Kucinich has been a 9/11 denier for most of the last decade, along with pushing all kinds of other crazy conspiracy theories about mind-control satellites and chemtrails and such. The lunatic even proposed a bill that would ban "psychotronic" devices that are "directed at individual persons or targeted populations for the purpose of... mood management, or mind control." He's a less-vocal version of Jessie Ventura. Why in the world would you ever have had any respect for him?
Thanks for pointing it all out to me. Now that you have enlightened me, I think I will go sulk in a corner and reflect on my views of the FDA, which are all obviously conspiracy theories.
You're welcome! I'm glad I could help. But you didn't answer the question:(
As for FDA approval.. have you EVER watched a commercial for an FDA approved drug? Nice, harmless side-effects like cancer, organ failure, Stevens-Johnson Syndrome, blindness, heart failure, brain damage, impotency, birth defects, peripheral neuropathy, weight gain, weight loss, coma, death.
That's just ignorant, man. If LSD was put through the hoops by the FDA and then placed on the market, it would most likely have an even longer list of side effects. Why? Because if a enough people in a sample group develop a particular condition, it gets listed as a "possible side effect" regardless of whether there's any reason to suspect that the treatment caused it. Compound that with the fact that ANY drug is bound to have an adverse side-effect in at least a small percentage of the population, and you end up with scary looking lists that poorly informed people love to trot out in order to "prove" that their drug of choice is much safer than the stuff on the market. Whereas your dealer, unfortunately, doesn't provide an FDA-approved list to go with your narcotics.
Yeah, you're right. I got my numbers wrong. Where I wrote 10 it should be 40, and 20 should be 80. Whoops. A wee bit of a difference there.
Given the land-area of Delhi, that actually means it would be pretty much entirely annihilated. 10-12 million casualties in the city - dropping off as you get into the outlying areas. 100 million is still a bit much, but 15-20 million wouldn't be inconceivable, if it hits the right place.
The Mayan calendar was more accurate... 365.2420 days, vs. Gregorians 365.2425, when the actual value was 365.2422.
Ugh. Every time I see garbage like this modded insightful, I loose a little more hope for my fellow slashdotters. Goddammit people, when you read something and think "huh, I didn't know that!", your first reaction should be to look it up, NOT to hit the "mod insightful" button!
Here's a link to a book that talks about where that claim originated, and why it's wrong. Link should take you to the relevant page, but, just in case, it's "Early Astronomy" by Hugh Thurston, page 202/203.
For those too lazy to read it, here's the tl;dr version: the Mayan calendar is 365 days. It has no leap days or leap years. While there's evidence that the Mayans knew that the solar year was longer than 365 days, their calendar doesn't reflect that knowledge. The original claim was made by a guy who died in 1931, and he got his conclusion by making some silly mathematical mistakes.
Humanity won't be in risk from this but if it crashes in a densely populated area like US east coast, central Europe, India or China then the death toll can be considerable. 100 million dead is a possibility.
No way. That's a third of the US population. Can't think of any place in the world where the population is packed densely enough to cause those kinds of casualties.
Striking rock, an iron meteorite would create a crater no more than 4km across. At 10 kilometers distance, well built structures would remain standing. You'd get dead people from flying glass and random rocks, but that's about it. At 20km, you should have no casualties at all, except maybe a few hundred dying from the resultant earthquake. Even if it hit Delhi (one of the top 10 densest cities in the world, population 12 million), I wouldn't expect more than 5 million casualties as a maximum, and probably far fewer.
It may be too risky to bring samples directly back to Earth. There may be some microbes that Earth life has not had a chance to grow immunities too. Sure, the risk is quite small, but not zero. We don't know enough yet.
.....
Hey, there's a non-zero chance that a toilet will fall out of the sky tomorrow and kill you. I suggest staying inside the house.
I'm sure they would never short-circuit research efforts that focus on safety of some of their GMO "stuff"; after all their own rigorous studies, much like this one have shown the "stuff" is safe, no?
Yes, they have. The willingness of fear-mongering buffoons to engage in data-manipulation is a different topic altogether. These clowns have published multiple papers making the same claim, all of which make the same kind of methodological "mistakes". The FSANZ response is particularly devastating.
