Tell me how five pages of parking lot description (including the height of the curbs) in Cryptnomicon was meaningful to the plot
As I mentioned earlier in the thread, I think that his earlier stuff, including Cryptonomicon, were pretty tone-deaf that way. The Baroque Cycle is a vast improvement, with his musings and minute details being far more directly tied to his narrative arc and his character/scene development. On reading Cryptonomicon, I found myself sometimes rolling my eyes over his need to cultivate quite such a Nerdly atmosphere. His powers of observation and research are obvious, and he enjoys displaying them - but in the B.C., he clearly found a way to harness them more usefully, and put them to work in the service of the story he was telling.
Who said anything about style? Length is length. If it takes you a page of words to explain something like how early stock trading was done in Baroque Germany, then it takes you a page. That's not a style, it a decision to include that information in the book. If he decided to include it, but described it using too few words to actually convey the information and its context, what would be the point?
I would bet money that 50% of any Stephenson book is typed in by some intern transcribing from the voice recorder Neal had on his latest trip to the mall.
I'll take that bet. It's a shame you don't actually read and comprehend what he writes. If he was literally filling pages for the sake of doing so, then the information, characters, and concepts that he builds up and has fun with wouldn't actually be meaningful to the plot or the subject... but they are, of course, and you'd know that if you bothered. Incidentally, he writes out his manuscripts by hand. With a pen, on paper. Quaint, but that's that. It probably serves very well as a means to make him think through each passage more carefully before jotting it down. I know that would make me more economical in my thoughts and writing, but my handwriting is terrible.
Yeah, there's nothing more demanding than two paragraphs and dozen or so sentences. But at least you had the good manners to take at least some time out of your day to make sure we all know what clever girl you are. I mean, at eleven years old, it's cool that you're visiting a site like this at all, instead of just shoplifting hair accessories at the mall with your friends. Keep up the good work!
Was there some particular need to be a prick about this?
Maybe not. I guess I'm tired of people who see a long book (which they haven't even bothered to pick up!) and simply default to saying it, or the author, or editor have failed. It's what's wrong with a great deal of our culture these days, and speaks volumes (if you'll pardon the pun) about the diseased state of our collective attention span. It's why people can't get through a two-page science article and draw some useful conclusions. It's why people can't vote sensibly. It's why so much potentially great entertainment - in all media - is chasing its own tail down the drain, searching for the lowest common denominator. Spanking Neal Stephenson and his editors for the length of the Baroque Cycle is to utterly, completely miss the point of that piece of work (and indeed of Stephenson's purpose for writing it and his choice of style).
I loved Snow Crash, I think there were editing problems all over that thing.
Yup. Likewise with Cryptonomicon. By the time he got to the B.C., he'd come a long way, I think. Greatly improved. I'll always admire T.S. Elliot for saying, "I'd have written you a shorter letter, but I didn't have time." Brevity - well used - can be a delight. But that isn't the only delight. People who don't like the Baroque Cycle probably couldn't make it through a Dorothy Dunnett novel, either (to say nothing of the series of them needed to actually tell a complete tale). It's a style one likes, or one does not. But not liking something meant to last you through many long evenings of reading doesn't mean that the author or his editor have somehow failed.
The guy still doesn't have an editor with the balls to say no
Sorry, no. He's got a publisher with the balls to let him write what he wants to, and willing to sell it to people who appreciate it. I would have missed any single paragraph removed from the Baroque Cycle, and remain grateful that he won whatever stare-down might have been necessary to get an editor or publisher to let him have it his way. It's wonderful work, and if you're in such a hurry to get back to your Wii, just limit yourself to comic books or something you can handle while in the bathroom. I hope that he doesn't give a moment's thought to lightening up. 960 pages? What's the big deal? Maybe for people with gnat-sized attention spans and shallow vocabularies. It's not meant to be fast - his stuff is meant to be savored.
Saddam had basically nothing to do with the war the US started against Iraq.
You mean, other than completely violating - year after year - the terms of the cease fire following his invasion of neighboring Kuwait. Other than regular attacks - with actual anti-aircraft guns and missiles - against the aircraft patrolling the no-fly zones that were set up to protect the populations he had been busy slaughtering in the many thousands in the north and south of Iraq. Other than his ongoing program to build and buy long range missiles (lots of business with North Korea on that front), which continued right up through 2003, in violation of his agreement not to, following his lobbing of SCUDs into Israel as he forces were being pushed back from Kuwait and the Saudi border. Other than his continuous shut-down of the UN inspectors and non-stop obfuscation about his weapons programs, including his refusal to come clean on the disposition of tons of VX gas and related hardware that were anything but imaginary (since they were seen and reported by inpsectors in the early rounds following Kuwait, before they were kicked out by Saddam). So, no, Saddam had nothing to do with his own regime being dismantled, other than a non-stop campaign of smuggling, scraping cash meant for his people's food and health so that he could buy military hardware and build palaces, live fire at coalition troops and aircraft on a regular basis, publicized cash payments to families of suicide bombers (remember the $50,000 checks and photo-ops?) to buy favaor with Hamas and Hezbollah, and more. Nah, he was just "trying to get by under an embargo." An embargo that he could have ended in a minute by simply doing what he said he told the UN he would do after being spanked following his violent invasion of Kuwait.
