champu

yeesh. I make earnest posts here that get ignored all the time and then I try being a little silly with tags that say [devil's advocate] and out comes the parade of disapproving emoticons...

You would be correct, but I forgot the [devil's advocate] tags I used earlier in the thread on that last post. I actually do think it's funny, however, that there are people who (most likely) don't believe in evolution AND would need the state to step in for their kid to get life-saving medical treatment AND they would be pissed about the state imposing a belief system on them AND (again most likely) are anti-abortion.

The kid lives, instead of dies. That's not the aftermath, that's the math. I'm talking about either A) a kid dying of natural causes not knowing any better or B) growing up removed from parents that basically tried to kill him or her or C) a complete legal disaster for the state if the kid dies in the hospital anyway. Look, do you really want to argue with a family that says, "We're religious and that means we're pro-life, we don't believe in evolution, we're going to pray for our child in lieu of seeking medical attention, and we've taught him or her to think like we do." Not only is it a self-correcting problem it's hilarious in a morbid sociopathic kinda way.

[devil's advocate] In situations where parents beat on or otherwise abuse their kids it's probably a good idea to step in and stop it because the kid really can't see the situation for what it is, and if left alone the kid is going to grow up to have all kinds of baggage and be a messed up member of society. But if parents would rather pray with the kid in their home than take him or her to a hospital and, as a result, the kid dies believing along with the parents that it was God's will... where's the problem? What does the aftermath look like if the state steps in, pulls the kid away from the parents, and puts him or her in a hospital? [/devil's advocate]

Whereas your haphazard use of question marks makes me feel like Adam West and Burt Ward are going to break down the door any minute now and haul you off. Indeed?

Jumping with Joe F#$%ing Jennings is a waste of your time with him when you could be listening to any of the many stories that guy has to tell about his adventures.

"I can't hear you... you're trailing off. And did I catch a "niner" in there? Were you calling from a walkie-talkie?"

The worst pick-up line that has ever worked: at a bar during new years shortly after midnight... "How's 2003 treating you so far?"

Interestingly... The Richter Scale is the only system I'm familiar with that actually uses bels as a system of logarithmic measurement (as opposed to decibels or dB used virtually everywhere else) Bottom line is that an increase of 0.3 on the Richter Scale translates to an earthquake of twice the energy. (note: this is not the same as saying twice the amplitude.) /edit: changed "Bels" to "bels" because units of measure aren't capitalized when spelled out, only when abbreviated and originating from a proper name. ...I'm a fucking blast at parties.

"Go on, I steal from the rich. Are you rich?" "No, I'm … comfortable." "That's no good, I can't steal from the fairly well off and give to the moderately impoverished! That's not gonna swing, is it?"

I woke up just before 4 for no apparent reason so I was awake already. Down here in the beach cities it was a "bump... ...rumblerumblerumble" and that was it. At the time I thought it was about a 3.5 that was close by.

yeow! A few years back a large delivery of LN2 was dumped in a parking lot at my work when a component on the delivery truck failed. It froze and shattered the tires on several vehicles parked nearby.... /edited to add: ...among other damage.

If I'm going to bother commenting in a thread, I'll at least give the article in the OP a once over. If I post links to anything its usually a news article for the purpose of calling attention to an event to discuss it. I don't data mine as a past time, and I don't claim any of my opinions are rooted in such an activity. What I do here, as a past time, is point out glaring oversights in people's arguments and conclusions. The more elaborate the argument and the more cocksure the conclusion, the more satisfaction I derive from asking the person to consider important factors I think they omitted, accidentally or otherwise. The right wing folks kinda phone it in on these boards, you know that. And when I point out the "left wing" areas of concern that do need consideration they usually don't argue with me about it. But the left wing folks, holy cow, they got viewgraphs and spreadsheets and they're ready to take that shit to the boardroom. So try not to worry so much about what "my side" is, as you may find the indicators you're going on are an artifact of which arguments need more tempering.

If you think people paying $13,243.20 (12.4% times $106,800) into social security every year are going to see a payout that is anything but insulting when they retire you are mistaken. How about sacking social security payouts altogether, keeping the tax around until we pay off the national debt and then kill the program off? [tongue-in-cheek] Old retired people are a terrible investment anyway.[/tongue-in-cheek]

