Re:The whole one-button mouse thing has to go...
on
Jef Raskin On The Mac
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· Score: 0, Flamebait
Insightful? Who moderated this moron as Insightful? Want a two-button mouse on a Mac plug one in, there you go it works. In fact you can buy 2 button mice from the Apple store here notice that they have many different options, including track balls, wireless mice, and also mice with more than 2 buttons with/without scroll wheels. Mod down parent as troll because that what this is, uninformed troll garbage.
And for the record, as far as laptops go, the necessity for the second mouse button just isn't there, especially when the keyboard shortcuts are designed so well. I have a 2 button mouse plugged into my mac, and dont use the second button(unless gaming). It simply is a waste for me to move my hand to the mouse to do something with the second mouse button that would be better served as a keyboard shortcut.
I would like to say I am adamantly opposed to any change of our current system that would result in creating a popular vote for the President. The current system forces us towards the most populace states being the most important and with popular voting we would have it be much worse.
My position is that we should change the electoral college by changing exactly how we know how many votes each state gets. Personally, I think they should all be equal, every state gets 2 votes. Then each state can decide how those 2 votes get decided. Whether thats IRV or whatever.
I've read many comments complaining that it would lessen the power of small population states. I fail to see how it is a problem. Look at Europe. Most countries in Europe directly elect their president, without consideration about the region where one votes.
Since most of europes countries are the size of a pimple on America's ass this isn't a problem in europe. In one region in the average european country to the next geography and climate do not change. You may be thinking why does this matter? Well it matters a hell of alot when your country has some states comprised of desert and then others comprised of mostly lakes or ocean front.
I'm not just picking on you because your european not many americans consider these things either. I live in Connecticut and sure as hell dont want Utah to be able to influence how my fishing industry is conducted or how much money we need for the coast guard. As far as president goes, whever we have large numbers of people congregating they are the most important for elections. The solution isnt to go to direct popular vote because that just wont work. I think the solution is to put the states on a more even level. Each state gets 2 votes, whoever gets a majority wins, if no one does, house/senate pick.
The problem europeans have is that they forget that the US is comprised of 50 seperate governments, which kind of eroded after the civil war but its still important that we keep them seperate and politically powerful.
The war in Iraq isn't perfect, but according to a lot of interviews with soldiers and stuff, it's not as bad as NBC/CBS/ABC/CNN wants you to believe.
I know that in my experience, the people who favor Kerry get their facts from Fareignheit 9-11 and the liberal news media. Do some independent research people.
Seems you did some high quality independent research by lots of interviews with soldiers and stuff. Top knotch work.
Even though Iraq doesn't have nukes, Saddam was an insane asshole who would've tried as hard as possible to get them -- several reports show that he was using the oil-for-food program to bypass UN sanctions
Hmm, seems to me that the reports I read indicated that Saddam effectively ended all efforts to acquire weapons illegally and instead was seeking to gain leverage with other nations in order to get said sanctions lifted so he could get weapons legally. Using the oil for food program was one way he was attempting to gain leverage and funds with foreign nations.
I know the world doesn't agree with us. People: THIS IS OKAY. The world looks out for the world. The US needs to look out for the US.
Care to tell us WHY this is okay. You can spout all the nonsense you want about well where america we have a right blah blah blah, we have more money and bigger guns therefore what we say is law attitude but that doesn't change the fact that our interactions with other countries signifigantly affect us. Confidence in the dollar is dropping and therefore our economy hasn't recovered as much as it should have if Bush hadn't damaged our reputation. The fact that you seem to think that the World and US can be seperated shows you have no clue how closely related international economies are. Japanese market crashes, the american one does too. Same with englands or frances, or germanys.
I'd like to rant a little further by saying. The repbulican party if bush wins again will be characterised by two things: 1) Simplistic rationalizations of poor decisions and 2) Its desire to enforce christian religious principles on america.
The hotter it is the more productive workers are. Logical conclusion for my management, I better start wearing shorts to work, or perhaps a bathrobe because I fully expect to come into work tomorrow to face sauna-like conditions.
