>Fox might call them "tewwowists", but they are Insurgents, nonetheless.
Terrorism(from dictionary.com, bolds added for effect): The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.
You may agree or disagree with what they are doing, but it is clearly terrorism. It is also insurgency.
>The trouble in middle east would not have bothered us a bit, if (a) Israel wasnt in the midst of all of it and (b) Oil, billions and billions of gallons of it.
The real trouble is that people see oil fields and can't think beyond that point. Superpowers, especially in the last 100 years have tried to fight by proxy, rather than fighting head to head. Proxies were used by the Soviets in Vietnam, and by the U.S. in places like Afghanistan. There are many reasons for that.
Some, such as not wanting their own troops killed, are purely selfish reasons.
Another would be the desire to not escalate a conflict to the nuclear point. The Cold War is a great example. What would have happened if the U.S. had gone head to head with USSR? For the two countries, certainly massive death and destruction. For the rest of the world, at the very least economic meltdown. At the worst, nukes would start flying with casualties in the hundreds of millions.
Was Iraq itself a dire threat to the U.S. by itself? Of course not. Their one and only hope of harming us was to purchase black market nukes or a delivery system for their old WMDs. Iraq was another proxy war. Who is the real enemy? I can make a few guesses here, and you are welcome to join in the speculation. Iran is clearly sending fighters and money to Iraq. Our friends the Saudis(some anyway) financially support terrorist groups fighting in Iraq and elsewhere in the middle east. Then you have the people in Europe who were getting rich off of the Oil for Weapons, oops, I mean Oil for Food program in Europe such as France, Germany and Russia. In the end the "real" enemy is probably Mr. and Mrs. Islamofascist all over the middle east and the world, and our weapon of choice is democracy in Iraq. We spread democracy and capitalism, people can do what they want, get a job, get educated, raise a family, and be happy. Happy people don't bomb places and kill people. And worst yet(for Islamofascists) democracy spreads.
I actually do agree with part of your post regarding the Sudan. The U.N. needs to step in immediately and try to help if they can. Genocide on any people, any where in the world should not be tolerated. However your view of the Iraq War is very short sighted.
>"d00d camper unfair!!!1111"? Umm if I kill you, it's a kill. I didn't cheat, so it sounds fair to me.
In general what you say makes sense, however there are some cases when "camping" is frowned upon. Most of the time these kids are just being whiney little bitches but occasionally you see someone doing something worthy of a little criticism.
For example if your team is attacking, and you hide in a dark corner on the opposite side of the map from the objectives, making no attempt to complete the objectives, and shoot whoever happens by in the back, that is usually frowned upon. Not saying that is what you are doing, just pointing out that there are some tactics considered cheap.
Another is pretending you are AFK at your spawn, waiting til someone comes up to knife you and then unloading on them. In fact, if you are gone for more than 30 seconds at the beginning of the round it's probably better to just sit it out.
Like in any game, or sport there are things which aren't technically illegal, but which are frowned upon.
It has a short barrel and a high rate of fire - logically it should be an inn-accurate weapon
Agreed. Unfortunately the worlds of logic and CS rarely meet. It is a deathmatchy FPS which uses weapons which look similar to real weapons but rarely have their qualities. Look at the P90. IRL it was designed to penetrate armor using SMG style ammo, yet in CS it's like throwing pebbles at an armored enemy. Also with the bullpup design it should be much more accurate that the MP5, or other SMGs but it isn't. *sigh*
With CS you really need to enter the CS universe where normal rules of physics don't apply and simply learn the way CS handles them.
When I need a more realistic game I play BF1942(and suck at it) or DoD. But for pure gameplay aspects I still like CS. The format of 3-5 minute rounds with no respawn appeals to me. If they could add all the cool features of DoD, such as lying prone, deploying a MG, more realistic weapons, etc to CS, but still keep the mission based format it would be insane.
I think what you are seeing is a symptom of another problem. A few of the guns are vastly superior to the others. The Colt in particular is undeniably the best gun in the game, with almost no change in aiming even during full auto, and excellent damage at almost any range. Other guns can beat it, for instance an AK up close, or in the hands of a skilled player will win because of the higher damage, but in general the Colt is the best.