Many, many more people have died in Iraq as a result of the invasion than would have died under Saddam's rule
He buldozed dirt over mass graves - when anyone bothered to try to cover anything up - as part of a sustained effort that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. And, do you really count Iran's finance, sponsorship, and direct participation in years of destabilizing bombings in Iraq as being "a result of the invasion?" They just can't stop themselves, can they. They have no choice but to ship high explosives to Iraq, and pay the thugs they station there to strap them to mentally impaired women who are then sent into markets to blow up dozens of women and children at a go... because the invasion made them do it. I see.
It didn't have weapons of mass destruction
Other than the ones they used many times, and other than the large stockpiles observed by UN inspectors, but the disposition of which remained a complete mystery. Saddam's regime wouldn't allow further inspections in the areas where they were previously stockpiled, and wouldn't provide the documentation he agreed to provide showing the nature and timing of any disposal process. So, we know they had them - that is simple fact - and where they got to is not known.
You are a true moron if you think that all Iranians believe the west "satan".
Does it matter if the average Iranian thinks that, when the people who run the place, write the checks to people who DO think that way, and are willing to deploy armed insurgents who operate with that notion in mind? No, it doesn't. Not of the people who do NOT think like that aren't willing to tear that murderous theocracy down. Which they aren't willing to do. They support them, by continuing to give them power.
So, what you're saying is that Obama's shiny new direction for America is just to rewind a couple of decades back, and continue to punish success, at higher rates, like we were doing before. Right now, the top 1% of earners in the country pay 39% of taxes. If it makes you feel any better, that's 2% higher than when Bush took office. The top 50% of earners pay 97% of all incomes taxes. 86% of all income taxes are paid by the top 25%. The people in the "lowest" brackets that you refer to don't pay income taxes. How will their income go up by charging other people more income taxes? They only way to do that is to directly give them other people's money. You can't reduce their income tax burden because they have none.
2. Iraq
Ah, I see. You're confused. You think that our willingness to stick out the job is the same as enjoying it. Is it your recommendation, right now, that we leave the Korean peninsula? What is Obama not recommending that? Because that's exactly the sort of role that McCain speaks about when he says he's willing to stick around Iraq for the longer term - until stability there is completely self-sustaining - as long as our soldiers aren't getting hurt or killed. Of course you know that. You've heard the quote, and you and your favorite candidate are deliberately, and with complete deceit, pretending you heard something else so that you can pass along a little lie on the subject. How does that make you feel, knowing that your candidate, who represents Change We Can Believe In, is specifically, and deliberately lying - just like you are?
McCain wants sanctions while Obama would like to, at least initially, stress direct diplomacy
Nice double speak there. I love it - "at least initially" - fantastic! Meaning, he'll do one round of theater so that - unlike how he has on so many other topics on which he's done an about face on his supposed principles - he can avoid directly pissing off the far left base he's been pandering too. So, one nice theatrical sit-down with Iran, and then - poof! - just like on every other issue on which he's been "refining" his policy positions, he'll realize that he can't have it the way he wants, because places like Iran don't really care what he wants, and don't think like he does, and won't as long as the mullahs that run the place are running it. Direct diplomacy - as we've seen - accomplishes nothing when you're talking about a regime like that.
What would his direct diplomacy actually offer to them? Be specific (since Obama refuses to). What would you give to Iran that would have them change their posture about eliminating Israel, and have them stop supplying money, materials, and fighters to create and sustain an insurgency in Iraq aimed at eroding democracy there? Specifically: absent the threat of sanctions, what diplomatic gesture is Obama thinking of offering? Hint: that pocket is empty. There's nothing to offer them. There is only a spanking to offer them, until they actually cease directly funding and operating terrorist activities, and cease with the nuclear weapons program. The difference between McCain and Obama on that? McCain's not wasting energy lying, like Obama is, in order to appease a loud but small constituency that thinks All We Need Is Love in order to make the mysoginistic, brutal theocracy in Iran suddenly realize that their entire world view is wrong, and maybe it's not OK to blow up markets full of women and children with mentally disabled female suicide bombers in order to scare people out of supporting self-government. Obama knows this, but he's trying to not wind up making one more change towards the rational position on a subject that will just get his left-leaning blogosphere even more mad at him for BSing all these months on so many other issues.
Health Care
"Buy into?" Come on. You mean "sign up for." You're talking about another massive entitlement program paid for by other people. It's just more redistribution of income, plain and simple. At least have the intellectual integrity to call it what it is.
Out of curiosity, what do you specifically mean when you say that? Like Obama, you are uttering the word "change" or "new direction," but going to great lengths to avoid actual specifics. It's fine to say how much you won't be like the person you so personally hate, but you're not saying in what way. With Obama, I think it's because he's smart enough to know that if he actually did specific, he knows he'd alienate an enormous portion of the voting public. In cases where he's got no choice, and has been shamed into being specific (say, on dropping what we're doing, and pulling out of Iraq). When his feet are actually held to the fire, the first thing he does is show how very specifically he wouldn't really do anything differently at all. Now that he has to be specific, he's feeling more deferential to the actual commanders on the ground there who know what's going on (just like McCain, just like Bush). Confronted with the reality of networks of violent people making phone calls to and from the US and communicating through system that transit the equipment run by private companies in the US that interface with international systems, he's suddenly (a la his FISA vote) realized that the ability to tackle that call between a Hezbollah franchise office and a financier in the U.S. is actually necessary... just like McCain, just like Bush.
