Why are our urban areas so far behind Japan and South Korea's urban areas?
Because we have a fucked up hybrid system that touts the advantages of the "free market" while actually granting monopolies that lock out competition (franchise agreements) and which are backed with the full force of Government?
Historically speaking, invasions of Russia rarely end well for the invaders. They also have nuclear weapons. Notwithstanding all of that, it isn't really an option for India anyway -- India is surrounded by the largest mountain range on the planet. That type of terrain doesn't lend itself to mass invasions.
If I was Russia I'd be more worried about China than I would be about India. India doesn't really have anywhere to go.
Ha! I think those nutcases have been put out to pasture, long overdue.
I don't think the NIMBY bastards have been put out to pasture, given the response we've seen in some communities to wind farms. My favorite was seeing all the rich liberal snobs out on Cape Cod/Martha's Vineyard whining about the proposal to build a wind farm there. I guess their scenic view takes a back seat to reducing carbon emissions and they should build them in some poor slobs backyard instead.
I didn't say they drove the steelworks out of business. I said they left them with little incentive to retain the equipment needed to build reactor containment walls. Now there's only a single supplier for those containment walls and they cost a fortune and have a huge backlog. Hmm.....
The point about warships is well made and something I hadn't considered. Still, you can't deny the fact that the suppression of new nuclear plants in the 70s and 80s contributed to the problem. The containment walls aren't the only bit of equipment that was affected. We gutted an entire industry because of a handful of very loud people and probably gutted whatever chance we had of averting runaway climate change in the process. It infuriates me to even think about it.....
You're assuming that we Indians would want the carbon capture technology. Al Gore is not a huge box office draw in India.
He will be when you have massive famines and can't feed your population. Most of the studies I've read suggest that India won't make out very well if we encounter runaway global warming.....
Why can't we? Would it have anything to do with the fact that the enviro-nazis and NIMBY bastards successfully stymied the construction of new plants back in the 70s and 80s and in so doing left zero incentive for American industry to retain the plant and equipment to build reactors?
I read somewhere that there's only one steelworks in the world that's capable of forging the reactor containment walls and they have years of back orders on the books. Of course it didn't used to be that way but the various anti-nuclear movements drove down demand to the point that it wasn't profitable for other steelworks to retain the equipment to produce them. Other parts of the supply chain have been equally impacted.
Congratulations environmentalists -- you ripped the heart out of the only energy source that could have weaned us off carbon in our lifetimes. Seems a bit shortsighted in retrospect, doesn't it?
In one formula, CO2. Coal is the fuel that produces more CO2 per joule than any other energy source.
I guess you missed the part where he said we need to invest in carbon capture and pointed out that even if we abandon coal (not likely but let's assume so for the sake of the argument) that the Chinese and Indians won't? Seems to me that if we can make carbon capture work we can sell it to them and get some exports going once again. What's not to like?
No. What I'm talking about is Yanks fans come into your stadium and cheer the Yankees. They're not drunk and obnoxious
You've obviously never been to Shea Stadium (may it RIP) during the Subway Series. Yankees fans can be pretty obnoxious in sufficient numbers with a sufficient supply of beer.
Red Sox fans come into your stadium and cheer the Sox. They're drunk and obnoxious, and if the Sox win, they're like, "We won! Why aren't you happy for us?"
As a Mets fan I can silence this with one word: 1986;)
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
last time I was in NYC, a complete stranger bloodied my nose in front of the Roosevelt, screaming "Go back to Boston." So I did!
The last time that happened to me I pepper sprayed the bastard before he could bloody my nose;) I was also the asshole that wore a Red Sox cap (even though the Mets are really my team) to the local Yankees bar when the Yanks were in the process of blowing Game 7 after a 3-0 series lead. That didn't win me any fans either. 26 (or is it 27?) world series rings and they still can't take a joke....
Just to belabor the fucking point, the same was true both times Bush Jr. was "Elected"; was it best to just ignore that?
Oh please. The fact that you feel the need to put quotation marks around the word elected suggests that you are operating more on emotion than on logic. I never cared much for GWB but Al Gore deserves more of the blame for losing in 2000 than GWB does. Gore ran a lackluster campaign, failed to win his own state and didn't bother calling for a statewide recount in Florida but instead cherry picked the counties that would best suit him. Count all the votes indeed.....