CS basically turns into a "how fast can I save up for a Colt or AK" game. Unless you are vastly more skilled than the other person, if you are using another gun you will generally get killed first.
To improve your game, try the low power version of the Colt, the MP5. The recoil is similar but it doesn't have the power. Once you can get a positive kill/death ratio with the MP5, you will own with the Colt. OTOH, if you simply want to do better now, buy the Colt. If you can't afford one, buy armor and wait in the back until someone drops one.
I wish it wasn't like that but the CS team seems to not give a crap about CS anymore. Rather than worrying about balancing the weapons they are spending their time adding different color crosshairs, etc. Our only hope is CS:Source to bring back the glory days of CS...
On a related note, I just picked up BF1942 and started playing that and I suck royally. I've been playing FPS for years, CS for over four, Doom, Doom 2, Quake, Q3A, UT, UT2004, etc, etc. and I still get owned in BF1942. The guns don't work the way I am used to and I have a hell of a time getting kills. Seems like each game is a learning process, and that you really need to learn all the little "secrets" before becoming a top player.
>For me, mileage isn't a killer. My drives are very short, if I opt to make them. I walk a lot because parking sucks here. I use about 1 tank of gas (~16 gal) per month.
This is an excellent point. If we all minimized our driving we wouldn't have to worry about MPG as much. I say more power to you for having a bad ass car, but not wasting that V8 on short little trips you can easily walk.
Small things, such as planning shopping trips so that you aren't going back and forth all over the city, and trying minimize the number of places you have to go, by going to a mall or plaza rather than 3-4 different independent shops, can make a huge difference.
As you mentioned, the biggest of these is simply walking if you can. My wife and I try to walk to anything within a mile or so, and save a ton of gas this way. Plus we get outside, get to smell the candy from the candy factory near our house, and we get some excersize as well.
>It's allways possibly to debate what came first; the tax break or the SUV...?
That would have to be the SUV, although they weren't called that back then. The Chevy Blazer has been around since the early seventies. Although it only had two doors it had seating for 5, ample cargo room, 4WD, powerful engine, etc. which is very similar to today's SUVs. They were used by people living in rural areas, especially where the weather is very bad.
You "city folk" didn't get them for another 15+ years until after the tax breaks you are talking about.:-)
I am not familiar with the interview you are talking about so I am not going to defend his actions. OTOH, I have seen him interview people he clearly disagreed with and let them speak with minimal interruptions(just to keep the person focused on what he thinks the audience in interested in). His interview with Michael Moore comes to mind. In fact he was downright respectful to MM, even when MM was intentionally trying to get a rise out of him.
>If you ask me, the right wing...has become extremely self-centered, pompous, rude, and disrespectful of anyone they disagree with.
Honestly I feel the exact same way about left wingers. Maybe we all need to take a step back and calm down, then talk about the issues. It's probably just wishful thinking though.
Just FYI. I listen to talk radio regularly(yes, I am a little right of center), and the talk show hosts(Hannity, Savage, etc.) regularly invite people from the other side of the political spectrum on their shows. Just as I would imagine NPR or Pacifica Radio probably invites conservatives on their shows.
The problem for both is that candidates like Nader, Kerry, Bush, etc. prefer to be interviewed by people who agree with them, or who will at least not totally rip them apart.
In other words, conservative shows(and I imagine liberal ones too) don't show only their viewpoints for lack of trying. They often just can't get the other side to come have a debate. Especially in an election year where every word and phrase is gone over with a fine tooth comb. Personally I can't stand election year politics.
Just FYI: Republican != "the right", and the personal shots at Pres. Clinton by some Republicans does not mean all Republicans are like that. Just because I think Teddy Kennedy is a loon doesn't mean I think that everything Democrats stand for is wrong, for example. You need to seperate out the partisan bickering from the actual issues.
The Dems are doing the exact same things now to GWB. And once the Dems get office again it will the Repubs will be back at it again too. There is a lot of money and power at stake and both parties(unfortunately) will do some bad things to get it.
>Maybe it's the case that most universities don't do this?
Mine certainly didn't. We were taught to check our input vars, but that's about it. The rest we were expected to learn in the field after graduation or on our own. The school I went to focused on CS theory more than practical solutions. Of course we didn't have automated homework checking or TAs either so it sounds like our schools were pretty different.