What is your specific "new direction?" Specifically? The president doesn't run the economy. Congress (currently run by Democrats) has FAR more to do with taxes, trade, etc., than the president. Congress can simply deny a president the Supreme Court nominee if they don't like him/her. Congress votes on budget matters. Why aren't you talking about getting a new direction there, where it will actually make more of a difference? Or is an inexperienced commander in chief - someone with zero executive experience who makes pronouncements about places like Iraq without even meeting with the people who would report to him on the subject and without simply going there as so many other policy-minded people have (and from which they return, with very different priorities once they've been there) - your idea of "different" in a good way? Or do you simply mean "different" as in, "different skin color?" Be specific - because otherwise, like him, you're just blowing smoke.
So the Republicans criticize him for spinning the facts in favor of the war?
No, they criticize him for trying to make it look like his earlier pronouncements of hopeless failure hadn't been uttered in the first place. He could have had the balls to post an addendum to his earlier remarks, and said, "Though I've never actually sat down with the general that's making this happen, and haven't been over there or anything, I now find that it's politically impossible to continue to say that we're not actually preventing the massive Al Queda insurgency and inter-sect civil war that I'd previously said was unavoidable. So, here's to the generals that have steered the recent course that has made such a difference, and even though I keep telling my base that my policy is to pull out, my old promise that included throwing a dart at a calendar is now going to be... exactly the same as the current Commander In Chief, which is to let the situation on the ground and professionals at work there determine the nature of a measured scaling down of our military involvement."
But, no. He's got to pretend he never said what he said in the first place. He's got to spit out an altered line of shrewd-sounding analysis that makes it sound as if his earlier naivete - upon which he has yet to improve by so much as having a meeting with the guys doing the work over there - wasn't the fuel driving his absurd pandering to the far left.
Title IX merely requires that the school allocate equal funding for both men's and women's sports, which makes plenty of sense to me. It says nothing about team size or entry requirements
So, when you have a school that can't find enough interest from capable female students to actually field a women's soccer team, lacrosse team, etc., you think that either:
1) The remaining sports that CAN get enough women to participate - even if it's only one or two teams - should have lavished on them the same budget that must also serve full-sized men's basketball, soccer, football, baseball, lacrosse and other sports that involve large teams, equipment, travel, etc? What should the much smaller women's teams do with all of that money? Put those women athletes in nicer dorms than the men get? Fly them first class to events? Or...
2) Men's teams and activities should be cut until - no matter how willing the school is to field teams, and no matter how many capable male atheletes want to participate - the men's teams are whittled down to match the less interested women's participation? Why?
actual education, you know, that thing kids are supposed to get at college
And if students who have to maintain better grades than many other students in order to participate want to spend their free time working out and playing on a school team... that's worse than the non-jock students who spend even more time than that simply drinking themselves into a stupor, or playing WoW all night? That's a pretty lame excuse to kill off the popular sports.
So, how will a quota in hiring in any profession (whether it's typically more often pursued by men or women) change how parents treat their children? Surely your father wouldn't have ever said, "Well, now that standards have been lowered so that the people with what it takes to have that job who also have an interest in that job, we need to take a closer look at your report card, missy!"
Come now. The article is about what they're discovering about who wants to do what sort of work. I suppose it's possible that there are (sticking with the concept, here) more men who want to be nurses, but who are being pushed out of those jobs by better qualified female applicants. Possible. But on the off chance that both men and women are equally able to do that job, how will the formative childhood years impact young boys now (in a way that will make them want that career more later) if it is, essentially, an act to force hospitals to hire inferior applicants now?
Is it worth knowing that less talented physicists will be getting jobs for years and years in the hopes that more women will - knowing that it's lower standards that are paving the way for them - perhaps develop the same interest you have cultivated? Are you actually worried, right now, that your own merits as a physicist would take a back seat to simple gender bias when someone is looking for a physicist to hire? Honestly, just curious.
Besides, this does nothing to fix the fundamental problem: there are fewer women because they are less interested
The problem is that you're referring to it as a problem. Why is it a problem that people with substantial genetic differences have different urges and inclinations when it comes to how they want to spend their time? Equality of opportunity is not, and should not be equality of results. Otherwise we'd have to make sure that some very smart people are also assigned ditch digging jobs, just that everything shakes out fairly. You know, quotas. Excellent idea. This, right here, is what your Nancy-Pelosi-Run-Congress is spending time working on? With all of the real stuff that we need to worry about?
Oh, and blocking men from hard science jobs so that you can fill those same slots with whatever women you can come up with isn't a vast over-simplification?
