How many Vietman vets does it take to screw in a lightbulb? YOU DON'T KNOW YOU WEREN'T THERE
How many Fruedians does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Two, one to screw in the lightbulb and the other holds the penis LADDER -holds the ladder. The ladder. Fuck.
Hahaha- It gets worse! The maximum possible efficiency for a light, where 100% of the electricity is converted to light, is about 683.002 lm/W. So you would need about.88 watts to produce 600 lumen with the most efficient lighting technology that's physically possible. So this still only generates 1/40th of the power needed, if everything is 100% efficient.
Ok, what the hell. Exactly what kind of worthless prize or conference is this, that they didn't check to see that you need 1000 times the energy the weight could possibly provide? And exactly what kind of scientist designed this thing that can't possibly work?
Meanwhile they're talking about how it would last two hundred years. Right. That's what they spent thier time with, trying to find a way to convince people how incredibly green this thing is.
I hate this sort of environmentalism that has absolutely no regard for reality. This one has no regard for basic conservation of energy, they might as well have said we can solve the energy problem with perpetual motion.
I disagree, I think the only way to judge a religion is by judging the actions of its members. What thier holy book says is irrelevant if they don't follow it.
This moral development you're talking about- I haven't seen it. I do agree that in theory, communism would be better, but I think saying that is a lot like saying it would be better if everything we could ever want rained from the sky. I think human nature is selfish and unless you neuter the drive to better one's own and one's family's life, communism won't work. I don't see that happening without drugs or some other sort of mind control, and I don't want to be neutered. I don't want to have to trust a giant government to make the best use of my time and to give me what they think I need. I don't trust any orginzation with that kind of power, and I value my freedom over my security. So even if communism could make me richer, which it can't, I'd die fighting it.
And the capitalist free market has been, always, orders of magnitude more efficient than government. Capitalist systems are competitive, and the inefficient die off. The free market, except in the case of uncompensated externalties, is perfect for regulating use of resources: whoever will pay the most is the one who needs/wants it most, and gets it. Aircraft aluminum isn't used for soda cans or refrigerators. That's because it is scarce and useful, thus expensive, so is used only used where they're needed most, that is, in airplanes. The free market also organizes people into doing tasks in a way governments could only dream of. Everyone, at every step of the way, is doing it for personal gain, and in doing so they've built everything we know. This is the invisible hand of the free market. People working for thier own gain making everyone richer.
Come on man. The historical debate is over, communism lost. It's been an abject failure. Even China has given up on it, and the more capitalist they get the faster thier economy is growing. It has perhaps caused more human suffering and misery than any other idea in history.
You cannot have communism unless everyone cooperates. You can't have that without cooersion. That's why every communist goverment that every existed as been made up of jackboot thugs and secret-police. Capitalism is the only way known to produce wealth without cooersion.
I for one would rather live on an island where I had to gather food or starve, VS the Island where I have enough food but I'm forced to work on a farm or I'd get shot. That's the difference between communism and capitalism. So even if communism and capitalism were equal in generating wealth, and it's not even close, I'd rather not be a slave.
Look at East Germany VS West Germany before the wall fell. People were only fleeing in one direction. Look at North korea VS South Korea. You can see the difference from space.
The historical debate is over. You cannot still be a thinking person who knows any history and be a communist.
What the hell- get over yourself. You are allowed to generalize about societies. You HAVE to.
Americans are richer than Indians. Are all Americans richer than all indians? No. But on average, we are a lot richer. We're also more educated and get better healthcare. If you try to understand the difference between american society and indian society without these basic facts because those facts are un-PC, you'll get nowhere.
In some cultures it's acceptable to stone a woman to death for having sex before marriage. And if you try to understand why honor killings take place in Saudi Arabia but not in France without acknowledging this basic fact because you consider it un-PC, you'll end up with an extremely bullshit reason and I'll call you a moron.
Cultures are different, in deep ways. It extends past food and music to core values. We do not all believe the same things or feel the same way about them. If that's un-PC, don't blame me, the world is the one that's like that and it won't change just because you decide to stick your fingers in your ears and sing "lalala".
You remind me of women who think it's sexist to say that men are physically stronger.
What Iraqis think the condition of detention is, or what the condition of detention in Iraq actually typically is, is something neither you nor I can know. It could be a situation where eveyrone has heard of someone who was raped or turtured, but nobody has met one and the three people they met who actually were detained said nothing happened. We don't have enough information to know this stuff. The soldier writing it seems to think that Iraqis think the reality of detention is pretty mild. I'm inclined to believe him, because there is no reliable data. Speculation from people thousands of miles away and attempts at opinion poles in a war zone don't convince me.
You're right the racism thing was pedantic, but that's not exactly what I meant. I meant it's ok to generalize about cultures. It's useful. Certain cultures have different attitudes toward violence than others. Certain ones are more literate. Certain ones are more religious. These are useful generalizations, and when you're talking about reactions of populations, you have to take into account the general trends of attitudes and beliefs of that population. Even though it says nothing about an individual, it will give you useful information about a population.
About the ex-iraqi army contribution, maybe there's no plausable theory regarding the ex-iraqi sodiers which would explain why the violence stopped in the last five weeks. What exactly changed five weeks before writing that which effects them? If nothing changed regarding them they can be left out of the speculation.