Having done my internship at a school that was predominately Mac and pushed portability on its students and faculty I've seen and worked on many iBooks and powerbooks. For me its very hard to choose between the two, the performance boost of the PB is very very noticable. However, the iBook is much more resistant to damage. Yes thats right, I've seen iBooks dropped, knocked off tables, and dragged through all kinds of other abuse and the most of the time the worst you get is a little scuff on the plastic. The PB however, you set that thing down too hard and you get dents, ugly dents that sometimes result in mangling internals. Also reception differences are very noticable, ibook is much better at picking up wireless signals.
My feeling is that if you think this computer is going to be dragged through hell and back used and abused on a daily basis go iBook, UNLESS you absolutely need the extra performance. I want an apple laptop but to be honest I cant make a decision knowing what I do about them. They are both excellent products but honestly for video editing you wont notice too much of a difference as long as you make sure to load them things up with RAM, in my experience RAM is the single most important factor in Mac performance.
Strange that you seem to think being Catholic and being Christian are mutually exclusive(although if you were arguing based on how far away from Christs actual teachings Catholics have become you would be somewhat more accurate) HOWEVER Christianity is the set of all religions based on the teachings of Christ which would include Catholocism.
Any job is the "worst job" if you have no clue what you are doing. I'd hate any job that I showed up to and had no idea how to do anything and so I was forced to rely on my underlings to complete tasks in order for me to keep my job. How does this pertain to IT manager you might ask? Well anybody who has worked IT long enough knows that a huge number of IT managers have no fucking clue what they are talking about or how to do things and instead rely on the tech savy IT workers to complete the tasks. This becomes a serious problem when these managers have to make decisions or try to act as though they know whats going on so that they don't lose credibility with their underlings. Basically all you IT managers out there would have a better time if you 1.) admit that you know nothing, 2.) admit that you are not needed in order to complete IT tasks, and 3.) that you can and should rely on the input and advice of your low-level IT employees.
Some people on here have been talking about throttle by wire and how wire systems are inherently dangerous. Well in throttle it is actually the safest system and makes the most sense.
I had the throttle wire snap on my 1987 VW Cabriolet while i was cruising down my road at about 65mph.. Thing is the tension on the cable is such that if the cable snaps its like not pressing the gas at all.. Actually even less since you tighten the cable to adjust idle speed, so my car immediately started slowing down until i stopped it. At which point the compelte lack of tension on the wire resulted in the car sputtering a bunch about to stall until i turned it off.
Now a similiar system could be worked witht he brake so that if the cable snaps the break immediately goes on fully:) I however do not recommend this and instead recommend the old beetle method.. which had the master cylinder(this is the object that pumps the brake fluid out to the wheels forcing your drums or discs to apply pressure and stop) mounted directly behind the brake pedal. The brake pedal was a piston on a hinge that had a foot pad, you pushed on it and it went into the master cylinder forcing the fluid towards the brakes. Nothing can go wrong there unless you forcibly break the pedal(very hard) or your master cyclinder or brake lines go(no matter what system you use this is always a danger).
Whats hypocritical? They arent saying the debates shouldnt be funded with public money. The lawsuit pertains to a violation of arizona constitution. This has nothing to do with principle or deciding to hold a debate hostage. Its an attempt at using litigation to get them in the debates which apparently should probably be garunteed by the arizona constitution. Your accusation is faceless as such you should be moderated as troll.
If you consider a 17" monitor for $250 to be cheap then I suspect you are a sucker who would buy anything... You want a cheap Apple computer I have a G3-450 that would be a steal at $650?. I just checked pricewatch and I can get a 21" Sony Trinitron for $228 and that INCLUDES shipping. Heres link.
A lot less than should. Especially since we have seen the corrupting and tampering of science by this administration. Which should make alot more people angry about how they are manipulating science to back up their views rather than evaluating their policies for flaws through science. This kind of stuff is actually very short sighted. If you manipulate science to show that your policy is ok and it turns out to be crap or really bad while during your run at office you come out looking good we have big problems 10 years later.
The current administrations stance on science should be recognized for what it is, a lack of leadership and an inability to evaluate their own work. Not that Kerry would do any better but he has shown in most cases to listen to credible scientific studies(other times not however). Obviously I hold science to be in high reguard, because when it comes down to it, all policy must be backed and checked with scientific scrutiny. If you don't support that then you don't support any body evaluating your work to see if it holds water. But hey people seem to like the denial, head in the sand approach that this administration offers.
