You truly don't understand the nature of economics, do you?
High taxes gain LESS revenue. NOT MORE. If we follow your silly populist rhetoric and "raise taxes on the 1%ers" we will get the following VERY predictable results:
1. - Costs for EVERYTHING will go up, as the "1%ers" who are actually business owners and businesses raise prices to offset the losses. This affects poor people the most as they are least able to absorb the price shocks.
2. Money Flight. The nice thing about being rich is that it brings you alternatives that the middle class and poor simply don't have. When taxes get beyond a certain level (determined to be roughly 10-11% by Laffer, but it does vary.) it becomes less expensive to simply tax shelter your money or move it offshore. Once regulation on those practices reaches a certain level, expatriation becomes desirable. This is what we are seeing now.
3. Job Flight. We have been seeing this for decades now as the corporate tax rates combined with excess regulation have made it worthwhile for companies to offshore factories and other jobs. Even though the pay rates for people in these countries have always been lower, historically, high education and good old patriotism kept companies from moving overseas. With a rising education level globally, and lower taxe rates and regulation overseas, patriotism alone isn't enough to keep companies here. Raising taxes yet again will only drive more of them out.
Secondarily, jobs will simply be lost as local companies are no longer able to compete against those that have outsourced or shipped jobs overseas. So even those companies that choose to stay will likely fail, resulting in more job loss and more poverty.
Classically, this is what economists refer to as a "Death Spiral". Taxes go up, the economy gets worse, so politicians that have bought into the progressive "Keynsian" model spend money on public projects and raise taxes MORE to pay for that spending, thus causing job loss and a worsening economy and round and round it goes until we reach total collapse.
There is ONLY ONE way out of the death spiral, and that is the Conservative way. Minimal social programs (HEAVILY means tested with time limitations) low tax rates around 10 - 15% total for all citizens (or no income taxes at all, with a sales tax instead.) and elimination of most of the existing government regulation and alphabet soup agencies.
Combined with a Balanced Budget Amendment that would force the government to live within it's means (Hey, if I have to, so should the government.) except during times of Congressionally declared War. it would create powerful incentives for companies to move BACK to American shores and the economy would take off like a rocket. You would see hiring not seen since the end of WWII and we could actually get back to an economy that resembles the 1950's or the 1980's again, rather than being stuck in something worse than the 1970's or 1930's like we have now.
Oh, one last thing. GE is the single largest contributor to the Democrat party and to Obama's election campaign. Since the Democrats had control of Congress (the Purse Strings) from 2006 to 2010, are you REALLY surprised that they would hand out favors to their largest donor? Really? And yes, it disgusts me. But it wasn't Conservatives that did that, it was Progressives and Liberals in the Democrat party. Yet more evidence that Progressive-ism = Fascism (Corporatism) Happy?
meanwhile we have the republicans marching out of talks at just the thought of raising taxes on the 1%ers.
Except that it wasn't just the "1%ers" that would be getting tax hikes. it would be EVERYONE.
Understand, the top 3% of our country pay over 75% of the taxes, both personal and corporate. The US has close to the highest corporate tax rates on the PLANET, and our upper tier income tax brackets extend all the way down to the upper limits of the middle class. We are being slowly taxed TO DEATH and yet Obama wants to raise taxes EVEN MORE. It's fucking insane. You cannot tax and spend yourself out of a recession. You have to GROW out, and ONLY the private sector can do that. This is basic Econ 101.
Oh, and the Democrats? Until Harry Reid was basically forced into creating one, the Democrats hadn't created a budget or a plan to deal with the debt problem in over 800 DAYS, despite having total control of BOTH houses of Congress from 2006 to 2010, and TOTAL control of both Congress and the White House since 2008. The Dems have had FOUR YEARS to come up with a plan and so far have given us bupkiss.
The Republicans, on the other hand, have proposed numerous solutions, and have actually passed not one, but TWO budget bills designed to deal with the debt crisis in less than 6 months. BOTH have been, not voted down on the merits, but TABLED by Reid et al without even getting to the floor for a vote. But somehow it's the REPUBLICANS who aren't serious about dealing with the debt? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?????
Obama keeps asking for confiscatory middle class taxes and an unlimited credit card. The Senate Democrats are basically sitting on their collective asses and not doing shit. You might not agree with the approach the GOP is taking, but AT LEAST they are trying to do something constructive.
I say, DE-table the GOP's "Cap, Cut, and Balance" plan that calls for a spending cap, serious cuts to ALL budgetary items, and a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution and have an open, public debate on it's merits on the senate floor during prime-time coverage with all the networks there to film the proceedings. No more back-room deals, and up or down vote on the ONLY serious plan proposed so far conducted in full view of the public and let the chips fall where they may.