Personally I thought this war was a terrible idea, but I don't fault the military on the way it went. As I see they were given an impossible job. War is ugly and we should have learned in Veitnam that you can't have a clean one. I'm certainly not going to fault the soliders for being slightly insensitive in an internal memo, non-PC concepts don't fit well into PC language. Concepts like "Iraq has a violent culture and widespread hatred between sunnis and shiites." I'm also by no means think the Army is stupid. And I certainly trust what they have to say about the condition on the ground over there more than I trust analysts thousands of miles away or the lying politicians that sent them in the first place.
The analysis you linked is extremely slanted and unfair. Seriously, the writer just comes off as a jerk.
The memo acknowledges collateral damage, but is blithely unaware of the implications. "Most raids also leave in their wake a number of innocents who were either rounded up and detained or had their houses busted up... But there appears to be sufficient care in how the attacks are carried out, adequate information in the community about the mild reality of detention, and sufficient civil affairs clean up afterwards that this has not been a major factor." By April 2004, the infamous Abu Ghraib pictures had begun to surface, visual evidence of how the military had been alienating the Iraqi civilian population.
No it isn't unaware at all, it says the implications are mild. I'd like to know how the author knows exactly what the impact is of the collateral damage. They are thinking about this stuff, and have concluded the impact is mild. And Abu Graib- it isn't concievable that the Iraqis know that was an abberation, since many may know peole who were detained and released, who told everyone it wasn't so bad?
A second explanation hinges explicitly on an old ethnic stereotype about how Arabs only understand force. The "Crossed the Line" argument insists that violence is intrinsic to Arab culture: "[It] is a form of political discourse as well as being culturally acceptable for settling disputes and scores." The memo then argues that the violence in Anbar was quelled once the Americans proved they could be more violent. The Americans brought out a bigger stick, namely Gen. Abizaid's threat to "some 70 Sheikhs and community leaders" in Anbar "to unleash hell," twinned with the U.S. Air Force dropping some timely Joint Direct Action Munitions on the province.
The writer of the memo wasn't be racist at all. Saying Iraqi culture is very violent is not the same as saying anything about arabs. It maybe very well be true that Iraqi culture is very violent. If you say that american culture is very literate, it doesn't mean all white people can read. The analyst is the one being racist, equating Iraqi with arab.
"A third explanation, "Occupation Ending," says that the insurgents are backing off because they think the U.S. is about to depart. "What they" -- meaning the Iraqis -- "have gotten wrong," says the memo's author, "is the idea that the military will be leaving Iraq in June, which one individual said he was sure was a major factor in the diminishing attacks. Oh well, this is one time it might be best that folks don't fully understand things." Supposedly, the CPA's June 2004 deadline for handing over sovereignty to the Iraqis was misread by some locals as implying the withdrawal of American troops, and thus caused the number of insurgent attacks to decrease. (Four years later, the Bush administration often says any deadline for troop withdrawal would increase attacks.)"
Bush is not the military. Military analysts are not Bush. Don't equate the two.
A fifth theory, "Engagement," says that Iraqis have begun to have hope thanks to sustained contact with Americans. "We'll take some credit here. We have been engaging widely with... ex-Baathists, ex-Army. While many are tiring of the refrain that if you stay with us things will get better, for some they actually have improved and that many have given hope to entire groups." The author calls these people "the various groups of losers in the New Iraq."
Yes, losers, as in, people who had position and power in the old Iraq, but have little in the new Iraq. People who lost as a result of the invasion. Perfectly fair.
Nowhere in any of these theories, including the "boring" one, does the author address the dissolution of the Iraqi Army as a major contributor to the violence.
That's because this is about why violence has stopped, not why it's been happening in the first place.
Nowhere, in fact, does the author seem to know which "bums" or
Yeah, but I'm trying. Really the point I was trying to impress on him was that if you don't understand math, you can't understand physics. Maybe encourage him to go learn something about magnetism and electricity and then maybe he'll apply that knowledge to that theory and see how ridiculous it is.
Yeah, exactly. Except you mentioned in the inverse cube law, and this guy doesn't really do math. Well lemme explain it a little for him.
Forces like magnetism and gravity fall off in different ways. Gravity falls off via the inverse square law, as does light intensity and other things. What this means, in layman's terms, is that if you double your distance from a light source, it's one quarter as intense. Double it again, and you get a quarter of that intensity. So if you're one meter from a (point) light, you will recieve four times the light you would at two meters. Gravity follows this rule as well, and falls off along that profile.
Magnetism falls off along the inverse cube law. That means that if at one meter from the magnet you recieve 1 newton of force, at two meters it would 1/9 of a newton, and at four meters it would be 1/27th of a newton. So as you can see, magnetism falls off very quickly.
Essentially, that is the differece between magnetism and gravity: Gravity falls off very, very slowly, but is very weak. Magnetism is very strong, but falls off so quickly that the strongest electromagnets we can produce can barely be detected a few tens of meters away.
If you do the math, you find that the earth's magnetic field at the distance of mars is so laughably weak it could not possibly induce weather there, and that gravity is literally billions of times stronger at that distance than magnetism.
You can even see this concept here on earth. A magnet can lift a piece of metal, so essentially, the magnet beats the entire earth for pull when the two are very close together. But put the piece of metal a foot away from the magnet, and suddenly the magnet's pull is completely insignificant.