The environment used to be primarily a Republican issue. Republicans started to distance themselves from the environment after the dreaded "hippies" made it one of their chief concerns. I've heard many republicans complain about how the Democrats stole the environment issue from them. Pretty interesting to think about how the parties(which are generally considered opposite numbers, they aren't they are both pretty close to eachother in truth) can trade issues like that.
Why does the DoD run a voting program? Since the DoD is so closely related to the military I would expect them to want to keep that seperate, I know I don't like mixing my generals and politicians or my military with voting implementation. A body with arms whose sole training revolves around the use of force should not be the caretaker of voting programs.
How deep is the ditch? How fast am I going? How close to the soltice is it? Am I wearing clean underwear?
All these are factors, knowing them will affect my decision. If its a 30 ft deep ditch and im going 5mph ill take the head on collision.
Bullshit. When faced with a no-win situation, you can still make the less-worse choice.
I didn't think I was required to vote for a candidate that I don't like. Lets be honest here, only fools would believe that either candidate is the "right" choice, at BEST you have less worse choice. Believing one to be the "right" choice implies that you believe the lies they are telling. No one could reasonably argue that both aren't liars. That was the original point I was making.
Yeah, it's a shitty system but that happens to be how it works at the moment. If you don't like it, pick an issue like open debates, verified voting, or whatever floats your boat, and WORK on it. What point is there in bitching about it, if you're not working to change it?
I believe what I'm doing now is trying to change it from the soap box, I'm voicing my opinion and allowing others to rebute it. If however lots of people agree with me and my ideas get repeated or my complaints get repeated and people care about these points more then we can possibly see change to reflect that. You can't ignore the problem forever and just play along with voting for less worse. Thats how they will get you. They will give you the impression that this election is so important you must vote for the less worse choice etc etc... It won't stop it will keep up as long as you buy into it. The proper thing to do at the moment would be to abandon the democratic party entirely. They have proven themselves to be unable to function or to even be liberal anymore. They are basically conservative but republicans are MORE conservative. We would have a few bad years of republican domination but when the Greens filled the gap, or someother party as the greens are pretty much crap now, we would have a renewed liberal party that could actually make people care/want to vote.
In my mind, the "undecided" voter is just about the most foolish creature on earth.
The person who can tell the difference between the two is the most foolish creature on earth in my book. Knowing who you want means that you believe the lies of one above the other. A true grasp of this situation means you have no clue who you want to vote for because not a single candidate would make a good president.
Badnarik has no political experience whastoever, only two failed attempts at running for the Texas State House of Representatives.
This is the general problem with third party candidates.
I think this is the general problem with politics today. We seem to think its the norm to have a career politician. I think the founding fathers would have intended a baker, a butcher, a sailor, and a bank owner to all be equally feasible politicians. These individuals don't like something so they say their ideas and if people like what they say the office selects the person. The way we have it now, the politician(which is a valid "career") looks around for offices that he/she is likely to win and they go for it.
Example: In the old days Americans,"founding fathers" decided that George Washington would be a good president. Washinton wasn't really interested in the position but support for him to become president was just so overwhelming that he was forced to take office. This is how we find a good president someone who gets the position not because they dog it relentlessly in order to gain power and influence but a person who solemnly accepts it because Americans demand that this person have the job.
This notion that experience matters is utter crap what we are doing is just facilitating the current power structure and making it harder and harder to affect meaningful change. If you want someone to continue giving us the status quo with no innovation and no passion for the position continue to select someone with "experience" I however will not.
but being that the Antarctic telescope is only usable six months out of the year
When its light out it can be looking at the sun studying sun spots or whatever. When its daylight at observatories the astronomers aren't sitting around going. ho hum nothing to do. Nope astronomers interested in studying our sun purchase up all daylight time on the big observatories so they can study the sun. Id suspect that most land observatories are in constant use as well.
Fine, but are you going to pay for all these new telescopes? Then you need to pay for the staff to man them, I'd rather just do it from one orbiting telescope and have NASA manage it. Anyway, good luck with your "bunch" of telescopes that you can't afford.
