That whooshing sound was the ironing flying over your head.
And nobody has made it past the preliminary challenge where the million dollars is NOT in jeopardy.
Funny, that.
Check the jref forums. All challenges, even those sent in handwritten and requiring transcription, are there.
Aaaand from the FAQ which you haven't read...
most of the applications are maintained in a file cabinet at the JREF headquarters. In other words, if you want a lot of details about the former applicants, you are going to have to visit the JREF and do your own research.
Note also that there are still no claims on the site that they post every test up. Listen, if all you are going to do is invent facts and post them as reality, you aren't much better than the charlatans that prey on the credulous. I'm a big fan of facts, me, not those that claim to possess them. Also your incorrect defence of JREF speaks of a bias all of its own; hardly worthy of a rational person, wouldn't you say?
Both sides must agree before the test is administered what will constitute a positive result.
Yes, and that leaves no wiggle room at all for JREF. From the site FAQ...
"Mutually agreed upon" means that neither side can force the other side into doing or saying something that they don't want to, and that if no agreement can be reached, the application process is terminated, with no blame or fault attributed to either side.
I like that little disclaimer there, about no blame or fault. And in no place could I find any assertions that they publicly post all the properly presented challenge applications. They do, however post the most ludicrous ones, which make the site a very entertaining read, and which should also tell you all you need to know about the James Randi Educational Foundation. A model of the scientific method, it is not.
We have looked, and looked, and looked and come up empty handed EVERY TIME.
Ahh, but thats what THEY want you to believe. These are not the telepaths you are looking for... *waves hand*
In all seriousness, and snake oil salesmen aside, I don't know why so many people feel personally threatened by the possible existence of "powers". Well okay, maybe its the extraordinary quantity of snake oil salesmen out there, I can see that. For myself, I don't want to believe (those posters with a picture of flying saucers, "I want to believe", are the height of ignorance- if there are flying saucers we are pw3nd six ways from Sunday- now thats scary), but I remain clinically open to the idea of telepathy, or numerous other extra-sensory abilities. The line from Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu" has always resonated with me...
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
The fact of the matter is that we as a race and species are in our infancy, having just crawled down from the trees an eyeblink ago in terms of the age of just about anything. Our technological prowess is counterpointed by our social retardation, the surging fight or flight chemicals that serve almost no purpose in a modern world, but influence everyone up to and including our elected leadership. We know very very little about the universe, having just barely chipped off enough knowledge to make some of us reasonably comfortable for the time being.
There are a lot of unanswered questions, and a lot of peculiar occurences that we cannot simply brush under the carpet. Things like near death experiences (before I get dogpiled, yes I know there are more merchants of dubiousity in that than anything else, but I have learned a lot about it, and there do seem to be some genuine cases of patients noting conversations after brain death occurs), concurrence, where two unrelated individuals have the same ideas at the same time, even the simple mystery of dreams or music, to name but a few. And don't leap in with links flailing telling me someone solved what dreams are, because they haven't.
The urge to confine humans to being just meat machines is almost as dangerous as the urge to praise the sky wizard of your choice; it reduces people to little more than automatons in the eyes of rational men, and it is my firm belief that we are far more than the sum of our parts. Not that I have any particular evidence for that. Yet.
Lets not forget, as one poster above pointed out, just a short time ago, radio was believed to travel over the lumineferous ether.
As for the Randi foundation, I have zero confidence in their ability to make an unbiased report on anything they might find. Why? Because if they do find real, actual psychic powers, thats a million they owe. And I don't know about anyone else here, but if I can avoid forking over a million, I will, and thats not even considering the knock-on effects. Some people have pointed out to me that they would get super rich from the merchandising or something. Sorry, try again, the psychic gets super rich. They get to cease existing. Just because you find someone with some sort of powers doesn't mean they owe you anything more than a receipt for a cool million. Oh yes, and you are out of a job.
The FBI agent in charge, Don Przybyla has no doubt where the principal threat comes from. He says "the majority are coming from China. They are using a shot-gun approach, flooding the Silicon Valley with engineers and scientists.
"The Chinese have found success in obtaining the technology through stealing, essentially. Once successful they'll send more people over to do the same thing."
