Misson

I took it to be a philosophical question. For example: Etc. Very clear thinking on the part of the poster, summing it up as he and/or she has. Yup.

Given an infinite number of monkeys and an infinite amount of time, the monkeys will eventually produce the entire collected works of Shakespeare. Alas, the equation does not appear to work when you substitute "money" for "monkey". (Assuming you could collect an infinite amount of money. Even the battle cry "Tax the rich!" won't do it...) So given an infinite amount of money and and infinite amount of time, the government will produce the entirety of a collective bureaucracy, but not perfect bridges. Or perfect educational systems. Or perfect energy policies. Or perfect law systems. Or perfect auto licensing procedures. Or...well, perhaps you get the point. Besides perfection in design vs money is a exponential curve. (And thus, an infinite amount of money will still not produce perfect bridges. So we fall back on our old friend cost-benefit analysis.)

What? Sorry, I was away from the 'net. Weekend access for me is quite touch and go, y'see... Like most topics, this one may have veered from the original intent, but that's pretty typical around here. In fact, I am frequently guilty of doing so myself. :blush: I'm inclined to leave it open for the time being. If it gets out of hand, I'll consider shutting it down. (So let's all take Rumba's advice, shall we? Everyone has a right to their opinion. (Even, on rare occasions and alternate full moons, when it's different than mine. ))

I'm not sure it could be put any more eloquently, so I won't even attempt to. Bravo.

Sounds good to me. Unfortunately the only thing I know about sinking cars is that the old VW Bugs aren't supposed to sink immediately because the majority of the body is made in one piece. (I also heard that they used to dip the cars in giant vats of paint, but that sounds like a rumor.)

Except that it would appear that we live in a linear time fashion. So you would enter the alternative time line and be unable to return to your "own present." Now, you could go back in time and try to alter your actions, but then what would happen to the you that lived in the original alternative time line? If you actions change the alternative future so it doesn't exist, then wouldn't you cease to exist during that period? Or maybe it is as some postulate and multiple time lines exist simultaneously, but [in Edwin Abbot fashion], we are limited to our 3D perception of the world and do not realize that it is possible to move between places in what we allege is the 4th dimension...

I was reading The Economist the other day and came across an article on making wind power a more effective alternative energy option. Since they are one of those bizarre publications that put everything in their magazine on-line for free, you don't have to subscribe like I do and can actually see the article here. Very, very interesting. I didn't know DC could actually be transmitted as efficiently (and actually, it sounds like more efficiently) than AC power! I had always been taught otherwise. What really amazes me is the idea of storing energy by doing things like compressing air and moving water when energy is abundant and then releasing it and using it to drive turbines and such when the energy is not. Clever! Damned clever! See what I mean about better technology coming along? This is using one natural, alternative energy to actually create another latent form of alternative energy for future use. That is amazingly cool, even if there is going to be some overall energy loss in the process. Give it time and it will be sorted out. Human creativity is practically limitless.

Well, I don't mean it to be directed at you, Jack (although I guess it does sound that way. Apologies.) However, there is a tendency in this country to get up in arms about the crisis du-jour and then throw more money at it until the next crises arises. What people forget is that this is your money. We tend to divorce ourselves from the idea that all the money the gov has either comes directly from us or is taken from the economy which is ultimately created by us. As for mismanagement...allowing any state money earmarked for roads to be sent to the national government who then (after spending money on the needlessly bureaucratic process of...processing it) doles it back out is the first problem. They've added a level of expenditure that doesn't need to be there so they can "encourage" states to follow various national road guidelines. An insidious override of state's rights.

This is sort of OT, but what the hey... I saw this on Rotten Tomatoes site discussing the DVD release of the movie Hot Fuzz (which I haven't seen, but it's definitely on my DVD list): Knowing those guys, that may be even funnier than the real movie.

And yet they haven't collapsed. Isn't that curious? There are probably at least another 80,000 (or more) in better shape. This is certainly a tragedy for the seven dead and dozens wounded and their families, but stepping outside of their personal trauma... Isn't this sort of like the sudden public uproar and agonizing about air travel as a whole when one plane crashes (of the thousands that take off daily)? It's actually a pretty good record when you look at the percentages. Risk is inherent in life. Certainly measures should be taken, but overzealous slightly irrational prosecution of the government is only going to lead to unnecessary expenditures.