The fact of the matter is that the main reason Monsanto needs to be so draconian about enforcing IP rights is because of the billions of dollars that have to be spent on testing "the stuff" and then convincing international agencies that it's safe for general use. It's hilarious - you want better testing but bitch about them trying to recoup the insanely high investment that goes into it, and even after they jump through all the hoops, you pull out half-baked "studies" to try and prove that the stuff is unsafe.
Just be honest - no matter what the data shows, no matter how much testing is done, no matter what kind of business practices are used, you'll never be satisfied because someone has convinced you that ("frankenfoods" == "double plus ungood"). Why waste time arguing the details when you're not willing to be convinced?
That is one year turnover of Aldi in Germany (one of the biggest groceries stores). Alone with the thrown away food we could feed all the starving people in the world twice.
Great, but who's going to feed them the other 1093 times?
Seriously, though, your numbers are a bit silly, and your assumptions are flawed. It's like adding up all the coffee breaks that employees at a company take, and saying "Look, this year alone employees wasted 16 man-years of company time. Clearly the real problem isn't that we don't have enough employees; we're just not working them hard enough". It's easy to come up with big numbers, and it's even easier to twist them in order to support your preconceived notions, but they're pretty much meaningless when it comes to coming up with real-world solutions.
There are 3 main problems which contribute to starvation around the world:
1. Lack of suitable land for locals to use. 2. Lack of security. 3. Poor choice of markets.
Technology can solve the first problem by providing food strains capable of growing in relatively inhospitable environments. The third problem can be resolved through a concerted effort by multinational entities to provide better trade opportunities to the citizens of impoverished nations. And the second can only be solved through force - be it brute force used by external actors, or popular support within the indigenous population for reformist leaders. Number 2 is, of course, the biggest issue. A country whose citizens have security can pull together and overcome the other issues on it's own. A country whose citizens don't have security is unlikely ever to succeed, regardless of how much effort we put into correcting the other issues.
Either way, "wealth redistribution" has nothing to do with it. We've been pumping trillions of dollars of foreign aid into third world shitholes for decades, with nothing to show for it. If you want to see what it takes to create a successful nation, you have to look at the efforts that went into reforming places like Japan and South Korea.
It's amazing to me that no matter how often this lie is addressed, people keep repeating it as if it were gospel. For fucks sake, do a bit of research. Monstanto hasn't sued anyone for having their crops contaminated. They sued people who intentionally took contaminated crops and then selected for the Monsanto strain. This isn't like someone throwing a DVD through my window and then suing me for having stolen property - it's like someone throwing a DVD through my window, and then suing me because I took that DVD and sold 10,000 copies.
I know that the anti-GM folks really don't HAVE anything other than FUD, but at least come up with some new stuff instead of repeating the same old lies over and over. You're starting to sound like creationists.
Yeah, and? What do you suggest to do for people to organize and get together, compared to the machineries they're facing?
Gee... I don't know... calm discussion? Organized debate? Electing representatives to speak in their stead?
Do you think a slick, well-oiled and silently humming greed bot is somehow more cool, or being a pussy fucking armchair critic of people who actually try to do fuck all?
Ah, I see, you're one of the chanting twits, aren't you? You've certainly mastered all the meaningless buzzwords.
I've only had one individual, in my entire life, "badger" me to "hurry up and sign". I put down the contract, and walked out. It's not very common and, on the rare occasions when it does happen, only a fool would bow to the pressure.
The articles you linked not only fail to support your absurd claim, but in some cases directly contradict it. However, that still doesn't tell me whether you're intentionally lying, or whether you're retarded. Could you please address the question?
Except the US aren't buying the oil anymore. The oil is now pumped by American companies, loaded on American tankers, and refined by American refiners at American refineries and burned in American SUVs on American roads.
Ok, now are you intentionally lying and hoping that only retarded people will read your comment... or are you, yourself, retarded?
Heh. I find it rather fascinating that the argument basically boils down to "the US is bad because it wasn't as ruthless at terrorizing the populace as Sadam's regime".
US's current major deficiency isn't even technical, it's a tactical one: we're not fighting a defensive war where everyone of "theirs" is fair game.
I think it's a little more extreme than that: you're not fighting a war, period; your enemies are fighting a war, and you're trying to be cops. Doesn't have anything to do with technology though, except insofar as your advanced technology actually lets you try to be the nice guys, instead of pulling a Soviet-style conquer-and-terrorize occupation.
As for this bit:
In a real invasion of US soil, should it come to that, the enemy would surely find all the cracks there are to be found.
