champu

NOT Scrooge McDuck swimming around in money that isn't earning anything, like you are. The rich make their money work for them - it can't do that stuffed in a mattress. Swimming around money they aren't earning? I have one of the dirtiest, nastiest jobs right now, what the fuck are you talking about? As an adult I've never received welfare, except unemployment, you really don't know a thing. As for the rich and their money, I was addressing the "fare share" comment by another poster, try to keep it in context for once. The fact that they make their hard stolen money work for them has nothing to do with who pays what taxes. Try to keep up. I love how many heated arguments occur on this website as a result of people not paying attention to what the other person is arguing or, in this case, not paying attention to what they themselves just asked. ...goes great with coffee.

Everything in moderation.

our spending. What I take away from that is our government has simply become a victim of its own size. The more large rectangles you start to see on plots like that, and the larger they become, the more it guarantees that any failure or shortcoming in that area is catastrophic to our deficit/debt/economy. United we stand, divided we fall. Yeah, well... united (by large government programs) we can also fall... only from much higher.

http://www.nationalpost.com/related/links/story.html?id=2493271 I caught wind of this today. I think these stories rarely show up on people's radar.

There's a difference between preferring to collect 78 cents over 0 cents on your dollar (CY$ mind you) at retirement and being an advocate of a pyramid scheme that is doomed to failure. I would happily overlook my sunk costs in social security if the program was halted outright tomorrow. I make no further payments, and I never see a dime of the money I've paid in over the last decade. I'm completely fine with that, I'll still come out way ahead.

Wow... okay... first off most fossil fuel deposits are caused by plankton, which sink to the bottom of whatever sea they happen to be in when they die. Given time this will result in quite the pile, as you say. Other geologic processes (silt deposition, tectonic activity, glacial movement, etc.) can reposition these layers up on continents, below the ocean floor, you name it. Now, your questions... the basis of a diamond is elemental carbon. The basis of oil and other fossil fuels are a combination of complex organic molecules. You won't get much beyond methane without involving a living organism to add the complexity for you.

During the keynote Jobs accidentally referred to it as an iPod at least once that I noticed. The iPad has too many of the same limitations that my iPhone has. I'm perfectly willing to accept them because, hey, it's a phone. And, unlike the iPad, my iPhone is a phone. (and a camera and an mp3 player that fits in my pocket.) I think Apple may be overestimating the transferability of excitement people had over the iPhone to a product like this.

The first 10 million years were the worst...

Hey! Don't you use that term. That's their term.

If people aren't willing to accept and abide by a solution then it's not really a solution is it? If people continue to insist on making things way more complicated than they have to be, there aren't going to be easy answers. Agreed. Things can just as easily be over-complicated as they can be over-simplified. /edited to add: but if you're still holding out hope for an "easy" answer to a problem that involves this many people then you may find that hope wearing on you in not too long.

If people aren't willing to accept and abide by a solution then it's not really a solution is it?

Well.. hopefully we could all tell that ending no-bid contracts above $25,000 was an absurd idea. If a team of four people take a week to prepare the proposal request and a week to review the bids then there goes your $25,000. What's a better threshold? I'm not really sure. $25M which this contract would fall under? Maybe. Depends on a lot of things besides just money... is it a service contract or a procurement? is it fixed-price with solid requirements or a cost-plus science project? Is there an incumbent (to some degree) and how have they been performing? Is there a company that clearly has relevant capital invested equal to a significant portion of the value of the contract? Is there a "hard-deck" threshold in dollars that trumps the above considerations?

http://xkcd.com/534/

Global Hawks are also not armed. And, like the U2, will probably never be. The furthest level of autonomy being pursued in armed (or "combat") unmanned air systems is in battle space management as Jan was referring to. Basically the aircraft are put on autonomous patrols and when an operator wants to attack something they take over one of the aircraft, and the system identifies the best one for the job. The focus is on improving timeliness and relieving pilots of endurance limitations. A bomb dropped by a remote controlled drone that flew out to and patrolled its target area autonomously is probably safer than one dropped by a pilot flying hours in and hours out several times a week. There should always be a human in the loop, and it shouldn't be an exhausted one.