Here's what psuedoscience looks like: "The current scientific establishment has been brainwashed into believing the standard model because of (*) and our model is much better but being unfairly discrimintated against by (whatever)"
* conspriracy, conformity, stupidity, etc.
The main practitioners of electric universe are themselves unversed in actual science, and the main proponents are completely scientifically illiterate laymen.
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How does the scientific community treat ideas that are true but challenge basic assumptions? See Einstein. He was an outsider whose idea actually worked. So he was accepted when his predictions turned out to be right. He got friction, but in the face of evidence, everyone came around.
How to current unaccepted ideas that may or may not be valid look? String theory. When people call it unscientific, their response is not calling the rest of the science community a conspiracy and stupid, or getting laymen support to troll message boards, but working more on thier theory. It might be crap. It might not be. In either case it's a scientific idea, and if usefull it'll become part of the standard model, if not it'll be thrown away.
Pterosaurs were bigger than birds, and Sauropods were bigger than modern land animals. This is true. But it's a HUGE leap to go from that to gravity being lower back then, and from that to surmise that gravity is caused by electrical phenomenon. It's crazy. Earth was also hotter then, and had more oxygen, which for my money is a much better explaination. Or maybe it still is possible, it just hasn't happened. The blue whale is believed to be larger than any whale before it, does that mean our water has different proporties than it did back then? Evolution is a weird thing, it doesn't operate with the goal to produce the largest animals the environment it can, just to produce animals that can survive.
It could also be that Dinosauria were better suited for large sizes in basic design than mammals. They died out, now mammals dominate which perhaps can't get as big. Also a better theory than higher gravity.
Gravity, not electrical phenomenon, is responsible for the structure of our solar system. There is no question about this whatsoever. The orbit of the Moon around the Earth and the orbit of the Earth around the Sun, and every other body in orbit around another in the solar system can be calculated perfectly using gravitation towards mass, not charge. If it were electric charge and not gravity, you would expect things orbiting the sun (extreme electromagnetic activity) and objects orbiting planets (nearly electromagnetically inert) to behave with different rules. They don't, the same formula works perfectly. So perfectly that we can plot orbits of spacecraft that do gravitational slingshots and execute them perfectly. The math involved there doesn't even acknowledge electrical charge of the objects involved, only their mass, since charge in insignificant on these scales.
It's Gravity. Gravity gravity gravity. Mass attracting mass over long distances. Magnetism and electrical force die off much too quickly to matter.
Big bang cosmology does not have to address the Sun's corona, and this is not a cop out. The Corona is a peculiarity on a very small scale compared to the big bang, and doesn't effect much of how a star works. Scientists disagree how exactly it works. It's not really a problem for star formation or the inner workings of stars, the corona is essentially the atmosphere and a very small (un-massive) part of the star.
You can calculate the pressure at the Core of the Sun from its mass. Fusion can occur there, there is enough.
Geologists are not mystified by the grand canyon. I looked it up, they aren't. The reason it appears to flow uphill is because uplift raised parts of it after it had started forming.
Neutron stars are not like atoms. Atoms have neglibible gravity, in neutron stars as so massive that gravity is the dominant force. I'm sure the neutrons are trying to repel each other and are held in place by gravity. Just because you can't imagine the core of a star spinning 300 times a second doesn't mean it can't be the case. I'm sure you can't imagine the heat in a nuclear explosion either, doesn't mean it's not happening. If pulars were binary stars you'd find them with every pulsar- you don't. You find them in the middle of supernova remnants and in star forming nebulae.
Look, this science is quite junky. It's just throw everything against the wall and see what sticks. Dinosaurs! The grand canyon! Quasars! The Corona! If the Sun is being powered by an external electrical current, it should be huge enough that it's easy to find. Like - impossible to miss easy.
I'm not going to write a complete rebuttal, but to start with, a 747 has a wingspan of ~55 meters. Not that a 12 meter wingspan isn't big, but it is not the size of a 747.
Second, a Pterosaur is not a bird. It's a different evolutionary branch entirely. Just because birds can't achieve that sort of wingspan, doesn't mean no flying animal can. Imagine if birds had died out and there were no bats, you'd find a fossil of a seagull and say gravity must have been lower because you can't breed a flying insect that size.
Third, look at the build of the larger birds, like vultures or eagles or albatrosses. The larger the birds get, the smaller thier bodies get in proportion to their wings. Now look at Pterosaur skeletons. The pattern holds.
Now think, for a moment, about what would happen if gravity were lower. Air would be much thinner. The earth would orbit further from the sun. I assume we're talking about a major change in gravity here that would allow "birds the size of 747s". If gravity were that low earth probably wouldn't even have liquid water.
Now here's the part I hope you won't take as me giving anything up, I'm not, but EVERYONE agrees the sun has electromagnetic phenomenon. It simply does. Science believes it's caused by the conductive plasma the sun is made of working as a dynamo caused by plasma convection from the sun's core, where energy is produced by fusion. What your electric universe theory suggests is that the sun is nothing but a big gas discharge light bulb, and there's a multiple exowatt current being run through it.
As for the Big Bang theory not explaining the sun's corona, those are sort of different scales, aren't they? The big bang theory also doesn't explain how ants communicate. It's not supposed to. It explains the formation of the universe, not phenomenon in individual stars.