It's an entirely hypothetical scenario, because there can not BE a "real invasion of the US". Even England in WW2 was never invaded by Axis forces, let alone occupied. The US is essentially it's own continent - if an unfriendly army ever sets foot on US soil, it will be because the nation has already collapsed. Or, if you believe the far-right extremists, because the "illegal" Mexicans (or Muslims, whoever the current boogyman is) have become the majority:p Either way, if either of those scenarios happens, you'll have already lost your technological edge.
It is sad that USA is now following Germany's example. We are building overly complex, hugely expensive equipment that cannot be easily field serviced, and building them in limited numbers because we cannot afford them in great quantity.
Eventually, even though we are 10 years ahead of every opponent technologically, someone will be able to over-run us in a drawn out war simply by having great numbers of simpler, cheaper equipment, and a lot of it.
Naw. Others have already pointed out the flaw in your reasoning in other areas, so I'll focus on this bit. While there's some truth to the saying that "quantity has a quality all it's own", it's far too simplistic to imagine that great numbers can overcome any technology. This is simply not the case. A modern AFV will never be defeated by men armed with slingshots, regardless of whether there are one hundred, or one million of them. The F22 may have a $300+ million price tag, but it also boasts a 100+ to 1 kill ratio in simulated engagements against fighters which themselves cost tens of millions. The M1 Abrams line of tanks destroyed the entire Iraqi armoured corps while essentially losing zero vehicles to enemy fire - IIRC all of their losses were to friendly fire and other accidents.
If your technology is advanced enough, quantity - for all intents and purposes - ceases to be an issue. This isn't Independence Day, where an invading alien fleet can be utterly annihilated by a computer virus and a bunch of F-18's. The real world doesn't leave those kinds of openings just to help out the little guys.
Slashdot Mirror
Kucinich has been a 9/11 denier for most of the last decade, along with pushing all kinds of other crazy conspiracy theories about mind-control satellites and chemtrails and such. The lunatic even proposed a bill that would ban "psychotronic" devices that are "directed at individual persons or targeted populations for the purpose of ... mood management, or mind control." He's a less-vocal version of Jessie Ventura. Why in the world would you ever have had any respect for him?
The estimates assumes Ugandan labor, Chinese materials, and Pakistani tech-support.
:p
Like I said, I love you conspiracy morons :) Can you talk some more about how I'm "up-modding my comments"? That was particularly funny :D
Real answer to your question: I've never done LSD.
Oh. I'm sorry. Must be genetic.
Thanks for pointing it all out to me. Now that you have enlightened me, I think I will go sulk in a corner and reflect on my views of the FDA, which are all obviously conspiracy theories.
You're welcome! I'm glad I could help. But you didn't answer the question :(
I love conspiracy morons :) You always brighten up my day!
Tell me, were you this way BEFORE taking LSD? Or did this behavior only manifest afterwards?
As for FDA approval.. have you EVER watched a commercial for an FDA approved drug? Nice, harmless side-effects like cancer, organ failure, Stevens-Johnson Syndrome, blindness, heart failure, brain damage, impotency, birth defects, peripheral neuropathy, weight gain, weight loss, coma, death.
That's just ignorant, man. If LSD was put through the hoops by the FDA and then placed on the market, it would most likely have an even longer list of side effects. Why? Because if a enough people in a sample group develop a particular condition, it gets listed as a "possible side effect" regardless of whether there's any reason to suspect that the treatment caused it. Compound that with the fact that ANY drug is bound to have an adverse side-effect in at least a small percentage of the population, and you end up with scary looking lists that poorly informed people love to trot out in order to "prove" that their drug of choice is much safer than the stuff on the market. Whereas your dealer, unfortunately, doesn't provide an FDA-approved list to go with your narcotics.
Yeah, you're right. I got my numbers wrong. Where I wrote 10 it should be 40, and 20 should be 80. Whoops. A wee bit of a difference there.
Given the land-area of Delhi, that actually means it would be pretty much entirely annihilated. 10-12 million casualties in the city - dropping off as you get into the outlying areas. 100 million is still a bit much, but 15-20 million wouldn't be inconceivable, if it hits the right place.
Scary. Thanks for making me recheck my figures.
The Mayan calendar was more accurate... 365.2420 days, vs. Gregorians 365.2425, when the actual value was 365.2422.