One software company that found itself targeted is 3DGeo. It deals with remote sensing equipment - searching for oil and gas from space. They had a contract with the Chinese national petrol company which included training opportunities in the US for six staff. The last two sent to California decided to help themselves to the company's secrets.
The fines aren't meant to destroy MS forever. They are just a warning shot across the bow. They have increased to $3 million per day, and will continue to increase until the shot across the bow changes to full ramming speed. Its not nice to fuck with continents.
Then they repudiate it all, and set up
shop, once they feel economicially strong
strong enough.
Kiss goodbye to the largest and richest market for your goods on earth, then. And say hello to trade sanctions from the west (trading partners included). And it will prove a little difficult to get economically strong in the first place when you aren't allowed to use what you know to advance yourself. Thats what IP law is about, in its entirety, letting the west have its cheap goods and prevent the people making them from making them for themselves.
Never mind in 10 or 20 years, the companies in the
countries being outsourced to will have all the
expertise they need, and the American partners will
be told to pound sand.
Why do you think the US has been working so hard to export its IP laws? Doesn't matter if you know how to do a thing, if you are legally restricted from making it.
1987 is a bit before my time in the north. I do recall all sorts of allegations going around at the time of the Omagh bombing though. Nyeh it was always one fucked up faction or another.
I never heard about Enniskillen (and I lived there for a few years) but Omagh was an accidental detonation by amateur couriers. Or amateur bomb makers. Which is what you get when you add breakaway factions from the main IRA to the mix. Said faction is currently expired, due to the efforts of aforementioned IRA.
Keep in mind you must continue to piss to keep the circuit closed for a significant amount of time to fry your heart. Now, this is something I would pay to see you do.
Ah slashdot. Pushing the boundaries of flamewars every day, in every way!
If your men start blowing up along one line, you don't want to go that way. Also anti-tank mines are largely easy to remove by hand, thats why these hopping mines were created. Because they had resorted to surrounding them with anti-personnell mines. As for the herding of cowes, just fire guns where you don't want them to go.
Heyy, didn't realise someone was still answering. Lets knock this shit on the head right here.
Jesus Christ did someone shit in your corn flakes this morning?
What, do my responses strike you as ill-tempered, or even dare I say it, vitriolic? I get like that when cornholing rednecks start degrading honest men trying to do a nasty job.
He was getting the point across that cops ultimately have a safe haven that they can always rely on to go home to at the end of the day, they have that anchor and are not stuck in the middle of a warzone at all times like a person in the armed forces currently serving on the front. Nevermind the fact that the enemies people in the military come across almost without doubt want the soldier dead, and with cops at least you have variance with the people you have to deal with in the line of duty. Nobody was saying cops live in the nice cushy neighborhoods, the salaries usually don't pay that well by far.
Oh yeah, those brave soldiers, living and camping in the heart of enemy territory, with no safe haven or heavily fortified military bases to go to. Why don't you sit down and drink a tall glass of shut the fuck up, tinkerbell. And yes, the soldiers' enemies invariably want them dead, so when they get killed no one bats an eyelid. Heres a hint: that makes life easier.
The enemy wears no standard uniform, and one second that apparently peaceful civilian walking past you might suddenly shift in the next second to the enemy trying to take your head off with his AK. Instead of getting political about this, why not focus on the actual issue being discussed?
Golf clap. Well done. Now you're getting an idea of what its like to be a cop, for the first time. Also you misspelled freedom fighters. Thats what happens when you get political.
and the fact that most of the people in the military are doing the best job they can given the situation they're in.
Yes nobody got conscripted. Cry me a river.
You're getting emotional over something that had no place in the original conversation, and you're obviously trying to stir the military man, which, to be frank, is disgusting and of very low class.
But its fun and easy?
Again, I hate Bush, the current administration, and a lot of what America is starting to stand for, and I probably see things very differently from this guy. You on the other hand seem to simply be concerned with spitting hate and vitriol, rather than actual constructive discussion about it
I don't especially hate anyone, baby, it wastes too much time. Don't mistake me for a "liberal" or even an american citizen; this is not someone who gives a flying fuck in hard vacuum about your high-larious two voice one party squabbles. You going to liberate me now? It might look like hate to you, but hey, are you going to roll over when a redneck spits on a hell of a lot of nice men and women doing possibly the shittiest job it is possible to find in our shiny first world?