Asteroids orbits are not all circular and not eliptical. Every orbit is eliptical, with the sun at one of its focci. Comets' orbits tend to be very eliptical. Asteroids less so, mostly. But they're all elipses, of varying degrees.
The grand canyon was caused by lighting because it's shape looks like a bolt of lighting. Give me a break.
1. There were never birds as big as 747s, Dinosaur or otherwise. 2. Uh.. electrical universe is so bunked it's hard to respond to it. It's like trying to prove bananas aren't 57 mph, or that the color yellow isn't the driving force behind cell phones. No real math, no good astronomy, no real science.. there's really nothing to it that works at all or explains anything. Electric force is very easy to see and measure in this day and age, and is very well understood, and we just haven't seen anything at all like you describe. An object on earth or the moon or mars' weight is determined by their mass and not their charge, so are their orbits, so gravity must be the force that keeps the solar system's structure. 3. The reason Einstein is liked so much is that his theory explains gravitation perfectly in all places we see it, effecting light, the orbit of mercury, frame dragging, his time dilation is put to use in technologies like GPS, which rely on extremely precise clocks. The speed of light being constant from all frames of reference makes no sense with an aether based theory, yet that's exactly what all experiments find. Just because Aether is easier to understand doesn't make it right- the universe has no obligation to be comprehensible to you.
I don't really get what it is about junk science that makes people want to believe it so much, maybe just being anti-establishment? I mean the real science is just as exciting most of the time.
Yeah, but I'm not sure what these people are trying to do will work. Googlebombing works with obscure phrases, like Litigous Bastards or Miserable Failure, because people are unlikely to search for these or link with them in the first place. That way googlebombers can overcome all of the 'legit' uses of those phrases because there aren't very many of them. It's also mostly harmless because you can't accidentally find it.
By actaully using the candidates name, they have to overcome a whole lot more, all of the actual political blogs, news articles, campaign sites, etc. I don't think it will work at all.
Here's a little phrase to help you remember the difference!
Cindy will *lose* her anal virginity tonight. Her asshole will be *loose*.
Re:The greatest game...the best AI..highest realis
on
A Gamer's Manifesto
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Which part is hateful bile, and who is it hateful to? The enemy or our soldiers? Sarcasdic yeah, but pretty much accurate.
The part about them always winning maybe? This is mostly true, they do usually win. The reason is because for them to win we just have to leave, for us to win we have to establish a functional democracy and then leave. That's not usually actually feasible. Usually we either get sick of it and leave, or stay forever. I wouldn't call either of those winning. The last time we succeeded in putting a country to together that we could actually safely leave was in WWII.
Yeah, he's pretty sarcasdic there, but also pretty much dead on.
This is a lesson America will only learn the hard way, or not at all. But don't worry, rest of the world: It will directly lead to America no longer being the lone superpower, economically or otherwise. Another bush brand Republican or two, and our economy will no longer be anything to be feared, and the government will be so massively in debt it can no longer afford its military superiority, or waging pointless wars.
Meanwhile, I've moved to Canada, and don't really feel any need to go back.
Ok ok, a lot of these things aren't exactly new, but they way they're implemented or used together in the game give it depth and is definately innovative.
Melee attacks, for instance, are in pretty much all action games/shooters, but they're usually like the fallback knife or fists in other shooters. They're used instead of guns, not in conjuntion with.
The same is true of grenades - definately not new in a game, but in halo the left trigger is your gun and the right is the grenade. Again, used in conjunction with weapons, not instead of.
Two or three man vehicles in halo I'm not sure are done anywhere else, but as someone mentioned, tribes. In capture the flag games these get more interesting however, as the flag bearer can't drive and will need a ride from a teammate.
And only being able to carry two weapons you switch between I don't think is done anywhere else either, and it definately adds a lot.
So even if these things have been done before, the way they come together and are balanced creates very deep multiplayer gameplay I haven't seen in any other game.
Um, I think halo is a bad example of "just another shooter". It really isn't just another action game. It has a number of inovations that give a lot of depth to gameplay.
Health/shields - recharging shields after a few seconds, so you never have to limp around almost dead, team mates can cover you while you recharge for team strategy, etc
Vehicles - the way you can just get in and get out at will
Carrying only two weapons at a time, forces you to choose, not just load up
Melee attacks - always available and make close combat much more interesting
Grenades - always available at a button press (not a weapon you switch to) and add lots of strategy, such as bouncing htem around corners, laying them in front of doors enemies are following you through, etc
Plasma / particle weapons - plasma hurts shields more, particle hurts health more, makes weapon combos more interesting
Motion tracker - Not a radar, you can only see people who are moving, so not moving is a strategic option, crouch walking is slow but you don't show up on motion trackers, so it adds a level of stealth to an action game
Granted, these are all halo 1 inovations, but the balance of all these things in halo 2 is superb. They all come up constantly. I think a better example of a boring by the numbers game is Doom 3.
For example: They had a very small leak. They didn't have time to fix it, so their solution? They threw a tampon in to soak up any water so it wouldn't short out the electronics.
Slashdot Mirror
Some off color ones:
How many Vietman vets does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
YOU DON'T KNOW YOU WEREN'T THERE
How many Fruedians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
Two, one to screw in the lightbulb and the other holds the penis LADDER -holds the ladder. The ladder. Fuck.