Ugh. Every time I see garbage like this modded insightful, I loose a little more hope for my fellow slashdotters. Goddammit people, when you read something and think "huh, I didn't know that!", your first reaction should be to look it up, NOT to hit the "mod insightful" button!
Here's a link to a book that talks about where that claim originated, and why it's wrong. Link should take you to the relevant page, but, just in case, it's "Early Astronomy" by Hugh Thurston, page 202/203.
For those too lazy to read it, here's the tl;dr version: the Mayan calendar is 365 days. It has no leap days or leap years. While there's evidence that the Mayans knew that the solar year was longer than 365 days, their calendar doesn't reflect that knowledge. The original claim was made by a guy who died in 1931, and he got his conclusion by making some silly mathematical mistakes.
Humanity won't be in risk from this but if it crashes in a densely populated area like US east coast, central Europe, India or China then the death toll can be considerable. 100 million dead is a possibility.
No way. That's a third of the US population. Can't think of any place in the world where the population is packed densely enough to cause those kinds of casualties.
Striking rock, an iron meteorite would create a crater no more than 4km across. At 10 kilometers distance, well built structures would remain standing. You'd get dead people from flying glass and random rocks, but that's about it. At 20km, you should have no casualties at all, except maybe a few hundred dying from the resultant earthquake. Even if it hit Delhi (one of the top 10 densest cities in the world, population 12 million), I wouldn't expect more than 5 million casualties as a maximum, and probably far fewer.
It may be too risky to bring samples directly back to Earth. There may be some microbes that Earth life has not had a chance to grow immunities too. Sure, the risk is quite small, but not zero. We don't know enough yet.
.....
Hey, there's a non-zero chance that a toilet will fall out of the sky tomorrow and kill you. I suggest staying inside the house.
I'm sure they would never short-circuit research efforts that focus on safety of some of their GMO "stuff"; after all their own rigorous studies, much like this one have shown the "stuff" is safe, no?
Yes, they have. The willingness of fear-mongering buffoons to engage in data-manipulation is a different topic altogether. These clowns have published multiple papers making the same claim, all of which make the same kind of methodological "mistakes". The FSANZ response is particularly devastating.
The fact of the matter is that the main reason Monsanto needs to be so draconian about enforcing IP rights is because of the billions of dollars that have to be spent on testing "the stuff" and then convincing international agencies that it's safe for general use. It's hilarious - you want better testing but bitch about them trying to recoup the insanely high investment that goes into it, and even after they jump through all the hoops, you pull out half-baked "studies" to try and prove that the stuff is unsafe.
Just be honest - no matter what the data shows, no matter how much testing is done, no matter what kind of business practices are used, you'll never be satisfied because someone has convinced you that ("frankenfoods" == "double plus ungood"). Why waste time arguing the details when you're not willing to be convinced?
That is one year turnover of Aldi in Germany (one of the biggest groceries stores). Alone with the thrown away food we could feed all the starving people in the world twice.
Great, but who's going to feed them the other 1093 times?
Seriously, though, your numbers are a bit silly, and your assumptions are flawed. It's like adding up all the coffee breaks that employees at a company take, and saying "Look, this year alone employees wasted 16 man-years of company time. Clearly the real problem isn't that we don't have enough employees; we're just not working them hard enough". It's easy to come up with big numbers, and it's even easier to twist them in order to support your preconceived notions, but they're pretty much meaningless when it comes to coming up with real-world solutions.
There are 3 main problems which contribute to starvation around the world:
1. Lack of suitable land for locals to use.
2. Lack of security.
3. Poor choice of markets.
Technology can solve the first problem by providing food strains capable of growing in relatively inhospitable environments. The third problem can be resolved through a concerted effort by multinational entities to provide better trade opportunities to the citizens of impoverished nations. And the second can only be solved through force - be it brute force used by external actors, or popular support within the indigenous population for reformist leaders. Number 2 is, of course, the biggest issue. A country whose citizens have security can pull together and overcome the other issues on it's own. A country whose citizens don't have security is unlikely ever to succeed, regardless of how much effort we put into correcting the other issues.
Either way, "wealth redistribution" has nothing to do with it. We've been pumping trillions of dollars of foreign aid into third world shitholes for decades, with nothing to show for it. If you want to see what it takes to create a successful nation, you have to look at the efforts that went into reforming places like Japan and South Korea.
