champu

I guess that whole unclean thing extends to lots of things in all the Abrahamic faiths in the middle east. Afghan hounds? Salukis? Who's imitating who here?

Victory mosque.

Why would anyone subscribe or adhere to a religion that they thought was one of the wrong ones? Mockery.

An interesting story that definitely raises a few questions. One thing the article talks about is people with gated driveways. Is there something magic about a gate or a fence that converts the property around your house to a different legal status? Is it because the gate/fence provides a reasonable expectation of privacy? (who hops fences?) What if you just put a sign up that said "Keep Out" or "Private Property - No Tresspassing"? Is there a reasonable expectation that people would obey such a sign? Secondly, if such a device were found on your car and you destroyed it (presumably not knowing who had put it there) could you be charged with destruction of government property or obstruction of justice? That would be pretty ridiculous. What if I (Joe Shmoe) put a GPS tracking device on someone's car without them knowing it? Is there anything I could be charged with? Is that at all a useful sanity check for decisions like this?

It's cheaper than a movie and there's free coffee.

Have you ever listened to the outcry of a group of people and thought, "That's not what the person/group they're pissed at meant when they said that. They wouldn't be so pissed off if they weren't looking to be offended"?

What probably happened is whoever wrote the article got statement {4} wrong. If you ignore that, a third think they don't have the right and shouldn't build it. A third think they do have the right, but shouldn't build it anyway. The final third think they have the right and should build it. The "do they have the right" question is an interesting one to put on a poll. I didn't know that was up for debate.

This is the elaboration regarding underlying mechanisms I've asked you to make. So right off the bat, thanks for doing so. I've thrown some italics in there for the stuff I want to respond to. You're getting a bit of "rich creep" in your argument again as you've defined the rich previously as the top 5%, 10%, and even 20% of wealth holders. You may find that the creation of an additional top bracket or brackets would be necessary to make tax increases comparable to some of the historical examples you like to bring up. As it is, top bracket increases affect a lot more than the millionaires. (this is just an aside, and one I've made before, but call it my futile attempt to inject some consistency in definitions.) Borrowing to invest isn't tied to accessibility of profits as you suggest. You either keep profits invested or you take them. You don't write yourself a paycheck and then start a new company out of your personal checking account. If you want to get started or expand, you take a loan through the company (if interest rates allow it) and you go to it. Publicly traded companies make things even more dynamic as the more "profit taking" (paying dividends) you do, the more attractive the stock becomes to capital investors. How does one spend a lot of cash and yet do so cheaply? They either spend it or they don't, and as much as you like to picture rich people having cash fights, that's not what happens. I'm not sure if you're trying to imply the money ends up buying cheap imported goods, but protectionist tarrifs, etc. is an entirely different issue affecting where all consumer dollars end up, not just from rich folks. And until we address that, encouraging consumer spending using borrowed dollars as you do is a huge disaster waiting to happen. On a more general note, it should not be surprising that absurd changes to tax rates (up or down) will shock the behavior of the economy. That should, by no means, be used as an argument that the rate before or after the change was the "correct" one. This back and forth defibrillation is a crap approach, and we need to go back to treating taxes as a way to finance the government. You keep mentioning low taxes leading to debt and I don't think anyone is arguing with you about that, but that has nothing to do with using taxes to try and control the economy. The government can still temper the economic situation, but it needs to do so through interest rate adjustments, spending in the appropriate arenas, and managing trade imbalances with tariffs.

The stats in that article were kinda funny... (0.28{3} - 0.63{1} * 0.28{4}) / 0.27{2} = 0.38 So... 38% of the people who support the mosque do so in spite of believing they don't have a right to build it?