The point here is that for one space telescope I can build and maintain a number of land based ones. Including man them althought nothing says i have to man a land based telescope, there really isnt any reason to. I'm not sure how many land based telescopes we could have instead of Hubble, but I bet its a damn lot. Also recent backyard telescope observations have resulted in an important discovery(a new planet). Seems to me Hubble doesn't offer any huge signifigant advantage.
If you said you wanted to put a big refractor into space I'd be all for that as there is a physical limit to refractor lense size because of earths gravity. But no we instead get an overly pirced reflector thats hard to maintain, so hard in fact that NASA is afraid to send humans to maintain it. The one in antartica could be repaired easily with little risk.
There has yet to be a democracy that has not managed to mangle the shit out of itself.
Examples? Also no government will last forever, whether it be a Republic, Democracy, Communist, Monarchy, or . So we could safely say that no form of government has not managed to mangle the shit out of itself.
The US should not be a democracy, in a democracy there is no way for me to protect my rights as an individual. Majority vote would rule supreme, so if the 96+%(or whatever it is in America) of people who believe in the existence of God decide that that believe is compulsory under the penalty of death that is now law. Democracy is nothing more than mob rule, pitchforks, clubs, and torches included.(I think this last thing agrees with what you say.)
I would be inclined to agree with you if it wasn't for the strict party line association we have in America currently. A republican house will not go against a republican president no matter how unpopular he/she is. Besides much of the presidents power has little/nothing to do with congress. We tend to focus on the presidents role in lawmaking even though that is NOT his primary job. Our presidents have gotten too invovled in lawmaking instead of making sure that those laws are carried out which is what the president is supposed to be doing. The president is there to manage the agencies that keep the system running smoothly the system is designed however by congress and not the president.
A good president is one who enacts the laws congress passes faithfully. This president would Veto laws he/she believes cannot be carried out properly under our current system or laws that he believes would be detrimental to the current system/economy. This presidents opinion should be considered by congress, but should they decide he/she is acting in an improper manner or abusing the Veto power they can override him.
With that in mind, there is still lots a president can do if congress doesn't feel like passing the laws he wants. He could for instance do the job that he is supposed to do. Bush has especially turned the Presidents position into chiefly a lobbying position for the interest groups he agrees with. Not that clinton didn't do the same thing, or that kerry wont do it himself if he was to be elected. I just think we have focused too much on a minor part of the presidents job which is assisting with legislation. He should have enough on his hands with managing goverment agencies and the military.
No I wouldn't reasonably blame Kerry but 4 years later(2008) on election day all that people will remember is how elections in Iraq got all fucked up as Kerry took office. Maybe if Kerry had been stronger as he came into office it would have went more smoothly as Bush had intended. That is the reasoning his opponenets would use come time for that next election. Now you could start talking political inertia to the cattle(US Voters) but the deafening "MOO" would drown out any logic you have to offer.
Americans don't like hearing about hard to understand concepts such as "political inertia" we like hearing things like patriot, axis of evil, terrorist, nukular, security, etc etc.. You gots to break it down Michael Moore style, "As Kerry took office the election process in Iraq faltered, little did we know that Kerry's second cousin once purchased a cheese dog from a street vendor in new york, that street vendor was osama bin ladin's fathers brothers nephews cousins former roomate."
In order to be effective in the American political process your logic has to be ineptly simple or such a stretch as to defy reason. Only in those two cases do you interest Americans, you can't [reasonably*] expect Americans to think about "political inertia".
*I understand that there are people who have proven themselves to be unreasonable by expecting Americans to make informed decisions.
I'm sure there will be some kind of election in Iraq in January - there's too much at stake politically for Blair and Bush for it not to happen.
Actually events in January have no political effect on Bush whatsoever. If he loses the election, those events will reflect poorly on Kerry. If he wins, those events will lower his approval rating but since he can't run for a third term what does he care? If anything it hurts cheney politically as he will be tied to the bush administration and any attempts by him to run for president would be affected. It would probably affect McCain as he will probably be the next republican to run for president and since he supports bush if bush messes up its his ass too.
But no, I don't think Bush really worries about whats happening in January, it won't affect the election so what does it matter?
Hubble can't just fire its boosters and go around to where ever it wants. It orbits the earth and is forced to abide by that pattern. So its view of things gets blocked out by the earth periodically. Much like a land telescope. The space telescope is useful for other reasons, being unrestricted by the position of the earth is not one of them.