A few comments, things to consider... Sorry for the long post, this thread is fairly spastic and a few things came up I wanted to comment on. If they're talking about average net worth increase from roughly the beginning of 2009 to the present I'm shocked it only went up 16%. You'd be seething if I told you how much my net worth increased between February 2009 and today, but I would hope you'd settle down if I extended the start date back another year. First off, this interest earned from the trust fund... where does it come from? Is interest just "magic money" in this example? Who is managing the fund and making sure it earns efficiently? What is their fee? I'll come back to this in a second. I find it interesting that in the same thread there's talk about working hard and getting ahead being a fairy tale and also a desire to send everyone through college for free. If everyone went to college what percentage of people would end up with useful (economically) degrees? And I don't mean that as an argument that some degrees are always useless, I mean to say that some degrees are more popular than others, and some will saturate the market faster than others. How far ahead do you really think such a move would get us, and at what cost? So the rich make money in a few different ways, and I separate them out because they need to be considered seperately 1) they provide organization/IP to groups of workers resulting in a product that is worth more than the sum of its parts. 2) they take money from not-as-rich people on mutually agreed to terms, attempt to make money with it, and return a portion of the gain to the not-as-rich person (see trust fund comment above) and 3) by virtue of being at the top of a hierarchy, they take advantage of excess productivity generated by hard workers that go above and beyond their pay rate. This hard work may be compensated through raises/bonuses, but generally the boss pockets a lot of it. It's hard to argue against 1) and 2) when you separate them out. These are the "labors" of the rich, and they are things they justly deserve to be compensated for. But now let's look at 3). 3) is the one that gets people's goat. 3) is how the rich "stand on the backs of the workers." And if you could quantify 3), it would be a fantastic way to figure out what the government might give back to the people once you taxed it from the rich. But this isn't the basis of social programs people propose. You're just making a list up as you go along. "Free college for everyone! that sounds great! put that on the list!" And before you complain that "The Jones' next door have socialized blah blah blah" keep in mind that the Jones' probably also have a different culture that makes the size of 3) different. You can legislate socialized blah blah blah, but you can't legislate culture and a discrepancy here will result in disaster. In the recent financial mess, some CEOs walked away with vast sums of money while investors got the shaft. This comes from people gaming 2) to get ahead, and generates a lot of resentment for rich people in general. I would agree that regulations should be employed to prevent that from happening again, but that is a wholly separate issue from determining a sustainable level of social programs we can achieve in our culture.

Exhibit A Exhibit B Discuss.

Any time someone says something you don't agree with you should go to a source you hate and see if you can find any information about it there. Then you post the link to that source yourself, dismiss it as "partisan bullshit", and you can get back to leaning back in your chair with your arms folded in no time! Wikipedia has lofty goals and I think they do a "reasonably okay" job of them. You can read the talk pages of articles that are controversial and get the rationale and sources that go along with many of the edits, which is nice. But people use some pretty horrendous sources to write some of the material and if there's a dispute it usually degenerates down to, "he who speaks last is heard loudest." So I'd recommend using wikipedia as a way to find sources and not refer to it as a source itself. You may find that what you were about to quote originally come from someone's blog or from an organization's mission statement page.

I really hope for the sake of humor everywhere you're not talking about digital and RF mixed-signal devices.

I'm curious as to just how many layers of nutcase-ness one has to peel back to get to the bottom of why a woman living in the western world would sympathize with fundamentalist muslims.

You've seen how people fly canopies at boogies, have you not? That's the picture I get in my head when someone talks about "the average skydiver."

That's actually the only reason I know how to drive a manual. My roommate had one in college and someone else had to be able to drive on road trips.

Well there would probably be less drivers, which it's hard to argue is a bad thing. But people won't put away distractions just because you make driving more complicated, they'll just do everything even less safely. You might stop a few drunk drivers who aren't able to back their car out of a parking space though.

But I thought "N" stood for "Never Use - Car Will Flip" About 10 years ago I had a car's cruise control malfunction on the freeway and go WOT. The order of troubleshooting went: brakes? no. Cruise control button? no. Neutral? Ah... coasting to a stop. Time elapsed was probably around 4 seconds. The one thing I didn't do was turn my hazards on or use my turn signals as I was getting over to the shoulder. People probably thought I was just an asshole.

I wouldn't trust them to guard a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. aww c'mon, why not?

My mother passed away 4 years ago. If anyone had actually benefitted from this, and had someone come to me with a rickety case stating she had been murdered, I would be more likely to be taken in by the case because of my emotions on the issue. But how strongly I felt about it would have had no bearing on what actually happened. This is why murder suspects are tried by a jury and not the victim's family. I don't get riled up reading and posting here, and I don't really care what you think happened on 9/11. I just think the internet is an interesting place to see the different ways people construct arguments and defend their point of view. You claim to be approaching this whole thing very objectively, but I think that's far from the case. Your repeated statements about feeling ridiculed and your thirst for the downfall of those who disagree with you only serve to drive this point further home.