meangreendork

Ugh. It's just that the nation is so unstable right now, it's not the best idea to let them get their hands on nuclear material and nuclear power. If that nation topples on its own, who knows who'll step up into the power vacuum.

People are buying the real-life equivalents in those SmartCars. Which also just happen to look like deathtraps.

I'm going to make a post that is equally worth reading when compared to the original post of this thread. Bacon.

I've often thought the same thing. Evolution of course, would depend on a stimulus to respond and develop changes to the environment. But what programmed DNA with the ability to adapt over long spans of time? My religious side tells me that it's God. My less than religious side still tells me that it's not by chance, and that there's intelligent design in it.

When religion is given governing powers, the results are often negative. You see abuses of authority, malformed laws, and corruption all thinly veiled under faith and morality. It twists and polarizes those in that particular country, and in some cases, ended with the loss of life. All of this happening through whatever religious figure(s) and group(s), manipulating faith for what often is personal gain. You can fool the masses when you tell them you're a direct voice of God/Allah/Vishnu/Galactic Hamster. When governing powers are given religious authority, you see almost the same thing. And it's often for the same purpose. Again, it's rather easy to manipulate the people if they think you're under a god-to-government mandate from God/Allah/Vishnu/Galactic Hamster.

Yeah, I'm low on my iron, aluminum, steel, and other mineral intake.

The Chinese have the money for it. But if I ever get around to buying a Hummer...I'll check it for lead based paint.

Like many things in American law and in the founding documents, it's all interpretation. You know, just like individual church doctrine. I see the original writings to mean that religion needs to be kept away from government to prevent religions from being replaced by a national religion. This is because people often already have faiths of their own, and there would be no need to impose one on a person. So, for those of us who don't have a particular religion, our "lack of" religion shouldn't be imposed upon. Next, we have a more practical way of looking at this: It would be counter-productive to the message of the U.S. to teach religion in a public setting. In a nation that really draws its strength from its diversity of people, it seems rather backwards to force it on people. We might as well restrict skin color and seating arrangement on buses because that would be the next step down the line. And finally: I'd strongly prefer someone not push their religion on me. I would assume they also don't want me doing the same to them. Just sayin'.

Sounds more like, "stop burning off so much gas for no really good reason, stop getting fat, and stop wasting electricity". Okay, that's reduction of pollution, reduced medical expenses due to complications associated with obesity, and less money spent for extraneous resource use. Okay.

This. This basically shoots this randomly sourced article in the foot. How does "the US might be Muslim country" equal "the Muslim world and the Western world need a better dialogue to handle Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and possibilities for peace with Israel/Palestine"? But I'm not seeing the issue here. So he's taking his experience with the Muslim world and trying to make good on it in his dealings with that side of the world. Fine, good. Not every Muslim wants to blow up a bus in my neighborhood. Some do, but generally speaking, most don't. Might as well make nice with the moderates that don't like to kill themselves for a false war they think the West wants to start with them. If the guy wants to make use of his Islamic middle name to do so, linking it with the places he was in growing up, that's fine. And no, the US isn't a single-religion nation. We have about as many religions and denominations within those as we have ethnic groups. So that's an accurate statement. But saying, "the US is one of the biggest Muslim countries" gets a great big WTF.

Project Natal is a really slick gadget. Tracks distance and motion of a human being, and gets voice commands too. Microsoft did a good job with this one. Sony didn't disappoint either - they introduced another motion controller that links to the Playstation Eye. I was watching Sony and Nintendo's conferences this morning and the Sony motion controller add-on just outclassed the WiiMote. The controller and camera are accurate enough to mimic handwriting accurately, they can detect angles of the controller's tilt, and in relation to the camera itself. I actually liked how the demo team used the controller/camera combination to control the demonstration in first-person shooter mode and in a real-time strategy mode. Very impressive, just as much as Natal. http://www.joystiq.com/2009/06/02/playstat...launching-2010/

If I remember right, it's got something to do with that sort of business being between "A man and his god". Plus, the mixture of religion and government often ends up with corruption of one or the other (see pre-20th century Europe), or it ends up with entire breakdowns of societies, like parts of the Middle East. Anyways, that's a sidenote. Religion has and always will be disfigured to motivate someone to commit horrible acts, and that's almost always contrary to the foundation of those beliefs.