I'm all for using more electricity, however I have a few major concerns. First, is how much energy is used to make a battery? I don't know, but that sounds like a hidden cost that no one ever mentions. I can't imagine that seperating out materials into their pure forms like Nickel and Cadmium is a cheap process. Plus we need a plastic container usually for them, so we need to include the cost of those materials too. Can anyone enlighten me?
Secondly, how often would the batteries need replaced. A cell phone battery or laptop battery needs replaced every few years. So we would need to multiply the cost to make the battery times the number of batteries used over the life of the product.
Third, how do we dispose of all these batteries? I would imagine that even a relatively safe material could be toxic in extremely high quantities. Again, what would be the cost to dispose of them, including energy, and any other materials needed.
Forth, how much energy and material is used to make the electricity in the first place? Wind towers are made of metal and probably some composites. Metal needs to be mined, and energy is required to form it to make the wind towers. Any form of energy creation is going to have an associated cost in energy and materials. In other words there is no such thing as "free" energy. Just moving our pollution around doesn't help anything.
Finally, every time we change the energy's state we are loosing some percentage. Wind(kinetic energy) to electricity to battery(chemical) to electric motor to movement(kinetic) is a lot of trasformation, so it's going to be pretty inefficient. Fossil fuels you can pull from the ground, seperate them and then go directly to movement. We would need to take that into consideration when calculating the amount energy each outputs and the cost.
I suspect that these "hidden" costs are why we don't really use batteries/electricity more. Of course the flip side of that is that the consumers should be paying the total cost for using fossil fuels too, including environmental cleanup and research to keep our grass green and our skies blue. Once we get an estimated total cost of using both technologies we could make a more intelligent decision about which we want to use.
Iraq Body Count (IBC), a volunteer group of British and US academics and researchers, compiled statistics on civilian casualties from media reports and estimated that between 5,000 and 7,000 civilians died in the conflict.
Most people would probably consider it fair if you said 6,000. OTOH, I was looking at the other site you included, which puts the number at over 7,000. Either one would be fair.
It should be noted that both of those estimates include people killed by either side in the war too. Since you were replying to a post regarding acceptable losses by American mistakes(such as errant bombs) that's worth mentioning too. I'm not saying you are wrong, just saying that people need the complete story to make their own decisions.
BTW, I checked out your site. You need to either make the url link "www.costasandsandra.com" instead of "costasandsandra.com" or change your DNS a little. Congrats on your wedding. I'm getting married soon too, on Oct 30th.
Your numbers are a little misleading. Here is a quote for my/. peeps(bold added for emphasis):
At least 5,000 civilians may have been killed during the invasion of Iraq, an independent research group has claimed. As more evidence is collated, it says, the figure could reach 10,000.
We all get your point, but it makes more of an impact if you are honest with the numbers.
They move to OR and WA and raise the property values* there because they sell their $500k house and go buy whatever the hell they want and pay a bunch for it because they can.
My point is that if CA had more of a property turnover, caused by more people moving out, that property values would not be as high as they are now. Yes they could afford a nice house elsewhere, due to the fact that CA will always be more expensive than most other places in the US, however it would not be 10 times more expensive, as it is now. The problem is that the laws in CA favor the wealthy property owners, and raise the property values far, far beyond a reasonable value.
I believe that many parts of CA would be too expensive to live in for many people, if they paid their share of taxes, rather than lower rates for the same services. These people would move elsewhere, buy a nice house and more people would move in to take their place.
The problem with the current system is that CA is scaring off all of the young, intelligent talent due to laws such as this. In other words, it is bad for the state to loose these people. Every time some smart young professional couple gets frustrated with CA and moves out CA looses their CA state income tax, sales tax on items they buy(and young people buy more than older people usually), and higher property taxes. Plus they are loosing the future of the state, because these people will go elsewhere to raise children...
BTW, I have nothing personal against you or your grandma, and I understand you are going to stick up for her(I would do the same thing for mine). I also realize that she did not make the current laws, or at least had a very small part in them. This isn't about "kicking out the old people" or anything like that. IMHO, it is simply about keeping the government's hands out of the housing market, and not artificially raising housing prices. I am just suggesting that the current laws are hurting CA's future, and that voters need to think about that when they vote on things like this.