Just how offensive to society is this type of crime versus murder or rape
Screwing with the computer systems that run city governments? That sort of thing could end up impacting emergency response, the payroll that goes to people that deal with murderers and rapists, and even the administrative requirements that have to be perfectly met while processing murderers and rapists. If you can't see how a city's information systems could directly or indirectly relate to life-altering, or financially ruinous turns of events for companies, individuals, victims, defendents, or a thousand other twists and turns - then you just aren't a big-picture sort of person. He went out of his way to deliberately prevent a city government from being able to do its job. It's not any different than a bomb threat in a court house, or torching a parking lot full of police cars.
any number of antique shops that routinely, perhaps unwittingly, sell fake Tiffany pieces
"Routinely" and "unwittingly" can be very different things. People in the antique business usually know when they're holding an actual piece of Tiffany silver work in their hands. And if a professional in that line of work can't tell the difference, then they've got pretty good cover if the real Tiffany comes knocking. But that's not what this is about - this would be more about someone setting up shop as a Tiffany dealer, as many busy sellers on eBay have essentially - and fraudulantly - done. It's not the occasional auction where someone is unloading grandma's old stuff and thinks they've got a Tiffany piece. It's the people who set up eBay stores and carry the whole product line, including obvious knock-offs of current-issue Tiffany products. Whole different thing.
As was recently discussed about the current Mars lander mission, it's really just fine if something built to do a very specific job doesn't have support for this week's gamer-friendly video board, a hacked Wii controller, bluetooth, and a dozen USB ports. Hardened, reliable hardware and bug-free seems better than, say, some of the misadventures that some IT-intensive commercial aircraft have suffered over the last few years. It's OK to be one notch less cool when you're flying around with large weapons.
I would imagine that the relatives of the Australians burned alive in a vacation nightclub bombing in Bali would feel differently. Or the families of the people killed in Madrid, or London. Anyone with an interest in a stable energy market has an interest in not allowing those few radical groups to stir up civil wars, kill leaders or candidates in places like Pakistan, plan (as in Canada) or execute (as in India) attacks on parliments... all in the name of moving the entire middle east back into a medieval land o' murderous theocracy. The world's invoived, whether it likes it or not. China can't function without the US economy able to buy things, and as much disdain as Europeans love to have for the US, that's with whom they do a hugely important share of their trade in food, manufacturing, and more.
Doesn't spam generally imply that something is being sold?
Bot nets are used to push out more malware-pushing content, the better to grow the bot net. These can be used very effectively to extort cash from web site operators by means of a site-debilitating distributed denial of service attacks. Many bot nets are used to try hugely random (and somewhat successful) SQL injection attacks from all sorts of random IP addresses, the better to target specific users of specific web sites with JS-based malware iFrames, etc. The days of just trying to get you to buy something are... quaint, now. The good ol' days.
just keep repeating the same old rhetoric, i'm sure one day, when corporations turn into the honest, holy, blameless creatures you characterize them as, it might actually be true.
As I expected, you won't answer a single specific question that actually establishes anything you're saying as anything other than whiny crap.
And as an aside, is your implication (above) that all individual people are honest, and they are only dishonest when they incorporate a business? I mean, you've been dishonest a dozen times in this thread alone, so I'm not sure what your point is. Regardless, I do appreciate your tacit agreement with the actually meaningful, factual issues at hand. Now we see you're really just angry because some humans in the world are dishonest or annoy you, and that you're too uncomfortable to say that to them directly and prefer instead to fashionably rail against companies providing services that you want (but don't feel like paying for) as a bit of angry-sounding misdirection. It's got to feel better to have that out in the open, I'm sure.
At least now we know that you DO understand that the First Amendment only talks about keeping the government out of the way of your ramblings, and doesn't somehow oblige your fellow citizens to provide you with any particular technology or platform with which to broadcast yourself to others. That part is up to you, and just like everyone else, you can talk out loud with your mouth, or bear the costs of amplifying yourself by other means. What you don't have is the right to force other people to do that for you. I'm glad you see that now.
Sorry, but there we part ways. The military works great against large, armed, easily-identified, centrally-organized opponents. Remove any of those modifiers, and you use a maul to trim a hangnail. Fighting a small group? Massive overkill. Fighting unarmed opponents? Massacre. Fighting unidentifiable opponents? Iraq. Fighting loosely organized isolated cells? Fingers-in-the-dike.
Except it's not any better to toss up your hands about the military's lack of finesses in dealing with smaller, slippier foes... and instead throw our domestic law enforcement agencies at them. Why? Because in all of the same ways that the military can be clumsy at small things, LEOs are a bad fit for the types of people we're talking about finding and fighting... overseas. This is why it's better to simply restore the horsepower that was gutted from the CIA/NSA and various special operations types ten+ years ago. They're the best suited to this sort of thing. But to the extent that the very people they have to hunt down and bring down happen to have a habit of making phone calls and swapping e-mail with financiers and accomplices within the US, things have changed.
Slashdot Mirror
The scary thing is that yet one more person can't feakin' tell the difference between "loose" and "lose." It's becoming an epidemic.
