More or less, eg I bought new pants a size or two smaller and I'm still wearing them. However I cheat sometimes, eg at a holiday party somewhere where there's no choice but to eat the HFCS stuff. But more-or-less yeah.
Actually, I think it's the other way around. Sucrose is a diglyceride of 50% fructose and 50% glucose. HFCS has higher concentrations of fructose, at least 55% maybe higher. Corn farmer unions claim that since sucrose is 50% fructose, the HFCS should have the same effect on the body since it's only 5% different. However, metabolism is a complicated chemical process and it's quite possible that the extra 5% can wreak more havoc on the system.
The other thing is that HFCS is understood to suppress the 'full' feeling, leading people with HFCS in their diet to eat alot more.
Yeah, we still have 'diet' products with similar synthetic sweeteners you mention. The problem is that the 'normal' or 'sugar' versions of products that used to use real sugar no longer do. It's tough to find sweet products without HFCS at a typical supermarket, as the HFCS is used by most big companies (eg Nabisco) because they save a few pennies. Interestingly, almost every country outside the USA uses real sugar, it seems to be only the USA that uses this HFCS crap.
I emailed Coca-Cola about this very issue about a year ago, sometime after I did an experiment to avoid all HFCS products. I still ate cookies and sweets and stuff, just those brands without HFCS, and I lost 15 pounds in 2-3 months without even meaning to, and without even trying.
But anyway, Coca-Cola's response was that individual bottling factories have the choice which sweetener to use and that I should contact them. Of course these factories choose to cut costs by using the low-price HFCS.
And remember two reasons HFCS is so cheap is because of government subsidies of corn farmers, and the embargo against Cuba (and it's huge sugar export economy).
Yeah, I remember the commercials for that (I was in college in Philly at the time). An old waittress at a greasy-spoon diner would ask the patron what he was in the mood for. "Coffee? Pepsi? Both?" And then she ripped off her face, revealing lounge singer Tom Jones underneath, singing "It's not unusual to be loved by you." Pretty bizarre commercial, made me want to try the product just for kicks but I never got around to it.
Yeah, I just wrote up a whole rant against HFCS upthread, and included that as an example. I'm not well-versed in economics or economic history, but I do know Cuba was a huge source of cane sugar. The embargo crippled their economy, and made it that much harder to get cane sugar in the USA. What I'm not certain of is how many US farmers grow cane or beet sugar, and how expensive the farming process is vs corn farming. There is alot of processing the corn goes through to get the HFCS, though. And of course the corn farmers wield political sway, especially with the Democratic primaries in Iowa.
Definitely. American companies put way too much HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup) in their products, and it's nasty stuff. About two years ago I decided to avoid HFCS, but still eat sweets like I normally would. Ie, I still ate ice cream, cookies, sodas, cereal, etc, but only those brands that use cane sugar instead of HFCS. You can get good products at places like Whole Foods (pricy) or Trader Joes (similar price or even cheaper than a supermarket). [In fact, Trader Joes cereals, which don't have HFCS, are cheaper than the corresponding kinds from Kelloggs and General Mills which do have HFCS.] Anyway, the interesting result is that, without meaning to, I lost about 15 pounds while still eating all the desserts I wanted, just by avoiding HFCS!.
One thing is that HFCS seems to do is inhibit the 'full' feeling you get after eating, so you can eat more if your food has HFCS. Great news for food companies, not good news for American health.
It is annoying because food with real sugar just tastes much better, and is healthier. In most other countries products like Coca-Cola has cane sugar, but here in the USA all products substitute HFCS. I once emailed Coca-Cola about this a few years ago, they said it's up to local bottlers to decide which sweetener to use. And of course they cut corners and go for the cheap stuff.
Some companies use this to their advantage because ignorant people see CORN instead of SUGAR and think the product is healthier. Ie, Kelloggs Corn Pops used to be called Sugar Pops. By making the change, parents thought Corn sounded much healthier than sugar, so they have no problem giving this cereal to their kids, when it has the same amount of calories, yet uses HFCS instead of cane or beet sugar.
