So this is a bit incorrect. Teller-Ulam devices (aka: huge fucking nukes like the Tsar Bomba) are three-stage or more weapons. The first stage, the "atom bomb", is the initiator. The second stage is where a normal hydrogen bomb gets its "oomph" from. After a third stage is added, things get very scary very quickly:
" Each stage can be 10-100 times the size of the previous stage. The 50 Mt bomb mentioned above was a three stage weapon."
Edward Teller proposed a (theoretical) T-U bomb that would be in the gigaton range, but reasoned it was impractical because it'd blow off a huge part of the atmosphere into space.
Fun bonus fact! The actual amount of plutonium that achieved pure fission in the Hiroshima explosion was roughly the size of a grain of rice. E=MC^2 is a hell of a thing!

But sticking with Trump is sticking with your crazy chick that tries to stab you in your sleep at least once a week, is so dumb she can't read or write, is aggressive and insists you back her up on her insanity or be prepared to be stabbed extra this week, and is so inconsistent that even when you repeat her positions verbatim she claims you never support her and attacks with everything at her disposal vs an ex girlfriend who you already know is only average intelligence, isn't violent, doesn't need you to constantly legitimize their insanity, and can accept it when you disagree.

Then there's the narcissism.
Then there's the grift and graft.
Then there's the lawlessness.
Then there's the ignorance.

Yes, Trump is more interesting, like an atom bomb is more interesting than an M-80.
"May you live in interesting times" is a curse, not well wishes.

Yes. Lets confront the issue of mental health. The unhinged shouldn't be allowed access to any weapons, be they pistols, rifles....atomic bombs...

Yes. In our schools in N.J. they had 3 types of drills.
Fire drill, atomic bomb and air raid.

Atomic bomb we would stand in the hall facing the wall with our arms crossed up in front of our face. For the air raids we would stay in the classroom and get on the floor under our desks.

I'm not sure any of us were really afraid at the time. We just did whatever they told us to do. I was in 5th grade in 1965-66.

CAN you build an atomic bomb out of slag iron and mud?

@newtboy

If you are only growing twice what you can eat yourself, you are describing a large garden, not a farm.

More over, what you class as 'industrial' farming is in fact the entirety of all grain farming. If there is a place in farming for wheat, corn, soy, canola and so on, 99% of it is done on what you class 'industrial' farming.

Your typical family farm is over a thousand acres today. If I go out and start naming the family farms of just friends and family I know, I can come up with 30-40+. They all farm over a thousand acres, they use tractors and combines and they make a fair bit more food than twice what they can eat. They aren't the ultra rich land barons that your 'industrial' moniker would imply either, at most they have a singular hired hand to help out with the work. The ones with children interested in taking over often don't need to hire anyone at all.

If you want to abandon that agricultural production and the methods used you mean raising the cost of production more than 100 times over. I can't even fathom the cost of weeding a thousand acres of wheat by hand, let alone removing grasshoppers from a corn crop that way. I'm sorry, but what works for your garden doesn't scale to grain crops.

Oh, and the conflation of herbicide and pesticide was done by the fear monger crowd. Listing round-up as a chemical that only kills plants and not insects and animals didn't fit their agenda so now everything is supposed to be called a pesticide across the board. Maybe that's just a Canadian thing, but the bottom line is that if you had a crop completely over run with insects you could spray it once a day with stupidly high concentrations of round-up and the water in the sprayer would do about the same damage to the insects as would the round up.


As for the video's other claims, I stand by my characterisation. You can't honestly tell me the video is trying to put forward on open and honest picture of Monsanto's actions and history. For example, the Manhattan Project, here's a transcription for clarity:
"Monsanto head Charles Allen Thomas was called to the pentagon not only asked to join the Manhattan project, but to lead it as it's co-director. Thomas put Monsanto's central research department hard to work building the atomic bomb.Fully aware of the implications of the task the budding empire sealed it's relationship with the inner cicrcles of washington with two fateful days in Japan.
"
- queue clip of nuclear blasts-

I think I stand by my summation.

Sorry about those two atomic bombs, but your rude emperor wouldn't stop being rude to us. I do however, love my Honda. You're cute and I want to do several inappropriate things to you. Why did you dye your hair red? You're not from Scotland, where all the rude things you mentioned are expected, and not doing them there is considered rude. Don't eat the food in Scotland, though.

