pirana

My understanding is that first runs will be for working out the bugs, ironing out the wrinkles and all that rot. As with the biggest telescopes, where first light is still a ways from fully operational; we probably won't see anything spectacular for a while. "I got your massive vector boson right here Sunshine." - Riker to Q " . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

It is my understanding that 'if', and a big 'if' it is, a black hole is created, it would be microscopic and extremly short-lived. Not much to worry about there. You must not have seen the movie. A black hole is like a big rotating funnel made of black graph paper and white lines that makes a deep resonant sucking noise; and really really wants to consume Ernest Borgnine. Was that not the death knell for his career? " . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

So we went there to build schools and improve their cell phone access? I thought it had something to do with WMD and terrorism. But that didn't pan out, so schools and cell phones make a nice fall back. But no matter, there are plenty of other places with bad schools and cell phone access. Good to know there is plenty of fodder for invasion after we're done in Iraq. And if we find an unfriendly government that does not have those problems, it's easy enough to find some other reason. Maybe they are being denied access to Starbucks. That would be an invasion worthy crime, right? " . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

I disagree. Wars these days appear to be fights over resources, nationalist/separatist tendencies, and border security. What's the problem with registering guns? We do it for cars, boats, planes, dogs, cats, real estate, and a boatload of other goodies. Why not guns? Don't at least some states already require registration of all firearms? Do any record all ammo purchased? " . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

One exception comes to mind. Professional sports franchises are private businesses that make a shitload of money AND cost the taxpayers millions of dollars. A total scam pulled off on the US citizenry by a very conniving group of billionaire businessmen. " . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

The thing is, when a single post has got so much stuff going on, it is more a sign of rambling incoherence (aka a poorly delivered sermon) than of making any kind of point. This one has Facism, Evil, extreme liberals, guilt, denial, addiction, intolerance, the Antichrist, and the Rapture. ALL IN ONE! My only complaint - - you forgot sexual promiscuity. Throw a little of that in when you mention sin and more people might read it. " . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

Correct, however a baglock that clears is still a baglock, likewise a lineover that clears is still a lineover. Some malfunctions may be fixed providing sufficient altitude and time and some may clear on their own. I think it would be more accurate to call it an ex-baglock. " . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

Send in Chuck Norris. Quickly, before he gets as old (or as old looking) as Hulk Hogan. I don't think anyone is scared of Hogan anymore, but they would probably still quake in their boots at the sight of Norris. " . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

You forgot sex-crazed, Cheeto-munching, orgyistic, joint-rolling, air-headed, concert-going, hitchhiking, mumbling, bumbling, stumbling, dancing fools. I only had time for a short list. " . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

So they've changed emphasis from plants to single-celled critters. Last I read about this it was expected that by 2015 we would have plants engineered to produce oil. And I don't mean ethanol refined from corn, i mean plants that produce oil. IIRC, it was a combination of genetic engineering and nanotechnology. Skip that whole Carboniferous period and go directly from living plants to oil. " . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

Holy Buckshot Batman! " . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

I'm Irish and if you don't take back that statement we're going to have to fight ... You're on, but let me fill up first. " . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

Psychotic women are typically great in bed. " . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

Can you send the video signal from the DVD player directly to the TV/monitor; and send the audio signal separately from the DVD player to the surround amplifier? I don't think you want to send the sound signal thru the TV. " . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

Yes, entitlement retards education. Humorous, and with a nice little bite of reality. In a similar vein, it occurs to me that the hungriest are willing to work hardest. Pretty typical throughout history that each wave or trend or change in immigration spins off little eddies of superachievement. It would be an error to stereotype any ethnic group by their highest or lowest achievers. Except for the Irish. They really are total lushes and leches. " . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

You haven't given enough information for anybody to be able to give advice, and that advice should come from a surgeon. Make sure to use one that does a LOT of them, and that he is very aware of what you intend to do in the future. What he advises will depend on the severity of the tearing, your condition/age, how hard you intend to push it, etc. I've had 2 knee surgeries already, have had moderate tears in both ACLs for years, but am in very good physical condition and no longer compete like a maniac - - so no more surgeries for me unless I do another full derangement. All knee injuries do not automatically keep getting worse. I suppose if I did a lot of deep knee bends, burpees, etc it would get worse; so I don't do them. I am forever excluded from the World Burpee Chamionships. Take care of your knees; you can only repair them so many times. After my last post-surgery check-up I was told it just might be time to start being nicer to them. He said he could fix them again but asked if someone was paying me millions of dollars per year to destroy them. A very good perspective to consider. " . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

My sentiments exactly; we will be seeing a lot of thinly disguised racism. " . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