Personally I'd rather have a bunch of land telescopes rather than 1 space telescope. Many more researchers can get time on the scope and we won't have a bottle neck. Especially if the scopes are someplace like antartica where we don't have to worry as much about light pollution, and atmospheric influence.
People who's mind can't fathom the harder parts, or the miracles are prone to reject it.
Whats there to understand, the bible is writing as though its an account of certain events, either the events happened or they didn't. If they didn't then we must explore the possibility that the bible is an elaborate mythology with a set of tales that have deeping points and meanings. We can conclude that some of the events did not happen, so if you still give the bible credence you would consider the second option. If you want to say Noah's flood and Jesus miracles are tales to help us understand morality you could probably go ahead and conclude that the very existence of god is a tale to help people understand morality.
My feeling is that if you wish to take it literal you must take all of it, the good and the bad. If you wish to take an interpretational view of it then the core concepts of god, heaven, hell must also be myths that are meant to be intepreted. I don't think this values it any less. But holding onto scraps of a belief system forcing them to be "true" makes a whole lot less sense than going completely interpretational.
I have a BS in Computer Science and I see bounds of holes in the bible. Either you accept those holes for what they are or you could evade them by going... Well god intended this to be proven wrong, its part of his plan. Or less suspicious but just as foolish well this part is meant to be intepreted but the rest of it that science hasn't proven to not be literal is still true. It is my theory that Christianity is no different that greek mythology. The way in which a group of people explain the unknown, using engaging human themes in order to pass along moral advice to a new generation. Both Greek mythology and christianity have their purpose but its gotten out of control when people actually believe in the existence of heaven and hell. Its just painfully obvious how this is nothing but symbolism and a way in which we can socialize our children.
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And for the record, as far as laptops go, the necessity for the second mouse button just isn't there, especially when the keyboard shortcuts are designed so well. I have a 2 button mouse plugged into my mac, and dont use the second button(unless gaming). It simply is a waste for me to move my hand to the mouse to do something with the second mouse button that would be better served as a keyboard shortcut.
My position is that we should change the electoral college by changing exactly how we know how many votes each state gets. Personally, I think they should all be equal, every state gets 2 votes. Then each state can decide how those 2 votes get decided. Whether thats IRV or whatever.
Since most of europes countries are the size of a pimple on America's ass this isn't a problem in europe. In one region in the average european country to the next geography and climate do not change. You may be thinking why does this matter? Well it matters a hell of alot when your country has some states comprised of desert and then others comprised of mostly lakes or ocean front.
I'm not just picking on you because your european not many americans consider these things either. I live in Connecticut and sure as hell dont want Utah to be able to influence how my fishing industry is conducted or how much money we need for the coast guard. As far as president goes, whever we have large numbers of people congregating they are the most important for elections. The solution isnt to go to direct popular vote because that just wont work. I think the solution is to put the states on a more even level. Each state gets 2 votes, whoever gets a majority wins, if no one does, house/senate pick.
The problem europeans have is that they forget that the US is comprised of 50 seperate governments, which kind of eroded after the civil war but its still important that we keep them seperate and politically powerful.
I know that in my experience, the people who favor Kerry get their facts from Fareignheit 9-11 and the liberal news media. Do some independent research people.
Seems you did some high quality independent research by lots of interviews with soldiers and stuff. Top knotch work.
Even though Iraq doesn't have nukes, Saddam was an insane asshole who would've tried as hard as possible to get them -- several reports show that he was using the oil-for-food program to bypass UN sanctions
Hmm, seems to me that the reports I read indicated that Saddam effectively ended all efforts to acquire weapons illegally and instead was seeking to gain leverage with other nations in order to get said sanctions lifted so he could get weapons legally. Using the oil for food program was one way he was attempting to gain leverage and funds with foreign nations.
I know the world doesn't agree with us. People: THIS IS OKAY. The world looks out for the world. The US needs to look out for the US.