FDR didnt decide that. Truman did. Truman was a weakling. He was like a teenage bully who suddenly got unbelievable power. Even Churchill noticed how much he changed and how he always attacked and tried to provoke Stalin.
And that decision wasnt made because of fear of more lost lives. it was made because after Germany was defeated Russia very quickly advanced towards Japan. Truman didnt want want Russia to get a say in Japan at all costs. Yet they knew Japan was willing to surrender, with only one condition: The emperor would not be touched. The Americans didnt even want to accept that single condition. But the funny thing is, they did after the war. The emperor was not touched. But Truman, in his world, was pretty smart. He not only stopped any possibility of the Russians being able to get a part of Japan, he also showed Stalin what a powerful nation the USA has become, and that it should be feared. In reality, it was 2 atom bombs for NOTHING. Those 2 bombs were a huge factor in the start of the cold war, but ultimately it was Truman and the people behind him, who started that war. He always saw an enemy in Russia. He did everything to ensure they would think the USA is their enemy. Yet memos of Stalin and other documents showed clearly that Stalin never wanted a confrontation with the USA and even after the cold war started, he never took an attack on them into consideration.
Its just another chapter in the aggression and chaos the USA spreads on this planet.

I found Colbert's question about "unknown knowns" the most interesting, but here's the thing:

Bush was the Commander in Chief. He didn't present their "intelligence evidence" of Iraq's WMDs to the American people because he *had* to. He tells the military what to do, they do it; the people don't get "veto rights". The only reason he presented it to the American people (I still remember watching Colin Powell show satellite photos etc.) was to shore up votes for his re-election. Which is exactly what any politician would do in that situation -- make a decision, and present that decision in the best possible light to the voters.

In other words, when Bush et al. were presenting that stuff to us, they weren't selling the actual invasion itself to us. They were selling us an image of their own legitimacy and competence. Viewed like that, of course they aren't going to inform us of those "unknown knowns"; it would shatter the image of them confidently and capably doing what they knew they had to do -- which was the actual point of it (selling that image to us, I mean).


I was sold, at the time. As were most (but not all) Americans, including many many people much older and wiser than I was (and am). I now agree that the invasion was a colossal mistake and that Bush's presidency in general was rather disastrous. BUT, that being said, I think it is problematic to hold these kinds of decisions against a president beyond a certain point.

FDR decided to drop two atom bombs on Japan rather than continuing with conventional warfare and risking many more American (and Japanese) lives with an invasion. Many people have questioned (and continue to question) that decision. But FDR was there. He was the Commander in Chief, he had some facts and plenty of unverifiable information and suggestions from his cabinet and intelligence sources of the time, and he made the decision.

I don't envy people in power who have to make weighty decisions like that based on incomplete information, only to have people question those decisions by citing information that they didn't have at the time. For the rest of their lives.

"It's been one culture that's been blowing shit up over and over again"

Americans?

This is really fucking reprehensible on Mahers part. He's an American and an atheist. See how quickly he takes responsibility for drone strikes, wire-tapping, dropping atomic bombs on civilians. How about the Stalinist purges?

Know what he'd say? I don't support that (except maybe the drone strikes, because fuck brown people, amirite?). I'm not part of that.

SO WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU PUTTING 9/11 ON A FUCKING KID WHO PROBABLY WASN'T EVEN BORN?

Hey, ya know what? Maybe we should be careful. Maybe we should treat the kind of people who commit mass killings in the US with a degree of caution. So let's start with locking up the white males, 'cos those motherfuckers seem to go on shooting sprees with depressing regularity.

Ugh, seriously, fuck Maher. That was fucking disgusting to watch.

I was thinking the same thing. We had a good deal of choice of what classes to take. I didn't take Lit, but I did do the basic English classes, where we read some Shakespeare and the like, but not to the degree the Lit students did. I didn't do any complex math classes either, I did Algebra. But then I also did Applied Business, or whatever it was called. I did Civics with the base History classes. I did Home Economics in 9th grade, not a required class, but an elective. Woodshop was another example of an elective class. Have they removed electives from schools? If not then it's this dude's own fault for not choosing the proper electives. If they are gone and all that is taught is the core, then there may be too much core.

I got to disagree with the video's premise that Math, History and the cores aren't needed. Do you need Calculus, no but you should graduate with a strong understanding of basic Algebra. History is important to, though I'm not sure the methods used are effective, route memorization of facts and dates for tests, rather than a general understanding of history and how to avoid the same mistakes. Teaching for tests period is a problem... Lit isn't important and should remain an elective, but having read some of the "classics" is important too, even if it is just a quick Cliff Notes sort of version of it (do they still have Cliff Notes?) Actually a Cliff Notes rundown of lots of the "classics" would probably be better than what most English classes do, while encouraging students to read more modern what they want fare for reports and the like. I didn't take Biology, but basic Science understanding is important, problem is it's politicized and rather than stick with the facts, too many people want to introduce at the very least doubt about the facts if not introduce ideological ideas that contradict the facts and are based on a misunderstanding of what the facts actually say... due to a messed up literal reading (well when it's convenient to take literal, other times things are dismissed as "literary" or "poetic" be it about the Earth not moving or bats being birds and on and on) of one particular bronze age book.

Also you can't teach people who to vote for... you gain understanding of the issues in History and Civics... so...