Tell me how five pages of parking lot description (including the height of the curbs) in Cryptnomicon was meaningful to the plot
As I mentioned earlier in the thread, I think that his earlier stuff, including Cryptonomicon, were pretty tone-deaf that way. The Baroque Cycle is a vast improvement, with his musings and minute details being far more directly tied to his narrative arc and his character/scene development. On reading Cryptonomicon, I found myself sometimes rolling my eyes over his need to cultivate quite such a Nerdly atmosphere. His powers of observation and research are obvious, and he enjoys displaying them - but in the B.C., he clearly found a way to harness them more usefully, and put them to work in the service of the story he was telling.
Length is not a style.
Who said anything about style? Length is length. If it takes you a page of words to explain something like how early stock trading was done in Baroque Germany, then it takes you a page. That's not a style, it a decision to include that information in the book. If he decided to include it, but described it using too few words to actually convey the information and its context, what would be the point?
I would bet money that 50% of any Stephenson book is typed in by some intern transcribing from the voice recorder Neal had on his latest trip to the mall.
I'll take that bet. It's a shame you don't actually read and comprehend what he writes. If he was literally filling pages for the sake of doing so, then the information, characters, and concepts that he builds up and has fun with wouldn't actually be meaningful to the plot or the subject... but they are, of course, and you'd know that if you bothered. Incidentally, he writes out his manuscripts by hand. With a pen, on paper. Quaint, but that's that. It probably serves very well as a means to make him think through each passage more carefully before jotting it down. I know that would make me more economical in my thoughts and writing, but my handwriting is terrible.
didn't have time to read your entire windy post
Yeah, there's nothing more demanding than two paragraphs and dozen or so sentences. But at least you had the good manners to take at least some time out of your day to make sure we all know what clever girl you are. I mean, at eleven years old, it's cool that you're visiting a site like this at all, instead of just shoplifting hair accessories at the mall with your friends. Keep up the good work!
Thank you!
Was there some particular need to be a prick about this?
Maybe not. I guess I'm tired of people who see a long book (which they haven't even bothered to pick up!) and simply default to saying it, or the author, or editor have failed. It's what's wrong with a great deal of our culture these days, and speaks volumes (if you'll pardon the pun) about the diseased state of our collective attention span. It's why people can't get through a two-page science article and draw some useful conclusions. It's why people can't vote sensibly. It's why so much potentially great entertainment - in all media - is chasing its own tail down the drain, searching for the lowest common denominator. Spanking Neal Stephenson and his editors for the length of the Baroque Cycle is to utterly, completely miss the point of that piece of work (and indeed of Stephenson's purpose for writing it and his choice of style).
I loved Snow Crash, I think there were editing problems all over that thing.
Yup. Likewise with Cryptonomicon. By the time he got to the B.C., he'd come a long way, I think. Greatly improved. I'll always admire T.S. Elliot for saying, "I'd have written you a shorter letter, but I didn't have time." Brevity - well used - can be a delight. But that isn't the only delight. People who don't like the Baroque Cycle probably couldn't make it through a Dorothy Dunnett novel, either (to say nothing of the series of them needed to actually tell a complete tale). It's a style one likes, or one does not. But not liking something meant to last you through many long evenings of reading doesn't mean that the author or his editor have somehow failed.
The guy still doesn't have an editor with the balls to say no
Sorry, no. He's got a publisher with the balls to let him write what he wants to, and willing to sell it to people who appreciate it. I would have missed any single paragraph removed from the Baroque Cycle, and remain grateful that he won whatever stare-down might have been necessary to get an editor or publisher to let him have it his way. It's wonderful work, and if you're in such a hurry to get back to your Wii, just limit yourself to comic books or something you can handle while in the bathroom. I hope that he doesn't give a moment's thought to lightening up. 960 pages? What's the big deal? Maybe for people with gnat-sized attention spans and shallow vocabularies. It's not meant to be fast - his stuff is meant to be savored.
Watchmen will rock the noobs and tards but disappoint the steadfast
Which is why you should definitely post a link to your much better version, no question.
Saddam had basically nothing to do with the war the US started against Iraq.
You mean, other than completely violating - year after year - the terms of the cease fire following his invasion of neighboring Kuwait. Other than regular attacks - with actual anti-aircraft guns and missiles - against the aircraft patrolling the no-fly zones that were set up to protect the populations he had been busy slaughtering in the many thousands in the north and south of Iraq. Other than his ongoing program to build and buy long range missiles (lots of business with North Korea on that front), which continued right up through 2003, in violation of his agreement not to, following his lobbing of SCUDs into Israel as he forces were being pushed back from Kuwait and the Saudi border. Other than his continuous shut-down of the UN inspectors and non-stop obfuscation about his weapons programs, including his refusal to come clean on the disposition of tons of VX gas and related hardware that were anything but imaginary (since they were seen and reported by inpsectors in the early rounds following Kuwait, before they were kicked out by Saddam). So, no, Saddam had nothing to do with his own regime being dismantled, other than a non-stop campaign of smuggling, scraping cash meant for his people's food and health so that he could buy military hardware and build palaces, live fire at coalition troops and aircraft on a regular basis, publicized cash payments to families of suicide bombers (remember the $50,000 checks and photo-ops?) to buy favaor with Hamas and Hezbollah, and more. Nah, he was just "trying to get by under an embargo." An embargo that he could have ended in a minute by simply doing what he said he told the UN he would do after being spanked following his violent invasion of Kuwait.