Care to tell us WHY this is okay. You can spout all the nonsense you want about well where america we have a right blah blah blah, we have more money and bigger guns therefore what we say is law attitude but that doesn't change the fact that our interactions with other countries signifigantly affect us. Confidence in the dollar is dropping and therefore our economy hasn't recovered as much as it should have if Bush hadn't damaged our reputation. The fact that you seem to think that the World and US can be seperated shows you have no clue how closely related international economies are. Japanese market crashes, the american one does too. Same with englands or frances, or germanys.
I'd like to rant a little further by saying. The repbulican party if bush wins again will be characterised by two things: 1) Simplistic rationalizations of poor decisions and 2) Its desire to enforce christian religious principles on america.
The hotter it is the more productive workers are. Logical conclusion for my management, I better start wearing shorts to work, or perhaps a bathrobe because I fully expect to come into work tomorrow to face sauna-like conditions.
My feeling is that if you think this computer is going to be dragged through hell and back used and abused on a daily basis go iBook, UNLESS you absolutely need the extra performance. I want an apple laptop but to be honest I cant make a decision knowing what I do about them. They are both excellent products but honestly for video editing you wont notice too much of a difference as long as you make sure to load them things up with RAM, in my experience RAM is the single most important factor in Mac performance.
Strange that you seem to think being Catholic and being Christian are mutually exclusive(although if you were arguing based on how far away from Christs actual teachings Catholics have become you would be somewhat more accurate) HOWEVER Christianity is the set of all religions based on the teachings of Christ which would include Catholocism.
Any job is the "worst job" if you have no clue what you are doing. I'd hate any job that I showed up to and had no idea how to do anything and so I was forced to rely on my underlings to complete tasks in order for me to keep my job. How does this pertain to IT manager you might ask? Well anybody who has worked IT long enough knows that a huge number of IT managers have no fucking clue what they are talking about or how to do things and instead rely on the tech savy IT workers to complete the tasks. This becomes a serious problem when these managers have to make decisions or try to act as though they know whats going on so that they don't lose credibility with their underlings. Basically all you IT managers out there would have a better time if you 1.) admit that you know nothing, 2.) admit that you are not needed in order to complete IT tasks, and 3.) that you can and should rely on the input and advice of your low-level IT employees.
I had the throttle wire snap on my 1987 VW Cabriolet while i was cruising down my road at about 65mph.. Thing is the tension on the cable is such that if the cable snaps its like not pressing the gas at all.. Actually even less since you tighten the cable to adjust idle speed, so my car immediately started slowing down until i stopped it. At which point the compelte lack of tension on the wire resulted in the car sputtering a bunch about to stall until i turned it off.
Now a similiar system could be worked witht he brake so that if the cable snaps the break immediately goes on fully :) I however do not recommend this and instead recommend the old beetle method.. which had the master cylinder(this is the object that pumps the brake fluid out to the wheels forcing your drums or discs to apply pressure and stop) mounted directly behind the brake pedal. The brake pedal was a piston on a hinge that had a foot pad, you pushed on it and it went into the master cylinder forcing the fluid towards the brakes. Nothing can go wrong there unless you forcibly break the pedal(very hard) or your master cyclinder or brake lines go(no matter what system you use this is always a danger).
Whats hypocritical? They arent saying the debates shouldnt be funded with public money. The lawsuit pertains to a violation of arizona constitution. This has nothing to do with principle or deciding to hold a debate hostage. Its an attempt at using litigation to get them in the debates which apparently should probably be garunteed by the arizona constitution. Your accusation is faceless as such you should be moderated as troll.
Wrong. Run flat tires aren't outlawed and they render the spike strips *useless*. Many cars get the run flats stock, for instance the mini cooper S.
If you consider a 17" monitor for $250 to be cheap then I suspect you are a sucker who would buy anything... You want a cheap Apple computer I have a G3-450 that would be a steal at $650?. I just checked pricewatch and I can get a 21" Sony Trinitron for $228 and that INCLUDES shipping. Heres link.
The current administrations stance on science should be recognized for what it is, a lack of leadership and an inability to evaluate their own work. Not that Kerry would do any better but he has shown in most cases to listen to credible scientific studies(other times not however). Obviously I hold science to be in high reguard, because when it comes down to it, all policy must be backed and checked with scientific scrutiny. If you don't support that then you don't support any body evaluating your work to see if it holds water. But hey people seem to like the denial, head in the sand approach that this administration offers.
