champu

I'd like to introduce a mandatory participation program where once a week a guy comes by and decks you in the face and gives you a dollar. Don't like it? No problem, don't take the dollar.

Congress as a whole is very much not amenable to compromises these days. Xkcd made an interesting graphic about it a little while ago. My comments in this thread, so I'm clear, are regarding the reading and passing of PPACA in the first place. It is defensible to have not "read the whole thing" and voted no, whereas not having "read the whole thing" and voting yes is reckless. I use quotes because politicians have staffers who "read the whole thing" and so I agree with the sentiment that the interviews in post #9 were cheap shots to score propaganda sound bites. The honest response to those questions would have been, "Of course I didn't read the whole thing you dolt. You realize we all have whole office staffs of employees, right? What do you think they do all day, just keep bringing us coffee?" But the current stalemate is not the passing of the PPACA. This is a different step in the process and one that's really not an appropriate venue to be hashing out compromises. Hell, passing CRs isn't even supposed to be a step in the process.

When it comes to a vote? Yeah, that's correct. It's pass/fail. There's no C-, B+, gold star, etc. The first time you get the bill and you're in the process of negotiations you can read the whole thing, redline out stuff you won't accept, and toss it back. If they go back and screw with it for a month and bring it to a vote and the stuff you struck out is still in there, you don't have to read the whole thing to vote no. By the time the bill is out of committee and goes to a general vote or the measure is on the ballot, you're not negotiating any more. pass/fail.

but we agree if i dont like the title i can stop right there and vote no. if i do like the title, i have to read the entire bill word for word to make sure there is nothing i do not like, before it is acceptable to vote yes. In addition to often being misleading, titles are inoperative, so there's never any reason to make a decision based on the bill's title. In fact, the entire forward/summary you see at the beginning of legislation that supposedly tells you what the bill does is inoperative. It's the team that wrote its sales pitch. It's not until you get down to the part where it starts talking about adding, removing, and changing parts of sections of various legal code that bills start doing anything. /edited to add side note: I didn't say "one thing I don't like" I said "one thing that is unacceptable"

The title of pretty much any legislation is the least useful part of it to read. (see: Defense of Marriage Act, Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act, etc.)

Indeed, losing a job that provided health insurance has always meant losing that insurance, and it always will. That said, a promise that people could keep their plan while mandating changes that necessitated the rewokring of most plans (I'm having trouble finding what percentage of people prior to PPACA had plans that had a lifetime coverage limit, for example, but I can safely guess "a very high percentage") is a promise that is doomed to be broken. There are special cases where waivers against these changes could be made, and fees are imposed, but if you have a group plan through your employer, the individual isn't the one negotiating for a waiver or not. That said... If you have a policy through a large employer group plan, you'll probably see your premiums go up modestly (starting a couple years ago) and your coverage won't really change significantly. I'm in this boat. c'est la vie. If you had insurance from a small company or had an individual plan... *throws hands up in the air* who the hell knows. Depending on your age, and how long it's been since you've shopped for a plan, I think all bets are off as to what's going to happen to your costs/coverage.

As opposed to those who voted against it and didn't bother to read it? A thousand times yes. I only have to find one unacceptable thing in a contract to not sign it. In order to sign it, I have to ensure it is devoid, in its entirety, of unacceptable things. That's why my advice on state ballot measures is always "if you didn't even read it, don't vote on it. If you read it and you either disagree or part of it doesn't make any sense to you, vote no. If you read it, understand it, and agree with it, then vote yes." Now, that said... Given the length and the constantly changing nature of licensing agreements, terms of service, and warranty disclaimers on everything in existence, I highly doubt this. Otherwise, god forbid I ever get stuck behind you in a line for anything anywhere. The nature of the document and the product/service will dictate the amount of attention you need to give it. I don't care at all about the fine print booklet shoved in the packaging of an HDMI cable or the terms of service on this website. If I'm buying a cell phone, subscribing to cable, or renting a car, I'll scan the whole thing but I'm really just looking for fees. Once you've done it a few times they're pretty easy to sniff out. Buying/refinancing a house, financing a car, buying insurance, hiring a general contractor, taking a job, voting for ballot meausres... these you need to be very particular about because the stakes can be a lot higher if you miss something. Yes everyone, I put ballot measures in the last group as they are very frequently major purchases. (See Exhibit 1A) Waivers at dropzones are an interesting category. My assumption is that they put everything they can possibly think of in there and say they aren't liable no matter what and I'm not even allowed to try suing anyone. And that's fine because you'd have to get so far out into a pathological case where someone who worked for the dropzone actively tried to kill me before I'd bring legal action, and I don't care what the waiver says, it's not going to protect against that. So while the gravity (har har) of the contract is very serious, I usually do more of a skim, making sure they don't squeeze anything weird in there like try to claim ownership of photos or video I shoot while jumping there.

