I got that your message could be read that way, but didn't seem that's what you intended - sorry!
The whole legislative "ends justifies the means" struggle is really offensive to me. Call it an anti-terrorist act one day, use it for domestic transgressions the next. Don't like guns but can't overturn the amendment? Come up with as many proscriptions/restrictions as you can possibly push through, and force the public to fight it out in the courts. Listening to people try to defend the first Amendment while decrying the second would be amusing if it weren't so frightening.
I didn't follow the whole Petersen case here in CA, but without regard to where you stand on abortion issues; how the hell can you have laws that simultaneously permit third-trimester abortions AND allow murder charges to be placed against an unborn fetus?! I gotta get out of this place.
> But if they could do this, why not outlaw all guns and rifles in the US!
Because of a little thing called the Constitution. If you can muster enough support to (legally) overturn the 2nd Amendment, go right ahead. Until then, stop trying to do end runs around it. (http://www.usdoj.gov/olc/secondamendment2.htm)
Also, you'd better be straight in front of or behind that aircraft if you intend on shooting at it. Your lead from any kind of angle at a plane going more than 150mph would be - significant. Sure as hell wouldn't have much in common with where the laser beam was pointed.
Global warming is a particularly human concern. The carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is in equilibrium with that in the oceans, which in term is in equilibrium with the vast extent of carbonaceous reefs and muds at the ocean floor. This buffer system dwarfs the potential impact of the carbon dioxide that could be produced by burning all biomass and fossil reserves on the planet.
All this amounts to is a temporary (perhaps couple of centuries) spike on the graph until the buffering system equilibrates. While the interim results may be moderately dramatic for people, along with those species we haven't killed off already, it won't have a whit of impact on "the Earth" or the flora and fauna that will take advantage of new niches.
Like once in middle of a serious scene there were double mobilephone rings with some really annoying happy tunes at highest possible volume. If I had been armed at the moment there might have been two extra bodies...
People at gun ranges (who are, as a group, much politer than society at large) are very, very good about having their cell phones turned off. The two times I've heard one go off, they've been visitors (family/friends/whatever). I just told them that cell phones qualify as targets of opportunity.;)
Every time I start working on a Word document, I find myself muttering, over and over, with minor changes in profanity:
"Stop fucking trying to help me, and do what I fucking tell you to do."
It doesn't work, of course - within minutes I'll be in some impossible blind alley of formatting that has nothing to do with what I tried to do. Paste a chunk one place, it changes the style. Paste it another, it works fine. Paste it in a third, it decides to indent itself another level and use tiny flying pigs for bullets.
The resulting tension and anxiety has now extended to my use of Microsoft products in general - I really don't want to bash them, but their products are much worse in this regard than anyone else's.
KeS
Well, no, but I'm not willing to buy an iPod in the first place. I don't want to have to worry about small expensive items of arbitrary value - probably why I've never bought an engagement ring.;)
If I were, yes, I think they could provide very acceptable tradeoffs, especially since you could turn off the wireless entirely unless you needed it.
It would also be completely in line with Apple's "digital hub" marketing. As I said, I'm really astonished - it's a clear piece in the puzzle, and the AirTunes feature of the AE is conspicuously incomplete without it. I can only guess they are caught between a product refresh vs engineering cycle.
I'm actually amazed the new iPod *doesn't* have wireless built in. Following the release of the Airport Express and AirTunes, I thought being able to stream music directly to AE would be the logical next step. Your own DJ playlist with wireless remote; you'd be the life of the party! Of course, it'd be a geek party so you'd be the only one there - hmm.
I don't think that a fall of about 8 inches could be considered life threating for a cat.
That's because you're a wimp! Sofa cushions, indeed. Try dropping them over a running table saw set at 1" and see if they can't be motivated to land on their tippy-toes!
? So for both jags & leopards, the black ones occur in whatever regions the "regular" ones do?
Yes, although for both there seems to be some areas where melanism is more or less common. But it can occur anywhere in the population.
? Surely you're connoting that black ones are the most common *outliers*, not the most common color, right?
Correct. I said "color variant", which I guess is somewhat ambiguous, it's used to represent both typical and atypical types. Black and white color patterns are always atypical in the big cats, but black jaguars are the most common of the atypicals.
They occur in litters mixed with regular leopards (like lab puppies!)