The "extremist movement" (which I'll refrain from referring to wholesale as Al-Qaida) sees the resolve of the civilian populace as the weak link in the chain, and they're correct. It's an interesting illustration of just how backwards the culture is between the west and islamic nations in the middle east and southwest asia. Over there you have fringe fundamentalists conducting attacks on us and claiming they are doing so because they think we have it in for the whole of Islam. When we attack the leadership of the fundamentalists in return (establishing, one would hope, that we really just have it in for the people who are trying to kill us) a large portion of the greater populace interprets this as the affront to Islam that the fundamentalists claimed was happening. A smaller, but real, portion joins the fight. Over here you have our executive arms conducting attacks on the fundamentalists claiming they are doing so because the fundamentalists have it in for the whole of the west. When fundamentalists conduct or attempt an attack on the greater populace or make death threats over cartoons (establishing, one would hope, that those few fundamentalists do have it in for the whole of the west) a large portion of the greater populace interprets this as evidence that they are right in thinking that we really just need to leave them alone. A smaller, but real, portion votes the current leadership out of office. Note: I realize I say "fundamentalists" seven times in this post (now eight) but the third paragraph was a mess to follow calling everyone "they."

By all means... ignore my last post if doing so suits your argument. I'm sure professional seismologists would not have witnessed what happened on 9/11 before. Particularly if they primarily studied controlled demolitions as opposed to buildings buckling like a soda can after planes had been flown into them.

I think it would be interesting if contributions directly to political campaigns by both individuals and organizations were limited to campaign logistics (e.g. candidate travel, campaign staff salary, etc.) and all contributions to ad campaigns (including but not limited to signage, television/radio spots, and booking of speaking venues) could be made with no limits, but had to be made directly, and with clear indication of the sponsoring individual/organization. And I mean in-your-face clear. Think "Allstate Sugar Bowl", "AT&T Cotton Bowl", and "Fedex Orange Bowl". Don't want a bad name? Don't get bad sponsors.

That's correct.

Back on topic a little... here's a video and, more importantly, audio of a fairly tall (looks like about 35 stories) building being demolished: link I think a seismologist could figure that out.

Of all the technical subjects I studied in school, Fourier analysis is one of the top three that really stand out as being the kind of thing that should be taught universally. It sits at the heart of much more complicated topics that I wouldn't subject people to against their will, but I think the basics could be taught qualitatively without too many exploding heads.

I would submit that it is in spite of special interest groups Just about every special interest group has a contrary counterpart, so you are absolutely correct. I don't think that simply because there are losers there necessarily has to be a winner though. Kallend's argument is that we shouldn't force language on the greater population because a particular special interest group wants it that way. I agree with that, but in the case of CA prop 8 the forcing was being done by the LDS church.

There's this dude sitting in a room in a basement wearing big 1960s headphones looking at a needle move around on a strip chart and suddenly the needle starts flying around and the guy goes, "whoa!" and throws his headphones off and fails out of his chair as the single light flickers in the hanging fixture that starts swaying ever so slightly back and forth. He slowly collects himself and peers over the strip chart paper, now slightly torn as the machine was knocked over in the commotion. His eyes dance back and forth rapidly looking over the squiggles that were recorded and then at once they come to a stop and he looks up into the camera and says softly, "...my god..." [FTB] /edited to add: Oh wait right... my mistake... that's not how it works.

Has anyone here jumped with snowboarding/snowmobile goggles anyway? They stick out quite a bit further than skydiving goggles and my guess is (unless you crank them down uncomfortably tightly) certain orientations will catch wind and tilt them away from your face making it hard to see (and if that wasn't bad enough your video is now pointed off who knows where.) This would be exacerbated by the fact that the strap attachment points on snowboard goggles are positioned with the intent of the strap going over the helmet, which would be no good for skydiving. If you put the helmet on over the strap/goggles, you'll probably bow the goggles away from your face, letting wind in.

Is it, in your opinion, possible for the word marriage to ever evolve through common usage to include homosexual unions? Yes, that is possible. It hasn't happened yet, nor should it be forced by the government or the courts. I would argue that the evolution is under way, and the government should neither force it, nor stand in the way. Legislation like prop 8 is adding control of language to state constitutions on behalf of special interest groups.

Two and two is four, but there's more to the story than just corporations chasing a bottom line. A three way tug-of-war between shareholders, labor representatives, and governmental regulation has negatively impacted our manufacturing base. That's not to say treating workers and the environment well aren't good ideas, just that the interests of the three are mutually exclusive so long as uprooting the whole operation or people buying goods from elsewhere remain alternatives. It's interesting to me that people can't put 2 and 2 and 2 together about China's manufacturing capacity, their desire to be treated as a "developing nation" in international pollution regulations (allowing them less strict standards), and their willingness to shut down access to the internet, text messaging, and international phone calls for months on end if people get out of line.