Maybe if you re-read your posts anytime in the future you'll realize that you're the one who's the product, taking the ultra-liberal-without-a-cause thing way too far and becoming just as mindless as the people that we both likely share a great distaste for. You're in need of some serious maturity because this baiting of emotions you're attempting is anything but.
Oh do teach me daddy, where have I gone so wrong? Don't try to draw empathy lines with me, you and I have very little in common. And as for emotion baiting, as I said, its fun and easy. Whats not to like?
You probably should've taken the time in school to enter into at the very least a single Debate class, because you really don't have any idea that you're floundering at best, here. You're the one trying to put on a tough guy image here, and the only thing you're achieving is coming off as an ignorant and young asshole dying for someone to spit your slime at.
And you win the debate, purely by dint of declaring yourself a victor. I must remember that tactic for future discussions. Fuck off already, genius.
Yes but isn't that already achieved if you keep the minefield secret? Plus a couple of other nasty side effects which I detailed above? Honestly, once you know the boundaires of the minefield, just drive a herd of cattle over it.
All due credit to your achievements, but I would disagree about the goal of a landmine not being secret. If an enemy can see clearly where the minefield starts and ends, he is forewarned and has several well defined options to remove the minefield. If he does not know where it is, an advancing force is demoralised by the surprise attack they cannot retaliate against, slowed to a crawl (very desireable) and of course damaged by the randomly dropped mines. The only way that a minefield can be a useful visible obstacle is if you are trying to secure a public facility, or keep in inmates, for example in a prison.
Which brings up another interesting point which another poster touched on. Surely these mines are extremely visible, not being buried? Whats to stop attackers from simply lobbing grenades in until there is a clear path? And even if they are camouflaged differently for each mine (which I can only see working in scrub or possibly very rocky territory, itself a hindrance to the mine's mobility), once they start moving surely they are even more visible? Thats entirely discounting the radio pulses they must put out making them yet more detectable?
All in all a heroic effort, but too many of the underlying ideas appear to be crucially flawed. Feel free to correct me on any particular point.
I concur with your conclusions, and you have my full support. The problem is, your pursuit of a rational agenda is directly in conflict with very entrenched forces in the US. Everything from the segregation of the intellectuals from the physically capable at an early school, as though there was some reason one cannot be both, to the complete sequestration of the media, to the two-party one-voice politics, its all set against you. I have the feeling that this train has been in motion for quite some time.
I mean what do you have here, you have a semi literate and poorly educated population being told that yes, they are not descended from monkeys and rats, but from the divine hand of god. Which is more appealing to them as they sit watching the game? People don't choose to be ill educated or stupid, they are made so by their society. I honestly cannot say what course of action will reverse the situation, but believe me you are not alone in your frustration at watching the forces at play in America today come closer to their endgame, whatever that is. They don't need to be right, just appealing.
Yes I am aware that sounds suspiciously close to a conspiracy theory, but it does appear to fit the available facts. Even here on slashdot, the amount of religious claptrappery popping up (and being modded up!) increases daily. I myself have hammered back more than once, but have neither the time nor the patience to make a crusade out of it, unlike my opponents. Still, we do what we can.
I too have difficulty believing in Darwin's theory. The idea that you and any other creationists are as evolved as me is very offensive, and I believe it leads to a new theory of homo knuckledraggus whereby a subspecies of inferior apes somehow evolved along with the main human bloodlines. Just don't go breeding anywhere near me.
I'm going to report the moderation on this post to the admins on slashdot and request that the moderator not be given points again, as he or she is clearly abusing the privelege. Leave your gods at the door, folks...
Bravo, sir, if I had mod points I'd mod this post up and your last four ones as well. I may yet. Its comments like these that remind me of why I come back to slashdot. More of you, please.
I'm only going to answer to one of your postings, since splitting threads is ass.
cops don't live in the hell-holes they patrol, so their families don't "face the meth dealer [they] busted".
What, a meth dealer can't read a map? There is some kind of magical wall that keeps them in the bad neighbourhoods? Grow up.