Since I'm doomed to be demodded for OT, I may as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.
No, I did not intend to say that lab puppies occur in leopard litters! It just came out that way. I meant that both yellow and black labs can be born in the same litter of puppies! Sheesh!
"Black panther" is a common term for a melanistic phase leopard (there's your black leopard). They occur in litters mixed with regular leopards (like lab puppies!), and are not truly a solid black - you can still see the rosettes as a darker color in sunlight.
Black jaguars are the same, but even more common; I believe they are the most common color variant among the big cats.
White phase (not albino) tigers are most common in Las Vegas;), but do occur in India - I think I've also seen at least one white Siberian on some program. Again, they are born in mixed litters.
There have been very rare reports of white lions, black tigers, and black lions, in decreasing order of likelihood. I've never heard of a white leopard or jaguar that wasn't an albino.
All this is apocryphal, I'm not a biologist, just an avid reader who likes cats.
The lynx isn't a big cat, though neither is the cougar come to that. Big cats are defined, albeit somewhat arbitrarily, by the absence of a solid hyoid bone, associated with the ability to roar vs purr. Lion, tiger, jaguar, leopard. Other cats scream. http://www.lairweb.org.nz/tiger/big.html
But you could argue that Apple still has Leopard to work with as well as Lion - Panther is an ambiguous term variously applied to leopards, cougars, and even jaguars.
Could you imagine customers putting up with this kind of stuff in a face-to-face setting?
You mean like the first class only lines at the airport, or the the preferred customer lines at the car rental, cruise, and hotel counters?
But you piqued a pet peeve - the notion that the person standing in front of you is less important than someone calling on the phone. The LAST time this happened to me (I just walk away now) was at a motorcyle dealer parts counter. There were a half dozen of us who had waited for over twenty minutes while the counter staff took call after call. Finally I turned to the wall phone (this was before cell phones), and called the dealership number and asked to be forwarded to parts. At this point a couple of guys in front of me clued into what I was doing and moved in front of me so the staff couldn't hear/see me. Sure enough, they took the call, checked the part, and told me it would be ready when I got there. I turned around, waved the phone at them, and bought my parts. Then raised hell until I got a manager, raised hell with HIM, and left with my parts while the rest of the customers continued to revile them. Priceless (tm)!
Tell me again about how I'm supposed to send all my mail through my ISP's mail server instead of delivering it myself? Oh, right, so they can *legally* sift through it at their leisure instead of having a court order (or self-signed letter) to try and sniff it off the wire in real time.
It's not a straw man argument. That was the greatest natural disaster (loss of life) in US history, and a significant contributing factor was that the fledgling US Weather Service didn't want to listen to the Cuban weather reports. Privatized weather companies may or may not be more willing to work and play together, but they certainly haven't shown the willingness to invest in the necessary infrastructure. Plus, in many countries private weather companies may *not* be able to cooperate, by government fiat.
Less government is generally better, but national infrastructure like weather services are a notable exception.
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't follow the whole Petersen case here in CA, but without regard to where you stand on abortion issues; how the hell can you have laws that simultaneously permit third-trimester abortions AND allow murder charges to be placed against an unborn fetus?! I gotta get out of this place.
KeS
Because of a little thing called the Constitution. If you can muster enough support to (legally) overturn the 2nd Amendment, go right ahead. Until then, stop trying to do end runs around it. (http://www.usdoj.gov/olc/secondamendment2.htm)
Also, you'd better be straight in front of or behind that aircraft if you intend on shooting at it. Your lead from any kind of angle at a plane going more than 150mph would be - significant. Sure as hell wouldn't have much in common with where the laser beam was pointed.
KeS
Y'all Yankees shut the hell up, now. Y'hear? KeS
All this amounts to is a temporary (perhaps couple of centuries) spike on the graph until the buffering system equilibrates. While the interim results may be moderately dramatic for people, along with those species we haven't killed off already, it won't have a whit of impact on "the Earth" or the flora and fauna that will take advantage of new niches.
KeS
Or, basically a stock Corvette. ;)
KeS
That's not what you started out saying:
This system would block the sitter's call to me, yet that is no less valid as an emergency than a 999 call is.
Yes, it is.