I think the problem with knowing what happened during that tiny fraction of a second has to do with lacking a theory that unifies the four fundamental forces (strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force, electromagnetism, gravity). I don't think the information is fundamentally unknowable. True; but Electromagnetism and the weak force are already demonstrated to be in unity, and I thought I had read a few years back that the evidence for uniting them with the strong force was very good. So that just leaves the bugger of the 4, gravity. And having a theory on uniting the four, or better said, having the ability to test such theories, will require incredible concentrations of energy. IIRC, the SSC was hoped to provide the concentrations necessary to find the Higgs; which might go a long way to understanding gravity in something other than Newtonian a fashion. But bringing the 4 known forces together still isn't a guarantee of understanding what happens when a singularity expands into a Universe. And we won't know until we get there whether or not it will support or debunk String Theory. So I agree, GU is a piece of the puzzle, but getting there is still, at it's core, a matter of concentrating energy and seeing what pops out. And then we are still left with what happens when such enormous amounts of energy act over some significant amount of space and the goodies in that space. I mean, similar to a stylus having some outrageously high temperature where it meets the groove but being meaningless to the human touch; creating a concentration of energy within the limited space of 2 subatomic particles does not exactly equate to what happens in a singularity holding all the existing and potential energy of the entire Universe. Unification is over-rated. We'll need a collider the size of our solar system to really get down to it. TIME FOR A JOKE ON THE TOPIC. A dairy farmer wants to maximize his yield, and so brings in an engineer, an artist, and a physicist for advice. The engineer gets busy and determines the precise infrastructure and processes necessary to extract the most milk. The artist paints the barns, puts up artwork, pumps in soothing music, and in general tries to make the cows as comfortable as is bovinely possible. The physicist walks in and says: "Imagine the cow is a sphere . . ." Stolen from Fear of Physics. It's not a crime if I give credit, right? " . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

The Bang part can cause discomfort with the idea. It could have just as easily been a Big Whoosh. We tend to hear Bang and think of something like a firecracker. Working backwards with what we know of physics, we can get back to something like 1 to the -43rd seconds. That's a decimal point, 42 zeroes, and a 1. That's a very tiny amount of time in our world, but a critically important LENGTH of time for something created from nothing, or a singularity containing all the enery in the Universe. So maybe from that singularity came a rush, or a whoosh of energy. In human perception, maybe it appears as an instantaneous indescribable unordered Bang; but in the realm of interacting particles and waves, there was lots happening and much more definition than just . . . . BANG! We will never know what that first itty bitty fraction of a second was like simply because to do so would require a concentration of energy that is absolutely, and by definition, inpossible. Unless we come up with a machine capable of jamming all the energy of the Universe inside the space of a single atom, we simply can't know. We can smash a few bits together, but all that gives us is what happens when you smash a few bits together. Tantalizing hints, and lots to think about, but no cigar. That alone is reason enough to take stuff like String Theory with a grain of salt. If it is possible to achieve the energy levels at which manifestations of String Theory can be tested, they are a long, long way off. Problem is that as scientific exploration of the origins of everything gets closer to hitting the wall (I think we are almost there) all kinds of goofy shit will be tossed out there because people are uncomfortable with "We don't know." It is why various religions have gotten away with peddling their dogmas. In the absence of knowledge, they create gobbleygook to pacify the uncomfortable masses. And so it goes. Keep asking questions, and resist the gobbleygook. " . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

Some great quotes earlier in the thread. But basically, this guy either doesn't know shit from shinola to history; or his pacifist leaning is so strong his filters are in overdrive. This amateur historian gives great credence to the long term inertia of human behaviors and consequences; and the long string of events leading to WWII easily goes back to the fall of Rome, the dynastic politics that filled the void, and the beginnings of nationalism. WWI and WWII were just the dying convulsions and wringing out of the complex system of alliances and betrayals that wreaked havoc in Europe for over a thousand years as powerful families and the nationalist tendencies they at first fought and then played off against each other played themselves out one last time. Well, maybe not the last time altogether, but the last time they will happen on that scale. With the crumbling of the Eastern Bloc, all the major players (Britian, France, Germany & Russia) are now integrated financially at a level that looks to have finally put that era to rest. Now I wonder how long it will take for the Middle East to settle their civilization. Ironic that civilization started there, but can't seem to get settled there. " . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

Very good point, along with the comparison to maps as an excellent example. Taking the map thing another step; imagine being lost in the woods. The map may be full of errors, and you might not know it. It is just a story, a depiction, someone's interpretation. The being lost part is the reality, the experience. You might even misinterpret that experience, but you are experincing that reality nonetheless. My line is that anything you learn other than from direct experience is just a story, it is modeling based on the experience of others. Take in enough of it and you probably get a pretty good picture; but it is still just a picture. Unless of course it is a picture of Planet X. In which case it is a camera flare. " . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

I don't believe in anything . I just choose working hypotheses that are optimally consistent with current experience and evidence. They can change as either new data surfaces or better hypotheses are found, and there may be several at a time that seem equally good. By those standards "higher divine beings" are out of the picture very quickly, and the beginning of the universe is a subject of ongoing scientific discussion that won't be settled anytime soon. Cheers, T How 'bout now? Are we there yet? " . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

Makes none to me. I'm going to "god" you today? Hey, how was "godding?" I'm so tired I can't "god" right now? I'm confused. Please elaborate. You've never been Godded by those obnoxious people that come knocking on your door on Saturday mornings? It's kind of like getting Amwayed, except worse. " . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

Agreed. I think the damage occurs when the child grows older and must determine reality from fantasy while dealing with pressures to conform ... PS: At least when a child grows older they are told that the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, etc... aren't real. HUH! What the . . . Wait a minute, back up there. But seriously, at least we still have The Great Pumpkin. I wonder if that little absurdity ever upset anyone? " . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

In theory, very good. In practice, lousy idea. (Though I think many Libertarian ideals do have some merit. The problem is there are too many ignorant parents. And too many that would rather buy a cfew cases of Bud than a semesters worth of school books and supplies. Tempting to say let them fuck up their own kids, but that presents too much of a future burden on society. " . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley