Posts Made By: Brett Wylie

I apologize for believing at face value 632 anti-Miller web pages when I should have believed at face value the other 632 pro-Miller web pages.
So, did a farmer really bring his cows with him, dressed up for the big day?

Goal; record an object/subject with maximum resolution.
Method; given equal optical quality, processing, seeing,stableness of the cameras mount, tracking, etc..
1) For any size format film/pixel based camera, use a lens that increases the size of that object (enlarging it on to the film/ccd plane) to make maximum and best use of the recording area. I.E. if you want to record a picture of a flower at highest resolution..there's no reason to have the image of the whole desert/mountains in the background using up most of the recording medium.
2.) Once you've done that, then the next major factors in the sharpness/resolution of your final image is the size of the particles recording the subject(smaller is better) and the overall size of the recording medium(larger is better).

Another point of view for the forum..AND, I've been eating freedom fries continuously, supporting our troops! Mark Twain loved bashing the French..so in that tradition...(added edit); author of "joke" unknown..obviously not an anatomist/zoologist..as snakes have both a backbone and ...

Once upon a time (allegedly) in a nice little forest, there lived an
orphaned bunny and an orphaned snake.

By a surprising coincidence, both were
blind from birth.

One day, the bunny was hopping through the forest and the snake was
slithering through the forest. The bunny tripped over the snake and fell
down. This knocked the snake about quite a bit.

"Oh, my," said the bunny, "I'm terribly sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you.
I've been blind since birth, so, I can't see where I'm going. In fact,
since I'm also an orphan, I don't even know what I am."

"It's quite OK," replied the snake. "Actually, my story is much the same as
yours. I, too, have been blind since birth and also never knew my mother.

Tell you what, maybe I could slither all over you and work out what you
are,
so at least you'll have that going for you."

"Oh, that would be wonderful," replied the bunny.

So the snake slithered all over the bunny, and said, "Well, you're covered
with soft fur, you have really long ears, your nose twitches and you have a
soft cottony tail. I'd say that you must be a bunny rabbit."

"Oh, thank you! Thank you," cried the bunny, in obvious excitement.

The bunny suggested to the snake, "Maybe I could feel you all over with my
paw and help you the same way that you've helped me."

So the bunny felt the snake all over and remarked, "Well, you're smooth and
slippery, have a forked tongue, no backbone and no balls.

I'd say you must be French."

It is my belief, although I don't pretend to be an economics whizz, that our economy would be best served from helping the bottom up, rather then the top up. I believe that an economy is promoted by consumers having descretionary income and job security (within performance standards of course, not socialism). I have the simple (George Bush like decision making) gut feeling, that if making wealthy people wealthier is good for the national economy, then South American would have the wealthiest countries in the world (humour me). I belive that 10,000 Americans owning 10,000 small sailboats is better for the economy then 2 people owning multi million dollar yachts .. or at least..that both situations are allowed to exist is better. How the economy is supposed to upright itself, given NAFTA, unemployment, subemployment, overseas trade imbalances, mass illegal immigration ...employers like to have a surplus of workers fighting for a job..it makes for low pay and low compensation .. international competition issues aside..when the middle class is thumped and the poor poorer..who will buy the automobiles, electronics, homes, furniture in an inflated price world? If we don't dedicate ourselves to the education of our populace and thus stay on top of technology, controlling it somewhat, and if older technologies can be easily exported to cheaper labor markets..how is the American economy ..our job market, our preeminence in the world market place going to hold up?

I am suprised that not one Republican has stepped forward calling for the impeachment of President Bush. Wolfowitz has admitted in an interview that the issue of WMD's in Iraq was only a pretense to invading Iraq. That one of the "benefits" of our invasion is the ability to remove our troops from Saudia Arabia. It is obvious, given this statement, and the history of falsefied documents which, among others, Powell read to the U.N., that this was a propoganda campaign to begin with. It is also obvious that the Pentagon ignored intelligence data compiled by the CIA that indicated that Iraq did not pose a significant risk, and accepted intelligence put forward by Rumsfelds own intelligence gathering appartus. An apparatus that slanted and filtered information to build a case for invading Iraq.
It is obvious that our President, his advisors, Secretary of State, the Pentagon has lied to the American People, the World, our allies. Is this not more damaging and significant as a lapse in honesty then the cover-up of a consensual sexual affair between our past president and an intern? Is it not a more serious offense to cause this nations citizens military to be put in harms way under false pretexts. If Iraq was not a "serious threat" to this nation and to the world, then we have wrongly invaded a soverign nation against all rules of international law.