>Do you think the state and local governments should be able to tax my grandmother's house at its appraised value of $200,000 rather than the $12,000 she paid for it forty years ago?
Yes. After all, the housing prices wouldn't be at $500,000+ for a two bedroom house if people would move out of the area occasionally, when it became to expensive to live there. Modest gains in housing prices with controlled, regular turnover is preferable to all people except those who have lived there for a long time and own property. Watching families working two jobs(earning 100K+ per year) living with their parents because they can't afford a $3000K per month mortage concerns me more than people who already have a quarter million dollar(low ball estimate) nest egg built up, who could live anywhere else in the country they want. And CA wonders why people and companies are leaving the state daily...
Not to mention the fact that all of the services that taxes provide are much more expensive now than they were 40 years ago. Why should those new tax rates be payed only by some people while a few other privileged elite pay a fraction of that?
I have to give it to the politicians, and old school Californians though. They sure do have a sweet system set up for themselves.
You mean all those genius kids who know how to turn on a radio when their parents are at work? Your logic(or complete lack of it)amazes me. The point is, that ABC, etc are legally liable because ANYONE can get their signal. Cable on the other hand is covered, because you have to PAY for their service, and sign a contract. Even though these concepts may be over your head, companies who broadcast to millions of people actually have to worry about getting sued by people.
Finally, I was trying to explain the law since some people obviously don't understand it, NOT express my personal opinion.
>you're making an exception to something because you agree with it. how convenient.
Actually I wasn't explaining because I agree with it. I was explaining the reasoning behind the law itself, by the people who wrote the laws. Their reasoning is that since Stern is broadcast and can get picked up by anyone of any age that it should be forced to edit it's content.
I should have said "What the FCC considers the problem...", rather than just saying "The problem is...".
Personally I think we should do away with laws like that and make up some sort of rating system, so parents can know the contents of a show before listening in case children are present. H.S. can be on the air and say whatever he wants completely unedited as long as parents can look up the show, see it is rated NC17(or some similar thing), and then decide if their children are allowed to watch it/hear it. Just like video games and movies. With technology we could do that by encoding a few bits of "ratings data" in with each signal, and make radios more customizable so they won't play content you don't want(like you can tell it to block anything PG-13 rated or worse, for example). That way parents are happy because the don't get suprised by something they find really offensive, and broadcasters can have their creative freedom.
BTW: The shift key should be right above your control key on your keyboard.
>Well, since breasts on TV has never been voted on in Congress, how will that help?
You could run for government office with that as your platform. Eventually you could get to Congress and propose a change in policy. Or you could lobby your Congressperson.
Good post. The problem with Stern, et al is that they are broadcast, so anyone with a radio, or a home electronics kit can listen making enforcement by parents tough. That's why cable TV can say and do whatever they want( or at least closer to it), like play the unedited South Park movie on Comedy Central, but companies which broadcast, such as radio, ABC, etc. cannot.
Actually, someone correct me if I am wrong, but I think that even broadcaster's rights get a little more relaxed after 10PM and before 6AM, when typically children are asleep.
So just because we all have them you think it is cool to be watching basketball with your family, and have some dude run in front of the camera, pull down his pants and show us his butthole? I don't know about you but seeing some dudes lubed-up sphincter isn't high on my list of things I want to see on television. Better yet, since we all do it, how about we just have some guy come on stage at the grammys and take a dump right in front of the podium?
The point isn't that Americans find it disgusting(we don't, except it was kinda flabby). The point is that to American's a breast is a symbol of sexuality, and people want to know what is going to be on a certain show so they can determine when their children are exposed to that. If they make a TV rating system, and then rate the Superbowl PG-13(occasional brief nudity), that is fine too, so long as parents know what to expect before deciding whether to let their children watch. By allowing people to do whatever they feel like on any show, you are imposing your beliefs(the "it's just a breast" belief) on other people(everyone watching the superbowl) without their consent.
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>Fox might call them "tewwowists", but they are Insurgents, nonetheless.
Terrorism(from dictionary.com, bolds added for effect): The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.
You may agree or disagree with what they are doing, but it is clearly terrorism. It is also insurgency.
>The trouble in middle east would not have bothered us a bit, if (a) Israel wasnt in the midst of all of it and (b) Oil, billions and billions of gallons of it.