Soldiers can't open up with assault rifles on their enemies any more than cops can with their pistols. Do not fire until fired upon is pretty much the rule of the day.
Pretty much, yeah. Like for example when invading another country. Just walk over the borders until they start shooting you. What planet are you from again?
Release valves? You mean like 4th of July barbecues? Drinking a few beers in front of the game with the guy? Going out fishing with your kids on the weekend? Yeah, we were able to do a whole lot of that in Shahi-Kot.
Just Like Nam Baby! Your whining about professionalism is rich in the face of the daily atrocities, innocents and children killed by US troops, not to mention the whole bullshit war in the first place. I hope you enjoy fighting for uncle george the second, because he sure as hell supports the troops making him and his cronies rich! Why he should be on his third mansion any time now. How are those turirists doing? Who cares?
Seriously, you're an arrogant, ignorant prick. But you've already illustrated that quite well.
Woo, good retort, I guess the ol' boot camp training isn't up to much in the arena of intellectual debate, eh? For what its worth, you are a product.
Feel free to counter with the usual: call me a Bush-voting, baby killing white trash yahoo, or whatever it is your narrow ideology demands. I'm none of those things, but you'll never believe it.
Frankly I don't care about you, and I wouldn't bat an eyelid if you dropped dead tomorrow. However, your argument, although impassioned, is completely wrong, since you have no idea what you are burbling about. So you got called on it, and now you are coming back in true military style, all guns blazing, on a hiding to nothing.
Evidence of the cop who beat his wife for not participating in Group sex.
The cop. Singular. You may have good documentation, but its not the same as what you post, which was that cops like to beat their wives. I didn't see "except for 99% of them" in there. Still, we're all behind you in your battle against jeep addiction,
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly the point.
That whooshing sound was the ironing flying over your head.
And nobody has made it past the preliminary challenge where the million dollars is NOT in jeopardy.
Funny, that.
Check the jref forums. All challenges, even those sent in handwritten and requiring transcription, are there.
Aaaand from the FAQ which you haven't read...
most of the applications are maintained in a file cabinet at the JREF headquarters. In other words, if you want a lot of details about the former applicants, you are going to have to visit the JREF and do your own research.
Note also that there are still no claims on the site that they post every test up. Listen, if all you are going to do is invent facts and post them as reality, you aren't much better than the charlatans that prey on the credulous. I'm a big fan of facts, me, not those that claim to possess them. Also your incorrect defence of JREF speaks of a bias all of its own; hardly worthy of a rational person, wouldn't you say?
Both sides must agree before the test is administered what will constitute a positive result.
Yes, and that leaves no wiggle room at all for JREF. From the site FAQ...
"Mutually agreed upon" means that neither side can force the other side into doing or saying something that they don't want to, and that if no agreement can be reached, the application process is terminated, with no blame or fault attributed to either side.
I like that little disclaimer there, about no blame or fault. And in no place could I find any assertions that they publicly post all the properly presented challenge applications. They do, however post the most ludicrous ones, which make the site a very entertaining read, and which should also tell you all you need to know about the James Randi Educational Foundation. A model of the scientific method, it is not.
We have looked, and looked, and looked and come up empty handed EVERY TIME.
Ahh, but thats what THEY want you to believe. These are not the telepaths you are looking for... *waves hand*
In all seriousness, and snake oil salesmen aside, I don't know why so many people feel personally threatened by the possible existence of "powers". Well okay, maybe its the extraordinary quantity of snake oil salesmen out there, I can see that. For myself, I don't want to believe (those posters with a picture of flying saucers, "I want to believe", are the height of ignorance- if there are flying saucers we are pw3nd six ways from Sunday- now thats scary), but I remain clinically open to the idea of telepathy, or numerous other extra-sensory abilities. The line from Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu" has always resonated with me...
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
The fact of the matter is that we as a race and species are in our infancy, having just crawled down from the trees an eyeblink ago in terms of the age of just about anything. Our technological prowess is counterpointed by our social retardation, the surging fight or flight chemicals that serve almost no purpose in a modern world, but influence everyone up to and including our elected leadership. We know very very little about the universe, having just barely chipped off enough knowledge to make some of us reasonably comfortable for the time being.