As far as 2004 goes, GWB won Ohio by almost 120k votes. The Democrats can whine about fraud all they want but the margin speaks for itself. I've worked as a poll worker for the last eight years in New York State and actually monitored a polling place in Ohio of all places (during the 2008 Presidential primary) and haven't seen a way to rig the system to generate that type of margin. And besides all that, I would place the blame for 2004 squarely at the feet of John Kerry. He ran a shitty campaign and allowed the Republicans to define him.
GWB had the fortune of running against two morons who didn't have the pulse of the nation or the wherewithal to run a competent campaign. Who knows what would have happened if he had faced a real opponent? The margin in both elections suggests that if the Democrats had found someone competent they might have carried the day.
This is obviously inconsequential in comparison, but it illustrates the point that NASA is not even pretending to be acting in the interests of the public any more. Why? Because listening to the will of the public would have spurred their interest! Not listening to them will only produce further disillusionment, as has been demonstrated by this discussion. It's not just me.
The 'interest' of the public would be served by honoring the results of a poll that was laced with ballot stuffing by Firefly fans and a TV personality who unleashed his "nation"? Again, I think you are taking this way too seriously if you think the public is going to be disillusioned with NASA over this......
One more time, NASA jumped the shark a long time ago and this is just further proof
NASA jumped the shark because it's a Governmental agency that's held hostage to politics. If NASA was given a real mandate, some proper funding and Congress stayed the hell out of the way (i.e: not trying to direct NASA contracts to their home districts) I think you'd find that there's still some life in the old gal. I'm doubtful this will happen because Obama seems hell bent on slashing NASA's funding even further, but I've been surprised before.....
I've never heard that one before, is it some kind of racist comment?
Only if you are a card carrying member of the PC police.
because it was promised to be a mockery from the beginning. And really, it's from NASA, so it was double-guaranteed. They haven't had much credibility since shuttles started blowing up regularly
I really think you need to get some perspective. "Promised to be a mockery from the beginning"? Then why even bother posting in this article?
That made them liars up front when they were soliciting votes which mean nothing. I guess our national elections demonstrated that people would feel like a part of democracy even when the votes aren't counted, though...
You are comparing a non-scientific voting process with no provision to prevent ballot stuffing and which came with a disclaimer saying that the results weren't binding to an actual election? I think you've ventured away from the reservation on this one....
We cannot hold the telecoms accountable for things we did not like but that were, in the strictest sense, legal.
Well, under that theory I guess we couldn't hold the Watergate burglars accountable either. The orders came from the President, so they have the same weight as a legal interpretation until otherwise overturned. Of course you kind of glossed over the point that the whole idea of the telecom suits wasn't to punish AT&T but rather to use the discovery process to find out exactly what the hell happened......
HR 6304 fixed the ambiguities in the wording that allowed a broad interpretation.
While providing exactly zero incentive for future administrations to actually follow the law, since we effectively set the precedent that you won't be punished or even investigated for bending/breaking it. I'm sorry, you can rationalize and/or spin it all you want but the FISA legislation stinks. I also seem to recall a certain former Senator from Illinois promising that he would filibuster any legislation containing telecom immunity. I guess that promise was as empty as the promise about a "new kind of politics".
Umm, what the hell does New Orleans have to do with my remark? I was complaining about our legislators. Unless you think it's the role of the 535 members of Congress to start filling sandbags (something I'd personally pay to see but don't consider real likely) I don't see what New Orleans has to do with anything.
I take to ridding the world of all drugs quite often using similar techniques it's a wonder I haven't received more recognition for my truely valiant efforts
Be careful looking for such recognition. Two goons might show up and piss on your rug or something. Just sayin', it's been known to happen after you wage the 'War on Drugs' for a few hours;)
Also, get yourself a "dirty" laptop. something that you can ditch and not have anything that can identify it as yours. Great idea is a laptop that has a easily removed hard drive.
Of course for the price of that laptop you just ditched you could probably have bought a lot of $0.99 tracks on iTunes and saved yourself the hassle;)
If most people actually tried to *think*, we wouldn't have these stupid laws in the first place
Actually the problem with half our laws is people thinking too damn much, IMHO. If we just legislate X, then Y will go away/be solved/cease to be a problem. Perhaps our legislators should stop thinking, stop legislating and just enjoy the DC cocktail circuit while leaving the rest of us the hell alone?