Many, many more people have died in Iraq as a result of the invasion than would have died under Saddam's rule
He buldozed dirt over mass graves - when anyone bothered to try to cover anything up - as part of a sustained effort that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. And, do you really count Iran's finance, sponsorship, and direct participation in years of destabilizing bombings in Iraq as being "a result of the invasion?" They just can't stop themselves, can they. They have no choice but to ship high explosives to Iraq, and pay the thugs they station there to strap them to mentally impaired women who are then sent into markets to blow up dozens of women and children at a go... because the invasion made them do it. I see.
It didn't have weapons of mass destruction
Other than the ones they used many times, and other than the large stockpiles observed by UN inspectors, but the disposition of which remained a complete mystery. Saddam's regime wouldn't allow further inspections in the areas where they were previously stockpiled, and wouldn't provide the documentation he agreed to provide showing the nature and timing of any disposal process. So, we know they had them - that is simple fact - and where they got to is not known.
You are a true moron if you think that all Iranians believe the west "satan".
Does it matter if the average Iranian thinks that, when the people who run the place, write the checks to people who DO think that way, and are willing to deploy armed insurgents who operate with that notion in mind? No, it doesn't. Not of the people who do NOT think like that aren't willing to tear that murderous theocracy down. Which they aren't willing to do. They support them, by continuing to give them power.
1. Taxes
So, what you're saying is that Obama's shiny new direction for America is just to rewind a couple of decades back, and continue to punish success, at higher rates, like we were doing before. Right now, the top 1% of earners in the country pay 39% of taxes. If it makes you feel any better, that's 2% higher than when Bush took office. The top 50% of earners pay 97% of all incomes taxes. 86% of all income taxes are paid by the top 25%. The people in the "lowest" brackets that you refer to don't pay income taxes. How will their income go up by charging other people more income taxes? They only way to do that is to directly give them other people's money. You can't reduce their income tax burden because they have none.
2. Iraq
Ah, I see. You're confused. You think that our willingness to stick out the job is the same as enjoying it. Is it your recommendation, right now, that we leave the Korean peninsula? What is Obama not recommending that? Because that's exactly the sort of role that McCain speaks about when he says he's willing to stick around Iraq for the longer term - until stability there is completely self-sustaining - as long as our soldiers aren't getting hurt or killed. Of course you know that. You've heard the quote, and you and your favorite candidate are deliberately, and with complete deceit, pretending you heard something else so that you can pass along a little lie on the subject. How does that make you feel, knowing that your candidate, who represents Change We Can Believe In, is specifically, and deliberately lying - just like you are?
McCain wants sanctions while Obama would like to, at least initially, stress direct diplomacy
Nice double speak there. I love it - "at least initially" - fantastic! Meaning, he'll do one round of theater so that - unlike how he has on so many other topics on which he's done an about face on his supposed principles - he can avoid directly pissing off the far left base he's been pandering too. So, one nice theatrical sit-down with Iran, and then - poof! - just like on every other issue on which he's been "refining" his policy positions, he'll realize that he can't have it the way he wants, because places like Iran don't really care what he wants, and don't think like he does, and won't as long as the mullahs that run the place are running it. Direct diplomacy - as we've seen - accomplishes nothing when you're talking about a regime like that.
What would his direct diplomacy actually offer to them? Be specific (since Obama refuses to). What would you give to Iran that would have them change their posture about eliminating Israel, and have them stop supplying money, materials, and fighters to create and sustain an insurgency in Iraq aimed at eroding democracy there? Specifically: absent the threat of sanctions, what diplomatic gesture is Obama thinking of offering? Hint: that pocket is empty. There's nothing to offer them. There is only a spanking to offer them, until they actually cease directly funding and operating terrorist activities, and cease with the nuclear weapons program. The difference between McCain and Obama on that? McCain's not wasting energy lying, like Obama is, in order to appease a loud but small constituency that thinks All We Need Is Love in order to make the mysoginistic, brutal theocracy in Iran suddenly realize that their entire world view is wrong, and maybe it's not OK to blow up markets full of women and children with mentally disabled female suicide bombers in order to scare people out of supporting self-government. Obama knows this, but he's trying to not wind up making one more change towards the rational position on a subject that will just get his left-leaning blogosphere even more mad at him for BSing all these months on so many other issues.
Health Care
"Buy into?" Come on. You mean "sign up for." You're talking about another massive entitlement program paid for by other people. It's just more redistribution of income, plain and simple. At least have the intellectual integrity to call it what it is.
dire need of a new direction
Out of curiosity, what do you specifically mean when you say that? Like Obama, you are uttering the word "change" or "new direction," but going to great lengths to avoid actual specifics. It's fine to say how much you won't be like the person you so personally hate, but you're not saying in what way. With Obama, I think it's because he's smart enough to know that if he actually did specific, he knows he'd alienate an enormous portion of the voting public. In cases where he's got no choice, and has been shamed into being specific (say, on dropping what we're doing, and pulling out of Iraq). When his feet are actually held to the fire, the first thing he does is show how very specifically he wouldn't really do anything differently at all. Now that he has to be specific, he's feeling more deferential to the actual commanders on the ground there who know what's going on (just like McCain, just like Bush). Confronted with the reality of networks of violent people making phone calls to and from the US and communicating through system that transit the equipment run by private companies in the US that interface with international systems, he's suddenly (a la his FISA vote) realized that the ability to tackle that call between a Hezbollah franchise office and a financier in the U.S. is actually necessary... just like McCain, just like Bush.