It's amazing to me that no matter how often this lie is addressed, people keep repeating it as if it were gospel. For fucks sake, do a bit of research. Monstanto hasn't sued anyone for having their crops contaminated. They sued people who intentionally took contaminated crops and then selected for the Monsanto strain. This isn't like someone throwing a DVD through my window and then suing me for having stolen property - it's like someone throwing a DVD through my window, and then suing me because I took that DVD and sold 10,000 copies.
I know that the anti-GM folks really don't HAVE anything other than FUD, but at least come up with some new stuff instead of repeating the same old lies over and over. You're starting to sound like creationists.
Yeah, and? What do you suggest to do for people to organize and get together, compared to the machineries they're facing?
Gee ... I don't know ... calm discussion? Organized debate? Electing representatives to speak in their stead?
Do you think a slick, well-oiled and silently humming greed bot is somehow more cool, or being a pussy fucking armchair critic of people who actually try to do fuck all?
Ah, I see, you're one of the chanting twits, aren't you? You've certainly mastered all the meaningless buzzwords.
Hah! Yeah, absolutely :) You know, paying 40% of your income vs 5% of your income is totally unfair. Clearly they should be paying at least 99%!
I've only had one individual, in my entire life, "badger" me to "hurry up and sign". I put down the contract, and walked out. It's not very common and, on the rare occasions when it does happen, only a fool would bow to the pressure.
lol. Yeah, they "stole" $150 quintillion dollars! Of which $140 quintillion was taxes that they themselves paid. The bastards!
The articles you linked not only fail to support your absurd claim, but in some cases directly contradict it. However, that still doesn't tell me whether you're intentionally lying, or whether you're retarded. Could you please address the question?
Oh no! We've only got another billion years to live!
Except the US aren't buying the oil anymore. The oil is now pumped by American companies, loaded on American tankers, and refined by American refiners at American refineries and burned in American SUVs on American roads.
Ok, now are you intentionally lying and hoping that only retarded people will read your comment ... or are you, yourself, retarded?
That was one of the most disjointed, ignorant, off topic comments I've ever read on here. I award you no points, and may god have mercy on your soul.
Heh. I find it rather fascinating that the argument basically boils down to "the US is bad because it wasn't as ruthless at terrorizing the populace as Sadam's regime".
US's current major deficiency isn't even technical, it's a tactical one: we're not fighting a defensive war where everyone of "theirs" is fair game.
I think it's a little more extreme than that: you're not fighting a war, period; your enemies are fighting a war, and you're trying to be cops. Doesn't have anything to do with technology though, except insofar as your advanced technology actually lets you try to be the nice guys, instead of pulling a Soviet-style conquer-and-terrorize occupation.
As for this bit:
In a real invasion of US soil, should it come to that, the enemy would surely find all the cracks there are to be found.
It's an entirely hypothetical scenario, because there can not BE a "real invasion of the US". Even England in WW2 was never invaded by Axis forces, let alone occupied. The US is essentially it's own continent - if an unfriendly army ever sets foot on US soil, it will be because the nation has already collapsed. Or, if you believe the far-right extremists, because the "illegal" Mexicans (or Muslims, whoever the current boogyman is) have become the majority :p Either way, if either of those scenarios happens, you'll have already lost your technological edge.
It is sad that USA is now following Germany's example. We are building overly complex, hugely expensive equipment that cannot be easily field serviced, and building them in limited numbers because we cannot afford them in great quantity.
Eventually, even though we are 10 years ahead of every opponent technologically, someone will be able to over-run us in a drawn out war simply by having great numbers of simpler, cheaper equipment, and a lot of it.
Naw. Others have already pointed out the flaw in your reasoning in other areas, so I'll focus on this bit. While there's some truth to the saying that "quantity has a quality all it's own", it's far too simplistic to imagine that great numbers can overcome any technology. This is simply not the case. A modern AFV will never be defeated by men armed with slingshots, regardless of whether there are one hundred, or one million of them. The F22 may have a $300+ million price tag, but it also boasts a 100+ to 1 kill ratio in simulated engagements against fighters which themselves cost tens of millions. The M1 Abrams line of tanks destroyed the entire Iraqi armoured corps while essentially losing zero vehicles to enemy fire - IIRC all of their losses were to friendly fire and other accidents.
If your technology is advanced enough, quantity - for all intents and purposes - ceases to be an issue. This isn't Independence Day, where an invading alien fleet can be utterly annihilated by a computer virus and a bunch of F-18's. The real world doesn't leave those kinds of openings just to help out the little guys.