Exactly what I was thinking. There's more to every story... I watched the videos in post #50 of the thread and it's clear that this was a "get everyone on motorcycles that we can into a swarm, take over the roads, screw traffic laws and other people." kind of event. There's people riding across all lanes of traffic, riding wheelies through red lights, weaving between moving city traffic both with and against the flow of traffic on both sides of the road. So, having observed that, and noting this guy had his wife and baby in the car with him... What did the motorcyclists get out of bed with the intention of doing that day? What did the SUV driver get out of bed with the intention of doing that day? What intention did the guy who pulled in front of him, looked over his shoulder and hit the brakes have? What intention did the SUV driver have when he first came to a stop? What intention did the crowd of motorcyclists have when they surrounded the SUV and started getting off their bikes and approaching it? What intention did the SUV driver have when he floored it out of there? What intention did the motorcyclists have when they then pursued the SUV? There are pieces of the story missing at this point, and the people involved are all gonna come up with fascinating versions of what happened I'm sure, but I'm not holding my breath for evidence that makes me feel sympathy for any of the motorcyclists, injured or not.

just wallowing in the stereotypes here: that's very conservative of you - the fact that you give voluntarily wouldn't your liberal mindset require you to want to give more to the government and let them decide what to give to veteran causes - it's not really your money to choose how you provide charity. It's pretty selfish of you to give to one cause when the government knows better who it should go to. I'll bet she writes off the donations to pay lower taxes too! She should decline the deduction and voluntarily pay more taxes if she wants to call herself a... er... wait, I forgot why people make that argument...

Dude, underhand throw right over the middle of the plate...

No, I haven't and I've been cruising around this patch longer than most. There's no such thing as a jumper with far fewer than 200 jumps. You can't have less than 0 jumps and that's not far fewer than 200. Did I miss something or does everyone but me live 8 hours one way from the nearest 182 tandem factory where it takes an entire skydiving career to get to 200 jumps? You can cork and have a collision with another jumper that results in injury while freeflying in the tunnel or while in the sky, so it can be helpful in preventing that. But even that's not simulated perfectly, because if you go to a fast backfly position in the tunnel and end up on the net it's not a big deal, but you just bombed out the bottom of the formation on a skydive. Is that a problem? *shrugs* it may result in one if you don't get back where you belong before breakoff.

Not as a general rule, no. As I said, zero as a number is more abstract than people usually give it credit for. 0/0 is undefined (meaning it doesn't have a defined value) and futhermore it's indeterminate (meaning, roughly, there's not even a way to figure out what values are near it.) Hmm - Infinitive nothingness? Infinitive? What do I look like, an English major?

You know who else was an (N-1)/N kinda guy...?

Not as a general rule, no. As I said, zero as a number is more abstract than people usually give it credit for. 0/0 is undefined (meaning it doesn't have a defined value) and futhermore it's indeterminate (meaning, roughly, there's not even a way to figure out what values are near it.) Btw, I was just trying to be funny but, as can happen with math jokes, accidentally produced an interesting [to whom?] result. The disconnect is that theists are claiming, "1/1", and atheists are saying, "0/0." but the theists interpret that as, "0/1." 0/1 is an absolute viewpoint that can come off as extreme. But 0/0 is indeterminate. Not believing in something that doesn't exist is indeterminate. Just like you can set up any number of limits that go to 0/0 and approach any value you want, you can come up any number of things that don't exist to not believe in. This doesn't mean atheists specifically, diligently, and actively don't believe in all these things. 0/0 doesn't equal all possible numbers, it equals none of them. On the other side of the coin, atheists hear, "1/1" and interpret that as, "1/0." You can set up any limit you want that approaches 1/0, but it will always diverge to infinity. So believing in something that doesn't exist is determinate. It diverges to infinity. The flying spaghetti monster (as well as references to the tooth fairy, unicorns, etc.) is an attempt to illustrate the indeterminate nature of the atheists belief of 0/0. But it doesn't really illustrate it very well and ends up just being a mockery of the divergent nature of 1/0, probably why the FSM has convinced exactly zero theists that they're "wrong." So how do a person who believes 1/1 and a person who believes 0/0 reach a common ground? Simple, tell the guy who keeps going on about math to shut up already.

Not as a general rule, no. As I said, zero as a number is more abstract than people usually give it credit for. 0/0 is undefined (meaning it doesn't have a defined value) and futhermore it's indeterminate (meaning, roughly, there's not even a way to figure out what values are near it.)

That's because you live in Massillon, OH. If someone could afford an $864K home in Massillon, OH, you're right, they would not be middle class. Middle class people. It's just that in Mountain View that means "people who can afford $864K homes."

The concept of "zero" (as a quantity, not just a placeholder in a number system) is actually less intuitive and more abstract than many people realize. If I have 0 apples, we all understand what that means. We know what apples are. We agree they exist despite my current lack of them. We can easily imagine having had some quantity of apples at some point in the past, not having any now, and perhaps having some more in the future. Mathematically, in our subconcious, what we're doing is saying that I have 0/(some big number of all the apples or all the apples I care to imagine at the moment) and we all end up on the same page. Theism is a bit more peculiar. I'll use monotheism in the next example, but any finitetheism would work the same way. Suppose there's a god. An atheist does not believe said god exists (that is, believes in 0/1 gods) and is "wrong." A monotheist believes in said god (that is, believes in 1/1 gods) and is "right." Simple... okay, now suppose there is no god. An atheist does not believe in any god (that is, believes in 0/0 gods, which is undefined) and "just doesn't have a defined opinion." A monotheist believes in a god (that is, believes in 1/0 gods) and is "out of his or her mind." I know what you're thinking... god is infinite... okay... then the values become 0/inf=wrong, inf/inf=undef, 0/0=undef, inf/0=insane respectively... Look, the point is as atheists we may be wrong, but we're definitely not out of our minds. That's more than theists can say.

Thanks for sharing the link, WWII is an amazing trove of individual stories.

When an atheist who espouses science criticizes religion and you call him a wizard, you have to admit that's rather amusing. That said, his point was that the foundational texts for religions haven't changed, and yet what is considered "moral" or "just" based on the interpretation of them has. From that observation he concludes it was never the religious texts driving morality in the first place, even if they are used as a tool to communicate some of the moral principles of the day.

http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=4513149#4513149 I'm not saying measures in the ACA don't help anyone, I'm saying claims that there isn't a raw end of the deal in all this are not in touch with reality. http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=4540749#4540749 Whatever agreements are made on the final stage of negotiations, they could have just as easily been made at the authorization stage of legislation without all the drama; I blame everyone at the table. When politicians from either side of the aisle get control of a state or federal entity these days they go immediately into "mandate from the people" mode and they act like a contestant on a gameshow in one of those phone booths with cash being blown around inside.

I was looking through some photos with emmiwy in anticipation of a certain boogie next weekend at Elsinore and I decided there's a whole category of images that can be summarized as "boogie chaos." Any freefall photographer who has been to a boogie knows what I'm talking about, so out with it. I'll get the ball rolling with a handful that I stumbled upon this evening... [inline boogie_chaos_1.jpg] [inline boogie_chaos_2.jpg] [inline boogie_chaos_3.jpg] [inline boogie_chaos_4.jpg] [inline boogie_chaos_5.jpg]

Does the plane have straddle-bench seating, floor seating, or some combination thereof? The reason I ask is because if you're sitting on the floor of the aircraft leaning against a large student/rental rig you have to be particularly mindful of your main handle so it doesn't either walk into or out of the BOC pouch as you shift around. You should always be careful, of course, but floor seating with large rigs exacerbates the issue. The bench set up in some aircraft (not just the PAC) also makes for a point in the climb where, after seatbelts come off, a couple people move from the bench to the floor, dragging their BOC/main handle and pin covers over the edge of the bench if they're not careful about it. This is also often the point in the climb where the door is opened on hot days, so care must be taken not to let a pilot chute work its way out. If I'm sitting near the door I will hold the door closed until after belts come off, people finish maneuvering, and I'm convinced no pilot chutes have come out. Sometimes this will require ignoring complaints from others on the plane for a whole 10 seconds, but complaints don't tend to wrap themselves around the tail of the aircraft quite like a canopy will. Bottom line: Always remember that thing on your back moves when you do and it has three handles and two parachutes that you're responsible for.

FYI, there was a thread started back in May with the same link (and I'm pretty sure I had seen it posted somewhere else mid-some-thread prior to that, but I couldn't find it just now.) There was a New York Magazine article posted in that thread and some interesting discussion about it there. "Okay, campers, rise and shine, and don't forget your booties 'cause it's cooooold out there today. It's coooold out there every day. What is this, Miami Beach?"

http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=3845874#3845874 http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=4440215#4440215 You're not helping me convince myself that I have anything left to add on speakers corner topics.

You mean the victims and the families about which you stop reading when you get to the end of the headline? I think it can be interesting to note the order in which information is presented in news articles (and I've done it myself here recently) but it's important to remember you're talking about what the editor thinks will grab as many members of the audience as possible. So if a piece of information is completely omitted from an article that's one thing, but I am hesitant to fault a news agency for having less dramatic headlines. Here, let's try this on the original article you posted, "'Islam,' 'Muslim' censored from newspaper reports on Kenya, Pakistan attacks" Bam... "Islam", "Muslim", and "censored from newspaper reports" right in your face. Sounds like some serious shit is up, let's read on... 1) Conjecture that newspaper reporters are incompetent (and we're off to a good start) 2) Nairobi, Kenya (where) 3) last weekend (when) 4) Islamist militants (religious affiliation of who) 5) executed non-Muslims in a mall and suicide bombed a Christian church elsewhere (what and religious affiliation of to whom) 6) 9 out of top 10 circulated newspapers did not use the words "Islam" or "Muslim" in the headlines of the stories about these events. 7) they list the specifics of headlines that, in fact, do not contain the words "Islam" nor "Muslim" and state that it's not until you read the article that you come across this information. ...So what's worse? Having to read beyond the headline to get all the details I care to know about a story, or having to read beyond a headline to learn that the headline itself is total bullshit?