What is your specific "new direction?" Specifically? The president doesn't run the economy. Congress (currently run by Democrats) has FAR more to do with taxes, trade, etc., than the president. Congress can simply deny a president the Supreme Court nominee if they don't like him/her. Congress votes on budget matters. Why aren't you talking about getting a new direction there, where it will actually make more of a difference? Or is an inexperienced commander in chief - someone with zero executive experience who makes pronouncements about places like Iraq without even meeting with the people who would report to him on the subject and without simply going there as so many other policy-minded people have (and from which they return, with very different priorities once they've been there) - your idea of "different" in a good way? Or do you simply mean "different" as in, "different skin color?" Be specific - because otherwise, like him, you're just blowing smoke.
So the Republicans criticize him for spinning the facts in favor of the war?
No, they criticize him for trying to make it look like his earlier pronouncements of hopeless failure hadn't been uttered in the first place. He could have had the balls to post an addendum to his earlier remarks, and said, "Though I've never actually sat down with the general that's making this happen, and haven't been over there or anything, I now find that it's politically impossible to continue to say that we're not actually preventing the massive Al Queda insurgency and inter-sect civil war that I'd previously said was unavoidable. So, here's to the generals that have steered the recent course that has made such a difference, and even though I keep telling my base that my policy is to pull out, my old promise that included throwing a dart at a calendar is now going to be... exactly the same as the current Commander In Chief, which is to let the situation on the ground and professionals at work there determine the nature of a measured scaling down of our military involvement."
But, no. He's got to pretend he never said what he said in the first place. He's got to spit out an altered line of shrewd-sounding analysis that makes it sound as if his earlier naivete - upon which he has yet to improve by so much as having a meeting with the guys doing the work over there - wasn't the fuel driving his absurd pandering to the far left.
Title IX merely requires that the school allocate equal funding for both men's and women's sports, which makes plenty of sense to me. It says nothing about team size or entry requirements
So, when you have a school that can't find enough interest from capable female students to actually field a women's soccer team, lacrosse team, etc., you think that either:
1) The remaining sports that CAN get enough women to participate - even if it's only one or two teams - should have lavished on them the same budget that must also serve full-sized men's basketball, soccer, football, baseball, lacrosse and other sports that involve large teams, equipment, travel, etc? What should the much smaller women's teams do with all of that money? Put those women athletes in nicer dorms than the men get? Fly them first class to events? Or...
2) Men's teams and activities should be cut until - no matter how willing the school is to field teams, and no matter how many capable male atheletes want to participate - the men's teams are whittled down to match the less interested women's participation? Why?
actual education, you know, that thing kids are supposed to get at college
And if students who have to maintain better grades than many other students in order to participate want to spend their free time working out and playing on a school team... that's worse than the non-jock students who spend even more time than that simply drinking themselves into a stupor, or playing WoW all night? That's a pretty lame excuse to kill off the popular sports.
So, how will a quota in hiring in any profession (whether it's typically more often pursued by men or women) change how parents treat their children? Surely your father wouldn't have ever said, "Well, now that standards have been lowered so that the people with what it takes to have that job who also have an interest in that job, we need to take a closer look at your report card, missy!"
Come now. The article is about what they're discovering about who wants to do what sort of work. I suppose it's possible that there are (sticking with the concept, here) more men who want to be nurses, but who are being pushed out of those jobs by better qualified female applicants. Possible. But on the off chance that both men and women are equally able to do that job, how will the formative childhood years impact young boys now (in a way that will make them want that career more later) if it is, essentially, an act to force hospitals to hire inferior applicants now?
Is it worth knowing that less talented physicists will be getting jobs for years and years in the hopes that more women will - knowing that it's lower standards that are paving the way for them - perhaps develop the same interest you have cultivated? Are you actually worried, right now, that your own merits as a physicist would take a back seat to simple gender bias when someone is looking for a physicist to hire? Honestly, just curious.
Does Title IX block men from sports so they can fill those same slots with whatever women they can come up with?
Yes. That's exactly what it does, as a matter of fact. Do a little homework before you act all shocked and everything.
Besides, this does nothing to fix the fundamental problem: there are fewer women because they are less interested
The problem is that you're referring to it as a problem. Why is it a problem that people with substantial genetic differences have different urges and inclinations when it comes to how they want to spend their time? Equality of opportunity is not, and should not be equality of results. Otherwise we'd have to make sure that some very smart people are also assigned ditch digging jobs, just that everything shakes out fairly. You know, quotas. Excellent idea. This, right here, is what your Nancy-Pelosi-Run-Congress is spending time working on? With all of the real stuff that we need to worry about?
Of course that is a vast over-simplification
Oh, and blocking men from hard science jobs so that you can fill those same slots with whatever women you can come up with isn't a vast over-simplification?