Hahaha- It gets worse! The maximum possible efficiency for a light, where 100% of the electricity is converted to light, is about 683.002 lm/W. So you would need about .88 watts to produce 600 lumen with the most efficient lighting technology that's physically possible. So this still only generates 1/40th of the power needed, if everything is 100% efficient.
Ok, what the hell. Exactly what kind of worthless prize or conference is this, that they didn't check to see that you need 1000 times the energy the weight could possibly provide? And exactly what kind of scientist designed this thing that can't possibly work?
Meanwhile they're talking about how it would last two hundred years. Right. That's what they spent thier time with, trying to find a way to convince people how incredibly green this thing is.
I hate this sort of environmentalism that has absolutely no regard for reality. This one has no regard for basic conservation of energy, they might as well have said we can solve the energy problem with perpetual motion.
I disagree, I think the only way to judge a religion is by judging the actions of its members. What thier holy book says is irrelevant if they don't follow it.
This moral development you're talking about- I haven't seen it. I do agree that in theory, communism would be better, but I think saying that is a lot like saying it would be better if everything we could ever want rained from the sky. I think human nature is selfish and unless you neuter the drive to better one's own and one's family's life, communism won't work. I don't see that happening without drugs or some other sort of mind control, and I don't want to be neutered. I don't want to have to trust a giant government to make the best use of my time and to give me what they think I need. I don't trust any orginzation with that kind of power, and I value my freedom over my security. So even if communism could make me richer, which it can't, I'd die fighting it.
And the capitalist free market has been, always, orders of magnitude more efficient than government. Capitalist systems are competitive, and the inefficient die off. The free market, except in the case of uncompensated externalties, is perfect for regulating use of resources: whoever will pay the most is the one who needs/wants it most, and gets it. Aircraft aluminum isn't used for soda cans or refrigerators. That's because it is scarce and useful, thus expensive, so is used only used where they're needed most, that is, in airplanes. The free market also organizes people into doing tasks in a way governments could only dream of. Everyone, at every step of the way, is doing it for personal gain, and in doing so they've built everything we know. This is the invisible hand of the free market. People working for thier own gain making everyone richer.
Come on man. The historical debate is over, communism lost. It's been an abject failure. Even China has given up on it, and the more capitalist they get the faster thier economy is growing. It has perhaps caused more human suffering and misery than any other idea in history.
You cannot have communism unless everyone cooperates. You can't have that without cooersion. That's why every communist goverment that every existed as been made up of jackboot thugs and secret-police. Capitalism is the only way known to produce wealth without cooersion.
I for one would rather live on an island where I had to gather food or starve, VS the Island where I have enough food but I'm forced to work on a farm or I'd get shot. That's the difference between communism and capitalism. So even if communism and capitalism were equal in generating wealth, and it's not even close, I'd rather not be a slave.
Look at East Germany VS West Germany before the wall fell. People were only fleeing in one direction. Look at North korea VS South Korea. You can see the difference from space.
The historical debate is over. You cannot still be a thinking person who knows any history and be a communist.
What the hell- get over yourself. You are allowed to generalize about societies. You HAVE to.
Americans are richer than Indians. Are all Americans richer than all indians? No. But on average, we are a lot richer. We're also more educated and get better healthcare. If you try to understand the difference between american society and indian society without these basic facts because those facts are un-PC, you'll get nowhere.
In some cultures it's acceptable to stone a woman to death for having sex before marriage. And if you try to understand why honor killings take place in Saudi Arabia but not in France without acknowledging this basic fact because you consider it un-PC, you'll end up with an extremely bullshit reason and I'll call you a moron.
Cultures are different, in deep ways. It extends past food and music to core values. We do not all believe the same things or feel the same way about them. If that's un-PC, don't blame me, the world is the one that's like that and it won't change just because you decide to stick your fingers in your ears and sing "lalala".
You remind me of women who think it's sexist to say that men are physically stronger.
What Iraqis think the condition of detention is, or what the condition of detention in Iraq actually typically is, is something neither you nor I can know. It could be a situation where eveyrone has heard of someone who was raped or turtured, but nobody has met one and the three people they met who actually were detained said nothing happened. We don't have enough information to know this stuff. The soldier writing it seems to think that Iraqis think the reality of detention is pretty mild. I'm inclined to believe him, because there is no reliable data. Speculation from people thousands of miles away and attempts at opinion poles in a war zone don't convince me.
You're right the racism thing was pedantic, but that's not exactly what I meant. I meant it's ok to generalize about cultures. It's useful. Certain cultures have different attitudes toward violence than others. Certain ones are more literate. Certain ones are more religious. These are useful generalizations, and when you're talking about reactions of populations, you have to take into account the general trends of attitudes and beliefs of that population. Even though it says nothing about an individual, it will give you useful information about a population.
About the ex-iraqi army contribution, maybe there's no plausable theory regarding the ex-iraqi sodiers which would explain why the violence stopped in the last five weeks. What exactly changed five weeks before writing that which effects them? If nothing changed regarding them they can be left out of the speculation.