Well said. It should also be noted, that Ried's plan is incredibly bad. It not only doesn't actually deal with the issue, all of the taxes are front-loaded (everybody's taxes go up right away) and the "cuts" are mostly either to the military, or cute accounting tricks that aren't cuts at all. It's essentially more of the status quo.
The problem we are facing is of "greece" proportions. As the GP stated, we simply do not have the money for any of this any more. The dream of the Nanny-state is dead. It's time to either move into the Capitalist future or go extinct. There are no other choices.
Or even better, use offsite backup. As long as you don't have Comcrap with asinine data caps you can use a service like Carbonite for about 60 bucks a YEAR and keep continuous incremental backups of pretty much anything.
Not trying to sound like a commercial or anything, but it does make sense. Keep either an eSata, USB, or removable drive for a local backup, and keep your offsite backup software running as well.
In case of a local server failure, you have a full backup on disk and can restore the most current files from offsite. In case of disaster, all your data is stored offsite, waiting for you to retrieve it.
It's what I do. Why bother with expensive tapes, disks and drives if you don't have to?
Your definition comes very close to having the moon declared a planet. Although at present the barycenter is below the surface of the Earth, the moon is constantly moving away from the Earth. The day will come when, by your definition, the moon will suddenly and instantly be elevated to planet-hood even though nothing obvious has changed.
Not that that makes your definition wrong of course, just pointing it out.
Excellent point. However I would hasten to point out that I included several other definitional points that must all be met to call a body a planet. Certainly point number 4 about having enough gravitational force to hold onto an atmosphere would prevent Luna from being classified as a new planet as it escapes Earth's grasp.
Whether you base it around "X" size or "X" mass, the problem is that "X" is inherently non-empirical and subject to change, thus inappropriate as a definition.
The only "mass" related definition that would be empirical would be "Mass large enough to compress it into a sphere." It's empirical enough that you can actually chart it.
Combined with other definitional points such as the ones mentioned in my earlier post, you can have a totally empirical definition of a planet that makes sense and prevents us from having an insane number of planets in our system.
Well, Mercury certainly COULD hold an atmosphere, but it's orbit is so close to Sol that the solar wind strips it.
If Pluto were closer it wouldn't have an atmosphere either. That's why the "outside the solar wind stripping influence" part of the definitional point.
Haven't they? I was under the impression that they orbited near the edge of the Kuiper belt, but that their orbit was actually clear of other Kuiper belt objects.
You missed the "Stable" part of the definition. Any body not in a stable orbit, regardless of size, would not be considered a "planet".
Yes, it may seem silly, but a randomly wandering body, regardless of size, shouldn't be called a planet. I think "Planetoid" or "dark body" would be more accurate, although we may need to come up with a new word.
However the size alone should not be the definitional point as size-based parameters are constantly subject to revision, and are thus unreliable.
Not only that, but as a definition it is empirical and not subjective, like the various "size" based definitions are.
Planet: Any body which has all of the following properties: 1. It's mass has compressed it into a spherical shape. 2. It's primary orbit is around a star 3. It has cleared it's orbit of all other bodies that aren't satellites of itself, Lagrange point bodies, or "twin" satellites of similar mass that it stably co-orbits with where the co-orbital point exists outside either body.
Note the last part there. Not everyone includes this. I include it as it not only allows BOTH Pluto and Charon to be counted as planets, but also takes into account any new extra-solar co-orbiters we may discover in the future.
I mean, wouldn't it be embarrassing to leave that last part out, and then down the road discover a "double earth" planet system orbiting another star and not be able to categorize either earth-sized body as a planet?
Now, if you INSIST on having a "planet / proto-planet" dichotomy, I could accept a fourth definitional point:
4. Must have a gravitational force large enough to hold an atmosphere outside of any solar wind stripping influence.
This addition would still include Pluto, although it might exclude Charon as it has no known atmosphere. However it's lack of atmosphere could also be due to the extreme cold and the fact that most of it's ices are water ices, thus largely non-volatile at those temperatures and unable to "gas off" and create an atmosphere.
Lastly, I have also seen some scientists want to include a 5th definitional point:
5. Has a differentiated structure.
Not sure how Pluto and Charon would stack up against that criterion.
Heh, my previous house was just like that. I called it my "Faraday home". It was nice knowing that nobody could get into my Wifi network because they simply couldn't reach it. I didn't run security on mine either. Although not being able to get online with my laptop while sitting in my back yard was, admittedly, annoying.
My new place is not so lucky, so I have to keep the Wifi power turned down quite a bit and use WPA2 security with a stupidly long and complex key. But I wasn't as bad as my neighbors, almost none of which had security turned on at all, or used the broadcast name as the security key. At least until I went in and changed all the names of the base stations to rude phrases, then they all got locked down in a weekend.:)
All the more reason to "go light" with government.