I no longer see the walls of text posted by the more 'conservative' members of forums posting excruciatingly twisted excerpts and personal interpretation of federal law to lend their support to the executives power of warrantless wiretapping, torture and Guantanamo Bay like I did 12 months ago.
No, now we see those walls of text posted by the more 'liberal' members of forums, trying to rationalize their own trampling of the Constitution and political maneuverings. The more things change.....
So many hypocrites, so little time.
Is there anyone involved in politics at the Federal level who isn't a hypocrite?
The telecoms conducted the wiretapping LEGALLY, according to a Bush Administration Executive Order. You can debate the Executive Order and Presidential Authority all you want, but at the time, the telecoms were acting within the law.
Executive order != the law. The mere issuance of an Executive Order is not enough to override Federal statues or Constitutional requirements.
HR 6304 effectively overruled the Bush Executive Order and denies the Executive the authority to bypass the FISA courts.
Wow, you must be a member of the Obama administration to come up with that rationalization. The Executive already lacked the authority to bypass the FISA court. When they bypassed the FISA court they broke the law. By granting retroactive immunity to the telecoms, we foreclosed one possible method (discovery in a civil lawsuit) of finding out to what extent those laws were broken and bringing those responsible to justice.
Put all the spin on it you want, but Obama folded on a civil liberties issue and caved to the Bush administration rather than run the risk of the issue dogging him on the campaign trail. That was the day when I stopped supporting him and decided I'd be voting for someone else.
Slashdot Mirror
No the environmentalists didn't get us into this mess. We got ourselves into this mess by becoming addicted to and dependant on civilization
Fixed that for you.
Why are our urban areas so far behind Japan and South Korea's urban areas?
Because we have a fucked up hybrid system that touts the advantages of the "free market" while actually granting monopolies that lock out competition (franchise agreements) and which are backed with the full force of Government?
Historically speaking, invasions of Russia rarely end well for the invaders. They also have nuclear weapons. Notwithstanding all of that, it isn't really an option for India anyway -- India is surrounded by the largest mountain range on the planet. That type of terrain doesn't lend itself to mass invasions.
If I was Russia I'd be more worried about China than I would be about India. India doesn't really have anywhere to go.
Ha! I think those nutcases have been put out to pasture, long overdue.
I don't think the NIMBY bastards have been put out to pasture, given the response we've seen in some communities to wind farms. My favorite was seeing all the rich liberal snobs out on Cape Cod/Martha's Vineyard whining about the proposal to build a wind farm there. I guess their scenic view takes a back seat to reducing carbon emissions and they should build them in some poor slobs backyard instead.
I didn't say they drove the steelworks out of business. I said they left them with little incentive to retain the equipment needed to build reactor containment walls. Now there's only a single supplier for those containment walls and they cost a fortune and have a huge backlog. Hmm.....
The point about warships is well made and something I hadn't considered. Still, you can't deny the fact that the suppression of new nuclear plants in the 70s and 80s contributed to the problem. The containment walls aren't the only bit of equipment that was affected. We gutted an entire industry because of a handful of very loud people and probably gutted whatever chance we had of averting runaway climate change in the process. It infuriates me to even think about it.....
You're assuming that we Indians would want the carbon capture technology. Al Gore is not a huge box office draw in India.
He will be when you have massive famines and can't feed your population. Most of the studies I've read suggest that India won't make out very well if we encounter runaway global warming.....
You can't build nuclear plants that fast
Why can't we? Would it have anything to do with the fact that the enviro-nazis and NIMBY bastards successfully stymied the construction of new plants back in the 70s and 80s and in so doing left zero incentive for American industry to retain the plant and equipment to build reactors?
I read somewhere that there's only one steelworks in the world that's capable of forging the reactor containment walls and they have years of back orders on the books. Of course it didn't used to be that way but the various anti-nuclear movements drove down demand to the point that it wasn't profitable for other steelworks to retain the equipment to produce them. Other parts of the supply chain have been equally impacted.
Congratulations environmentalists -- you ripped the heart out of the only energy source that could have weaned us off carbon in our lifetimes. Seems a bit shortsighted in retrospect, doesn't it?
