champu

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Everything posted by champu

  1. champu
    Unless you're talking about a small to medium sized coral atoll, it's not as easy as it sounds to "wipe things off the map." Much of Iran sits atop an extensive plateau which would make it particularly difficult to join the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf. Similarly, "bombing places back to the stone age" is an intractable goal. It's unlikely you'd destroy all post-stone-age technology on the surface, let alone in underground facilities. Even if you did, it wouldn't stay there very long as the inevitable influx of international aid workers would bring modern technology with them. Finally, I'd like to point out that "glass parking lots" would make terrible parking lots.
  2. champu
    Remember, this is the internet. So in the real story the "Brunette who likes posing with AR-15s" is a dude, the "firing range" is the dude's basement, the "Muslims" were a sandwich and a Mountain Dew, and "the banning" was eating them. A dude in his basement ate a sandwich and drank a Mountain Dew, why are we all so bent out of shape?
  3. champu
    How about... not ban all Muslims...? That's a serious answer by the way. Some guys were behaving in a disruptive fashion and she told them to leave. That's all you really have to do, and you're allowed to do that. The only thing banning Muslims does beyond that is prohibit people that aren't doing anything else you'd want to ask them to leave for from being there. Not surprisingly, some people will have a problem with that.
  4. champu
    Returning the bill to the house of origin with no signature is what vetoing means in California (and the United States.) They can still override it, but I don't think that's happened in California since the late 70s.
  5. champu
    "And I'm Smokestoomuch." "Well, you better cut down a little then." "I'm sorry?"
  6. champu
    "Hey... so um... there's this app my parents made..."
  7. champu
    Update: Brown vetoed SB 808 today. I like his veto message, it's almost exactly what I wrote in a letter to him earlier this month... http://gov.ca.gov/docs/SB_808_Veto_Message.pdf
  8. champu
    I don't know how often other people wash their canvas shopping bags... maybe my wife and I are gross? (actually did wash one recently when a bowl of fruit cracked and spilled all over the inside.) I used to hang plastic grocery bags on hooks next to the garbage can in the kitchen to collect recyclables, but they've gotten so thin and weak these days that I've given up on them altogether. Now I use retail / hardware store bags that ae a little bigger and heftier for the same purpose. This law isn't getting rid of those.
  9. champu
    http://gov.ca.gov/news.php?id=18742 http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201320140SB270&search_keywords= As of next summer grocery stores and pharmacies are banned from distributing (giving or selling) plastic bags. Paper or compostable bags may be provided, but for no less than $0.10. The summer after that, the same goes for convenience stores and liquor stores. Still allowed plastic bags are... Which covers my concerns... anyone else have thoughts?
  10. champu
    It goes beyond that even... it invalidates affirmative consent that she may have very well given if she was drunk when she gave it but then later says she "couldn't understand the fact, nature, or extent of the sexual activitiy." And his being drunk can't be used as an excuse for not being able to tell she was too drunk to have not understood what saying "yes" meant.
  11. champu
    The other issue is that the language of the bill makes being drunk yourself not a defense as well as rendering invalid what would otherwise be affirmative consent of the other person if they are "incapacitated" due to use of alcohol if you should have known they had too much to drink. Soooooooo.... Last one to the student services office is a rotten egg... er... rapist... And "incapacitated" dosen't mean "blackout drunk or passed out" which we can hopefully all agree would not be okay, it just means "not with the capacity to give consent" which could mean anything. They list "unconscious" separately.
  12. champu
    You wrote "surveyed" instead of "surveilled" so, yeah... you're over-qualified. Don't damn yourself with faint praise.
  13. champu
    I get what you're trying to say but I think, as lawrocket demonstrated, the only sensible takeaway is that "workplace violence" is just a dumb thing to try and classify events as being or not in general, not just in this case. "Terrorism / violent political actions rooted in religious fundamentalism" is a more useful category as is "long-term untreated schizophrenia" because each of those categories has a set of things you might propose or debate doing about them as a category.
  14. champu
    I must have missed the required declaration by Congress. I find the misuse of the words "technically" and "feasible" to be rampant. We should just delete those two words from the dictionary - they are more frequently used exactly 180 degrees from the real definition than the real defs are..... In before quade chews your ass off for suggesting this... /edited to add: This is the other reason why I think this is a terrible move. It sets a stupid and reactionary restriction on firearms usage that isn't based on fighting any actual statistical trends. This is the same kind of crap we have to deal with from legislators. And the support it gets has the same roots as all the idiotic gun laws out there: "Well, doesn't affect me..."
  15. champu
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Come_in_Peace
  16. champu
    I think it would be funny when it came time to teach that history to kids after they had been exposed to the concept of Chuck Norris jokes (or whoever replaces him in the jokes with time.) "You mean these jokes used to be about guy named Chuck Norris? Wait... did the jokes start before or after he became Attorney General? ...either way it worries me."
  17. champu
    I don't think anyone doing quite that much fawning over ISIL and the brand of Islam they espouse would have let one of their daughters near a flight suit in the first place, regardless of who she was fighting. The last statement in the letter is also a no-true-Scotsman fallacy.
  18. champu
    I read about that one... Turns out that's a terribly written version of the story. Try this one: http://www.gainesvilletimes.com/m/section/6/article/104844/
  19. champu
    http://abc7chicago.com/news/fbi-searches-home-probes-background-of-brian-howard/326017/ Portillos... so... probably not muslim.
  20. champu
    I don't fault police for making split-second decisions incorrectly. Here have been my thoughts on a few events over the last year. Hopefully its clear my stance on the issue is a little more nuanced than "bashing cops." http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=4518979#4518979 http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=4553786#4553786 http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=4572927#4572927 http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=4671683#4671683
  21. champu
    No, of course not. What part of my post(s) makes you think I do?
  22. champu
    I've watched the two videos you posted. My comment was in regards to the video in post #263 of the thread. You seem to be focused on the part where the motorist starts rummaging in his car. My focus is on 0:32 - 0:35 in the video, before the rummaging, where the officer has the motorist's undivided attention. He's stone still with his hands visible until the officer tells him to do something.
  23. champu
    Take care when dismissing peoples' imaginations. That said, the repeated comments that people "don't know what it's like" is all the more reason that if compliance in a particular manner is expected (under penalty of deadly force) then it has to be stated as such. Many people here have stated that they articulate actions and move slowly, and that's all well and good, but there's no "citizen academy" that everyone has to go to in order to learn how to not get shot by law enforcement. You can't say "it should be obvious not to suddenly lunge into the car" and claim "you don't know what we're up against" in the next breath. In most of these cases btw I don't have a problem with the offending officer merely being fired, I think it's just very difficult for that and only that to actually happen.
  24. champu
    Taxing for the purpose of directly affecting income distribution would be a bad thing, yes. Also, "highest wealth earners" and "a little more" are ill-defined terms, and it's unlikely any definition you give to them to achieve a reasonable consensus will match what would end up as policy.
  25. champu
    You forgot to make the hypothetical person work in a cement factory. Average surface temperature, not "temperature everywhere." And you really don't want the planet to be "alligators everywhere."