The environment used to be primarily a Republican issue. Republicans started to distance themselves from the environment after the dreaded "hippies" made it one of their chief concerns. I've heard many republicans complain about how the Democrats stole the environment issue from them. Pretty interesting to think about how the parties(which are generally considered opposite numbers, they aren't they are both pretty close to eachother in truth) can trade issues like that.
Why does the DoD run a voting program? Since the DoD is so closely related to the military I would expect them to want to keep that seperate, I know I don't like mixing my generals and politicians or my military with voting implementation. A body with arms whose sole training revolves around the use of force should not be the caretaker of voting programs.
All these are factors, knowing them will affect my decision. If its a 30 ft deep ditch and im going 5mph ill take the head on collision.
Bullshit. When faced with a no-win situation, you can still make the less-worse choice.
I didn't think I was required to vote for a candidate that I don't like. Lets be honest here, only fools would believe that either candidate is the "right" choice, at BEST you have less worse choice. Believing one to be the "right" choice implies that you believe the lies they are telling. No one could reasonably argue that both aren't liars. That was the original point I was making.
Yeah, it's a shitty system but that happens to be how it works at the moment. If you don't like it, pick an issue like open debates, verified voting, or whatever floats your boat, and WORK on it. What point is there in bitching about it, if you're not working to change it?
I believe what I'm doing now is trying to change it from the soap box, I'm voicing my opinion and allowing others to rebute it. If however lots of people agree with me and my ideas get repeated or my complaints get repeated and people care about these points more then we can possibly see change to reflect that. You can't ignore the problem forever and just play along with voting for less worse. Thats how they will get you. They will give you the impression that this election is so important you must vote for the less worse choice etc etc... It won't stop it will keep up as long as you buy into it. The proper thing to do at the moment would be to abandon the democratic party entirely. They have proven themselves to be unable to function or to even be liberal anymore. They are basically conservative but republicans are MORE conservative. We would have a few bad years of republican domination but when the Greens filled the gap, or someother party as the greens are pretty much crap now, we would have a renewed liberal party that could actually make people care/want to vote.
The person who can tell the difference between the two is the most foolish creature on earth in my book. Knowing who you want means that you believe the lies of one above the other. A true grasp of this situation means you have no clue who you want to vote for because not a single candidate would make a good president.
I think this is the general problem with politics today. We seem to think its the norm to have a career politician. I think the founding fathers would have intended a baker, a butcher, a sailor, and a bank owner to all be equally feasible politicians. These individuals don't like something so they say their ideas and if people like what they say the office selects the person. The way we have it now, the politician(which is a valid "career") looks around for offices that he/she is likely to win and they go for it.
Example: In the old days Americans,"founding fathers" decided that George Washington would be a good president. Washinton wasn't really interested in the position but support for him to become president was just so overwhelming that he was forced to take office. This is how we find a good president someone who gets the position not because they dog it relentlessly in order to gain power and influence but a person who solemnly accepts it because Americans demand that this person have the job.
This notion that experience matters is utter crap what we are doing is just facilitating the current power structure and making it harder and harder to affect meaningful change. If you want someone to continue giving us the status quo with no innovation and no passion for the position continue to select someone with "experience" I however will not.
When its light out it can be looking at the sun studying sun spots or whatever. When its daylight at observatories the astronomers aren't sitting around going. ho hum nothing to do. Nope astronomers interested in studying our sun purchase up all daylight time on the big observatories so they can study the sun. Id suspect that most land observatories are in constant use as well.
Fine, but are you going to pay for all these new telescopes? Then you need to pay for the staff to man them, I'd rather just do it from one orbiting telescope and have NASA manage it. Anyway, good luck with your "bunch" of telescopes that you can't afford.
The point here is that for one space telescope I can build and maintain a number of land based ones. Including man them althought nothing says i have to man a land based telescope, there really isnt any reason to. I'm not sure how many land based telescopes we could have instead of Hubble, but I bet its a damn lot. Also recent backyard telescope observations have resulted in an important discovery(a new planet). Seems to me Hubble doesn't offer any huge signifigant advantage.
