champu

Except road damage is roughly proportional to the fourth power of axle weight. More reasonable would be miles * weight^4 / axles^3. Damn. You're really going to stick it to me when I go rollerblading; I have 8 axles. Nah that's an inverse cubic so you're fine. Joggers are really screwed.

Except road damage is roughly proportional to the fourth power of axle weight. More reasonable would be miles * weight^4 / axles^3. Weight is a variable, better set up an integral.

You could require all cars to electronically report the delta odometer reading since the last time you put gas in it, and scales at all gas pumps to weigh the vehicle. Using these and the amount of gas sold the pump could calculate an "atmospheric and road wear tax" and apply it to the purchase price. ...of course you'd need a government agency with employees to be sure all scales and odometers were calibrated and operating accurately on a regular basis as well as bean counters to adjust all the rates based on region, climate, etc. ...and offices to collect the taxes and determine appropriate distributions to locals based on road miles and vehicle counts. ...and programs to supply upgrades to cars owned by the underprivledged, and scale installation subsidies for gas stations in low-income areas. Hell, if we're lucky, we might even break even.

http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2011-05-04-Bin%20Laden/id-0ad2c7b2dfb44cfc9309a4192827f3f8 The photo(s) are not going to be released. I think that's the right decision.

Don't get me wrong, I think partying in the streets over this is garish. I think the difference, however, is in regards to how people see the big picture of the conflict, how people measure success, and what path (if any) they're looking at towards an end to conflict. How do think the celebration of a soldier's death might differ from the death of an iconic leader in terms of the above?

The full text of the rule is, "'I' before 'e', except after 'c', or when you're spelling 'neighbor', 'weigh', 'neither', or a bunch of other words... oh, and ignore the except after 'c' part for words like 'science' or 'conscience'... you know what, just forget it..." It was abbreviated but, as a result, lost a lot of its usefulness.

I'm not sure why I would need to explain my reasoning in that situation as, after all, who the hell am I? Thanks for the concern though.

Or Salyut...? Apollo (specifically the lunar missions), Mir, and the shuttle are, I think, the best known manned missions. People have largely forgotten about other historical missions and the ISS has had relatively few hitches to call lots of attention to it. Hubble and the Mars probes / landers are probably the best known unmanned missions. Voyagers (that are still ticking), Chandra, MESSENGER, the EOS birds, et al. just aren't as sexy in the public's eye.

I find that to be a very sincere and accepting response to many areas. By the way, this is essentially what I was getting at with the clown-suit/forehead-asshole comment and only getting worried when the numbers get too large. If someone chooses to believe something I consider ridiculous or unjustified it doesn't bother me (e.g. alien UFO sightings, the westboro baptist church, people who believe the moon landing was a hoax, etc.) But if millions and millions of people believe something I consider ridiculous or unjustified and they let it influence their behavior at the polls (e.g. electing people to try and get ID taught as science in schools, banning research, CA prop 8, etc.) then suddenly I'm going to have a problem with it. That's the "so what." Now, I'm not going to respond with, "well god doesn't exist so you're opinion is wrong neener neener," but I am going to try and find out how their support or opposition for something relates back to their belief in god. Then I'm going to try and provide some other explanations for things (like where a moral code/law might come from) in an effort to sever their stance on a particular issue from their belief in god. I care about the former, not the latter. Some people take this as an affront to their faith even though I'm going to lengths to avoid doing that. Some people take this as simply me inserting some other "just as faith-based" opinion on the issue even though that's not the case either. And then some people just ignore me completely which I'm used to.

I'm really starting to love this thread title.

Well, nicknames of the people involved aside, the resumes of these three and the positions they're being put in may signal the start of that drawdown in Afghanistan everyone keeps murmuring about.

If one assumes the second is true then probably the first is true also. You still seem to think that my concern is about what people's beliefs are in and of themselves and I'm at a bit of a loss as to why. I'm not god's gift to insightful discourse such that all must hang on my every word, but when you skip over a page and a half of conversation in the thread and say, "I may disagree with it, but so what?" then I see no reason to repeat myself.

Interesting... Rubs chin... http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/28/us/28military.html?_r=1&hp

Interesting that you brought need into this. From both sides of the argument you get those who apparently need to force their POV on the other side. This is a psychological issue and indeed may be a pathological one. ....because I can respect their entitlement to whatever POV they have. I may disagree with it, but so what? We can discuss with an eye towards enlightenment or we can argue 'till we're blue in the face. I prefer to discuss with an eye towards self-enlightenment. Are you trolling or have you just not read most of my posts in the thread?

