Posts Made By: James C Chandler Jr

Newsweek-- The Case for Killing Granny--

http://www.newsweek.com/id/215291

Iceland is too cold to have a volcano!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laptaCg0BHA

Its tough getting used to a dog being gone. But they remain with us forever really. Or close enough to forever for practical purposes.

They do not get jealous if you adopt another dog. Lots of dawgs need a home.

david elosser said:

Barbara Boxer must have been seething. With the her re-election bid in the balance showing the worst poll numbers she's ever had, Obama totally screws up her campaign fundraiser speech. First, in a 6-1/2 minute speech, he talks three minutes about himself, gets three minutes of heckling, and even walks away from the podium in a clear demonstration of lack of control. Barbara only gets about 30 seconds of exposure out of all this. The crowd is clearly upset over what Obama does best: passing the buck.

(Caution: this video is graphic in nature may be upsetting to some supporters of Obama: parental discretion is advised.)
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/04/19/pro-gay_hecklers_repeatedly_interrupt_obama_at_dnc_fundraiser.html

David E

BHO never said it was gonna be easy. He never said it was gonna be easy. He don't quit. He don't quit.

No matter how flustrating it may be to him, hopefully he won't quit helping Barbara, and he will help her even more gooder than he helped in MA and NJ.

Demographically, supposedly gays do pretty well in the income category. If so they probably pay pretty stiff tax bills. Hopefully they are not the selfish sort who may ultimately say, "I've got mine, screw the rest."

I got the impression that this CStar 8X20 monocular is Russian rather than Chinese, but dunno its heritage.



I got it many years ago and it still works good as new, They are still fur sail apparently--

http://www.amazon.com/CStar-Optics-M-28C-Spy-Scope-Monocular/dp/B0007YR6BA

It is a nice daytime scope considering that it is such a tiny little cheap gadget. Difficult to imagine a practical monocular any smaller than this.

I've carried it on rare air trips for high-altitude sightseeing, and carry it on a neck strap on each trip to the firing range to observe the hits on up to 50 yard targets. Not powerful enough for my eyes to see bullet holes on 100 yard targets.

It focuses pretty sharp, and the Apparent Field of View is PERHAPS 40 or 50 degrees if the tiny eyepiece is almost touching the eyeball. At least with this design, it is easy enough to get the tiny eyepiece nearly touching the eyeball.

When shooting with goggles over the eyeglasses, and the monocular has to be a long distance from the eye-- The AFOV is tiny but it still isn't too much hassle to get the small view centered on a 50 yard target.

John Agnew said:

I'm sure we've covered this ground before, but I'm curious as to what you all think about an omniscient god and free will. If an Omniscient being truly knows all, including the past and the future, then it knows the choices we will make before we choose. How can my will be free and already known beforehand? How could a just god punish someone for failing a test that he had already known the results of?

Hi John

It also seems a foggy notion in the realm of current scientific understanding.

In the 19th century newtonian clockwork universe, EVERYTHING is in principle completely predictable, given access to all data and adequate computational resources.

So if everything is in principle predictable, it doesn't matter whether or not we can calculate the future-- Regardless whether we can calculate the future, it is all cast in stone and we cannot change the future one iota, and any notion of free will is mere illusion. Every future choice we make is already fore-ordained by the universe's preceeding state and the laws of nature.

There is chaos theory, but as best I understand it, chaos theory doesn't open an avenue for free will. Chaos theory shows that some systems have so many interactive modes that we can't realistically predict the future state of a chaotic system. However, I think in principle if we knew everything about the system, then even the chaos could be accurately calculated. Please correct if that is my misunderstanding.

Quantum theory opens a possibility for randomness, for not being able in principle to precisely predict the future. As we learn more, we find more situations where quantum effects can influence the macro world.

But quantum observation seems to be dependent on our situation embedded in space-time. We can observe photons exhibiting quantum behavior in their speed of light time-delay. Random happenings in the time window between photon emission and detection. The probability wave.

However, from the perspective of the photon, there seems no indeterminancy in the probability wave? At the speed of light, the photon experiences no time-delay from emission to absorbtion, and so the flight of a photon for millions of years takes zero time as far as the photon is concerned. It jumps off a faraway star and instantly impacts our telescope mirror. It is 'instantly connected' between the star and the mirror.

If there is some kind of 'global speed of light' connection between everything, then from that frame of reference everything in the space-time exists "at once" in one big frozen multi-dimensional construction. So that might be another frame of reference which is omniscient and does not appear to have any room for free will?

Andreas Saldivar said:

Just like the Major Hasan murders I think we'll see the MSM bury this pretty quick. Also, don't hold your breath for any outrage, at this latest terror attempt, by the majority of the worldwide islamic community.