If you said you wanted to put a big refractor into space I'd be all for that as there is a physical limit to refractor lense size because of earths gravity. But no we instead get an overly pirced reflector thats hard to maintain, so hard in fact that NASA is afraid to send humans to maintain it. The one in antartica could be repaired easily with little risk.
Examples? Also no government will last forever, whether it be a Republic, Democracy, Communist, Monarchy, or . So we could safely say that no form of government has not managed to mangle the shit out of itself.
The US should not be a democracy, in a democracy there is no way for me to protect my rights as an individual. Majority vote would rule supreme, so if the 96+%(or whatever it is in America) of people who believe in the existence of God decide that that believe is compulsory under the penalty of death that is now law. Democracy is nothing more than mob rule, pitchforks, clubs, and torches included.(I think this last thing agrees with what you say.)
A good president is one who enacts the laws congress passes faithfully. This president would Veto laws he/she believes cannot be carried out properly under our current system or laws that he believes would be detrimental to the current system/economy. This presidents opinion should be considered by congress, but should they decide he/she is acting in an improper manner or abusing the Veto power they can override him.
With that in mind, there is still lots a president can do if congress doesn't feel like passing the laws he wants. He could for instance do the job that he is supposed to do. Bush has especially turned the Presidents position into chiefly a lobbying position for the interest groups he agrees with. Not that clinton didn't do the same thing, or that kerry wont do it himself if he was to be elected. I just think we have focused too much on a minor part of the presidents job which is assisting with legislation. He should have enough on his hands with managing goverment agencies and the military.
Americans don't like hearing about hard to understand concepts such as "political inertia" we like hearing things like patriot, axis of evil, terrorist, nukular, security, etc etc.. You gots to break it down Michael Moore style, "As Kerry took office the election process in Iraq faltered, little did we know that Kerry's second cousin once purchased a cheese dog from a street vendor in new york, that street vendor was osama bin ladin's fathers brothers nephews cousins former roomate."
In order to be effective in the American political process your logic has to be ineptly simple or such a stretch as to defy reason. Only in those two cases do you interest Americans, you can't [reasonably*] expect Americans to think about "political inertia".
*I understand that there are people who have proven themselves to be unreasonable by expecting Americans to make informed decisions.
Actually events in January have no political effect on Bush whatsoever. If he loses the election, those events will reflect poorly on Kerry. If he wins, those events will lower his approval rating but since he can't run for a third term what does he care? If anything it hurts cheney politically as he will be tied to the bush administration and any attempts by him to run for president would be affected. It would probably affect McCain as he will probably be the next republican to run for president and since he supports bush if bush messes up its his ass too.
But no, I don't think Bush really worries about whats happening in January, it won't affect the election so what does it matter?
Personally I'd rather have a bunch of land telescopes rather than 1 space telescope. Many more researchers can get time on the scope and we won't have a bottle neck. Especially if the scopes are someplace like antartica where we don't have to worry as much about light pollution, and atmospheric influence.
Whats there to understand, the bible is writing as though its an account of certain events, either the events happened or they didn't. If they didn't then we must explore the possibility that the bible is an elaborate mythology with a set of tales that have deeping points and meanings. We can conclude that some of the events did not happen, so if you still give the bible credence you would consider the second option. If you want to say Noah's flood and Jesus miracles are tales to help us understand morality you could probably go ahead and conclude that the very existence of god is a tale to help people understand morality.
My feeling is that if you wish to take it literal you must take all of it, the good and the bad. If you wish to take an interpretational view of it then the core concepts of god, heaven, hell must also be myths that are meant to be intepreted. I don't think this values it any less. But holding onto scraps of a belief system forcing them to be "true" makes a whole lot less sense than going completely interpretational.
I have a BS in Computer Science and I see bounds of holes in the bible. Either you accept those holes for what they are or you could evade them by going... Well god intended this to be proven wrong, its part of his plan. Or less suspicious but just as foolish well this part is meant to be intepreted but the rest of it that science hasn't proven to not be literal is still true. It is my theory that Christianity is no different that greek mythology. The way in which a group of people explain the unknown, using engaging human themes in order to pass along moral advice to a new generation. Both Greek mythology and christianity have their purpose but its gotten out of control when people actually believe in the existence of heaven and hell. Its just painfully obvious how this is nothing but symbolism and a way in which we can socialize our children.