Just how offensive to society is this type of crime versus murder or rape
Screwing with the computer systems that run city governments? That sort of thing could end up impacting emergency response, the payroll that goes to people that deal with murderers and rapists, and even the administrative requirements that have to be perfectly met while processing murderers and rapists. If you can't see how a city's information systems could directly or indirectly relate to life-altering, or financially ruinous turns of events for companies, individuals, victims, defendents, or a thousand other twists and turns - then you just aren't a big-picture sort of person. He went out of his way to deliberately prevent a city government from being able to do its job. It's not any different than a bomb threat in a court house, or torching a parking lot full of police cars.
any number of antique shops that routinely, perhaps unwittingly, sell fake Tiffany pieces
"Routinely" and "unwittingly" can be very different things. People in the antique business usually know when they're holding an actual piece of Tiffany silver work in their hands. And if a professional in that line of work can't tell the difference, then they've got pretty good cover if the real Tiffany comes knocking. But that's not what this is about - this would be more about someone setting up shop as a Tiffany dealer, as many busy sellers on eBay have essentially - and fraudulantly - done. It's not the occasional auction where someone is unloading grandma's old stuff and thinks they've got a Tiffany piece. It's the people who set up eBay stores and carry the whole product line, including obvious knock-offs of current-issue Tiffany products. Whole different thing.
As was recently discussed about the current Mars lander mission, it's really just fine if something built to do a very specific job doesn't have support for this week's gamer-friendly video board, a hacked Wii controller, bluetooth, and a dozen USB ports. Hardened, reliable hardware and bug-free seems better than, say, some of the misadventures that some IT-intensive commercial aircraft have suffered over the last few years. It's OK to be one notch less cool when you're flying around with large weapons.
I would imagine that the relatives of the Australians burned alive in a vacation nightclub bombing in Bali would feel differently. Or the families of the people killed in Madrid, or London. Anyone with an interest in a stable energy market has an interest in not allowing those few radical groups to stir up civil wars, kill leaders or candidates in places like Pakistan, plan (as in Canada) or execute (as in India) attacks on parliments... all in the name of moving the entire middle east back into a medieval land o' murderous theocracy. The world's invoived, whether it likes it or not. China can't function without the US economy able to buy things, and as much disdain as Europeans love to have for the US, that's with whom they do a hugely important share of their trade in food, manufacturing, and more.
Doesn't spam generally imply that something is being sold?
... quaint, now. The good ol' days.
Bot nets are used to push out more malware-pushing content, the better to grow the bot net. These can be used very effectively to extort cash from web site operators by means of a site-debilitating distributed denial of service attacks. Many bot nets are used to try hugely random (and somewhat successful) SQL injection attacks from all sorts of random IP addresses, the better to target specific users of specific web sites with JS-based malware iFrames, etc. The days of just trying to get you to buy something are
Here's a handful I've received recently
Can't believe you've missed out on this gem:
"Speed up your nightclub successes with a realistic diamond-studded Rollex"
I've blocked about 20,000 of those in the last 24 hours.
just keep repeating the same old rhetoric, i'm sure one day, when corporations turn into the honest, holy, blameless creatures you characterize them as, it might actually be true.
As I expected, you won't answer a single specific question that actually establishes anything you're saying as anything other than whiny crap.
And as an aside, is your implication (above) that all individual people are honest, and they are only dishonest when they incorporate a business? I mean, you've been dishonest a dozen times in this thread alone, so I'm not sure what your point is. Regardless, I do appreciate your tacit agreement with the actually meaningful, factual issues at hand. Now we see you're really just angry because some humans in the world are dishonest or annoy you, and that you're too uncomfortable to say that to them directly and prefer instead to fashionably rail against companies providing services that you want (but don't feel like paying for) as a bit of angry-sounding misdirection. It's got to feel better to have that out in the open, I'm sure.
At least now we know that you DO understand that the First Amendment only talks about keeping the government out of the way of your ramblings, and doesn't somehow oblige your fellow citizens to provide you with any particular technology or platform with which to broadcast yourself to others. That part is up to you, and just like everyone else, you can talk out loud with your mouth, or bear the costs of amplifying yourself by other means. What you don't have is the right to force other people to do that for you. I'm glad you see that now.
Sorry, but there we part ways. The military works great against large, armed, easily-identified, centrally-organized opponents. Remove any of those modifiers, and you use a maul to trim a hangnail. Fighting a small group? Massive overkill. Fighting unarmed opponents? Massacre. Fighting unidentifiable opponents? Iraq. Fighting loosely organized isolated cells? Fingers-in-the-dike.
Except it's not any better to toss up your hands about the military's lack of finesses in dealing with smaller, slippier foes... and instead throw our domestic law enforcement agencies at them. Why? Because in all of the same ways that the military can be clumsy at small things, LEOs are a bad fit for the types of people we're talking about finding and fighting... overseas. This is why it's better to simply restore the horsepower that was gutted from the CIA/NSA and various special operations types ten+ years ago. They're the best suited to this sort of thing. But to the extent that the very people they have to hunt down and bring down happen to have a habit of making phone calls and swapping e-mail with financiers and accomplices within the US, things have changed.