Unfortunately midwestern corn farmers have alot of political power, and politicians, aiming for approval in the early Iowa primaries, are likely to bow down to these farmers in order to get the party nomination. The corn lobby has huge power, both political and economical, and they choose to market HFCS instead of doing something productive such as growing biofuels with the corn instead.
Another thing is that it's more expensive to import and use cane sugar than to process corn into HFCS. I am not certain of this, but I would theorize that one big factor is due to the embargo we put on Cuba after Castro came to power in 1959. Cuba was a huge source of cane sugar (their chief export), so the embargo basically crippled their economy overnight and impeded a huge source of sugar cane into the USA. So corn farmers, along with massive chemical processing to produce the HFCS, filled the void.
Anyway, that is my rant, I hate HFCS, and it's good to see more people becoming aware of it. I really do think that just by substituting cane sugar for HFCS there will be a notable change in America's obesity problem. It probably won't cure the problem, but I think there would be definite effects.
What are you talking about, NASA has been outsourcing projects and components to private industry since its inception. Eg, Grumman Aircraft and Boeing, along with many other companies, contributed to the Apollo programs. Perkin Elmer produced the infamously flawed Hubble Telescope mirror, etc.
In fact, many of the problems on NASA missions are due to outsourced companies providing sub-par work, cutting corners, and over-billing NASA. In other words, they've grown fat and dependent on NASA's pork. For a current example, there are companies outsourced to build parts for one of the replacement cameras on Hubble that will hopefully get launched. I've heard 'horror' stories about the outsourced work. One company made filters that used an epoxy not rated for space's thermal or vacuum conditions, and the filters are basically non-functional. They want to charge NASA double the price to make another round of proper filters. Another company made some electronic parts that should have been built in a cleanroom but they used a sweatshop in Puerto Rico. There are pictures showing pictures of shirtless guys covered in sweat assembling these electronics when they hould be wearing bunnysuits in a cleanroom. Of course, working yield was less than 25%, and they refuse to produce more or give NASA a discount. And these stories are only within the past 5 years, it's probably been worse throughout history.
The problem isn't with NASA, the problem is with NASA's bureaucracy demanding that certain tasks be outsourced when it could be far more efficient to produce in-house. NASA has amazing fabrication resources, but for various political reasons they give pork projects to industry. Now if NASA had to spend $100,000 to develop an op-amp that could be bought for $5, obviously that's a waste. But if they spend $10 Million to pay a company to develop new filters, when they could develop themselves in proper cleanrooms and with proper thermal-vac testing for only $5 Million, then it makes sense to keep it in-house.
The other problem is that certain companies are greedy with these NASA 'pork' projects, and they will charge NASA more money for a project than they'd charge another business. Unfortunately NASA's bureaucracy makes them outsource such projects at ripoff prices, in order to add pork for the various Congressmen in an area.
Yeah, I was just talking to my brother about this today. He's a financial guy, and compared the 'books' between Google and Yahoo, showing that Yahoo's revenue is still 90% of Google's, etc, and that Google really isn't that much better than Yahoo. He thinks Google's stock is overvalued, which maybe it is.
But I had to tell him the major difference is beyond just the books, people tend to just like Google. Their services are a joy to use, the ads aren't in your face, they do tons of cool other things like Google Maps, Google Earth, etc, that Yahoo doesn't. Granted, Yahoo does many things that Google doesn't too, but for my personal preferences Google's take is pretty damn cool.
Now if only they would make the Gmail interface more intuitive and sensical (to me at least).
Even the dudes in Space Balls knew you could exceed the speed of light. Remember Plaid Speed?
No no no, you've got it all wrong. They were travelling at "Ludicrous Speed", which as we all know, is the next realm faster than "Ridiculous Speed", which itself is faster than light speed.
They weren't travelling at plaid speed, but as a result of travelling at ludicrous speed they "Went to Plaid", which is of course the inevitable intangible result of bending space-time to handle such anti-Einsteinian modes of travel. That's also how they were able to watch Spaceballs the Movie during the filming of said movie. Ludicrous speed dynamics also govern on when 'then' will become 'now', which we know the the answer to be 'soon'.