Personally I thought this war was a terrible idea, but I don't fault the military on the way it went. As I see they were given an impossible job. War is ugly and we should have learned in Veitnam that you can't have a clean one. I'm certainly not going to fault the soliders for being slightly insensitive in an internal memo, non-PC concepts don't fit well into PC language. Concepts like "Iraq has a violent culture and widespread hatred between sunnis and shiites." I'm also by no means think the Army is stupid. And I certainly trust what they have to say about the condition on the ground over there more than I trust analysts thousands of miles away or the lying politicians that sent them in the first place.
The analysis you linked is extremely slanted and unfair. Seriously, the writer just comes off as a jerk.
... But there appears to be sufficient care in how the attacks are carried out, adequate information in the community about the mild reality of detention, and sufficient civil affairs clean up afterwards that this has not been a major factor." By April 2004, the infamous Abu Ghraib pictures had begun to surface, visual evidence of how the military had been alienating the Iraqi civilian population.
... ex-Baathists, ex-Army. While many are tiring of the refrain that if you stay with us things will get better, for some they actually have improved and that many have given hope to entire groups." The author calls these people "the various groups of losers in the New Iraq."
The memo acknowledges collateral damage, but is blithely unaware of the implications. "Most raids also leave in their wake a number of innocents who were either rounded up and detained or had their houses busted up
No it isn't unaware at all, it says the implications are mild. I'd like to know how the author knows exactly what the impact is of the collateral damage. They are thinking about this stuff, and have concluded the impact is mild. And Abu Graib- it isn't concievable that the Iraqis know that was an abberation, since many may know peole who were detained and released, who told everyone it wasn't so bad?
A second explanation hinges explicitly on an old ethnic stereotype about how Arabs only understand force. The "Crossed the Line" argument insists that violence is intrinsic to Arab culture: "[It] is a form of political discourse as well as being culturally acceptable for settling disputes and scores." The memo then argues that the violence in Anbar was quelled once the Americans proved they could be more violent. The Americans brought out a bigger stick, namely Gen. Abizaid's threat to "some 70 Sheikhs and community leaders" in Anbar "to unleash hell," twinned with the U.S. Air Force dropping some timely Joint Direct Action Munitions on the province.
The writer of the memo wasn't be racist at all. Saying Iraqi culture is very violent is not the same as saying anything about arabs. It maybe very well be true that Iraqi culture is very violent. If you say that american culture is very literate, it doesn't mean all white people can read. The analyst is the one being racist, equating Iraqi with arab.
"A third explanation, "Occupation Ending," says that the insurgents are backing off because they think the U.S. is about to depart. "What they" -- meaning the Iraqis -- "have gotten wrong," says the memo's author, "is the idea that the military will be leaving Iraq in June, which one individual said he was sure was a major factor in the diminishing attacks. Oh well, this is one time it might be best that folks don't fully understand things." Supposedly, the CPA's June 2004 deadline for handing over sovereignty to the Iraqis was misread by some locals as implying the withdrawal of American troops, and thus caused the number of insurgent attacks to decrease. (Four years later, the Bush administration often says any deadline for troop withdrawal would increase attacks.)"
Bush is not the military. Military analysts are not Bush. Don't equate the two.
A fifth theory, "Engagement," says that Iraqis have begun to have hope thanks to sustained contact with Americans. "We'll take some credit here. We have been engaging widely with
Yes, losers, as in, people who had position and power in the old Iraq, but have little in the new Iraq. People who lost as a result of the invasion. Perfectly fair.
Nowhere in any of these theories, including the "boring" one, does the author address the dissolution of the Iraqi Army as a major contributor to the violence.
That's because this is about why violence has stopped, not why it's been happening in the first place.
Nowhere, in fact, does the author seem to know which "bums" or
Yeah, but I'm trying. Really the point I was trying to impress on him was that if you don't understand math, you can't understand physics. Maybe encourage him to go learn something about magnetism and electricity and then maybe he'll apply that knowledge to that theory and see how ridiculous it is.
Yeah, exactly. Except you mentioned in the inverse cube law, and this guy doesn't really do math. Well lemme explain it a little for him.
Forces like magnetism and gravity fall off in different ways. Gravity falls off via the inverse square law, as does light intensity and other things. What this means, in layman's terms, is that if you double your distance from a light source, it's one quarter as intense. Double it again, and you get a quarter of that intensity. So if you're one meter from a (point) light, you will recieve four times the light you would at two meters. Gravity follows this rule as well, and falls off along that profile.
Magnetism falls off along the inverse cube law. That means that if at one meter from the magnet you recieve 1 newton of force, at two meters it would 1/9 of a newton, and at four meters it would be 1/27th of a newton. So as you can see, magnetism falls off very quickly.
Essentially, that is the differece between magnetism and gravity: Gravity falls off very, very slowly, but is very weak. Magnetism is very strong, but falls off so quickly that the strongest electromagnets we can produce can barely be detected a few tens of meters away.
If you do the math, you find that the earth's magnetic field at the distance of mars is so laughably weak it could not possibly induce weather there, and that gravity is literally billions of times stronger at that distance than magnetism.
You can even see this concept here on earth. A magnet can lift a piece of metal, so essentially, the magnet beats the entire earth for pull when the two are very close together. But put the piece of metal a foot away from the magnet, and suddenly the magnet's pull is completely insignificant.
http://tim-thompson.com/electric-sun.html
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This is an actual scientist response to the electric sun junk arguments.