There are a lot of unanswered questions, and a lot of peculiar occurences that we cannot simply brush under the carpet. Things like near death experiences (before I get dogpiled, yes I know there are more merchants of dubiousity in that than anything else, but I have learned a lot about it, and there do seem to be some genuine cases of patients noting conversations after brain death occurs), concurrence, where two unrelated individuals have the same ideas at the same time, even the simple mystery of dreams or music, to name but a few. And don't leap in with links flailing telling me someone solved what dreams are, because they haven't.
The urge to confine humans to being just meat machines is almost as dangerous as the urge to praise the sky wizard of your choice; it reduces people to little more than automatons in the eyes of rational men, and it is my firm belief that we are far more than the sum of our parts. Not that I have any particular evidence for that. Yet.
Lets not forget, as one poster above pointed out, just a short time ago, radio was believed to travel over the lumineferous ether.
As for the Randi foundation, I have zero confidence in their ability to make an unbiased report on anything they might find. Why? Because if they do find real, actual psychic powers, thats a million they owe. And I don't know about anyone else here, but if I can avoid forking over a million, I will, and thats not even considering the knock-on effects. Some people have pointed out to me that they would get super rich from the merchandising or something. Sorry, try again, the psychic gets super rich. They get to cease existing. Just because you find someone with some sort of powers doesn't mean they owe you anything more than a receipt for a cool million. Oh yes, and you are out of a job.
Your comment reminds me of the large US hi-tech companies accusing the Chinese of "stealing their IP"
Funnily enough, the FBI seem to think so too... From the fine article:
The FBI agent in charge, Don Przybyla has no doubt where the principal threat comes from. He says "the majority are coming from China. They are using a shot-gun approach, flooding the Silicon Valley with engineers and scientists.
"The Chinese have found success in obtaining the technology through stealing, essentially. Once successful they'll send more people over to do the same thing."
One software company that found itself targeted is 3DGeo. It deals with remote sensing equipment - searching for oil and gas from space. They had a contract with the Chinese national petrol company which included training opportunities in the US for six staff. The last two sent to California decided to help themselves to the company's secrets.
Whats even funnier is that even when they steal the technology, they find themselves incapable of reverse engineering it. India and China have got a long, long way to go before they can begin to match western technology.
The fines aren't meant to destroy MS forever. They are just a warning shot across the bow. They have increased to $3 million per day, and will continue to increase until the shot across the bow changes to full ramming speed. Its not nice to fuck with continents.
Then they repudiate it all, and set up shop, once they feel economicially strong strong enough.
Kiss goodbye to the largest and richest market for your goods on earth, then. And say hello to trade sanctions from the west (trading partners included). And it will prove a little difficult to get economically strong in the first place when you aren't allowed to use what you know to advance yourself. Thats what IP law is about, in its entirety, letting the west have its cheap goods and prevent the people making them from making them for themselves.
Lisa Randall is a babe!!
I do not think that word means what you think it means...
Never mind in 10 or 20 years, the companies in the countries being outsourced to will have all the expertise they need, and the American partners will be told to pound sand.
Why do you think the US has been working so hard to export its IP laws? Doesn't matter if you know how to do a thing, if you are legally restricted from making it.
1987 is a bit before my time in the north. I do recall all sorts of allegations going around at the time of the Omagh bombing though. Nyeh it was always one fucked up faction or another.
I never heard about Enniskillen (and I lived there for a few years) but Omagh was an accidental detonation by amateur couriers. Or amateur bomb makers. Which is what you get when you add breakaway factions from the main IRA to the mix. Said faction is currently expired, due to the efforts of aforementioned IRA.
Keep in mind you must continue to piss to keep the circuit closed for a significant amount of time to fry your heart. Now, this is something I would pay to see you do.
Ah slashdot. Pushing the boundaries of flamewars every day, in every way!
If your men start blowing up along one line, you don't want to go that way. Also anti-tank mines are largely easy to remove by hand, thats why these hopping mines were created. Because they had resorted to surrounding them with anti-personnell mines. As for the herding of cowes, just fire guns where you don't want them to go.
That would be the largest economy in the world...