Since regulators and bureaucrats are unelected and therefore inherently insulated to the "will of the people" via elections, they are uniquely and ideally positioned to profit the most from corruption and corporate bribery.
Therefore, it is in the people's best interests to have as few of them as possible, thus lowering the overall ability of corporate interests to bribe the government into doing what is against the interests of the populace at large.
To put it another way: "That government which governs least governs best."
Manual gearboxes are all fine and well... For small sports cars. And plenty of our sports cars have manual gearboxes. But frankly, here in America we just want to get from point A to point B. It's not about the "driving experience", it's about just getting there with a minimum of fuss.
Manual shift is nice if you want that "connected" feeling you get when you drive a sports car. But for pretty much everything non-road rally related, Manual shift is a huge step backwards.
Automatic drive allows more people to drive and allows them to drive longer. It's safer, more fuel efficient (on average), and less complex to use than manual gearing. With the advent of CV transmissions, efficiency is even further up, and the ride is MUCH smoother.
Don't get me wrong, I don't hate manual transmissions, but the snobbery about using something that is actually technologically inferior just rubs me the wrong way.
Full disclosure: I've driven everything from a '82 K-Car to an original Shelby Cobra (not mine, and yes it was awesome.) I currently own an automatic 4x4 Jeep Liberty. So far it's the best vehicle I've ever owned, and I love driving it.
The next successful terrorist action that involves a commercial passenger get will likely be simple, inexpensive and, in hindsight, obvious
I don't think we even need hindsight on this one.
Provided that the Terrorist's goal is to continue to simply kill people and frustrate the US, then a body cavity bomb is the next obvious step.
Backscatter machines won't detect it, and as long as the person used has a reasonable explanation (joint replacement, etc.) and some way to back it up (fake medical records) then the trigger could be put into a limb and activated either by the bomber or remotely.
There are some complexities with this, but none that couldn't be overcome with some creative thought and minimal cost.
Yet another reason why the TSA is a waste of money. they are REACTIONARY. Reactionary security is invariably flawed.
You're really using the Flight 93 situation as a citation of functional security? It fucking crashed. Everyone died. Way to go, security.
I think you missed his point.
Everybody died because the pilots were dead and nobody could get to the controls fast enough to prevent the plane from nosing in. The only reason the passengers took so long is because of the afore-mentioned "just be quiet and don't be a hero" conditioning. They finally took action the moment they realized they were prisoners on a "jet shaped missile" rather than hostages on a plane. Had they not been pre-conditioned to "not do anything" it's likely that not only would all or most of Flight 93 survived, but so would have the passengers of the other 3 planes.
The "security" he is speaking of is the only one any of us can actually count on. People defending themselves against attack with as much force as they are capable of mustering until the threat is neutralized.
If you prefer, we could cite the "shoe bomber" passengers instead. They kicked the shoe bomber's ass.
As far as locked doors being "common sense", I'd argue that they were, prior to 9/11, NOT common sense. Common sense was to keep the door open, and allow hijackers access to the cockpit and the pilots so they could non-violently relay their demands to the ground. Prior to 9/11, locking the cockpit doors only led to dead crew and passengers as hijackers shot passengers and crew in an attempt to gain access to the cockpit.
Now, of course, locking the doors makes perfect sense. Back then? Not so much.
As far as the TSA goes, I think all of us (except Neutron Cowboy) are largely in agreement. They do nothing to increase security, and much to harm Freedom. They NEED TO GO. NOW.
That's fair, and you have a right to your opinion.
(Incidentally, I am also an American, and I have also lived outside the United States.)
However, as a parent, I don't want to have to deal with public displays of nudity and sexuality and the loss of innocence for kids that comes along with it. For adults, yes, it's not a big deal. When you bring kids into the equation, it's a problem. And when you are talking about society as a whole, Kids are ALWAYS in the equation. Thus, we have Obscenity laws designed to keep those kinds of things in private where they belong.
Incidentally, I agree with you on the violence. We have become far too loose with both sex and violence in public, and it's impacting our society for the worse.
In the case of this SCOTUS decision though, the California law did less to help parents than it did remove rights from minors and force an undue burden of enforcement on the game makers and retail outlets. It was right for SCOTUS to strike this one down.
As a fellow conservative, I must disagree. I see no problem with a state limiting what a minor may buy. Just a state may place limits on buying alcohol, pornography and cigarettes, I see no reason why a state may not place age restrictions on video games.
Note: No is saying that minors are not allowed to play these games, only to PURCHASE them. As a parent, I not only appreciate the idea that I would have to be the one to purchase the material, but I also like the idea that other parents would have to purchase the material for their kids. It's a parent's responsibility to keep up with what their kids are doing. This law would have helped a parent do that. As for the parents too lazy to get off their ass to buy the games? These are the same parents that won't monitor what their kids are doing and are EXACTLY the parents of the kids I don't want owning violent/pornographic video games.
With all that said, I would more than likely buy such games for my kids and even play them with them, but I like the idea of ME being in control.
Ok, first of all, which clod marked this guy Troll? His response was an insightful and thoughtful counterpoint to my post, and while I don't necessarily agree with him, it is a good post and deserves to at least be at '1'.
EDIT: Before I could post this response, He was modded up. I leave my previous statement in as support for dissenting opinion and open discussion free of mod point abuse.
That aside, (and more to the point of ArcherB's post) while I can understand wanting to restrict the purchase of inappropriate material to minors, The way the California law was written was bad. It not only removed rights from minors, but put the burden of enforcement on the games industry and the individual stores. it was an impossible request for them to undertake.
Now, if stores want to THEMSELVES restrict sales of video games rated for older kids and adults to minors "except when accompanied by a parent", I'm all for that. But the state had no place in this.
Ultimately, it is up to the parents to do their job. It's not like this stuff is just plastered everywhere for free, the kids have to have the money and go into the store and buy it. Once they have bought it, they then have to take it home and either install it on a family owned PC or put it into the game console and play it on the family TV. Any parent who misses that is either not paying attention, or is a moron. In which case their kids are likely lost causes anyway, and this law would not have helped.
Obscenity is excluded so that the jobs of the morality police are easier.
No, Obscenity is excluded so that parents and families don't have to deal with issues of trying to protect their kids from public displays and advertisements that include pornographic images.
It's one thing to task parents with the duty of proper child rearing, which society has always done and which this SCOTUS decision reinforces. It's something else entirely to then turn around and make that task nearly impossible by allowing the porn/adult industry to inundate all of public life. (more than it already has, that is.)
Societies generally set their own standards of acceptable public discourse, and in America we have set the standard that certain things (such as porn and certain types of intimate behavior) belong in a private setting. If you live in America and don't like that, you are free to either get the obscenity laws altered/removed (unlikely) or move to a country more amenable to your viewpoint. (I hear the town of Amsterdam is lovely this time of year.)
If you are not an American and are speaking on American laws, well then you opinion holds little weight anyway.
When a million people say "ill turn my computer off tonight while i sleep...", "Ill just run the ac in the rooms i need", and things like that then we will see reductions in power consumption which in turn could reduce power stations, etc
1. Most people's computers go to sleep after a long period of disuse. Particularly if they are laptops. It's called "default power management settings" which the vast majority of users don't change.
2. Most people don't have zone or room based AC. If they have AC at all and it's not window units, it's almost always whole-house forced-air AC.
Even when using window units, it is often more efficient to simply leave them running, since they use less power performing minimal room temperature maintenance than they do cranking up to full power to cool a blazing hot room. Especially if one is home during the day.
Ultimately, we have to get over the whole "mankind's activity damages the earth" mindset. It's bunk and bullcrap. Spend all the time looking at Google maps that you want. I know that when I look at it, I'm always amazed at just how much greenspace there is out there. How much totally undeveloped and unused land. Yes, the megalopolis of NYC has alot of pavement. but it is ONE city, comprising a very small portion of the planet's surface. Most of our planet is Blue Ocean and Green trees and grasses. Humanity has impacted it not at all, and once we are gone, it will not remember us.
Were we all to die off today, within 1000 years it would be as if we never existed. All of our supposed great impacts would be as a fly landing on the shoulder of an elephant, all of our great works quickly wiped off of the globe, disappearing under a carpet of green, never to be seen again. Earth would spin on, producing life in ever more abundant, vibrant and diverse ways, just as it does today.
Mankind simply doesn't have the power to damage Earth beyond fleeting pinpricks and it is arrogant to think that we can.
So yes, be responsible with your own consumption, if only to prevent personal overspending. but don't buy into the green religion, and don't ever demand that other people be forced to change they way they behave because of such bunk.
If you have a simple and very "Occam's razor" style theory on one hand and a very UNlikely and politically motivated theory on the other hand, how does combining them create an even more likely theory?
Answer: It doesn't, unless you are trying to find any way possible to continue to include the highly unlikely politically motivated theory in your calculations.
Face it, the "global warming" explanation for grey whale re-population and Algae increase is as much bunkum as the rest of "global warming" (or "Climate Change" or whatever obscuring terminology the shysters have switched to using today.)
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You truly don't understand the nature of economics, do you?
High taxes gain LESS revenue. NOT MORE. If we follow your silly populist rhetoric and "raise taxes on the 1%ers" we will get the following VERY predictable results:
1. - Costs for EVERYTHING will go up, as the "1%ers" who are actually business owners and businesses raise prices to offset the losses. This affects poor people the most as they are least able to absorb the price shocks.
2. Money Flight. The nice thing about being rich is that it brings you alternatives that the middle class and poor simply don't have. When taxes get beyond a certain level (determined to be roughly 10-11% by Laffer, but it does vary.) it becomes less expensive to simply tax shelter your money or move it offshore. Once regulation on those practices reaches a certain level, expatriation becomes desirable. This is what we are seeing now.
3. Job Flight. We have been seeing this for decades now as the corporate tax rates combined with excess regulation have made it worthwhile for companies to offshore factories and other jobs. Even though the pay rates for people in these countries have always been lower, historically, high education and good old patriotism kept companies from moving overseas. With a rising education level globally, and lower taxe rates and regulation overseas, patriotism alone isn't enough to keep companies here. Raising taxes yet again will only drive more of them out.
Secondarily, jobs will simply be lost as local companies are no longer able to compete against those that have outsourced or shipped jobs overseas. So even those companies that choose to stay will likely fail, resulting in more job loss and more poverty.
Classically, this is what economists refer to as a "Death Spiral". Taxes go up, the economy gets worse, so politicians that have bought into the progressive "Keynsian" model spend money on public projects and raise taxes MORE to pay for that spending, thus causing job loss and a worsening economy and round and round it goes until we reach total collapse.
There is ONLY ONE way out of the death spiral, and that is the Conservative way. Minimal social programs (HEAVILY means tested with time limitations) low tax rates around 10 - 15% total for all citizens (or no income taxes at all, with a sales tax instead.) and elimination of most of the existing government regulation and alphabet soup agencies.
Combined with a Balanced Budget Amendment that would force the government to live within it's means (Hey, if I have to, so should the government.) except during times of Congressionally declared War. it would create powerful incentives for companies to move BACK to American shores and the economy would take off like a rocket. You would see hiring not seen since the end of WWII and we could actually get back to an economy that resembles the 1950's or the 1980's again, rather than being stuck in something worse than the 1970's or 1930's like we have now.
Oh, one last thing. GE is the single largest contributor to the Democrat party and to Obama's election campaign. Since the Democrats had control of Congress (the Purse Strings) from 2006 to 2010, are you REALLY surprised that they would hand out favors to their largest donor? Really? And yes, it disgusts me. But it wasn't Conservatives that did that, it was Progressives and Liberals in the Democrat party. Yet more evidence that Progressive-ism = Fascism (Corporatism) Happy?
meanwhile we have the republicans marching out of talks at just the thought of raising taxes on the 1%ers.
Except that it wasn't just the "1%ers" that would be getting tax hikes. it would be EVERYONE.
Understand, the top 3% of our country pay over 75% of the taxes, both personal and corporate. The US has close to the highest corporate tax rates on the PLANET, and our upper tier income tax brackets extend all the way down to the upper limits of the middle class. We are being slowly taxed TO DEATH and yet Obama wants to raise taxes EVEN MORE. It's fucking insane. You cannot tax and spend yourself out of a recession. You have to GROW out, and ONLY the private sector can do that. This is basic Econ 101.
Oh, and the Democrats? Until Harry Reid was basically forced into creating one, the Democrats hadn't created a budget or a plan to deal with the debt problem in over 800 DAYS, despite having total control of BOTH houses of Congress from 2006 to 2010, and TOTAL control of both Congress and the White House since 2008. The Dems have had FOUR YEARS to come up with a plan and so far have given us bupkiss.
The Republicans, on the other hand, have proposed numerous solutions, and have actually passed not one, but TWO budget bills designed to deal with the debt crisis in less than 6 months. BOTH have been, not voted down on the merits, but TABLED by Reid et al without even getting to the floor for a vote. But somehow it's the REPUBLICANS who aren't serious about dealing with the debt? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?????
Obama keeps asking for confiscatory middle class taxes and an unlimited credit card. The Senate Democrats are basically sitting on their collective asses and not doing shit. You might not agree with the approach the GOP is taking, but AT LEAST they are trying to do something constructive.
I say, DE-table the GOP's "Cap, Cut, and Balance" plan that calls for a spending cap, serious cuts to ALL budgetary items, and a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution and have an open, public debate on it's merits on the senate floor during prime-time coverage with all the networks there to film the proceedings. No more back-room deals, and up or down vote on the ONLY serious plan proposed so far conducted in full view of the public and let the chips fall where they may.
Well said. It should also be noted, that Ried's plan is incredibly bad. It not only doesn't actually deal with the issue, all of the taxes are front-loaded (everybody's taxes go up right away) and the "cuts" are mostly either to the military, or cute accounting tricks that aren't cuts at all. It's essentially more of the status quo.
The problem we are facing is of "greece" proportions. As the GP stated, we simply do not have the money for any of this any more. The dream of the Nanny-state is dead. It's time to either move into the Capitalist future or go extinct. There are no other choices.
Fairly certain that the 9/11 conspiracies came along first.
Although yes, they do seem to emanate from similar places. Namely, loonies on both ends of the political spectrum.
Or even better, use offsite backup. As long as you don't have Comcrap with asinine data caps you can use a service like Carbonite for about 60 bucks a YEAR and keep continuous incremental backups of pretty much anything.
Not trying to sound like a commercial or anything, but it does make sense. Keep either an eSata, USB, or removable drive for a local backup, and keep your offsite backup software running as well.
In case of a local server failure, you have a full backup on disk and can restore the most current files from offsite. In case of disaster, all your data is stored offsite, waiting for you to retrieve it.
It's what I do. Why bother with expensive tapes, disks and drives if you don't have to?
Your definition comes very close to having the moon declared a planet. Although at present the barycenter is below the surface of the Earth, the moon is constantly moving away from the Earth. The day will come when, by your definition, the moon will suddenly and instantly be elevated to planet-hood even though nothing obvious has changed.
Not that that makes your definition wrong of course, just pointing it out.
Excellent point. However I would hasten to point out that I included several other definitional points that must all be met to call a body a planet. Certainly point number 4 about having enough gravitational force to hold onto an atmosphere would prevent Luna from being classified as a new planet as it escapes Earth's grasp.
i think the sensible answer is "neither".
Whether you base it around "X" size or "X" mass, the problem is that "X" is inherently non-empirical and subject to change, thus inappropriate as a definition.
The only "mass" related definition that would be empirical would be "Mass large enough to compress it into a sphere." It's empirical enough that you can actually chart it.
Combined with other definitional points such as the ones mentioned in my earlier post, you can have a totally empirical definition of a planet that makes sense and prevents us from having an insane number of planets in our system.
Well, Mercury certainly COULD hold an atmosphere, but it's orbit is so close to Sol that the solar wind strips it.
If Pluto were closer it wouldn't have an atmosphere either. That's why the "outside the solar wind stripping influence" part of the definitional point.
Haven't they? I was under the impression that they orbited near the edge of the Kuiper belt, but that their orbit was actually clear of other Kuiper belt objects.
You missed the "Stable" part of the definition. Any body not in a stable orbit, regardless of size, would not be considered a "planet".
Yes, it may seem silly, but a randomly wandering body, regardless of size, shouldn't be called a planet. I think "Planetoid" or "dark body" would be more accurate, although we may need to come up with a new word.
However the size alone should not be the definitional point as size-based parameters are constantly subject to revision, and are thus unreliable.
(Eris would be the Queen)
Don't tell Charon that. She's been hanging with Pluto a long time. Also, she's an icy bitch.
Not only that, but as a definition it is empirical and not subjective, like the various "size" based definitions are.
Planet: Any body which has all of the following properties:
1. It's mass has compressed it into a spherical shape.
2. It's primary orbit is around a star
3. It has cleared it's orbit of all other bodies that aren't satellites of itself, Lagrange point bodies, or "twin" satellites of similar mass that it stably co-orbits with where the co-orbital point exists outside either body.
Note the last part there. Not everyone includes this. I include it as it not only allows BOTH Pluto and Charon to be counted as planets, but also takes into account any new extra-solar co-orbiters we may discover in the future.
I mean, wouldn't it be embarrassing to leave that last part out, and then down the road discover a "double earth" planet system orbiting another star and not be able to categorize either earth-sized body as a planet?
Now, if you INSIST on having a "planet / proto-planet" dichotomy, I could accept a fourth definitional point:
4. Must have a gravitational force large enough to hold an atmosphere outside of any solar wind stripping influence.
This addition would still include Pluto, although it might exclude Charon as it has no known atmosphere. However it's lack of atmosphere could also be due to the extreme cold and the fact that most of it's ices are water ices, thus largely non-volatile at those temperatures and unable to "gas off" and create an atmosphere.
Lastly, I have also seen some scientists want to include a 5th definitional point:
5. Has a differentiated structure.
Not sure how Pluto and Charon would stack up against that criterion.
God...
Posts like yours make me wish there was a "-1 sheeple" mod option.
Heh, my previous house was just like that. I called it my "Faraday home". It was nice knowing that nobody could get into my Wifi network because they simply couldn't reach it. I didn't run security on mine either. Although not being able to get online with my laptop while sitting in my back yard was, admittedly, annoying.
My new place is not so lucky, so I have to keep the Wifi power turned down quite a bit and use WPA2 security with a stupidly long and complex key. But I wasn't as bad as my neighbors, almost none of which had security turned on at all, or used the broadcast name as the security key. At least until I went in and changed all the names of the base stations to rude phrases, then they all got locked down in a weekend. :)
So wait. Does that mean I get a sonic screwdriver with a new download of Firefox?
All the more reason to "go light" with government.
Since regulators and bureaucrats are unelected and therefore inherently insulated to the "will of the people" via elections, they are uniquely and ideally positioned to profit the most from corruption and corporate bribery.
Therefore, it is in the people's best interests to have as few of them as possible, thus lowering the overall ability of corporate interests to bribe the government into doing what is against the interests of the populace at large.
To put it another way: "That government which governs least governs best."
Manual gearboxes are all fine and well... For small sports cars. And plenty of our sports cars have manual gearboxes. But frankly, here in America we just want to get from point A to point B. It's not about the "driving experience", it's about just getting there with a minimum of fuss.
Manual shift is nice if you want that "connected" feeling you get when you drive a sports car. But for pretty much everything non-road rally related, Manual shift is a huge step backwards.
Automatic drive allows more people to drive and allows them to drive longer. It's safer, more fuel efficient (on average), and less complex to use than manual gearing. With the advent of CV transmissions, efficiency is even further up, and the ride is MUCH smoother.
Don't get me wrong, I don't hate manual transmissions, but the snobbery about using something that is actually technologically inferior just rubs me the wrong way.
Full disclosure: I've driven everything from a '82 K-Car to an original Shelby Cobra (not mine, and yes it was awesome.) I currently own an automatic 4x4 Jeep Liberty. So far it's the best vehicle I've ever owned, and I love driving it.
I don't think we even need hindsight on this one.
Provided that the Terrorist's goal is to continue to simply kill people and frustrate the US, then a body cavity bomb is the next obvious step.
Backscatter machines won't detect it, and as long as the person used has a reasonable explanation (joint replacement, etc.) and some way to back it up (fake medical records) then the trigger could be put into a limb and activated either by the bomber or remotely.
There are some complexities with this, but none that couldn't be overcome with some creative thought and minimal cost.
Yet another reason why the TSA is a waste of money. they are REACTIONARY. Reactionary security is invariably flawed.
I think you missed his point.
Everybody died because the pilots were dead and nobody could get to the controls fast enough to prevent the plane from nosing in. The only reason the passengers took so long is because of the afore-mentioned "just be quiet and don't be a hero" conditioning. They finally took action the moment they realized they were prisoners on a "jet shaped missile" rather than hostages on a plane. Had they not been pre-conditioned to "not do anything" it's likely that not only would all or most of Flight 93 survived, but so would have the passengers of the other 3 planes.
The "security" he is speaking of is the only one any of us can actually count on. People defending themselves against attack with as much force as they are capable of mustering until the threat is neutralized.
If you prefer, we could cite the "shoe bomber" passengers instead. They kicked the shoe bomber's ass.
As far as locked doors being "common sense", I'd argue that they were, prior to 9/11, NOT common sense. Common sense was to keep the door open, and allow hijackers access to the cockpit and the pilots so they could non-violently relay their demands to the ground. Prior to 9/11, locking the cockpit doors only led to dead crew and passengers as hijackers shot passengers and crew in an attempt to gain access to the cockpit.
Now, of course, locking the doors makes perfect sense. Back then? Not so much.
As far as the TSA goes, I think all of us (except Neutron Cowboy) are largely in agreement. They do nothing to increase security, and much to harm Freedom. They NEED TO GO. NOW.
That's fair, and you have a right to your opinion.
(Incidentally, I am also an American, and I have also lived outside the United States.)
However, as a parent, I don't want to have to deal with public displays of nudity and sexuality and the loss of innocence for kids that comes along with it. For adults, yes, it's not a big deal. When you bring kids into the equation, it's a problem. And when you are talking about society as a whole, Kids are ALWAYS in the equation. Thus, we have Obscenity laws designed to keep those kinds of things in private where they belong.
Incidentally, I agree with you on the violence. We have become far too loose with both sex and violence in public, and it's impacting our society for the worse.
In the case of this SCOTUS decision though, the California law did less to help parents than it did remove rights from minors and force an undue burden of enforcement on the game makers and retail outlets. It was right for SCOTUS to strike this one down.
As a fellow conservative, I must disagree. I see no problem with a state limiting what a minor may buy. Just a state may place limits on buying alcohol, pornography and cigarettes, I see no reason why a state may not place age restrictions on video games.
Note: No is saying that minors are not allowed to play these games, only to PURCHASE them. As a parent, I not only appreciate the idea that I would have to be the one to purchase the material, but I also like the idea that other parents would have to purchase the material for their kids. It's a parent's responsibility to keep up with what their kids are doing. This law would have helped a parent do that. As for the parents too lazy to get off their ass to buy the games? These are the same parents that won't monitor what their kids are doing and are EXACTLY the parents of the kids I don't want owning violent/pornographic video games.
With all that said, I would more than likely buy such games for my kids and even play them with them, but I like the idea of ME being in control.
Ok, first of all, which clod marked this guy Troll? His response was an insightful and thoughtful counterpoint to my post, and while I don't necessarily agree with him, it is a good post and deserves to at least be at '1'.
EDIT: Before I could post this response, He was modded up. I leave my previous statement in as support for dissenting opinion and open discussion free of mod point abuse.
That aside, (and more to the point of ArcherB's post) while I can understand wanting to restrict the purchase of inappropriate material to minors, The way the California law was written was bad. It not only removed rights from minors, but put the burden of enforcement on the games industry and the individual stores. it was an impossible request for them to undertake.
Now, if stores want to THEMSELVES restrict sales of video games rated for older kids and adults to minors "except when accompanied by a parent", I'm all for that. But the state had no place in this.
Ultimately, it is up to the parents to do their job. It's not like this stuff is just plastered everywhere for free, the kids have to have the money and go into the store and buy it. Once they have bought it, they then have to take it home and either install it on a family owned PC or put it into the game console and play it on the family TV. Any parent who misses that is either not paying attention, or is a moron. In which case their kids are likely lost causes anyway, and this law would not have helped.
Obscenity is excluded so that the jobs of the morality police are easier.
No, Obscenity is excluded so that parents and families don't have to deal with issues of trying to protect their kids from public displays and advertisements that include pornographic images.
It's one thing to task parents with the duty of proper child rearing, which society has always done and which this SCOTUS decision reinforces. It's something else entirely to then turn around and make that task nearly impossible by allowing the porn/adult industry to inundate all of public life. (more than it already has, that is.)
Societies generally set their own standards of acceptable public discourse, and in America we have set the standard that certain things (such as porn and certain types of intimate behavior) belong in a private setting. If you live in America and don't like that, you are free to either get the obscenity laws altered/removed (unlikely) or move to a country more amenable to your viewpoint. (I hear the town of Amsterdam is lovely this time of year.)
If you are not an American and are speaking on American laws, well then you opinion holds little weight anyway.
Heh, looks like he didn't even read the summary, let alone RTFA.
But he got First Post, so, um, Yay for him I guess?
Let me just say; Hear hear! Well done Supreme Court.
Our rights (ALL of them) are not to be given away to petty tyrants for any reason, even "For the Children".
When a million people say "ill turn my computer off tonight while i sleep...", "Ill just run the ac in the rooms i need", and things like that then we will see reductions in power consumption which in turn could reduce power stations, etc
1. Most people's computers go to sleep after a long period of disuse. Particularly if they are laptops. It's called "default power management settings" which the vast majority of users don't change.
2. Most people don't have zone or room based AC. If they have AC at all and it's not window units, it's almost always whole-house forced-air AC.
Even when using window units, it is often more efficient to simply leave them running, since they use less power performing minimal room temperature maintenance than they do cranking up to full power to cool a blazing hot room. Especially if one is home during the day.
Ultimately, we have to get over the whole "mankind's activity damages the earth" mindset. It's bunk and bullcrap. Spend all the time looking at Google maps that you want. I know that when I look at it, I'm always amazed at just how much greenspace there is out there. How much totally undeveloped and unused land. Yes, the megalopolis of NYC has alot of pavement. but it is ONE city, comprising a very small portion of the planet's surface. Most of our planet is Blue Ocean and Green trees and grasses. Humanity has impacted it not at all, and once we are gone, it will not remember us.
Were we all to die off today, within 1000 years it would be as if we never existed. All of our supposed great impacts would be as a fly landing on the shoulder of an elephant, all of our great works quickly wiped off of the globe, disappearing under a carpet of green, never to be seen again. Earth would spin on, producing life in ever more abundant, vibrant and diverse ways, just as it does today.
Mankind simply doesn't have the power to damage Earth beyond fleeting pinpricks and it is arrogant to think that we can.
So yes, be responsible with your own consumption, if only to prevent personal overspending. but don't buy into the green religion, and don't ever demand that other people be forced to change they way they behave because of such bunk.
Why would BOTH being correct be more probable?
If you have a simple and very "Occam's razor" style theory on one hand and a very UNlikely and politically motivated theory on the other hand, how does combining them create an even more likely theory?
Answer: It doesn't, unless you are trying to find any way possible to continue to include the highly unlikely politically motivated theory in your calculations.
Face it, the "global warming" explanation for grey whale re-population and Algae increase is as much bunkum as the rest of "global warming" (or "Climate Change" or whatever obscuring terminology the shysters have switched to using today.)