Here's what a *actual* protoscience looks like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory
Here's what psuedoscience looks like: "The current scientific establishment has been brainwashed into believing the standard model because of (*) and our model is much better but being unfairly discrimintated against by (whatever)"
* conspriracy, conformity, stupidity, etc.
The main practitioners of electric universe are themselves unversed in actual science, and the main proponents are completely scientifically illiterate laymen.
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How does the scientific community treat ideas that are true but challenge basic assumptions? See Einstein. He was an outsider whose idea actually worked. So he was accepted when his predictions turned out to be right. He got friction, but in the face of evidence, everyone came around.
How to current unaccepted ideas that may or may not be valid look? String theory. When people call it unscientific, their response is not calling the rest of the science community a conspiracy and stupid, or getting laymen support to troll message boards, but working more on thier theory. It might be crap. It might not be. In either case it's a scientific idea, and if usefull it'll become part of the standard model, if not it'll be thrown away.
No. I'm sorry. We cannot allow "Squirt" to enter our vernacular as a word for sending data wirelessly. No way.
Pterosaurs were bigger than birds, and Sauropods were bigger than modern land animals. This is true. But it's a HUGE leap to go from that to gravity being lower back then, and from that to surmise that gravity is caused by electrical phenomenon. It's crazy. Earth was also hotter then, and had more oxygen, which for my money is a much better explaination. Or maybe it still is possible, it just hasn't happened. The blue whale is believed to be larger than any whale before it, does that mean our water has different proporties than it did back then? Evolution is a weird thing, it doesn't operate with the goal to produce the largest animals the environment it can, just to produce animals that can survive.
It could also be that Dinosauria were better suited for large sizes in basic design than mammals. They died out, now mammals dominate which perhaps can't get as big. Also a better theory than higher gravity.
Gravity, not electrical phenomenon, is responsible for the structure of our solar system. There is no question about this whatsoever. The orbit of the Moon around the Earth and the orbit of the Earth around the Sun, and every other body in orbit around another in the solar system can be calculated perfectly using gravitation towards mass, not charge. If it were electric charge and not gravity, you would expect things orbiting the sun (extreme electromagnetic activity) and objects orbiting planets (nearly electromagnetically inert) to behave with different rules. They don't, the same formula works perfectly. So perfectly that we can plot orbits of spacecraft that do gravitational slingshots and execute them perfectly. The math involved there doesn't even acknowledge electrical charge of the objects involved, only their mass, since charge in insignificant on these scales.
It's Gravity. Gravity gravity gravity. Mass attracting mass over long distances. Magnetism and electrical force die off much too quickly to matter.
Big bang cosmology does not have to address the Sun's corona, and this is not a cop out. The Corona is a peculiarity on a very small scale compared to the big bang, and doesn't effect much of how a star works. Scientists disagree how exactly it works. It's not really a problem for star formation or the inner workings of stars, the corona is essentially the atmosphere and a very small (un-massive) part of the star.
You can calculate the pressure at the Core of the Sun from its mass. Fusion can occur there, there is enough.
Geologists are not mystified by the grand canyon. I looked it up, they aren't. The reason it appears to flow uphill is because uplift raised parts of it after it had started forming.
Neutron stars are not like atoms. Atoms have neglibible gravity, in neutron stars as so massive that gravity is the dominant force. I'm sure the neutrons are trying to repel each other and are held in place by gravity. Just because you can't imagine the core of a star spinning 300 times a second doesn't mean it can't be the case. I'm sure you can't imagine the heat in a nuclear explosion either, doesn't mean it's not happening. If pulars were binary stars you'd find them with every pulsar- you don't. You find them in the middle of supernova remnants and in star forming nebulae.
Look, this science is quite junky. It's just throw everything against the wall and see what sticks. Dinosaurs! The grand canyon! Quasars! The Corona! If the Sun is being powered by an external electrical current, it should be huge enough that it's easy to find. Like - impossible to miss easy.
I'm not going to write a complete rebuttal, but to start with, a 747 has a wingspan of ~55 meters. Not that a 12 meter wingspan isn't big, but it is not the size of a 747. Second, a Pterosaur is not a bird. It's a different evolutionary branch entirely. Just because birds can't achieve that sort of wingspan, doesn't mean no flying animal can. Imagine if birds had died out and there were no bats, you'd find a fossil of a seagull and say gravity must have been lower because you can't breed a flying insect that size. Third, look at the build of the larger birds, like vultures or eagles or albatrosses. The larger the birds get, the smaller thier bodies get in proportion to their wings. Now look at Pterosaur skeletons. The pattern holds. Now think, for a moment, about what would happen if gravity were lower. Air would be much thinner. The earth would orbit further from the sun. I assume we're talking about a major change in gravity here that would allow "birds the size of 747s". If gravity were that low earth probably wouldn't even have liquid water. Now here's the part I hope you won't take as me giving anything up, I'm not, but EVERYONE agrees the sun has electromagnetic phenomenon. It simply does. Science believes it's caused by the conductive plasma the sun is made of working as a dynamo caused by plasma convection from the sun's core, where energy is produced by fusion. What your electric universe theory suggests is that the sun is nothing but a big gas discharge light bulb, and there's a multiple exowatt current being run through it. As for the Big Bang theory not explaining the sun's corona, those are sort of different scales, aren't they? The big bang theory also doesn't explain how ants communicate. It's not supposed to. It explains the formation of the universe, not phenomenon in individual stars. Asteroids orbits are not all circular and not eliptical. Every orbit is eliptical, with the sun at one of its focci. Comets' orbits tend to be very eliptical. Asteroids less so, mostly. But they're all elipses, of varying degrees. The grand canyon was caused by lighting because it's shape looks like a bolt of lighting. Give me a break.