Andreas

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100504/ap_on_re_us/us_times_square_car_bomb

It is immediately obvious that they arrested the wrong fellow. This guy from the religion of peace couldn't have done it. It was some deranged Tea Party activist, according to NYC Mayor Bloomberg last night.

http://dailycaller.com/2010/05/04/liberals-accuse-tea-partiers-of-role-in-failed-times-square-car-bomb-attack/

"New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg appeared on Katie Couric's show Monday night to discuss the attempted car bombing in Times Square. Between reassuring viewers at home that New York was safe and praising the city's resilient spirit, Bloomberg wondered aloud if the culprit behind the Times Square car bomb was "a mentally deranged person or somebody with a political agenda that doesn't like the health-care bill or something."

"Bloomberg was just one of many public figures who intimated the Tea Party movement Monday might have tried - or at the very least, wanted - to blow up Midtown Manhattan. Over at the Nation, Robert Dreyfuss kiboshed the possibility that the attempted bombing was an act of Islamic terrorism, arguing instead that it was "either a lone nut job or a member of some squirrely branch of the Tea Party, anti-government far right. Which actually exists in Connecticut, where, it seems, the car's license plates were stolen."

"From the Daily Kos:

The reality is that in this country there seem to be essentially two scenarios that can unfold at this point when we hear about terrorism, two kinds of people/groups that typically end up being involved. And that says quite a lot in and of itself. If I were the Tea Partiers, I wouldn't be too quick to dwell on the question of why Americans might think they're involved in terrorism. I don't think that's a discussion that's going to go well for them.

From Washington and Lee University law professor Timothy Stoltzfus Jost:

I think the politics of this incident will turn heavily on who is found to be responsible. If, as seems unlikely, the bomb is linked to south Asian or Middle Eastern terrorists, questions will again arise as to whether Homeland Security is doing all it can do to keep us safe. If, as I believe much more likely, the bomb was placed by a right-wing lunatic, it seems to me that questions need to be raised as to whether the right wing media bears some responsibility for stoking the delusions of such people through its relentless and often unfounded attacks on the Obama administration and the federal government. We need to consider whether it isn't time to return to responsible, ethical, journalism.

Election Ink's Jason Levin claimed Monday that:

Anonymous sources have reported that a suspect is currently being questioned in the Bridgeport / New Haven CT area. The suspect is a middle age white male, has a history of strong political views, and considers himself a Sarah Palin Tea Party express activist. An arrest is expected within days. In a strange twist, the suspect worked in the past as an informant with law enforcement agencies."

Paul Kammueller said:

Sooooo a 1000-point drop, and bounce back, on no news to speak of. Financial sites just pointing to the Greek/Portugal/Spain debt crisis but the market's known about that for days/weeks, everyone's been talking about it. Opinions? Is there a really big shoe about to drop that the market just caught wind of?

Hi Paul

Haven't the foggiest idea on what goes thru stock market investors' heads, but it is interesting thatstocks have been sagging for awhile, but precious metals so far do not seem to be tracking down along with the market.

Since fall 2008, until now, metals have sagged in tandem with stock price sags.

If this time metals surge against a stock sag, would that be evidence of increasingly weakened confidence in both stocks and fiat currency? Or just coincidence?

Paul Kammueller said:

OK I admit I don't know a lot about UK politics.

A Conservative-Lib Dem coalition in the UK in opposition to Labour. Someone explain to me how, ideologically, this works. Sounds like here in the U.S. if we had, say, socialists and republicans form a coalition against the dems.

I get the impression that Labour is the socialist party over there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_Party_(UK)

"The Labour Party is a member of the Party of European Socialists and the Socialist International." ..."The party grew out of the trade union movement and socialist political parties of the 19th century seeking representation for workers. It describes itself as a "democratic socialist party""

Rod's Roger Darlington link states, "In America, the term 'liberal' generally means quite left-wing. In Britain, the name 'Liberal' means broadly centrist."

In the 1800's up to early 1900's in the USA, 'liberal' was approximately the same as modern-day USA Libertarian. But then the meaning and platform of 'liberal' morphed.

Dunno if liberal brits are anywhere near usa libertarians. Or for that matter, whether conservative brits are very similar to usa conservatives. In the USA, libertarians side with conservatives on some issues and usa liberals on other issues.

So one might say that libertarians are 'broadly centrist' because they have some agreement with both left and right. But usa libertarians are not generally perceived as 'broadly centrist'. More often perceived as far-right loons or whatever. USA self-described centrists typically have a lot of authoritarianism, and have a talent for picking the very worst things to agree with the left and right on. For example Lou Dobbs or Bill O'Reilly.

USA libertarians despise economic collectivism so much, that they would be more likely to partner with conservatives on bread'n'butter issues, while disagreeing on matters of militarism and personal freedoms and civil rights. Economic collectivism being such a big part of the democrat agenda lately, it seems vanishingly unlikely that usa libertarians would ally themselves with democrats unless/until democrats get the socialism out of their system.

Perhaps somewhat analogous in UK, or perhaps not. Dunno.

From her answer, seems that the young woman has the most in common with Hitler Youth.