That's easy, I can just take my post from three years ago and add more jumps to the last canopy on the list... Skymaster 290 @0.6 (6 jumps; static lines) Skymaster 230 @0.75 (14 jumps) Sabre 170 @1.1 (8 jumps) Sabre 135 @1.25 (~600 jumps) Stiletto 135 @1.25 (~350 jumps) Katana 120 @1.5 (~20 jumps) Stiletto 107 @1.65 (~150 jumps) Katana 107 @ 1.65 (~630 jumps) Velo 103 @ 1.75 (~15 jumps) Velo 96 @ 1.85 (~15 jumps) Velo 90 @ 2.0 (~950 jumps and counting)

Is not. Is too. Seriously? I don't care if what someone thinks I think about god requires any faith because I don't bring it into the argument as an axiom. One doesn't need god to not exist to simply present a better (i.e. less complicated) explanation for something, but you do need god to exist to use him/her as an explanation for anything. If someone wants to, for example, redefine what god is and has done so that they can still state that god created the Earth in a week a few thousand years ago then I can't prove them wrong because they're just stating everything axiomatically as required by their argument. But I don't care that I can't prove the person wrong because at this point they're standing on so much nonsense that they're wearing a clown suit and there's an asshole in the middle of the forehead. The only problem is that if the crowd of people wearing clown suits with assholes in the middle of their foreheads starts getting big then I start getting worried about the future of mankind.

Well, page 4 of this thread has been an excellent demonstration of champu's law...

Here's a post explaning my frustration with the "government should get out of marriage" argument. As you pointed out, that's another thread, so I'll leave it there. But I have no problem repeating myself when it comes to the idea of "common sense". I've really come to dislike that term as I've realized that it doesn't actually mean anything. I would challenge people to avoid using it in discussions.

Well, maybe, maybe not. I subscribe to the theory (again, just looking for a sociological explanation before a divine one, not asserting anything) that religious texts that form the basis for organized religion are simply man's attempt to snapshot the moral code as it had evolved up to the time of the writing and explain it from the reference frame of what we knew of the world at that time. Some things change over time and some don't. So if we could wipe our memory clear of religious texts and we sat down today to write something akin to the bible based on what we think works well as a society and what we know of the world today, we might come up with a lot of the same moral code, but there would probably be quite a few additions and omissions. I imagine the fables, stories, and explanations of natural phenomenon would look a lot different too.

So, I take it you view these, consequences, as more of a negative than a positive? If so, why and do you have an example? (I am not trying to put words into your mouth. As this is the internet I am just trying to understand your position) Edited to add I am posting to this country the US I do tend to focus on the negative examples of it because those are the situations I would like to see changed, but I don't advocate throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Since you seem keen to bypass the discussion of "how" or "why" and jump right into a more indepth discussion of a particular "what", I'll pick one that gets less talk around here: the banning and/or withholding of public funding for certain types of stem cell research.

I am just curious What are some consequencies of some one's faith on others, are you posting to? It's almost always an indirect consequence. The teaching of a particular right or wrong that is rooted in religious scripture results in people voting (in the case of our country) or dictating (in the case of certain other countries) that particular right or wrong into law. As soon as it's law, it very clearly affects others. Now, in many cases, there are also good social well-being, economic, etc. reasons that make the law a good idea and in those cases there aren't going to be a lot of complaints. But every so often there's a right or wrong written into law that, when you peel back the onion, doesn't have anything but a religious leg to stand on, but people defend them anyway.

See, this is exactly my point. This argument isn't about god existing or not, it's just tired misunderstanding and some people trying to shove words in each others' mouths. Atheism, for me anyway, is a "working hypothesis." That doesn't mean that I believe god doesn't exist in the way that someone else believes that he does. All it means is that I spend little or no time looking at god as an explanation for anything. There are plenty of avenues to explore in sociology, psychology, biology, astrophysics, etc. before you get to the devine. What I explicitly avoid doing is saying, "because god doesn't exist ." and the reason I don't is because that would be the "faith" thing that people keep saying is required of atheists. It turns out that I never really need to make such an assertion because it never helps me make a point. The closest to that you'll probably hear me say is, "If god doesn't exist ." which is just me trying to get people to consider the consequencies their faith has on themselves and, more importantly, on others.

Well stated. Most religious discussions (here anyway) aren't really about whether there is a God or gods though. The discussions are about statements like, "Without a higher power, atheists must just think morals come out of a pinata." or "Intelligent design deserves equal consideration in science classes as evolutionary biology." If atheists pipe up against statements like these vociferously, it should not be mistaken as just another page in the endless "is/are there god/s or not?" debate.

This is a perfect example of what I like call "information age meltdown." Indeed.

Depends on who is talking, right? Throwing every public employee into one big bucket makes the question kinda meaningless.