champu

Moving to LA from Chicago (about ten years ago now) my first thought was "where the hell are the mile markers / exit numbers?" My second thought was "where the hell are the cardinal directions?" For the uninitiated, you can come up on freeway interchanges and the two choices will just be two city names. No North, South, East, West, just "Fountain Valley" and "Seal Beach" and as a transplant I'm just thinking, "I don't know what that means! I want to go North!"

In Southern California the left lane is the "don't you know who I think I am" lane.

These responses reinforce the point I was trying to make by asking the question. Why make AGW the focal point in the debate for all the measures you want to take in an effort to prevent it if it is the worst venue to have the debate and the venue that your opponents prefer? Are people of the opinion that none of the parties involved in the debate (scientist, politician, pundit, or otherwise) have any desire but to argue as a distraction? Now there's an interesting angle, "Nuclear Power: The French haven't surrendered to its challenges, will you?" Hey!

What I've always found funny about the AGW debate over CO2 emissions is the myriad of other good reasons to wean off the burning of fossil fuels as an energy source. Why has AGW become this lynchpin of sorts?

Things shook here (Redondo Beach) a bit, but it was a fairly slow wobble.

Must be a NJ thing. Must be. Hell even the California state senator (whose gun control efforts I've shown much contempt for in the past several months) who just got popped for facilitating the trafficking of automatic weapons and shoulder-fired missiles into the US (among other crimes, the whole affidavit is a great read, but skip to pages 96-102 for the best part.) stated that visiting New Jersey made him feel like he was back in the 1950s. That's how you know New Jersey is corrupt.

Yup, you are a patriot if you condemn a man to death, or take up arms. You are an enemy of the state if you help pay for health care coverage for Americans. I neither wrote nor implied either of those things. Who are you arguing with?

What does portrait aspect mean? It means holding the phone vertically. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt9zSfinwFA

She shot video in portrait-aspect, so I have no problem with people condemning her.

Does the mortgage interest deduction force you to buy a house? Lack of a mortgage interest deduction is not a tax. Income tax is a tax. If you get a mortgage, the government allows you to deduct the interest you pay, essentially agreeing to split the interest bill with you, but you don't "come out ahead" of where you'd be if you hadn't gotten the mortgage in the first place. Similarly you can write off health insurance premiums for yourself, your spouse, and your kids (though not your domestic partner if, say, you're gay and live in a state that prohibits gay marriage.) In either case, you either make the purchase or you don't, and the government deductions allow you to afford more of that product... (...until everyone can afford more of that product and the price just goes up leaving you right where you started but mortgage banks, health insurance companies, and real-estate firms are all up. But that's another discussion.) In the case of the ACA you either get insurance and then you have insurance or you pay a fine to not have insurance. It is not like a deduction. It is more similar to car insurance requirements where you are subject to fine for operating a motor vehicle on public roads without insurance. The ACA is saying that every inch of land in the country is a "public road" and being alive is "operating a motor vehicle" on it. It's a new concept. If you think it's the right idea, that's fine, but acknowledge it for what it is. /edited to add: buying health insurance is now in a class with being called to jury duty and being drafted into the military.

I wonder if they know that you can turn the blinking lights off. Go Pros need not be the modern day L.A. Lights.

I worked at the service desk at a CompUSA in high school. My (least?) favorite was after replacing a video card that had overheated and died* we fire it up and the desktop wallpaper is a woman posing seductively on a stone alter, draped in a Nazi flag. * apparently the person was using their computer case both to house components and as a dryer vent based on how much lint was in it.

Alright, I'll bite, which class was it?

http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=4511242;#4511242

"If there's more than one way to do a job, and one of those ways will result in disaster, then somebody will do it that way." -Murphy, in reference to access covers on an ejection seat assembly that still fit when installed upside down.

Why not? Look at seat belt laws.

The last time I bought beer under any form of rules was my most recent cutaway. My main and freebag landed in a nearby trailer park and a couple folks there were a big help retrieving them off their trailers so I asked them what kind of beer they drank and took care of them. The time before that I botched my setup (too high/forward) shooting video of a formation swoop, passed between Tippie and JT as they came to a stop, and landed my canopy landed on the packing tent. It doesn't matter how many jumps you have, that's always beer. /edited to clarify that it wasn't that bad of a setup.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QRHa32O2oM&t=1m21s [inline cr2010.jpg]

I expect state politicians to continue passing idiotic and misguided state laws on top of what is there and on top of anything most people will admit to wanting. I expect federal politicians to always try and include assault weapon bans and bans on magazines over 10 rounds to anything they introduce. I expect people who claim to only want background checks to be more likely to come to an Internet forum to piss on my leg and tell me it's raining than to communicate with their representatives about the matter. I agree, but I expect the former.

Really? Have I ever said anything close to that? You're taking a page right out of the NRA play book; when ever any measure is suggested to regulate who can buy guns, no matter that 90% of the population is in favor of background checks, just flail your arms and scream that their coming to take all of your guns. I'm not talking about background checks and who can buy guns. I'm talking about the state we live in. Background checks are here, assault weapons are banned, magazines over 10 rounds are banned, most handguns are banned, it's nearly impossible to get a CCW permit, it's a serious crime if you let a minor or a prohibited person get their hands on one of your firearms because you didn't secure it properly, and yet, every year there are more laws. Some make it, some don't, but every year there's more. You care so little about what measures are taken that you think I'm complaining about background checks.

Because even in the presence of background checks and the absence of SYG laws (...and bans on assault weapons, and magazines over ten rounds, and handgun safety courses, and bans on any new handguns that don't have impossible technology) Democrats don't keep their gun control pets on leashes. You say you want reasonable measures, but the truth is you don't care what measures are taken.

That quote, taken as a whole, doesn't make sense. Also, there's a video associated with this story on that site where they talk about the first two paragraphs you quoted, and then have a quote from the guy they were interviewing which is completely different from that 'duty to retreat' line in the article. So I'm not sure who that line is supposedly quoting.

Thanks you guys, re-reading it now I've been a bit of a grump in this thread. The mechanics I understood but the legitimate reasons I understand a little better now. My concerns really do come down to the gaming aspect of it all. Yes the SEC is there, yes risk is generally higher when shorting, and yes there are upward analogs that are also quite bad. For some reason, despite all that, my mind sees the short-term downward gaming to be simpler/easier and qualitatively worse than other forms of manipulation and I've been taking it out on the instrument.

I'll save you a seat. Bring more cookies! Can I Tagalong?

Companies rise and fall, investments succeed and fail, I get the necessity of that. Again, the thing I find "special" about short sales is that you make your move, the security falls in value, and then you walk away from the table counting your money. Does the security's value recover? Did the value drop in favor of growth somewhere else? Who cares, the best thing that could happen to you when shorting is complete collapse of the security.