I've suggested it, but it's up to the board admin to do that. I also see a pattern of sorts to their usernames. It's awfully subtle, though. That'd be harder to catch. FWIW, we could also lose some legitimate posts that way.

I was quoting a job with an extruded aluminum manufacturing company and the salesgirl was a lot like your friend sounds. When she left, I could just imagine these 50-something year old purchasing guys being called on by this girl and buying just so she'd come back. (She must have bathed in her perfume, though. It nearly knocked you over.) Alas, I didn't buy from her. I found a company on the internet that was much cheaper. Actually, the fact that the girl Phil mentioned worked on her own Vette isn't what's interesting about her. (In fact, I would think we (Phil and I) would have little in common with a girl who was good at and enjoyed working on her own car - unless working on cars interested us as well. But that's a supposition on my part about Phil.) What is interesting is that she did that and played the violin. Two things that appear to be at opposite ends of the spectrum. Although, upon considering it further, they are both mechanical skills. Did she write music for the violin? That's a creative skill. I like interesting contradictions in people. Of course, there's also the aspect that she worked on the car at all which appears to suggest an independent thinker at some level. I know several mechanically inclined women now that I think about it. They may not buy classic cars and rebuild the transmissions as a regular activity, but their skills could be adapted to such. So maybe I'm wrong in saying there can't be such a woman.

I thought Christina Aguilera was a female....... Drat.... now I find out he posed for fhm (whoever they are) and shows off his body........ FHM is one of the new breed of ADD-writing-style men's magazines that show racy (but, not as far as I'm aware, naked) pictures of the stream of young girls who flow ceaselessly through the entertainment industry. A guy I roomed with on a trip either had that or Maxim or something like that which he procured for the plane trip. (How can such possibly fill a 14 hour plane trip? A question for another day...) Is C.A. really all that shy about showing "certain parts of his [or her] body?" From what little I've seen about her, it would seem to be her stock in trade. That's actually what I found funny about the post. Here's a regular newsstand magazine reference and a comment about an woman who doesn't seem exactly shy... Why follow some random link to find that? They're better off with C.A.'s head pasted on some random naked model's body. (I'm sure Google images will find the FHM pics for you. Probably in the first page.)

There's the rub. I haven't read the Fire and Ice article yet, although I've heard of it. I've read a lot of others (like the one cited in the Live Earth thread) and I find you have to sift through them to find the supportable info and separate it from the finger pointing and name calling. That's why I try to find statements with research behind them. And also why I cite sources on this issue in particular whenever I have them handy. Anyone can say there's going to be a 20' rise in sea level. The question is, where is the research that backs that up? (And what is it based on? But there's no answer because no one can back that one up.) As for the co2debt site...that's the kind of company Gore has an ownership stake in. (Imagine!)

Naw - a real chick would drive (like a college GF did) a '63 split-window Vette, that she did all her own work on - including balancing and blueprinting the engine and re-doing the tranny - then go inside and practice her violin. There's no girl like that. There can't be.

Au contraire! Our planet is quite durable. It is we who are fragile. The planet will outlast us just as it has outlasted hundreds of species before us. Oh, where's my Michael Crichton quote... "Our planet is four and half billion years old. There has been life on this planet for nearly that long. Three point eight billion years. The first bacteria. And, later, the first multicellular animals, then the first complex creatures, in the sea, on the land. Then the great sweeping ages of animals -- the amphibians, the dinosaurs, the mammals, each lasting millions upon millions of years. Great dynasties of creatures arising, flourishing, dying away. All this happening against a background of continuous and violent upheaval, mountain ranges thrust up and eroded away, cometary impacts, volcanic eruptions, oceans rising and falling, whole continents moving. Endless constant and violent change.... The planet has survived everything, in its time. It will certainly survive us...." "Let's say we had a bad [radiation accident] ... and the earth was clicking hot for a hundred thousand years, life would survive somewhere -- under the soil, or perhaps frozen in Arctic ice. And after all those years, when the planet was no longer inhospitable, life would again spread over the planet. The evolutionary process would begin again. It might take a few billion years for life to regain its present variety. And of course it would be different from what it is now. But the earth would survive our folly. Life would survive our folly." [Jurassic Park]

See, I think that's entirely a matter of your perceptive lens. If you look for people to be heartless, that's what you will find. If you look for people who are understanding, that's what you find. How do you perceive the world? That's how it is for you. So are there genuinely heartless people? I don't think so, actually. They just don't have heartfelt conviction for the same things as you do. (Despite the spate of movies and TV shows about serial killers. You'd think there was one on every street corner. I will go so far as to propose that even they, in their twisted way, care about something. Perception. (Plus they are psychologically damaged. I don't think most people are psychologically damaged to such an extent. Some people are, but they are the exceptions. I don't see where making the rules about human nature based on the exceptions is a wise course.)