The real trouble is that people see oil fields and can't think beyond that point. Superpowers, especially in the last 100 years have tried to fight by proxy, rather than fighting head to head. Proxies were used by the Soviets in Vietnam, and by the U.S. in places like Afghanistan. There are many reasons for that.
Some, such as not wanting their own troops killed, are purely selfish reasons.
Another would be the desire to not escalate a conflict to the nuclear point. The Cold War is a great example. What would have happened if the U.S. had gone head to head with USSR? For the two countries, certainly massive death and destruction. For the rest of the world, at the very least economic meltdown. At the worst, nukes would start flying with casualties in the hundreds of millions.
Was Iraq itself a dire threat to the U.S. by itself? Of course not. Their one and only hope of harming us was to purchase black market nukes or a delivery system for their old WMDs. Iraq was another proxy war. Who is the real enemy? I can make a few guesses here, and you are welcome to join in the speculation. Iran is clearly sending fighters and money to Iraq. Our friends the Saudis(some anyway) financially support terrorist groups fighting in Iraq and elsewhere in the middle east. Then you have the people in Europe who were getting rich off of the Oil for Weapons, oops, I mean Oil for Food program in Europe such as France, Germany and Russia. In the end the "real" enemy is probably Mr. and Mrs. Islamofascist all over the middle east and the world, and our weapon of choice is democracy in Iraq. We spread democracy and capitalism, people can do what they want, get a job, get educated, raise a family, and be happy. Happy people don't bomb places and kill people. And worst yet(for Islamofascists) democracy spreads.
I actually do agree with part of your post regarding the Sudan. The U.N. needs to step in immediately and try to help if they can. Genocide on any people, any where in the world should not be tolerated. However your view of the Iraq War is very short sighted.
>"d00d camper unfair!!!1111"? Umm if I kill you, it's a kill. I didn't cheat, so it sounds fair to me.
In general what you say makes sense, however there are some cases when "camping" is frowned upon. Most of the time these kids are just being whiney little bitches but occasionally you see someone doing something worthy of a little criticism.
For example if your team is attacking, and you hide in a dark corner on the opposite side of the map from the objectives, making no attempt to complete the objectives, and shoot whoever happens by in the back, that is usually frowned upon. Not saying that is what you are doing, just pointing out that there are some tactics considered cheap.
Another is pretending you are AFK at your spawn, waiting til someone comes up to knife you and then unloading on them. In fact, if you are gone for more than 30 seconds at the beginning of the round it's probably better to just sit it out.
Like in any game, or sport there are things which aren't technically illegal, but which are frowned upon.
It has a short barrel and a high rate of fire - logically it should be an inn-accurate weapon
Agreed. Unfortunately the worlds of logic and CS rarely meet. It is a deathmatchy FPS which uses weapons which look similar to real weapons but rarely have their qualities. Look at the P90. IRL it was designed to penetrate armor using SMG style ammo, yet in CS it's like throwing pebbles at an armored enemy. Also with the bullpup design it should be much more accurate that the MP5, or other SMGs but it isn't. *sigh*
With CS you really need to enter the CS universe where normal rules of physics don't apply and simply learn the way CS handles them.
When I need a more realistic game I play BF1942(and suck at it) or DoD. But for pure gameplay aspects I still like CS. The format of 3-5 minute rounds with no respawn appeals to me. If they could add all the cool features of DoD, such as lying prone, deploying a MG, more realistic weapons, etc to CS, but still keep the mission based format it would be insane.
I think what you are seeing is a symptom of another problem. A few of the guns are vastly superior to the others. The Colt in particular is undeniably the best gun in the game, with almost no change in aiming even during full auto, and excellent damage at almost any range. Other guns can beat it, for instance an AK up close, or in the hands of a skilled player will win because of the higher damage, but in general the Colt is the best.
CS basically turns into a "how fast can I save up for a Colt or AK" game. Unless you are vastly more skilled than the other person, if you are using another gun you will generally get killed first.
To improve your game, try the low power version of the Colt, the MP5. The recoil is similar but it doesn't have the power. Once you can get a positive kill/death ratio with the MP5, you will own with the Colt. OTOH, if you simply want to do better now, buy the Colt. If you can't afford one, buy armor and wait in the back until someone drops one.