Heyy, didn't realise someone was still answering. Lets knock this shit on the head right here.
Jesus Christ did someone shit in your corn flakes this morning?
What, do my responses strike you as ill-tempered, or even dare I say it, vitriolic? I get like that when cornholing rednecks start degrading honest men trying to do a nasty job.
He was getting the point across that cops ultimately have a safe haven that they can always rely on to go home to at the end of the day, they have that anchor and are not stuck in the middle of a warzone at all times like a person in the armed forces currently serving on the front. Nevermind the fact that the enemies people in the military come across almost without doubt want the soldier dead, and with cops at least you have variance with the people you have to deal with in the line of duty. Nobody was saying cops live in the nice cushy neighborhoods, the salaries usually don't pay that well by far.
Oh yeah, those brave soldiers, living and camping in the heart of enemy territory, with no safe haven or heavily fortified military bases to go to. Why don't you sit down and drink a tall glass of shut the fuck up, tinkerbell. And yes, the soldiers' enemies invariably want them dead, so when they get killed no one bats an eyelid. Heres a hint: that makes life easier.
The enemy wears no standard uniform, and one second that apparently peaceful civilian walking past you might suddenly shift in the next second to the enemy trying to take your head off with his AK. Instead of getting political about this, why not focus on the actual issue being discussed?
Golf clap. Well done. Now you're getting an idea of what its like to be a cop, for the first time. Also you misspelled freedom fighters. Thats what happens when you get political.
and the fact that most of the people in the military are doing the best job they can given the situation they're in.
Yes nobody got conscripted. Cry me a river.
You're getting emotional over something that had no place in the original conversation, and you're obviously trying to stir the military man, which, to be frank, is disgusting and of very low class.
But its fun and easy?
Again, I hate Bush, the current administration, and a lot of what America is starting to stand for, and I probably see things very differently from this guy. You on the other hand seem to simply be concerned with spitting hate and vitriol, rather than actual constructive discussion about it
I don't especially hate anyone, baby, it wastes too much time. Don't mistake me for a "liberal" or even an american citizen; this is not someone who gives a flying fuck in hard vacuum about your high-larious two voice one party squabbles. You going to liberate me now? It might look like hate to you, but hey, are you going to roll over when a redneck spits on a hell of a lot of nice men and women doing possibly the shittiest job it is possible to find in our shiny first world?
Maybe if you re-read your posts anytime in the future you'll realize that you're the one who's the product, taking the ultra-liberal-without-a-cause thing way too far and becoming just as mindless as the people that we both likely share a great distaste for. You're in need of some serious maturity because this baiting of emotions you're attempting is anything but.
Oh do teach me daddy, where have I gone so wrong? Don't try to draw empathy lines with me, you and I have very little in common. And as for emotion baiting, as I said, its fun and easy. Whats not to like?
You probably should've taken the time in school to enter into at the very least a single Debate class, because you really don't have any idea that you're floundering at best, here. You're the one trying to put on a tough guy image here, and the only thing you're achieving is coming off as an ignorant and young asshole dying for someone to spit your slime at.
And you win the debate, purely by dint of declaring yourself a victor. I must remember that tactic for future discussions. Fuck off already, genius.
Way to late for that, I have three daughters that are older and smarter than you!
Okay, but you aren't allowed to have sex with them, no matter what the old testament says. Ook ook, monkey boy.
At the end of it all it is simply a numbers game.
Unless you have cows.
Yes but isn't that already achieved if you keep the minefield secret? Plus a couple of other nasty side effects which I detailed above? Honestly, once you know the boundaires of the minefield, just drive a herd of cattle over it.
All due credit to your achievements, but I would disagree about the goal of a landmine not being secret. If an enemy can see clearly where the minefield starts and ends, he is forewarned and has several well defined options to remove the minefield. If he does not know where it is, an advancing force is demoralised by the surprise attack they cannot retaliate against, slowed to a crawl (very desireable) and of course damaged by the randomly dropped mines. The only way that a minefield can be a useful visible obstacle is if you are trying to secure a public facility, or keep in inmates, for example in a prison.
