champu

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Everything posted by champu

  1. champu
    Huh? I think he meant, "Does his lawyer think our country has gotten 'this liberal'?" with "liberal" being used as a generic pejorative.
  2. champu
    Are there still people in the USA that don't own Dr. Strangelove?
  3. champu
    *shrugs* Last year when there actually was a missile launched near Norway that produced a strange visual effect and officials everywhere said, "Uh yeah... it was a missile." there were people who wouldn't believe that. /edited to add: [one year from now] Reporter: "Strange mystery airplane spotted in South America!" The internet: "Mystery airplane pretty obviously photographer's finger in front of the lens." Theorists: "Fingers in front of lenses can't possibly move like that! It must have been some mundane aircraft flying by but they don't want us to know!" The internet: "Oh, shut up."
  4. champu
    Insult cruise missiles why dontchya? I'm gonna lay the missile card on ya'! Well what'sit doin' up there? That's not where you want be as a missile, now is'it?
  5. champu
    A lone high-flying cruise missile would be a pretty stupid cruise missile.
  6. champu
    Ballistic missiles and space launch vehicles are generally out of the atmosphere within a couple minutes and over the horizon (or at least at too low an elevation angle to see) after a few more.
  7. champu
    I've been called in once. Slept in the jury waiting room all morning. After lunch I sat in the pool in the back of the courtroom through the jury selection and watched half the jury try to give the "wrong" answers to the screening questions to get out of serving. A couple were successful but I never got brought into the box. If I'm not working on something particularly time/mission critical then I wouldn't squirm to get out of serving.
  8. champu
    They're clearly filming Iron Man 3. Not sure why CBS didn't get the memo.
  9. champu
    Ah, a very good observation. wait, what? abort! abort!
  10. champu
    The parachute keeps flying in the same direction because you and the parachute are flying and because it's designed to be stable in yaw, not because it has a larger moment than the jumper. This is correct. You're right that you can't vector your angular momentum (by "kicking" or "squirming" or whatever you want to call the motion) without applying a torque on something... If only there was something we were attached to that we wanted to rotate relative to by applying a torque on it... hmm...
  11. champu
    Well, at least part of the problem is that because alcohol is legal it is more frequently consumed in locations other than one's own residence. Often times people, through poor planning, put a drive between their drinking and a place to crash (morbid pun intended.) Other drugs currently being illegal means consumption has to be somewhat more low-key. If you're free to go anywhere you want and consume some of those other drugs then people will. Afterwords, they'll need to get home somehow. If the drug impairs motor skills and alcohol is any lesson, they'll get home via a drive that's dangerous to themselves and others. I'm not making an argument regarding legalization or prohibition of anything, just giving my thoughts on the results of the study.
  12. champu
    Reaction wheels?!? Old hat, man. But speaking of spacecraft, the segment starting at 3:10 in this video seems apt to this discussion.
  13. champu
    Did you really care until someone made up an outrageous number? There are plenty of published budgets and budgets available via FOIA requests that include trivial crap not worth getting worked up about. Some budgets include things that really should get more public attention but this is more than likely not one of them. I'm going to have to agree with idrankwhat on this one.
  14. champu
    Strong fear or positive obsession (to the point that either plays a negative role in your life) with anything is generally due to developmental issues and a lack of emotional maturity. Freud always gets brought up because people just like saying, "...oh, and you need to get laid."
  15. champu
    Exactly the same here. Here's a link to the results by county as the polls start closing http://vote.sos.ca.gov/maps/ballot-measures/all/
  16. champu
    As you feed your ballot into the machine I recommend shouting, "Take THAT 'will of others'!"
  17. champu
    Side note: PA, DoD, off-duty LEO, whatever... don't rub their noses in stuff like this.
  18. champu
    This post came across to me as more mean than you probably intended.
  19. champu
    This is the first Halloween that I haven't lived in an apartment since leaving the nest. I bought a bunch of candy expecting trick-or-treaters, but none so far. I think the cities of Manhattan Beach and Redondo Beach put on events for Halloween that run until 6:30-7:00 so maybe some will be by later after that's over. If I had more of a sweet tooth I'd be in trouble.
  20. champu
    Well, the whole point of the "Big Whatever" pejoratives are that the industries supposedly have so much money that they buy politicians' support so they can keep doing whatever it is they're doing to make the money. It suggests an, at the very least tacit, coalition of large companies or organizations. Hence "Big". Disparate scientific organizations chasing government funding and often times competing with one another for it doesn't seem to fit the profile.
  21. champu
    I'm not sure "Big Science" is cohesive enough to warrant the epithet.
  22. champu
    your litterbox is half full ! Bill is an engineer. His litterbox is twice as large as it needs to be...or has only been used for half the time it was designed for. His litter box has 3 dB of margin.
  23. champu
    Agreed. And you're biting into the income security (not to be confused with social security!) category which is a $570B chunk of the budget that billvon initially shied away from. There are $70B worth of tax credits (not deductions... credits) associated with having children provided every year. /edited to remove $20B from the above number as the "Making work Pay" tax credit, while being just a goofy way of implementing a focused tax cut, doesn't have anything to do with having children. My mistake.
  24. champu
    Prooving once again, the contents of the proverbial glass is important to consider when discussing optimism vs. pessimism.
  25. champu
    That renders it completely invalid?