I wish it wasn't like that but the CS team seems to not give a crap about CS anymore. Rather than worrying about balancing the weapons they are spending their time adding different color crosshairs, etc. Our only hope is CS:Source to bring back the glory days of CS...
On a related note, I just picked up BF1942 and started playing that and I suck royally. I've been playing FPS for years, CS for over four, Doom, Doom 2, Quake, Q3A, UT, UT2004, etc, etc. and I still get owned in BF1942. The guns don't work the way I am used to and I have a hell of a time getting kills. Seems like each game is a learning process, and that you really need to learn all the little "secrets" before becoming a top player.
>For me, mileage isn't a killer. My drives are very short, if I opt to make them. I walk a lot because parking sucks here. I use about 1 tank of gas (~16 gal) per month.
This is an excellent point. If we all minimized our driving we wouldn't have to worry about MPG as much. I say more power to you for having a bad ass car, but not wasting that V8 on short little trips you can easily walk.
Small things, such as planning shopping trips so that you aren't going back and forth all over the city, and trying minimize the number of places you have to go, by going to a mall or plaza rather than 3-4 different independent shops, can make a huge difference.
As you mentioned, the biggest of these is simply walking if you can. My wife and I try to walk to anything within a mile or so, and save a ton of gas this way. Plus we get outside, get to smell the candy from the candy factory near our house, and we get some excersize as well.
>It's allways possibly to debate what came first; the tax break or the SUV...?
:-)
That would have to be the SUV, although they weren't called that back then. The Chevy Blazer has been around since the early seventies. Although it only had two doors it had seating for 5, ample cargo room, 4WD, powerful engine, etc. which is very similar to today's SUVs. They were used by people living in rural areas, especially where the weather is very bad.
You "city folk" didn't get them for another 15+ years until after the tax breaks you are talking about.
I am not familiar with the interview you are talking about so I am not going to defend his actions. OTOH, I have seen him interview people he clearly disagreed with and let them speak with minimal interruptions(just to keep the person focused on what he thinks the audience in interested in). His interview with Michael Moore comes to mind. In fact he was downright respectful to MM, even when MM was intentionally trying to get a rise out of him.
>If you ask me, the right wing...has become extremely self-centered, pompous, rude, and disrespectful of anyone they disagree with.
Honestly I feel the exact same way about left wingers. Maybe we all need to take a step back and calm down, then talk about the issues. It's probably just wishful thinking though.
Just FYI. I listen to talk radio regularly(yes, I am a little right of center), and the talk show hosts(Hannity, Savage, etc.) regularly invite people from the other side of the political spectrum on their shows. Just as I would imagine NPR or Pacifica Radio probably invites conservatives on their shows.
The problem for both is that candidates like Nader, Kerry, Bush, etc. prefer to be interviewed by people who agree with them, or who will at least not totally rip them apart.
In other words, conservative shows(and I imagine liberal ones too) don't show only their viewpoints for lack of trying. They often just can't get the other side to come have a debate. Especially in an election year where every word and phrase is gone over with a fine tooth comb. Personally I can't stand election year politics.
Please mod parent up!!!
Just FYI: Republican != "the right", and the personal shots at Pres. Clinton by some Republicans does not mean all Republicans are like that. Just because I think Teddy Kennedy is a loon doesn't mean I think that everything Democrats stand for is wrong, for example. You need to seperate out the partisan bickering from the actual issues.
The Dems are doing the exact same things now to GWB. And once the Dems get office again it will the Repubs will be back at it again too. There is a lot of money and power at stake and both parties(unfortunately) will do some bad things to get it.
>Maybe it's the case that most universities don't do this?
Mine certainly didn't. We were taught to check our input vars, but that's about it. The rest we were expected to learn in the field after graduation or on our own. The school I went to focused on CS theory more than practical solutions. Of course we didn't have automated homework checking or TAs either so it sounds like our schools were pretty different.
I'm all for using more electricity, however I have a few major concerns. First, is how much energy is used to make a battery? I don't know, but that sounds like a hidden cost that no one ever mentions. I can't imagine that seperating out materials into their pure forms like Nickel and Cadmium is a cheap process. Plus we need a plastic container usually for them, so we need to include the cost of those materials too. Can anyone enlighten me?