What's going to happen when the reality of America's dependence fossil fuels meets the reality of climate change?
We'll fully commit ourselves to nuclear and finally have the ammo we need to silence the anti-nuclear crowd?
In one formula, CO2. Coal is the fuel that produces more CO2 per joule than any other energy source.
I guess you missed the part where he said we need to invest in carbon capture and pointed out that even if we abandon coal (not likely but let's assume so for the sake of the argument) that the Chinese and Indians won't? Seems to me that if we can make carbon capture work we can sell it to them and get some exports going once again. What's not to like?
Angels fan...
I'm sorry ;) (j/k)
No. What I'm talking about is Yanks fans come into your stadium and cheer the Yankees. They're not drunk and obnoxious
You've obviously never been to Shea Stadium (may it RIP) during the Subway Series. Yankees fans can be pretty obnoxious in sufficient numbers with a sufficient supply of beer.
Red Sox fans come into your stadium and cheer the Sox. They're drunk and obnoxious, and if the Sox win, they're like, "We won! Why aren't you happy for us?"
As a Mets fan I can silence this with one word: 1986 ;)
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Amen.....
last time I was in NYC, a complete stranger bloodied my nose in front of the Roosevelt, screaming "Go back to Boston." So I did!
The last time that happened to me I pepper sprayed the bastard before he could bloody my nose ;) I was also the asshole that wore a Red Sox cap (even though the Mets are really my team) to the local Yankees bar when the Yanks were in the process of blowing Game 7 after a 3-0 series lead. That didn't win me any fans either. 26 (or is it 27?) world series rings and they still can't take a joke....
Mets are by far the better NY team. B-Mets home-opener day is tomorrow! Too bad I'm not in Bingo to go cheer them on.
I'll be there :)
Just to belabor the fucking point, the same was true both times Bush Jr. was "Elected"; was it best to just ignore that?
Oh please. The fact that you feel the need to put quotation marks around the word elected suggests that you are operating more on emotion than on logic. I never cared much for GWB but Al Gore deserves more of the blame for losing in 2000 than GWB does. Gore ran a lackluster campaign, failed to win his own state and didn't bother calling for a statewide recount in Florida but instead cherry picked the counties that would best suit him. Count all the votes indeed.....
As far as 2004 goes, GWB won Ohio by almost 120k votes. The Democrats can whine about fraud all they want but the margin speaks for itself. I've worked as a poll worker for the last eight years in New York State and actually monitored a polling place in Ohio of all places (during the 2008 Presidential primary) and haven't seen a way to rig the system to generate that type of margin. And besides all that, I would place the blame for 2004 squarely at the feet of John Kerry. He ran a shitty campaign and allowed the Republicans to define him.
GWB had the fortune of running against two morons who didn't have the pulse of the nation or the wherewithal to run a competent campaign. Who knows what would have happened if he had faced a real opponent? The margin in both elections suggests that if the Democrats had found someone competent they might have carried the day.
This is obviously inconsequential in comparison, but it illustrates the point that NASA is not even pretending to be acting in the interests of the public any more. Why? Because listening to the will of the public would have spurred their interest! Not listening to them will only produce further disillusionment, as has been demonstrated by this discussion. It's not just me.
The 'interest' of the public would be served by honoring the results of a poll that was laced with ballot stuffing by Firefly fans and a TV personality who unleashed his "nation"? Again, I think you are taking this way too seriously if you think the public is going to be disillusioned with NASA over this......
One more time, NASA jumped the shark a long time ago and this is just further proof
NASA jumped the shark because it's a Governmental agency that's held hostage to politics. If NASA was given a real mandate, some proper funding and Congress stayed the hell out of the way (i.e: not trying to direct NASA contracts to their home districts) I think you'd find that there's still some life in the old gal. I'm doubtful this will happen because Obama seems hell bent on slashing NASA's funding even further, but I've been surprised before.....
Is there any lower life form than a spammer?
Rapists, murders and Yankees fans all come to mind ;)
I've never heard that one before, is it some kind of racist comment?
Only if you are a card carrying member of the PC police.
because it was promised to be a mockery from the beginning. And really, it's from NASA, so it was double-guaranteed. They haven't had much credibility since shuttles started blowing up regularly
I really think you need to get some perspective. "Promised to be a mockery from the beginning"? Then why even bother posting in this article?