I don't know why I'm bothering.
1. There were never birds as big as 747s, Dinosaur or otherwise.
2. Uh.. electrical universe is so bunked it's hard to respond to it. It's like trying to prove bananas aren't 57 mph, or that the color yellow isn't the driving force behind cell phones. No real math, no good astronomy, no real science.. there's really nothing to it that works at all or explains anything. Electric force is very easy to see and measure in this day and age, and is very well understood, and we just haven't seen anything at all like you describe. An object on earth or the moon or mars' weight is determined by their mass and not their charge, so are their orbits, so gravity must be the force that keeps the solar system's structure.
3. The reason Einstein is liked so much is that his theory explains gravitation perfectly in all places we see it, effecting light, the orbit of mercury, frame dragging, his time dilation is put to use in technologies like GPS, which rely on extremely precise clocks. The speed of light being constant from all frames of reference makes no sense with an aether based theory, yet that's exactly what all experiments find. Just because Aether is easier to understand doesn't make it right- the universe has no obligation to be comprehensible to you.
I don't really get what it is about junk science that makes people want to believe it so much, maybe just being anti-establishment? I mean the real science is just as exciting most of the time.
Yeah, but I'm not sure what these people are trying to do will work. Googlebombing works with obscure phrases, like Litigous Bastards or Miserable Failure, because people are unlikely to search for these or link with them in the first place. That way googlebombers can overcome all of the 'legit' uses of those phrases because there aren't very many of them. It's also mostly harmless because you can't accidentally find it.
By actaully using the candidates name, they have to overcome a whole lot more, all of the actual political blogs, news articles, campaign sites, etc. I don't think it will work at all.
Here's a little phrase to help you remember the difference!
Cindy will *lose* her anal virginity tonight. Her asshole will be *loose*.
Which part is hateful bile, and who is it hateful to? The enemy or our soldiers? Sarcasdic yeah, but pretty much accurate.
The part about them always winning maybe? This is mostly true, they do usually win. The reason is because for them to win we just have to leave, for us to win we have to establish a functional democracy and then leave. That's not usually actually feasible. Usually we either get sick of it and leave, or stay forever. I wouldn't call either of those winning. The last time we succeeded in putting a country to together that we could actually safely leave was in WWII.
Yeah, he's pretty sarcasdic there, but also pretty much dead on.
Can't. War's over, sanity lost.
This is a lesson America will only learn the hard way, or not at all. But don't worry, rest of the world: It will directly lead to America no longer being the lone superpower, economically or otherwise. Another bush brand Republican or two, and our economy will no longer be anything to be feared, and the government will be so massively in debt it can no longer afford its military superiority, or waging pointless wars.
Meanwhile, I've moved to Canada, and don't really feel any need to go back.
Ok ok, a lot of these things aren't exactly new, but they way they're implemented or used together in the game give it depth and is definately innovative.
Melee attacks, for instance, are in pretty much all action games/shooters, but they're usually like the fallback knife or fists in other shooters. They're used instead of guns, not in conjuntion with.
The same is true of grenades - definately not new in a game, but in halo the left trigger is your gun and the right is the grenade. Again, used in conjunction with weapons, not instead of.
Two or three man vehicles in halo I'm not sure are done anywhere else, but as someone mentioned, tribes. In capture the flag games these get more interesting however, as the flag bearer can't drive and will need a ride from a teammate.
And only being able to carry two weapons you switch between I don't think is done anywhere else either, and it definately adds a lot.
So even if these things have been done before, the way they come together and are balanced creates very deep multiplayer gameplay I haven't seen in any other game.
You're right, and that is where they go the idea (they've admitted this). Alien's not a video game though.
Actually the motion tracker is from bungie's earlier game, Marathon, which predates Alien vs Predator.
Um, I think halo is a bad example of "just another shooter". It really isn't just another action game. It has a number of inovations that give a lot of depth to gameplay.
Health/shields - recharging shields after a few seconds, so you never have to limp around almost dead, team mates can cover you while you recharge for team strategy, etc
Vehicles - the way you can just get in and get out at will
Carrying only two weapons at a time, forces you to choose, not just load up
Melee attacks - always available and make close combat much more interesting
Grenades - always available at a button press (not a weapon you switch to) and add lots of strategy, such as bouncing htem around corners, laying them in front of doors enemies are following you through, etc
Plasma / particle weapons - plasma hurts shields more, particle hurts health more, makes weapon combos more interesting
Motion tracker - Not a radar, you can only see people who are moving, so not moving is a strategic option, crouch walking is slow but you don't show up on motion trackers, so it adds a level of stealth to an action game
Granted, these are all halo 1 inovations, but the balance of all these things in halo 2 is superb. They all come up constantly. I think a better example of a boring by the numbers game is Doom 3.
For example: They had a very small leak. They didn't have time to fix it, so their solution? They threw a tampon in to soak up any water so it wouldn't short out the electronics.
That's brilliant.