Which brings up another interesting point which another poster touched on. Surely these mines are extremely visible, not being buried? Whats to stop attackers from simply lobbing grenades in until there is a clear path? And even if they are camouflaged differently for each mine (which I can only see working in scrub or possibly very rocky territory, itself a hindrance to the mine's mobility), once they start moving surely they are even more visible? Thats entirely discounting the radio pulses they must put out making them yet more detectable?
All in all a heroic effort, but too many of the underlying ideas appear to be crucially flawed. Feel free to correct me on any particular point.
I concur with your conclusions, and you have my full support. The problem is, your pursuit of a rational agenda is directly in conflict with very entrenched forces in the US. Everything from the segregation of the intellectuals from the physically capable at an early school, as though there was some reason one cannot be both, to the complete sequestration of the media, to the two-party one-voice politics, its all set against you. I have the feeling that this train has been in motion for quite some time.
I mean what do you have here, you have a semi literate and poorly educated population being told that yes, they are not descended from monkeys and rats, but from the divine hand of god. Which is more appealing to them as they sit watching the game? People don't choose to be ill educated or stupid, they are made so by their society. I honestly cannot say what course of action will reverse the situation, but believe me you are not alone in your frustration at watching the forces at play in America today come closer to their endgame, whatever that is. They don't need to be right, just appealing.
Yes I am aware that sounds suspiciously close to a conspiracy theory, but it does appear to fit the available facts. Even here on slashdot, the amount of religious claptrappery popping up (and being modded up!) increases daily. I myself have hammered back more than once, but have neither the time nor the patience to make a crusade out of it, unlike my opponents. Still, we do what we can.
I too have difficulty believing in Darwin's theory. The idea that you and any other creationists are as evolved as me is very offensive, and I believe it leads to a new theory of homo knuckledraggus whereby a subspecies of inferior apes somehow evolved along with the main human bloodlines. Just don't go breeding anywhere near me.
I'm going to report the moderation on this post to the admins on slashdot and request that the moderator not be given points again, as he or she is clearly abusing the privelege. Leave your gods at the door, folks...
Bravo, sir, if I had mod points I'd mod this post up and your last four ones as well. I may yet. Its comments like these that remind me of why I come back to slashdot. More of you, please.
I'm only going to answer to one of your postings, since splitting threads is ass.
cops don't live in the hell-holes they patrol, so their families don't "face the meth dealer [they] busted".
What, a meth dealer can't read a map? There is some kind of magical wall that keeps them in the bad neighbourhoods? Grow up.
Soldiers can't open up with assault rifles on their enemies any more than cops can with their pistols. Do not fire until fired upon is pretty much the rule of the day.
Pretty much, yeah. Like for example when invading another country. Just walk over the borders until they start shooting you. What planet are you from again?
Release valves? You mean like 4th of July barbecues? Drinking a few beers in front of the game with the guy? Going out fishing with your kids on the weekend? Yeah, we were able to do a whole lot of that in Shahi-Kot.
Just Like Nam Baby! Your whining about professionalism is rich in the face of the daily atrocities, innocents and children killed by US troops, not to mention the whole bullshit war in the first place. I hope you enjoy fighting for uncle george the second, because he sure as hell supports the troops making him and his cronies rich! Why he should be on his third mansion any time now. How are those turirists doing? Who cares?
Seriously, you're an arrogant, ignorant prick. But you've already illustrated that quite well.
Woo, good retort, I guess the ol' boot camp training isn't up to much in the arena of intellectual debate, eh? For what its worth, you are a product.
Feel free to counter with the usual: call me a Bush-voting, baby killing white trash yahoo, or whatever it is your narrow ideology demands. I'm none of those things, but you'll never believe it.
Frankly I don't care about you, and I wouldn't bat an eyelid if you dropped dead tomorrow. However, your argument, although impassioned, is completely wrong, since you have no idea what you are burbling about. So you got called on it, and now you are coming back in true military style, all guns blazing, on a hiding to nothing.
Like the fist of an angry god.
Evidence of the cop who beat his wife for not participating in Group sex.
The cop. Singular. You may have good documentation, but its not the same as what you post, which was that cops like to beat their wives. I didn't see "except for 99% of them" in there. Still, we're all behind you in your battle against jeep addiction,