How to move away from testing is a tricky thing. You need to prove you have an understanding of how to form an Algebraic formula and to solve one. You need to prove you understand the issue(s) of the Civil War and the basic era (I'm not convinced you need to remember exact dates, know it was the 1860s), same with the other wars. What was one's nation's involvement in the World Wars and what caused those wars in the first place, and again basic era, if you don't know the exact year of the bombing of Pearl Harbor or D-Day or the dropping of the atomic bombs, okay, but a basic close approximation of the years. For English you need to prove you can write and read, and a basic understanding of literature, not details of classic books, but narrative structure etc. There should perhaps be more time spent on critical thinking and how to vet sources. You need to have a basic enough understanding of science not to dismiss things as "just a theory" which proves you don't know what theory means in science, and don't ask ridiculous questions like "if we came from monkeys why are there still monkeys" instead you should be able to answer that. You should be able to answer properly if somebody notes that CO2 is good for plants or that compact fluorescent have mercury in them so they aren't better for the environment than older bulbs.

How does one prove these things without tests? That's the question. And it needs to be Federally standardized to a degree to ensure that you don't have lose districts teaching that the Civil War wasn't about slavery nearly at all, rather than the fact it was the primary reason, or that Evolution is "just a theory", or deny the slaughter of the Native Americans or interment of Japanese Americans. You need to insure that all students are getting the same basics, and insure they have a good range of choices for electives. It's the basics though that basically need tested for, and I personally can't figure out a way to prove a student knows say what caused the Civil War or that they know what Evolution actually is, or how to form an Algebraic formula to solve a real life problem without a test.

Might be interesting to compare and contrast how we in the US have handled our laundry list of "bad things we've done in the past" compared to, say, Germany.

I know that the Nazi flag and other imagery are outright banned / censored in Germany. From what I understand, WW2 history taught in schools in Germany is handled very carefully, if not largely glossed over.

In the US, the only bit of history that gets treatment similar to that (in my experience/opinion) is the Vietnam war. I know my High School history classes definitely glossed over it and didn't want to get into any details about why, how, or whether or not we should have been in the war at all.

Compare that to WW2, which was covered in pretty great detail. Very much including actively encouraging students to consider their own thoughts on controversial things like dropping not just one but two atomic bombs on Japan.

The Civil War is also covered much more openly and honestly. I don't think I can recall anyone ever seriously suggesting that the single, most important root cause of the Civil War wasn't slavery. Other umbrella labels like "states rights" might be referred to as the impetus, but yes, any and all of those things really boil down to slavery.



One thing that scares me about the German approach (sweep under the rug and don't talk about it) is that it sort of all too conveniently ignores the reality that these terrible things were done by people who were (disturbingly) not very different from us. OK, Hitler himself might have been a 1 in a million or 1 in a billion combination of evil, crazy, and powerful. But Joe Average from today ... not so different from Hans Average from 1930s Germany.

Celebrating one's heritage and past is OK, sometimes even good. Especially when one can honestly own and try to understand the bad along with the good. I think it is OK to appreciate the Confederate flag, along with historical figures like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. It is possible to accept that their core motivations were done in support of a very bad and evil institution (slavery), but to still respect or even admire their accomplishments as human beings. Thomas Jefferson owned slaves too, but we are willing to look beyond that when considering his legacy.

Maybe the Confederate flag is tied too closely to the institution of slavery for it ever to be uncoupled from that. Maybe a government that prides itself on being democratic should consider that that connection creates a conflict with many of its constituents. But I hope we never sweep it under the rug and pretend it never happened.

Perhaps you amateur climate scientists could pay attention to the what the scientists say that study this issue. The consequences are serious. The effects are starting now. There are many positive feedback loops. We are driving the climate to a state it has not been in for the past several million years. (Oh, and that 'atomic bomb per second' is about 280kt/s these days.)

@3:00 - I'm not sure that I'd call a half-assed attempt to send plague fleas via sub and air as being "equally devastating" in comparison to 2 atomic bombs.

My question is, if Canada or Mexico were being controlled by terrorists and were firing rockets into our country and killing people, how long do you think it would take for the national outrage to develop and a ground campaign sent out to utterly destroy the capability of the enemy to hurt us any longer? I don't see us putting up with it, or any other country for that matter. Yet, for some reason there is a double standard with Israel that people think they should put up with it.

That said, I would agree that Israel has a lot to answer for as far as civilian deaths; there is a lot of racism and insensitivity and brutality. America isn't any better.. We dropped two atomic bombs on Japan to destroy their war machine and killed over 250k people. Iraq probably had quite a few more, yet we are lecturing to Israel to stop trying to remove the terrorists who live in their back yard. We would never stand for it so why are we telling Israel that they should. I am against war and I think Israel has crossed the line many times but I still recognize that countries are asking them to do something they themselves would never do.