KeS
People at gun ranges (who are, as a group, much politer than society at large) are very, very good about having their cell phones turned off. The two times I've heard one go off, they've been visitors (family/friends/whatever). I just told them that cell phones qualify as targets of opportunity. ;)
KeS
"Stop fucking trying to help me, and do what I fucking tell you to do."
It doesn't work, of course - within minutes I'll be in some impossible blind alley of formatting that has nothing to do with what I tried to do. Paste a chunk one place, it changes the style. Paste it another, it works fine. Paste it in a third, it decides to indent itself another level and use tiny flying pigs for bullets.
The resulting tension and anxiety has now extended to my use of Microsoft products in general - I really don't want to bash them, but their products are much worse in this regard than anyone else's. KeSI suspect this new technology will fix the "problem" simply by making it such that fasteners are also 40% of the cost of the car. ;)
KeS
If I were, yes, I think they could provide very acceptable tradeoffs, especially since you could turn off the wireless entirely unless you needed it.
It would also be completely in line with Apple's "digital hub" marketing. As I said, I'm really astonished - it's a clear piece in the puzzle, and the AirTunes feature of the AE is conspicuously incomplete without it. I can only guess they are caught between a product refresh vs engineering cycle.
KeS
KeS
KeS
That's because you're a wimp! Sofa cushions, indeed. Try dropping them over a running table saw set at 1" and see if they can't be motivated to land on their tippy-toes!
KeS
Danny DeVito answers the phone:
"Debbie? No, Debbie can't come to the phone right now. She's got my dick in her mouth."
He then hangs up the phone and says "Heh...I love wrong numbers."
KeS
Yes, although for both there seems to be some areas where melanism is more or less common. But it can occur anywhere in the population.
? Surely you're connoting that black ones are the most common *outliers*, not the most common color, right?
Correct. I said "color variant", which I guess is somewhat ambiguous, it's used to represent both typical and atypical types. Black and white color patterns are always atypical in the big cats, but black jaguars are the most common of the atypicals.
KeS
Since I'm doomed to be demodded for OT, I may as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.
No, I did not intend to say that lab puppies occur in leopard litters! It just came out that way. I meant that both yellow and black labs can be born in the same litter of puppies! Sheesh!
KeS
Black jaguars are the same, but even more common; I believe they are the most common color variant among the big cats.
White phase (not albino) tigers are most common in Las Vegas ;), but do occur in India - I think I've also seen at least one white Siberian on some program. Again, they are born in mixed litters.
There have been very rare reports of white lions, black tigers, and black lions, in decreasing order of likelihood. I've never heard of a white leopard or jaguar that wasn't an albino.
All this is apocryphal, I'm not a biologist, just an avid reader who likes cats.
KeS
Leopards and jaguars. Why do you ask? KeS
But you could argue that Apple still has Leopard to work with as well as Lion - Panther is an ambiguous term variously applied to leopards, cougars, and even jaguars.
But I digress. ;)
KeS
You mean like the first class only lines at the airport, or the the preferred customer lines at the car rental, cruise, and hotel counters?
But you piqued a pet peeve - the notion that the person standing in front of you is less important than someone calling on the phone. The LAST time this happened to me (I just walk away now) was at a motorcyle dealer parts counter. There were a half dozen of us who had waited for over twenty minutes while the counter staff took call after call. Finally I turned to the wall phone (this was before cell phones), and called the dealership number and asked to be forwarded to parts. At this point a couple of guys in front of me clued into what I was doing and moved in front of me so the staff couldn't hear/see me. Sure enough, they took the call, checked the part, and told me it would be ready when I got there. I turned around, waved the phone at them, and bought my parts. Then raised hell until I got a manager, raised hell with HIM, and left with my parts while the rest of the customers continued to revile them. Priceless (tm)!
KeS
KeS
"Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius." -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Darned formatting.
http://www.1900storm.com
It's not a straw man argument. That was the greatest natural disaster (loss of life) in US history, and a significant contributing factor was that the fledgling US Weather Service didn't want to listen to the Cuban weather reports. Privatized weather companies may or may not be more willing to work and play together, but they certainly haven't shown the willingness to invest in the necessary infrastructure. Plus, in many countries private weather companies may *not* be able to cooperate, by government fiat.
Less government is generally better, but national infrastructure like weather services are a notable exception.
KeS
Here's what happens when you don't have good international cooperation for your weather service: http://www.1900storm.com/ KeS
KeS