Secondly, how often would the batteries need replaced. A cell phone battery or laptop battery needs replaced every few years. So we would need to multiply the cost to make the battery times the number of batteries used over the life of the product.
Third, how do we dispose of all these batteries? I would imagine that even a relatively safe material could be toxic in extremely high quantities. Again, what would be the cost to dispose of them, including energy, and any other materials needed.
Forth, how much energy and material is used to make the electricity in the first place? Wind towers are made of metal and probably some composites. Metal needs to be mined, and energy is required to form it to make the wind towers. Any form of energy creation is going to have an associated cost in energy and materials. In other words there is no such thing as "free" energy. Just moving our pollution around doesn't help anything.
Finally, every time we change the energy's state we are loosing some percentage. Wind(kinetic energy) to electricity to battery(chemical) to electric motor to movement(kinetic) is a lot of trasformation, so it's going to be pretty inefficient. Fossil fuels you can pull from the ground, seperate them and then go directly to movement. We would need to take that into consideration when calculating the amount energy each outputs and the cost.
I suspect that these "hidden" costs are why we don't really use batteries/electricity more. Of course the flip side of that is that the consumers should be paying the total cost for using fossil fuels too, including environmental cleanup and research to keep our grass green and our skies blue. Once we get an estimated total cost of using both technologies we could make a more intelligent decision about which we want to use.
OMG! Me with a mod point left and I already posted to this thread. *bangs head on keyboard*
Anyway, great post. I would mod you up if I could.
Well, Return of the Jedi was a bit of a disappointment after Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back, IMHO
I think you must have been getting popcorn during the scene on Jabba's Love Barge. Princess Leia in metal lingerie...
In fact that is pretty much all I remember about RotJ. What are these "ewoks" people keep complaining about?
Well, here is a quote from the link you gave:
Iraq Body Count (IBC), a volunteer group of British and US academics and researchers, compiled statistics on civilian casualties from media reports and estimated that between 5,000 and 7,000 civilians died in the conflict.
Most people would probably consider it fair if you said 6,000. OTOH, I was looking at the other site you included, which puts the number at over 7,000. Either one would be fair.
It should be noted that both of those estimates include people killed by either side in the war too. Since you were replying to a post regarding acceptable losses by American mistakes(such as errant bombs) that's worth mentioning too. I'm not saying you are wrong, just saying that people need the complete story to make their own decisions.
BTW, I checked out your site. You need to either make the url link "www.costasandsandra.com" instead of "costasandsandra.com" or change your DNS a little. Congrats on your wedding. I'm getting married soon too, on Oct 30th.
Your numbers are a little misleading. Here is a quote for my /. peeps(bold added for emphasis):
At least 5,000 civilians may have been killed during the invasion of Iraq, an independent research group has claimed. As more evidence is collated, it says, the figure could reach 10,000.
We all get your point, but it makes more of an impact if you are honest with the numbers.
I think cruise missles have at least the same range if not greater, so in a word, no. They can still retaliate.
They move to OR and WA and raise the property values* there because they sell their $500k house and go buy whatever the hell they want and pay a bunch for it because they can.
My point is that if CA had more of a property turnover, caused by more people moving out, that property values would not be as high as they are now. Yes they could afford a nice house elsewhere, due to the fact that CA will always be more expensive than most other places in the US, however it would not be 10 times more expensive, as it is now. The problem is that the laws in CA favor the wealthy property owners, and raise the property values far, far beyond a reasonable value.
I believe that many parts of CA would be too expensive to live in for many people, if they paid their share of taxes, rather than lower rates for the same services. These people would move elsewhere, buy a nice house and more people would move in to take their place.
The problem with the current system is that CA is scaring off all of the young, intelligent talent due to laws such as this. In other words, it is bad for the state to loose these people. Every time some smart young professional couple gets frustrated with CA and moves out CA looses their CA state income tax, sales tax on items they buy(and young people buy more than older people usually), and higher property taxes. Plus they are loosing the future of the state, because these people will go elsewhere to raise children...
BTW, I have nothing personal against you or your grandma, and I understand you are going to stick up for her(I would do the same thing for mine). I also realize that she did not make the current laws, or at least had a very small part in them. This isn't about "kicking out the old people" or anything like that. IMHO, it is simply about keeping the government's hands out of the housing market, and not artificially raising housing prices. I am just suggesting that the current laws are hurting CA's future, and that voters need to think about that when they vote on things like this.