Money, of course. Eventually (depends on how long network providers are able to fight it) you'll just see data to both home and mobile and all the voice, messaging, video, etc. will be IP services that aren't tied to the network provider. Network providers have a struggle ahead of them to avoid becoming a commodity, but for now they're going to milk the $10-20/mo texting plans for all they can. /edited: whoops, their vs they're, that's what I get for rewriting my response too many times and not reading it all the way through before posting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqwj--wGEgY

I suspect Big Brother will quickly find it impossible to resist tracking the movements of ALL individuals. Nice. Yet they'd also be overwhelmed by the data. It's a bit like how they can currently track anyone with a modern cell phone, but except in specific cases it's pointless to even attempt to track anyone 24/7/356. To clarify my last post, I'm not trying to trivialize the pathological worst case that could come of government abuse, I'm just saying that government abuse is something we as a society are more tuned in to, and more focused on preventing. Rampant abuse by marketing/advertising seems much more likely even if it is slightly better than absolutely horrible. People watch Minority Report and the scene where people are identified automatically by the scanners and quickly arrested makes them think, "wow, that's effective yet terrifying!" but the same people see the seen where ads and billboards follow people around everywhere they look and think, "wow, that's neat!"

When the iPhone first came out there were numerous horror stories about people setting up their plan incorrectly and getting 5-figure phone bills in the mail. There were still more stories of people getting encyclopedic paper statements that included every text, call, or data access that was made and they showed up in boxes rather than in an envelope. I've been with AT&T for a little over 6 years and have only had one billing screw up which they fixed without arguing with me. Unlimited anything doesn't make much sense for us. I've been keeping an eye on our data usage, and I'm probably going to drop us both down to at&t's new 2GB plan to save an extra $10/mo. We both vary between 300MB and 1GB.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100819/ap_on_re_us/us_border_bridges

Call me crazy, but I actually find the marketing/advertising aspects of this technology more disgusting than the law enforcement aspect. Maybe it's just the attitude each are talked about with. "[stern face] Law enforcement use will have strict oversight because we all appreciate how important it is to maintain privacy... [happy face] but at least we can all agree that companies monitoring everything you buy or look at and paying a guy to follow you around with a bullhorn yelling advertisements in your ear, texting you every 20 seconds, and wadding up sale flyers and shoving them down your throat is win-win for everyone!"

VIOLENT AGREEMENT!

It could actually be more dangerous if knowledge of the delay makes drivers even less cautious about entering an intersection when they get a green light (if that's even possible.)

Agreed.

You can still get tboned (or close to it) with a round about if the person entering doesn't bother to look. you'd think self preservation would be motivation enough, but it sure as hell isn't. Long Beach has one notable roundabout; local lore has it that the designer's daughter died traversing it. Like I said in my earlier post, great idea, but too much yielding required for American drivers. Speaking of the Long Beach roundabout, let's take a look on street view to see how well th- oh, what a surprise, someone got run off the road.

And we all know how competent all management is Wendy P. (who used to be a manager of rocket scientists, no less ) Managing rocket scientists isn't brain surgury.

Two one-ways interecting is inherently safer than an interection involving one or more two-way streets, but you're right, you can still get t-boned. Well thought out one-ways are the next best thing to roundabouts in cities though.

We all know roundabouts involve far too much yielding for them to work well on a large scale in the United States. In many dense cities where there isn't room for roundabouts they already employ a similar solution which is simply to have lots of one-way streets.

That's how I pack, and I find it easier without the split bag. *shrugs* YMMV depending on your particular container/bag size and canopy combination. I do think it makes more sense to have the non-split bag as standard because that's what more people are used to. It was a good call to switch back on Mirage's part.

You either love 'em or you hate 'em... ...or you're like me and think they're kinda nice but don't really care that much. If you're a "completely s-fold the canopy into a stack and then pull the bag over it" kinda person, the split bag makes it easier to get the bulk into the back corners of the bag, particularly considering the shape of Mirage bags. I had one for quite a while and liked it. I don't have one with my current Mirage and I miss it sometimes on particularly dry days. If you're a "make part of the s-fold, then put that in the bag, then sit the bag up and make the other half of the s-fold directly into the bag" kinda person then the split bag will just barf your pack job all over the place. I've found that people who encounter this problem are generally not open to trying new bagging methods, so they get a new bag or have the split sewn shut. And the up-thread talk about "bag rock" has nothing to do with the split or non-split, it's talking about how the line stow points are closer to the centerline of the bag. I don't know if that makes that much of a difference in "bag rock" but I like it for the simple reason that shorter stows gives you more control over how much excess you end up with, rather than having to choose between "way to little" and "a crapload". /edited to add: and the Mirage split bags don't have velcro on them. I certainly would not want velcro that close to my lines if I could help it.

What state do you live in?