With this topic, I'm not sure that's even possible.

That's funny, I just saw AI for the first time about a week ago. (The Stan Winston studios book lead me to it.) I thought the GW stuff was irritating - it's based on that misbegotten 20 foot rise in sea level thing. (What is the IPCC predicting now...20" over 100 years? 17"? Anyone for 15"?) The NYC buildings in the water was a cool digital effect, though. Didn't they do that in The Fifth Element too? I know the basic concept was a central feature in Waterworld. They used it in the graphic novels for Cadillacs and Dinosaurs too...Hollywood sci-fi sure has gotten a lot of mileage out of one activist's unsubstantiated statement about rising sea level. (BTW, this is a common source of such incorrect statistics - activists, having no number, make one up to satisfy a reporter who wants a number to wrap his story around. This gets reported, often without correct source references, and then gets re-reported and re-reported until no one is sure where the original statistic came from. Since it's been so widely reported, however, you can find gobs of sources for a number someone basically pulled out of their...ear.) Anyhow, AI...what a bizarre movie. I kept wondering how they were going to manage to generate sympathy for robots. In fact, I don't think they managed to - it sure didn't work for me. They kept trying to impart this emotional appeal and show how intolerant people were to...robots. How do you feel sorry for a robot? Even the "love" chip that the little boy robot had...so what? It came across to me as if it were just special programming, not genuine love. I did like the supertoy teddy bear, though. He seemed to be the most intelligent character in the movie. The Gigolo Joe robot was sort of cool in a way, too.

Would this be a good thing to use for a portable surgeon's kit?

I have to go to SanFran for a Tuesday meeting mid August and I thought I'd extend the visit for the weekend. (Although, admittedly, I'd rather spend it in Napa Valley. Unfortunately, that's more fun with two than one.) Anyhow, I was looking for a hotel and I found the Sir Francis Drake Hotel. It seemed to make the most sense. Although I'm sure the pirate aspect is next to nil, it seemed like serendipity. I'll report back if there's anything of merit.

Actually, I believe it exists. (Anyone who doesn't is playing ostridge, IMO. It's like saying we have no impact on our environment and there is clear evidence that that isn't true.) I just don't believe the effect is strong enough to have the tragicomic results the GW pundits do. ("20 foot increases in sea level! Rapidly melting glaciers destroying polar bear habitats! Dramatically increased hurricanes!" Sounds like The Sun in overdrive. "Batboy joins Al Gore in leading the charge against carbon emissions!" ) There's lots of evidence that there are gaping holes in the hypothesis. For example, I guess they finally dropped the temperature "hockey stick" model from the IPCC's report this year because it left out some crucial cooling and warming periods. (Al should go update his movie. Maybe he is - I hear a sequel is in the works.)

Huh. None today.

Yah, me too. That's why I edited that one written in gobbledegook so the links were gone - that way I could play with it. (Silkie called it "Thieves Cant" when reporting one of them ) Unfortunately only mods can edit other posts, tho'. If you find something particularly choice, go ahead and comment on it - if it's pretty funny, I'll edit the links out. We may as well have some fun at their expense, eh? (If you're just going to complain about the post, however, don't bother. Trust me, they're probably annoying me far more than they'll ever annoy you because they create work for me. I have to go through, capture their names and IP addys, send a pm off to Booty and then delete the thread - which is a multi-step process. ("Are you really, really, really sure you want to delete this? Honest and for true?")

I found the material that said the ship was different between the two movies. It was in that soppy book Bring Me That Horizon. It was pretty vague, though. (I tell ya' that book is not a good example of a "Making of..." book IMO) only saying that the first ship was a different size because of the barge constraints and something about how the new ship (for II and III) was more visually interesting and exciting or some such.