champu

Really? You've met "many" MIT students, who you both (a) know their math skills and (b) have seen crash U-hauls into bridges with exactly a 2 foot interference? Exactly how many? I've never crashed a U-haul (or in fact anything) into an overpass (or in fact anything) having not graduated from MIT. So, that's one instance of the contrapositive. Also, if a grad student can figure out a math equation then its complexity oughtn't strain ones credulity.

I'm inclined to doubt your 40.4% number unless you're self-employed and are including self-employment/FICA in there. Keep in mind nobody actually pays an effective rate equal to their marginal rate.

Is there...

Carbon dioxide emissions cause spying.

What the hell is a classified patent? (other than an oxymoron) Several types of special patents (or things like patents) I get the "things like patents" (maybe even a patent application that was pulled under a secrecy order) and I figured that's what he meant, I just find the term funny because the two words are incompatible.

I'm not suggesting anything... Little did you know...

What the hell is a classified patent? (other than an oxymoron)

So... I was just at another career expo for two days at my alma mater last week talking to students and taking resumes. As usual I encountered all four corners of the "doing well in classes" and "able to explain what they've done and what interests them about their field" gamut. So in terms of verbal communication skills I'd say those have to develop in parallel with putting your nose in a book. Some areas of study are obviously more focused on problem solving, and just like any exercise, you get better at it the more you do it. You're suggesting that too much focused exercise in one area can leave a person "muscle bound" where they can bench-press a metric ton but can't scratch their lower back. I think that's quite possible, but more of an extreme case than people think. Not everyone going to the gym comes out looking ridiculous and not everyone who gets a bachelors or even a masters or PhD is an academic snob. Classes that require a lot of memorization and/or exposure to existing ideas may seem like they are narrowing your world view, but if you approach them "correctly" then they give you an important foundation to build on. There's a risk that you'll come away from a class like that thinking, "I have all the ideas in my head now," and that's no good, but if you never study it there's an even greater risk you'll come up with seemingly novel ideas that are actually old news and doomed to failure.

warning right off the bat: the audio in the linked videos is a bit loud. Okay for reference, because I'm the one who hijacked the other thread, here's a velocity 90 (with a little coaxing to the right to keep it on heading) taking a little less than 500 ft to open... http://media.chaz720.net/videos/velo.mov ...and here is the katana 107 opening I referenced in the other thread where a tension knot hung up the slider on the left side and the canopy still didn't take 1000 ft to open... http://media.chaz720.net/videos/snivel.mov So for those of you saying you regularly have 800, 900, 1000+ ft openings, I want to believe you, but either whatever you're using as a reference is whack, or your canopy is a complete waste of altitude.

"I run Gentoo!!!!!!!!!!11111111337" I'm going to buy an iPhone 5 because I've been largely happy with my 3Gs, I want a faster phone with more storage and a better camera, I've got a bunch of software for it that I don't feel like throwing away, I use iTunes for my music library, and I make enough money such that I don't care if there are other phones that are basically the same thing and a little cheaper that I could eventually make serve my purpose. That said, there are a couple lessons I've learned from owning my 3Gs that I'll keep in mind... 1) Apple, or whomever they subcontract out to, doesn't know how to build cables. It's one of the few instances I can think of where the first party accessories are rubbish and the third party products last forever. I'm very delicate with my electronics but the Apple cables dry out and are too prone to cracking at the strain reliefs. It's a bit silly given the amount of energy they put into product engineering with all their aluminum and glass. 2) Don't upgrade more than one major iOS revision beyond the version that came on your phone. Clock cycles are not yet the trivial commodity on cell phones that they are on personal computers these days. Cell phones right now are more like computers at the turn of the century when, before making a software purchase, you actually had to read the system requirements/recommendations on the bottom of the box. With iOS 5, Apple, despite disabling most of the new features and capabilities advertised when installed on the 3Gs, managed to really make the phone run like Private Pyle climbs obstacles.

I'm offensive, and I find this very Christian.

I don't have any previous neck injuries but I do quite routinely jump with cameras on my head. So, to be clear, I definitely appreciate soft openings. But 500 ft or so is all you should need for a canopy to open comfortably in a properly staged fashion. Several years ago I had a 1000 ft opening on a katana 107 and it was because a tension knot caused the slider to hang up and it required action on my part to clear it. Often I find I'm talking apples to oranges though in what I consider to be "opening" vs folks who claim to have 800, 900, or 1000 ft "openings."

A 900 ft opening sounds like a cleared malfunction. Seriously, there's no reason for a canopy to take that long*. * unless you define "opening" to mean "looking at your altimeter, waving off, picking your nose, pulling, opening, screwing with your slider, and popping your brakes."

You're missing the problem. For Islamic hard-liners, many forms of insult from the west are unforgivable. Satirizing their Prophet or desecrating a copy of the Quran is actually worse than murder. There are places in the middle east where people can simply be paid off to go away if you were to... say... kill their parents. But if you burn that same person's Quran then they must see you dead. So from that frame of reference your above statement is akin to suggesting that they just keep killing westerners indiscriminately until we all eventually stop getting so bent out of shape over it. I made a similar post over in one of the other threads about Iranian nuclear facilities but I don't think anyone read it.

Proponents of proliferation (in this case, namely, Iran creating nuclear weapons) should take a look at the history of close calls between the US and the USSR during the cold war. Both sides of an embittered stand-off having them is not the guaranteed recipe for success that many folks suggest. US vs. USSR, India vs. Pakistan (still wouldn't call this one over), Iran vs. Israel... how many nuclear stand-offs involving mutual distrust/hatred and imperfect communication between leaders do we want to go for? Comparisons of an action against infrastructure supporting an internationally condemned nuclear program and actions against civilian populations may seem bizarre, but they shouldn't be unexpected. [Under perhaps unpopular yet quite relevant interpretations] Islam treats killing as an appropriate response to insult. So from that frame of reference, sure, insulting a nation by stalling their nuclear program is basically equivalent to indiscriminately killing a whole mess of people. In the context of a nuclear stand-off, this mentality is particularly distressing. What level of insult could be interpreted as a "first strike" warranting retaliation? And while the people of Iran may not universally think or behave this way, the cold war close calls should teach us that the decisions of only a handful of people are what make the difference. And, that being the case, it's incredibly important that those handful of people have a solid secular grounding.

Apparently it stands for "Cybercast News Service," but yeah, you get the idea...

Well, I am sure there is a word or two in over 11,000 pages. But it you really need a better metric, why didnt you comment on the cost part of the post? The article cites a source which says the following... And it doesn't go on to explain why more pages necessarily means more cost to comply with them, it just states it axiomatically. Personally, I think the length of a given regulation and the cost to comply with it would be largely uncorrelated. You can write short, clear, concise requirements that prohibit something and therefore cost a absolute fortune to implement. You can write requirements that are very long, loaded with lengthly definitions, to make it very clear what specific situation is being addressed that barely cost anything because they so rarely apply. Or you can write confusing, long-winded requirements that take a lawyers time * number of businesses in existence to sort out what it means to each business, and the behavior you were trying to regulate goes on because the actors in question squeeze through a loophole. It's fine to speak out / suggest we try and reduce regulations of this third type, but there seems to be no ammo in any of this information to make this about Obama or Bush or whomever. The study was conducted for the small business administration and the numbers are being tossed around carelessly by the chamber of commerce, so it's ripe for conflicts of interest, but there's a tempered statement buried in there that I think most can agree with. Concurrence gets easier and easier the less specific you get, but sometimes you have to take a step back.

Apparently you can't tell the difference between x < 250 and 200 < x < 250 Math skills ARE important. "'Middle income is $200,000 to $250,000 and less,' Romney responded." Sounds like x < 250 to me. But I'll just keep fiddlin' and you just keep dancin'. OK, assuming the AP reporter got it wrong and you are correct, $8,000/year is middle income according to Mitt (8 < 200). He's still out of touch. Apparently you can't spot the similarities between "x < 250" and "x < [200,250]" There are plenty of valid differences in the platforms of Romney and Obama to allow voters to discriminate. This is not one of them.

I have a bit of a problem with this metaphor. OK, how about firing a flaming arrow into a gasoline truck. That's not even metabolic. That's worse.

This was not specifically for JT, but it's a video I had started and forgotten about four years ago. It's all footage from the summer of 2008 during Jedi's second year with JT and the fun projects and trips that involved. I decided to finish it recently, and I thought I'd share. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3z8igoF2V0

I have a bit of a problem with this metaphor. The ambassador and consulate personnel were not killed by hornets, bears, nor piranhas. They were killed by human beings. Generally we make exceptions to the standards we hold human beings to in two instances 1) youth 2) mentally handicapped. In these cases we consider the mental capacity of the individual to be less than that of a fully developed adult human. Your metaphor of hornets suggests a sub-human reaction and therefore transference of responsibility. To suggest that insulting Mohammed can set off a sub-human reaction in people who are muslim but suffer from no mental infirmities is to suggest that belief in Islam, in and of itself, is a mental handicap. To blame the author of the film is to gravely insult people like in the attached photo.

No, they're just calculating their withholdings incorrectly. If your life is pretty stable year to year (not buying houses, changing jobs, getting married, or having kids) you shouldn't be owing or being refunded large sums of money. There are calculators online you can use but for every 800-900 bucks or so you receive as a refund, you should bump up your federal allowances on your W-4 by one. If you're owing that much, bump it down by one.* * if you think "800-900" is too low in that statement then you probably aren't the target demographic for my advice.

If a child that doesn't belong to someone I know goes missing and starts more than a 24-hour-child-wandering-distance away from me, it doesn't concern me and I don't really care.

Relax. What's amazing to me is that you interpret my posts as having been "taken in" by Morris's video.

I never defended Morris's 5% number. Also, I'm not married.