James,
I disagree.
Saddam would never have been left "unfettered"; thus, to my mind, it is a falacious argument to insist he was ever going to be a huge threat to the security of the world. We could have constrained him without ever setting a GI's foot on Iraqi soil. Of course, it is good for the economy if we were to build up his weapon systems FOR him again, before some other European power does and makes a killing. We could have handed him our better equipment for killing people, and then in a violent mood swing, taken them back again..this could go on for decades(sarc). Just think of the big fat military contracts we could add to push the future Bush rosey economic boom..

The Soviet Union was constrained by American military power?..I cannot seriously think Iraq would ever have been a threat of anywhere near that magnitude. Iraq as a great threatening power?..this is a joke. I think the war pretty much proves this. It was obvious prior to the invasion that Iraqi's conventional military wouldn't be able to constrain the Amer. military. No jungle, no place to hide, no air cover; being part of their air defense system would've been like sitting in an electric chair waiting for the switch to be thrown.

It is coming out that the U.S. policy makers had no hard fact intelligence indicating Sadamn had WMD's, just made up possiblities from "cherry picked" intelligence streams.

However, I don't have any qualms about Sadamn&sons getting kicked off this planet earth. What a trio(!), proof positive that total power corrupts totally.

1) Why would Iraq go thru the trouble of sanctions if they weren't trying to hide WMD's. Why would Saddam not open the country to totally free inspections if he wasn't fearful of disclosures showing the presence of WMD's in Iraq. Did he take this as such an important insult to do so, as to place himself and his family/wealth in harms way in resistance of it?

2) Why shouldn't 'we' citizens of the world be suspicious of the Bush administrations claims on Iraq's possesion of WMD's, when the case for removal of the regime 'Saddam' had been made by Wolfowitz/Pearl among others in 1997, even prior to Bush ever taking office..and as a policy to be implemented, the decision for/or no, was not at that time based on the presence or not of WMD'sI(it was to extend the U.S.'s influence into the region), and supposedly sans current 2003 intelligence data still indicating the presence of WMD's and thus the political/military justification for the removal of the Iraqi dictator?

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2003/06/04/national0317EDT0452.DTL

Long ago society on the whole figured out that magic is fake, false, a fraud. It is a hand trick, a hat trick, a disquise. It is thin strings in the dark, hidden speakers, hidden lights. Fog making equipment. It is Hollywood, an early form, but Hollywood.

Scientist/scientific thinking stresses our ability to look out at the universe, and bring home to earth physical processes/laws we see around us in our enviroment, and comprehend those basic processes that produced the universe we live in.

To be "a believer" one has to have a different mind set. You have to believe that not everything, not all knowledge, can be constructed from the phyisical reality. You have to believe in miracles, magic, ghosts, and the existence of spiritual "zones", and fundamentally believe in the existence of an overseer..GOD, Jehovah, et al. You also have to believe in exclusive intervention .. that GOD so loved the world it was willing to involve itself in the goings on here.

When a scientist watches a magician, the attitude could be, how is this entertainer trying to fool us, what tricks, visual turn of hand, are they accomplishing.
When a believer watches a magician, the attitude more likely to be, is just that..belief. The "girl" is really sawed in half, the rabbit really lives in the hat, the ghost really is their mother. And, most importantly, the magician isn't performing for the money! It just, out of the goodness of it's heart, wants you to see that "miracles do happen".

Such a split in thinking is evident..here. Certainly there are evidently grays between black and white. Some of us our more agreeable to the idea that the physical universe isn't the all and be all. Others of us demand that what we see is what we get!

Given barely a homo sapien history of existence, in a percentage calculation of the Earth's 5 billion years, and even a more drastic absence in the 13.5 billion year old universe..a rationalist would compute that our importance is nil. Given 100 billion stars in our galaxy and 100's of billions of galaxies..even more so..our importance is nil by a hundred hundred billion. Given a 100x14 billion years future for the Universe, a rationalist would compute a 100 billion x 100 billion x 140 billion nil. For a rationalist the importance of human existence would have to be in proportion to our affect on the universe as a whole..and that could logically be said to be near zero.

For a "believer"..extra dispensation comes into play. God will give us a new sun..we will forever get new light bulbs to moth around on. God will give us a new galaxy if it comes to it. And when the physical reality is no more (to us individually, or jointly) God will give us a non physical reality to play in.

I think this schism in thinking processes is fundamental..although it may not last forever..and it needn't be terminal .. for the believers or the rationalists.

Peace

James,
Lord of the Flies?