>Do you think the state and local governments should be able to tax my grandmother's house at its appraised value of $200,000 rather than the $12,000 she paid for it forty years ago?
Yes. After all, the housing prices wouldn't be at $500,000+ for a two bedroom house if people would move out of the area occasionally, when it became to expensive to live there. Modest gains in housing prices with controlled, regular turnover is preferable to all people except those who have lived there for a long time and own property. Watching families working two jobs(earning 100K+ per year) living with their parents because they can't afford a $3000K per month mortage concerns me more than people who already have a quarter million dollar(low ball estimate) nest egg built up, who could live anywhere else in the country they want. And CA wonders why people and companies are leaving the state daily...
Not to mention the fact that all of the services that taxes provide are much more expensive now than they were 40 years ago. Why should those new tax rates be payed only by some people while a few other privileged elite pay a fraction of that?
I have to give it to the politicians, and old school Californians though. They sure do have a sweet system set up for themselves.
You mean all those genius kids who know how to turn on a radio when their parents are at work? Your logic(or complete lack of it)amazes me. The point is, that ABC, etc are legally liable because ANYONE can get their signal. Cable on the other hand is covered, because you have to PAY for their service, and sign a contract. Even though these concepts may be over your head, companies who broadcast to millions of people actually have to worry about getting sued by people.
Finally, I was trying to explain the law since some people obviously don't understand it, NOT express my personal opinion.
>you're making an exception to something because you agree with it. how convenient.
Actually I wasn't explaining because I agree with it. I was explaining the reasoning behind the law itself, by the people who wrote the laws. Their reasoning is that since Stern is broadcast and can get picked up by anyone of any age that it should be forced to edit it's content.
I should have said "What the FCC considers the problem...", rather than just saying "The problem is...".
Personally I think we should do away with laws like that and make up some sort of rating system, so parents can know the contents of a show before listening in case children are present. H.S. can be on the air and say whatever he wants completely unedited as long as parents can look up the show, see it is rated NC17(or some similar thing), and then decide if their children are allowed to watch it/hear it. Just like video games and movies. With technology we could do that by encoding a few bits of "ratings data" in with each signal, and make radios more customizable so they won't play content you don't want(like you can tell it to block anything PG-13 rated or worse, for example). That way parents are happy because the don't get suprised by something they find really offensive, and broadcasters can have their creative freedom.
BTW: The shift key should be right above your control key on your keyboard.
>Well, since breasts on TV has never been voted on in Congress, how will that help?
You could run for government office with that as your platform. Eventually you could get to Congress and propose a change in policy. Or you could lobby your Congressperson.
Good post. The problem with Stern, et al is that they are broadcast, so anyone with a radio, or a home electronics kit can listen making enforcement by parents tough. That's why cable TV can say and do whatever they want( or at least closer to it), like play the unedited South Park movie on Comedy Central, but companies which broadcast, such as radio, ABC, etc. cannot.
Actually, someone correct me if I am wrong, but I think that even broadcaster's rights get a little more relaxed after 10PM and before 6AM, when typically children are asleep.
> The current censorship system only helps parents if they share your hangups.
Then make the current rating system more comprehensive, and less culture/belief system specific. Don't abolish it all together.
So just because we all have them you think it is cool to be watching basketball with your family, and have some dude run in front of the camera, pull down his pants and show us his butthole? I don't know about you but seeing some dudes lubed-up sphincter isn't high on my list of things I want to see on television. Better yet, since we all do it, how about we just have some guy come on stage at the grammys and take a dump right in front of the podium?
The point isn't that Americans find it disgusting(we don't, except it was kinda flabby). The point is that to American's a breast is a symbol of sexuality, and people want to know what is going to be on a certain show so they can determine when their children are exposed to that. If they make a TV rating system, and then rate the Superbowl PG-13(occasional brief nudity), that is fine too, so long as parents know what to expect before deciding whether to let their children watch. By allowing people to do whatever they feel like on any show, you are imposing your beliefs(the "it's just a breast" belief) on other people(everyone watching the superbowl) without their consent.