That made them liars up front when they were soliciting votes which mean nothing. I guess our national elections demonstrated that people would feel like a part of democracy even when the votes aren't counted, though...
You are comparing a non-scientific voting process with no provision to prevent ballot stuffing and which came with a disclaimer saying that the results weren't binding to an actual election? I think you've ventured away from the reservation on this one....
Otherwise they're just making themselves liars.
How are they making themselves liars when the page had a big huge disclaimer on it that said they weren't bound by the results?
Even worse, according to Die Hard 4, you can hack the entire nation with a cell phone.
As long as you do so during nights and weekends. Those peak minute overages will kill you ;)
We cannot hold the telecoms accountable for things we did not like but that were, in the strictest sense, legal.
Well, under that theory I guess we couldn't hold the Watergate burglars accountable either. The orders came from the President, so they have the same weight as a legal interpretation until otherwise overturned. Of course you kind of glossed over the point that the whole idea of the telecom suits wasn't to punish AT&T but rather to use the discovery process to find out exactly what the hell happened......
HR 6304 fixed the ambiguities in the wording that allowed a broad interpretation.
While providing exactly zero incentive for future administrations to actually follow the law, since we effectively set the precedent that you won't be punished or even investigated for bending/breaking it. I'm sorry, you can rationalize and/or spin it all you want but the FISA legislation stinks. I also seem to recall a certain former Senator from Illinois promising that he would filibuster any legislation containing telecom immunity. I guess that promise was as empty as the promise about a "new kind of politics".
Umm, what the hell does New Orleans have to do with my remark? I was complaining about our legislators. Unless you think it's the role of the 535 members of Congress to start filling sandbags (something I'd personally pay to see but don't consider real likely) I don't see what New Orleans has to do with anything.
I take to ridding the world of all drugs quite often using similar techniques it's a wonder I haven't received more recognition for my truely valiant efforts
Be careful looking for such recognition. Two goons might show up and piss on your rug or something. Just sayin', it's been known to happen after you wage the 'War on Drugs' for a few hours ;)
Also, get yourself a "dirty" laptop. something that you can ditch and not have anything that can identify it as yours. Great idea is a laptop that has a easily removed hard drive.
Of course for the price of that laptop you just ditched you could probably have bought a lot of $0.99 tracks on iTunes and saved yourself the hassle ;)
If most people actually tried to *think*, we wouldn't have these stupid laws in the first place
Actually the problem with half our laws is people thinking too damn much, IMHO. If we just legislate X, then Y will go away/be solved/cease to be a problem. Perhaps our legislators should stop thinking, stop legislating and just enjoy the DC cocktail circuit while leaving the rest of us the hell alone?
I no longer see the walls of text posted by the more 'conservative' members of forums posting excruciatingly twisted excerpts and personal interpretation of federal law to lend their support to the executives power of warrantless wiretapping, torture and Guantanamo Bay like I did 12 months ago.
No, now we see those walls of text posted by the more 'liberal' members of forums, trying to rationalize their own trampling of the Constitution and political maneuverings. The more things change.....
So many hypocrites, so little time.
Is there anyone involved in politics at the Federal level who isn't a hypocrite?
The telecoms conducted the wiretapping LEGALLY, according to a Bush Administration Executive Order. You can debate the Executive Order and Presidential Authority all you want, but at the time, the telecoms were acting within the law.
Executive order != the law. The mere issuance of an Executive Order is not enough to override Federal statues or Constitutional requirements.
HR 6304 effectively overruled the Bush Executive Order and denies the Executive the authority to bypass the FISA courts.
Wow, you must be a member of the Obama administration to come up with that rationalization. The Executive already lacked the authority to bypass the FISA court. When they bypassed the FISA court they broke the law. By granting retroactive immunity to the telecoms, we foreclosed one possible method (discovery in a civil lawsuit) of finding out to what extent those laws were broken and bringing those responsible to justice.
Put all the spin on it you want, but Obama folded on a civil liberties issue and caved to the Bush administration rather than run the risk of the issue dogging him on the campaign trail. That was the day when I stopped supporting him and decided I'd be voting for someone else.