This instance would be using intellectual property, not actual physical property, in which case AFAIK, and IANAL, eminent domain isn't fully defined.
This isn't as clear cut as the state taking someone's house and land to build a highway, in which case the person can only lose the land once and would be left with nothing. Instead, the drug company will still fully own its IP after the fact, they will only have lost some virtual sales.
Taiwan appears to only want to produce the drugs to save lives, but not to profit off of its sales to other parties.
If anything, the company should be able to claim the amount of the price that Taiwan didn't buy as some kind of charitable deduction. But if they try to sue Taiwan for saving lives, then they really should win the "Evil Moneygrubbing Bloodsuckers of the Year" award.
The irony of Robertson's prayers (beyond the irony of a devout Christian praying for 'vacancies' in an institution that has lifetime appointments) is that he really wants vacancies of the more liberal or swing justices. Rehnquist was rather conservative in his dealings.
So his prayers have been answered, but not in the way he wants.
" In Congress, Democrats including House Democratic Caucus Chairman Robert Menendez are stepping up their criticism, and the Democratic National Committee today issued a statement under the title, ``Where is the leadership, Mr. President.''
``Why is it that five days after hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast many of our fellow Americans are still without food and water, living in squalor in dangerous, inhumane conditions?'' the statement said. "
Nice try to twist the words. Yes, the guard is there today, but why did it take five days? The key point is that there were only 250 guardsmen when FEMA chief declared there were several thousand.
If you actually read the article, there isn't much contradiction.
Oh really?
Chertoff [Homeland Security Director]: In addition to local law enforcement, we have 2,800 National Guard in New Orleans as we speak today. One thousand four hundred additional National Guard military police trained soldiers will be arriving every day: 1,400 today, 1,400 tomorrow and 1,400 the next day.
Nagin [Mayor of New Orleans]: I continue to hear that troops are on the way, but we are still protecting the city with only 1,500 New Orleans police officers, an additional 300 law enforcement personnel, 250 National Guard troops, and other military personnel who are primarily focused on evacuation.
---
Brown [FEMA Chief]: I've just learned today that we... are in the process of completing the evacuations of the hospitals, that those are going very well.
CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta: It's gruesome. I guess that is the best word for it... There is no electricity. There is no water. There's over 200 patients still here remaining.
Dr. Matthew Bellew, Charity Hospital: We still have 200 patients in this hospital, many of them needing care that they just can't get. The conditions are such that it's very dangerous for the patients.
---
Brown: I've had no reports of unrest, if the connotation of the word unrest means that people are beginning to riot, or you know, they're banging on walls and screaming and hollering or burning tires or whatever. I've had no reports of that.
CNN's Chris Lawrence: From here and from talking to the police officers, they're losing control of the city. We're now standing on the roof of one of the police stations. The police officers came by and told us in very, very strong terms it wasn't safe to be out on the street.
The first words in the post are "Where are the guardsmen? Right where they ought to be."
Yet the mayor of the city says there's only 250 guardsmen in the whole city, and has meanwhile sent out an S.O.S. and called for tens of thousands of guardsmen. So yes, I'd say the original post is way the hell off mark.
Nice propaganda, you are a good patriot for drinking the laced Kool-Aid. Now can you be so nice as to tell us from which unbiased source you plagiarized your post?
Anyway, you are buying the statements of federal officials hook, line, and sinker. Read this article by CNN that contrasts what Bush administration officials are saying versus the realities on the ground.
Here's a snippet to demonstrate your propaganda is just that, propaganda.
Chertoff [Director of Homeland Security]: In addition to local law enforcement, we have 2,800 National Guard in New Orleans as we speak today. One thousand four hundred additional National Guard military police trained soldiers will be arriving every day: 1,400 today, 1,400 tomorrow and 1,400 the next day.
Nagin [Mayor of New Orleans]: I continue to hear that troops are on the way, but we are still protecting the city with only 1,500 New Orleans police officers, an additional 300 law enforcement personnel, 250 National Guard troops, and other military personnel who are primarily focused on evacuation.
Amazingly, journalists are starting to wake up and report actual news instead of repeating the carefully prepared statements of federal officials. Unfortunately it took a tragedy to get to this point.
Journalists are finally starting to see through the misleading statements of federal officials who are claiming everything is jus' fine down in N'awleans, and are reporting the actual reality on the ground.
Too bad it took a disaster for this to happen. But when you see people dying in front of your eyes and your own government waiting 4 days before really attempting to help out, your sense of conscience grows.
CNN has a special page contrasting the statements of officials about how great things are going versus the reality. Read the article here.
I design high frequency pulse amplifiers, and at subnanosecond risetimes, capacitors act pretty awful. but in the audio range, there is no way to hear the difference in a good quality capacitor.
I used to do research designing and building microwave electro-optical circuits, specifically high-end AD converters. In fact there's a good chance we've used some of the amlifiers you've designed.
My boss at that time is one of the smartest experimentalist (or applied physicists) that I've ever worked with. He's also an audiophile, and he absolutely swears by using very good series capacitors. He told me the three things you can do to a crappy amp to make it sound really good are : replace the op-amps, replace capacitors, and use thick-ass cable to the speakers.
The thing is, audio and sub-nanosecond circuits are in two totally different regimes. As you no doubt know, there's a tradeoff between SNR and bandwidth (see the Walden Wall, for example), and this would ultimately be limited by Heisenberg uncertainty.
I'd imagine that your sub-nanosecond risetime amps don't offer too much SNR, but decent audio should have _at least_ 108 dB of spur-free and intermod-free dynamic range, preferrably around 144 or so.
When you're talking about this much dynamic range, weak non-linearities can kill you with intermods. Your RF amp noisefloor is probably far above where such intermods would be produced, but for audio with a much wider SNR, such distortions are problematic.
The Usenet Oracle has pondered your question deeply. Your question was:
Oh omnipotent oracle! If there were a single
molecule from a forgotten oraclelean 10,000-year-old fart I would not be worthy to inhale it!
Timorously, I ask you:
If you drop a buttered piece of bread, it will fall on the
floor butter-side down. If a cat is dropped from a window
or other high and towering place, it will land on it's feet.
But what if you attach a buttered piece of bread, butter-side
up to a cat's back and toss them both out the window?
Will the cat land on it's feet? Or will the butter splat on
the ground?
-Mike
And in response, thus spake the Oracle:
Even if you are too lazy to do the experiment yourself you should be
able to deduce the obvious result. The laws of butterology demand
that the butter must hit the ground, and the equally strict laws of
feline aerodynamics demand that the cat can not smash it's furry back.
If the combined construct were to land, nature would have no way to
resolve this paradox. Therefore it simply does not fall.
That's right you clever mortal (well, as clever as a mortal can get),
you have discovered the secret of antigravity! A buttered cat will,
when released, quickly move to a height where the forces of
cat-twisting and butter repulsion are in equilibrium. This equilibrium
point can be modified by scraping off some of the butter, providing
lift, or removing some of the cat's limbs, allowing descent.
Most of the civilized species of the Universe already use this
principle to drive their ships while within a planetary system. The
loud humming heard by most sighters of UFOs is, in fact, the purring of
several hundred tabbies.
The one obvious danger is, of course, if the cats manage to eat the
bread off their backs they will instantly plummet. Of course the cats
will land on their feet, but this usually doesn't do them much good,
since right after they make their graceful landing several tons of
red-hot starship and pissed off aliens crash on top of them.
You owe the Oracle two slices of toast and a bag of kitty litter.
Interesting how you accuse me of binary thinking right after you justify the situation in Iraq based on a binary decision of less dead under US occupation than Saddam.
If you think I'm trying to "trap you", it reveals more about your own interpretation of your actions than perhaps you'd have liked to let on.
You're right, though, it's not a binary situation. For example, I fully support our troops in the miltary, and I hope and pray for their safe return. I don't, however, support the administrations decisions to invade Iraq, especially the way in which it was done.
Additionally I believe that anyone that wanted to invade Iraq, especially those that justify the number of dead American soldiers, be 100% willing to enlist themselves (or their children or relatives if they're physically unable) into service with the Armed Forces. If not, they are not willing to fight firsthand for what they believe in, and IMHO are cowards for letting other people do the dirty work for them.
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More or less, eg I bought new pants a size or two smaller and I'm still wearing them. However I cheat sometimes, eg at a holiday party somewhere where there's no choice but to eat the HFCS stuff. But more-or-less yeah.
The other thing is that HFCS is understood to suppress the 'full' feeling, leading people with HFCS in their diet to eat alot more.
Yeah, we still have 'diet' products with similar synthetic sweeteners you mention. The problem is that the 'normal' or 'sugar' versions of products that used to use real sugar no longer do. It's tough to find sweet products without HFCS at a typical supermarket, as the HFCS is used by most big companies (eg Nabisco) because they save a few pennies. Interestingly, almost every country outside the USA uses real sugar, it seems to be only the USA that uses this HFCS crap.
Can you link to one of these many studies you talk about? Preferrably one not funded by corn growers or their partners.
Redundant my ass.
But anyway, Coca-Cola's response was that individual bottling factories have the choice which sweetener to use and that I should contact them. Of course these factories choose to cut costs by using the low-price HFCS.
And remember two reasons HFCS is so cheap is because of government subsidies of corn farmers, and the embargo against Cuba (and it's huge sugar export economy).
Yeah, I remember the commercials for that (I was in college in Philly at the time). An old waittress at a greasy-spoon diner would ask the patron what he was in the mood for. "Coffee? Pepsi? Both?" And then she ripped off her face, revealing lounge singer Tom Jones underneath, singing "It's not unusual to be loved by you." Pretty bizarre commercial, made me want to try the product just for kicks but I never got around to it.
Yeah, I just wrote up a whole rant against HFCS upthread, and included that as an example. I'm not well-versed in economics or economic history, but I do know Cuba was a huge source of cane sugar. The embargo crippled their economy, and made it that much harder to get cane sugar in the USA. What I'm not certain of is how many US farmers grow cane or beet sugar, and how expensive the farming process is vs corn farming. There is alot of processing the corn goes through to get the HFCS, though. And of course the corn farmers wield political sway, especially with the Democratic primaries in Iowa.
One thing is that HFCS seems to do is inhibit the 'full' feeling you get after eating, so you can eat more if your food has HFCS. Great news for food companies, not good news for American health.
It is annoying because food with real sugar just tastes much better, and is healthier. In most other countries products like Coca-Cola has cane sugar, but here in the USA all products substitute HFCS. I once emailed Coca-Cola about this a few years ago, they said it's up to local bottlers to decide which sweetener to use. And of course they cut corners and go for the cheap stuff.
Some companies use this to their advantage because ignorant people see CORN instead of SUGAR and think the product is healthier. Ie, Kelloggs Corn Pops used to be called Sugar Pops. By making the change, parents thought Corn sounded much healthier than sugar, so they have no problem giving this cereal to their kids, when it has the same amount of calories, yet uses HFCS instead of cane or beet sugar.
Unfortunately midwestern corn farmers have alot of political power, and politicians, aiming for approval in the early Iowa primaries, are likely to bow down to these farmers in order to get the party nomination. The corn lobby has huge power, both political and economical, and they choose to market HFCS instead of doing something productive such as growing biofuels with the corn instead.
Another thing is that it's more expensive to import and use cane sugar than to process corn into HFCS. I am not certain of this, but I would theorize that one big factor is due to the embargo we put on Cuba after Castro came to power in 1959. Cuba was a huge source of cane sugar (their chief export), so the embargo basically crippled their economy overnight and impeded a huge source of sugar cane into the USA. So corn farmers, along with massive chemical processing to produce the HFCS, filled the void.
Anyway, that is my rant, I hate HFCS, and it's good to see more people becoming aware of it. I really do think that just by substituting cane sugar for HFCS there will be a notable change in America's obesity problem. It probably won't cure the problem, but I think there would be definite effects.
In fact, many of the problems on NASA missions are due to outsourced companies providing sub-par work, cutting corners, and over-billing NASA. In other words, they've grown fat and dependent on NASA's pork. For a current example, there are companies outsourced to build parts for one of the replacement cameras on Hubble that will hopefully get launched. I've heard 'horror' stories about the outsourced work. One company made filters that used an epoxy not rated for space's thermal or vacuum conditions, and the filters are basically non-functional. They want to charge NASA double the price to make another round of proper filters. Another company made some electronic parts that should have been built in a cleanroom but they used a sweatshop in Puerto Rico. There are pictures showing pictures of shirtless guys covered in sweat assembling these electronics when they hould be wearing bunnysuits in a cleanroom. Of course, working yield was less than 25%, and they refuse to produce more or give NASA a discount. And these stories are only within the past 5 years, it's probably been worse throughout history.
The problem isn't with NASA, the problem is with NASA's bureaucracy demanding that certain tasks be outsourced when it could be far more efficient to produce in-house. NASA has amazing fabrication resources, but for various political reasons they give pork projects to industry. Now if NASA had to spend $100,000 to develop an op-amp that could be bought for $5, obviously that's a waste. But if they spend $10 Million to pay a company to develop new filters, when they could develop themselves in proper cleanrooms and with proper thermal-vac testing for only $5 Million, then it makes sense to keep it in-house.
The other problem is that certain companies are greedy with these NASA 'pork' projects, and they will charge NASA more money for a project than they'd charge another business. Unfortunately NASA's bureaucracy makes them outsource such projects at ripoff prices, in order to add pork for the various Congressmen in an area.
But I had to tell him the major difference is beyond just the books, people tend to just like Google. Their services are a joy to use, the ads aren't in your face, they do tons of cool other things like Google Maps, Google Earth, etc, that Yahoo doesn't. Granted, Yahoo does many things that Google doesn't too, but for my personal preferences Google's take is pretty damn cool.
Now if only they would make the Gmail interface more intuitive and sensical (to me at least).
No no no, you've got it all wrong. They were travelling at "Ludicrous Speed", which as we all know, is the next realm faster than "Ridiculous Speed", which itself is faster than light speed.
They weren't travelling at plaid speed, but as a result of travelling at ludicrous speed they "Went to Plaid", which is of course the inevitable intangible result of bending space-time to handle such anti-Einsteinian modes of travel. That's also how they were able to watch Spaceballs the Movie during the filming of said movie. Ludicrous speed dynamics also govern on when 'then' will become 'now', which we know the the answer to be 'soon'.
This isn't as clear cut as the state taking someone's house and land to build a highway, in which case the person can only lose the land once and would be left with nothing. Instead, the drug company will still fully own its IP after the fact, they will only have lost some virtual sales. Taiwan appears to only want to produce the drugs to save lives, but not to profit off of its sales to other parties.
If anything, the company should be able to claim the amount of the price that Taiwan didn't buy as some kind of charitable deduction. But if they try to sue Taiwan for saving lives, then they really should win the "Evil Moneygrubbing Bloodsuckers of the Year" award.
"Nuke them over there so we don't have to deal with the fallout over here."
So his prayers have been answered, but not in the way he wants.
Have you watched the news at all? All people questioning the slow federal response make mention of the 5 days.
For example, take the following snippet from a Bloomberg news article :
" In Congress, Democrats including House Democratic Caucus Chairman Robert Menendez are stepping up their criticism, and the Democratic National Committee today issued a statement under the title, ``Where is the leadership, Mr. President.'' ``Why is it that five days after hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast many of our fellow Americans are still without food and water, living in squalor in dangerous, inhumane conditions?'' the statement said. "
Nice try to twist the words. Yes, the guard is there today, but why did it take five days? The key point is that there were only 250 guardsmen when FEMA chief declared there were several thousand.
Oh really?
Chertoff [Homeland Security Director]: In addition to local law enforcement, we have 2,800 National Guard in New Orleans as we speak today. One thousand four hundred additional National Guard military police trained soldiers will be arriving every day: 1,400 today, 1,400 tomorrow and 1,400 the next day.
Nagin [Mayor of New Orleans]: I continue to hear that troops are on the way, but we are still protecting the city with only 1,500 New Orleans police officers, an additional 300 law enforcement personnel, 250 National Guard troops, and other military personnel who are primarily focused on evacuation.
---
Brown [FEMA Chief]: I've just learned today that we ... are in the process of completing the evacuations of the hospitals, that those are going very well.
CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta: It's gruesome. I guess that is the best word for it ... There is no electricity. There is no water. There's over 200 patients still here remaining.
Dr. Matthew Bellew, Charity Hospital: We still have 200 patients in this hospital, many of them needing care that they just can't get. The conditions are such that it's very dangerous for the patients.
---
Brown: I've had no reports of unrest, if the connotation of the word unrest means that people are beginning to riot, or you know, they're banging on walls and screaming and hollering or burning tires or whatever. I've had no reports of that.
CNN's Chris Lawrence: From here and from talking to the police officers, they're losing control of the city. We're now standing on the roof of one of the police stations. The police officers came by and told us in very, very strong terms it wasn't safe to be out on the street.
Yet the mayor of the city says there's only 250 guardsmen in the whole city, and has meanwhile sent out an S.O.S. and called for tens of thousands of guardsmen. So yes, I'd say the original post is way the hell off mark.
Anyway, you are buying the statements of federal officials hook, line, and sinker. Read this article by CNN that contrasts what Bush administration officials are saying versus the realities on the ground.
Here's a snippet to demonstrate your propaganda is just that, propaganda.
Chertoff [Director of Homeland Security]: In addition to local law enforcement, we have 2,800 National Guard in New Orleans as we speak today. One thousand four hundred additional National Guard military police trained soldiers will be arriving every day: 1,400 today, 1,400 tomorrow and 1,400 the next day.
Nagin [Mayor of New Orleans]: I continue to hear that troops are on the way, but we are still protecting the city with only 1,500 New Orleans police officers, an additional 300 law enforcement personnel, 250 National Guard troops, and other military personnel who are primarily focused on evacuation.
Amazingly, journalists are starting to wake up and report actual news instead of repeating the carefully prepared statements of federal officials. Unfortunately it took a tragedy to get to this point.
Too bad it took a disaster for this to happen. But when you see people dying in front of your eyes and your own government waiting 4 days before really attempting to help out, your sense of conscience grows.
CNN has a special page contrasting the statements of officials about how great things are going versus the reality. Read the article here.
I used to do research designing and building microwave electro-optical circuits, specifically high-end AD converters. In fact there's a good chance we've used some of the amlifiers you've designed.
My boss at that time is one of the smartest experimentalist (or applied physicists) that I've ever worked with. He's also an audiophile, and he absolutely swears by using very good series capacitors. He told me the three things you can do to a crappy amp to make it sound really good are : replace the op-amps, replace capacitors, and use thick-ass cable to the speakers.
The thing is, audio and sub-nanosecond circuits are in two totally different regimes. As you no doubt know, there's a tradeoff between SNR and bandwidth (see the Walden Wall, for example), and this would ultimately be limited by Heisenberg uncertainty.
I'd imagine that your sub-nanosecond risetime amps don't offer too much SNR, but decent audio should have _at least_ 108 dB of spur-free and intermod-free dynamic range, preferrably around 144 or so. When you're talking about this much dynamic range, weak non-linearities can kill you with intermods. Your RF amp noisefloor is probably far above where such intermods would be produced, but for audio with a much wider SNR, such distortions are problematic.
Of course this would inevitably launch the Buttered Toast arms race, as depicted in Dr. Seuss's Butter Battle Book.
From the Internet Oracle Best of Digests :
You're right, though, it's not a binary situation. For example, I fully support our troops in the miltary, and I hope and pray for their safe return. I don't, however, support the administrations decisions to invade Iraq, especially the way in which it was done.
Additionally I believe that anyone that wanted to invade Iraq, especially those that justify the number of dead American soldiers, be 100% willing to enlist themselves (or their children or relatives if they're physically unable) into service with the Armed Forces. If not, they are not willing to fight firsthand for what they believe in, and IMHO are cowards for letting other people do the dirty work for them.