For argument's sake, let's say that Tiller was found guilty for his actions. Then, let's say he got out of jail, and started to practicing late-term abortions. He's committing a criminal act. And with the legal precedent set, he's probably subject to, say, life in prison/execution. That still doesn't make it justified to kill someone in a vigilante act, especially on holy ground. Furthermore, I agree with CBL here. It's not exactly the place of the head of government to lay out morality for the nation. He should set an example, of course. But I think it's the place of churches, parents, and your neighbors to set the standards of decency.

Misread it. The ambulance crew should've had its lights on. Though, I agree with Emmitt here - let the ambulance get where it's going, get the crew's ID, and report them. Then, go about other police business. I don't think the state trooper should've been so aggressive and hair-trigger here.

I gotta disagree about religion and education. Religion should stay out of schools, or at least presented in a very matter-of-fact format, and equal airtime given to the major religions. You know, separation of church/state, in a country where one of its strengths happens to be its diversity of cultures, nations, and ethnic groups? I do agree with schools and education levels, though. Part of it is the pay of public school educators, and part of it, especially in Texas, is teaching-to-tests. Ugh. The other part is mom and dad not doing their job at home. Good argument, calling people, "pinheads". I don't think anyone would want to buy up GM aside from the government. Chrysler tried to find someone else to purchase them back in...2007 and they had a very difficult time doing so, taking at least 8 months to do it. And that was in 2007 in a far more easy marketplace than we have now. Something as large as GM would have to be parted out into individual divisions in order for any of it to be purchased. That's breaking off into the Saturn line, GMC, Chevrolet, Pontiac, etc. So if GM went entirely belly up: The local dealerships would end up trying to sell off their stock back to GM, or attempt to sell vehicles without a warranty or at least some sort of interim one. The employees, if let go, would have to find new jobs, and that's gotta be in the 10,000's of unemployed. The autoworkers would have to renegotiate to get picked up with other automakers (which they should do anyways). Then you have to look at the warranties of all of the vehicles that are still under warranty - who buys those up so they can still be honored, and if that happens, who's going to handle the logistics chain to run that? I think what all of this is isn't the government killing off capitalism. I think it's the result of capitalism killing itself, or at least going to the hospital for being obese. Had GM and its American cousins handled themselves better over the last 20 years, none of them would be staring bankruptcy in the face.

Ugh. I wanna hope he'll be classy about it.

Wow. This looks like a huge tangle. I figure the troopers would know something urgent was going as the ambulance was zipping along with its lights on. Of course, sirens should be on, but I think that's a minor issue compared to the patient inside of the ambulance. Ugh. Though, my spidey-sense tells me the trooper in question is probably in trouble for raging out on an ambulance driver with a patient in the vehicle. Talk about overreaction.

He's probably not at all new to intelligence reports - he's had at least a few just in his 4-5 months in office. It's an agency only a few years old, that used to be another agency. And this agency basically just reports things to other agencies who then probably put the NGA's data together with their own in order to formulate a report. On top of that, they're using a mix of government and commercial satellites to gather all of this, so even then, they're just a middleman. Of the 90-wabillion agencies, it's hard to not have any fall through the cracks of memory.

It's an opinion article from an online pub with a thing for being sensationalist, which is kind of a journalistic no/no for me to pay attention to. It's like reading WND or Huffington...you just gotta give it the eye of skepticism. If she's strolling around with openly racist beliefs, she's gotta go. I don't care what her skin color is.

The source is apparently known to be rather sensationalist/nationalist. Take with a grain of salt.

We all know it's coming...in August or July. This year's version should be a bit more fun... They added an improved defense system so the computer can help out with defensive plays, helping you stay on your coverage man, sideline reporters and they're also dropping in a new create-a-school function. But it doesn't work like it did before where you only had a few options for logos, colors, uniforms and such. This time, you build your team online from your laptop or whatever, and then load it to your console. There are far more logo options, and the option to upload your own (am I seeing SoW and Flying Worm Uniforms?), more uniform choices, and more customization in team rosters and the stadiums. I'll probably just toss out whatever built-in UNT the game has and drop my own in. http://ncaafootball.easports.com/blog.acti...gId=TeamBuilder

Just run without them. We can make Soylent Green Pudding.

Ah, but those transporters are equipped with...you guessed it...Heisenberg Compensators that make up for the fact you can't get an exact lock on individual atoms speed or position at the same time. How that works is fiction, of course. However, the likelihood of warp-speed transport or space folding is more likely. Basically, it involves moving the space around an object as opposed to the object itself, and then letting the space of the destination point fill in the blank when the transported space and object appear where they need to be.

Good, as they should be.