You missed the point....he was doing a ju-jutsu asshole reversal move.

With all these people and CNN giving credit to God and Jesus for saving their lives which btw clearly implies God DID NOT save the people who died (now who's implying terrible things on others?). Then why do they need our help? They have Jesus on their side and God clearly has a plan for them right? How is that "wishing terrible things for others" by acknowledging their belief that God is going to take care of them?

I wonder why he comes across like an asshole when he takes their belief to the next logical conclusion? Because we all know it's bullshit and you'ld have to be an asshole to say "god saved them, god will help them, they don't need our help" but that was the point he was making....god didn't save them, god is not going to help them, they do need our help.

Your video, People Almost Dying on Skydives and BASE jumps, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

I've never owned an iPhone, I've always been droid all the way. But I'm looking into buying the 5s because my Samsung G3 just sucks. Also the people badmouthing Apple just seem like such haters I don't know why anyone listens to them.

Everyone I've known with an iPhone hasn't ever had a problem with it, they work very nicely so I don't get the big deal. People are dying just as much to build your Samsungs and LGs than they are your Apples.

@bcglorf
thanks for the thoughtful response my friend.

since i wrote my comment i have come across a few more pieces of information that implicate assads regime but not assad himself.it has become apparent that chemical weapons were used but still no conclusive evidence WHO authorized the use.

so right now,in regards to who is to blame for the usage of chemical weapons is still conjecture.

my friend,syria is an awful situation.
two millions people displaced and flooding into neighboring countries.innocent people are dying.the political situation is a hornets nest of privileged power,theocracy and religious dissidents.

but you skipped over (much like the obama administration is doing currently) my questions regarding diplomacy.
why are we not searching with vigor a multi-lateral diplomatic solution?
what would a limited strike on damascus actually produce besides continued violence in which the innocent will pay in blood and only succeed in prolonging a violent civil war?
already the civil war had been prolonged due to outside interference (many countries bear that shame,including the US).

now let us consider if we DO go in to "punish" assad.which i think is likely.
what are the possible consequences?
could it be possible that russia,china and iran react?
what then?

do you see where i am going with this?
a diplomatic resolution may take more time.it may take some..you know..talking and patience,but the final outcome will benefit those innocents both you and i (and pretty much the world) AND the political stability in that region and all outlying players.

while a military resolution will create more casualties and deaths,many of them innocent civilians,and may possibly create a conflaguration of a world powers conflict.where the innocent body bags will begin to be counted in the millions.

am i being overly-dramatic?
possibly.
my point is the diplomatic resolution keeps innocent death counts low while a military resolution will only raise the death count and create more refugees.

so maybe i was not clear in my commentary because i guess i appeared that i didnt want the united states to do anything.
this is untrue.
i was just pointing to the utter hypocrisy of the political rhetoric.
and whatever moral credit america once possessed,it was spent many years ago.

so the best route to take BEFORE there is even talks of military action is diplomacy.even our staunches allies have refused to engage militarily,and yet what are we seeing?obama traveling the political circles to promote the march to further violence.

syria is no threat to the united states.
the humanitarian argument to fight violence with violence is a canard,its bullshit.
this has nothing to do with saving lives nor preventing further violence.

the international community needs to band together and put pressure to cease and desist.this is the moral path to take.
this is the path that will garner results quickly with far less bloodshed.


i fear this is not what is going to happen.
right now as i wrote this the obama administration is putting political pressure on all fronts.
i fear this is going to end badly.
i fear that this may domino and drag opposing nations to a conflict where the death toll will be catastrophic.

i hope i am wrong.

thanks for responding bc.i know we disagree politically on some issues and its always a pleasure discussing issues with you so i can see things from a different vantage point.

Just think how much MORE touching this story would have been if it had been a good song.

Do a test. Let someone listen to the song without telling them the background story. Is the song only good if they know it was about a cute old man losing his wife?

According to my calculations 100% of people who die during marriage leave the other one behind for some period of time (Assuming they didn't die simultaneously). Does that transform them immediately into competent song writers?

I think not.

What if Ron Paul defunded all social welfare programs and cause thousands upon thousands of people to die from preventable diseases in his own country all in the name of liberty?

Wait, that'd only make him WORSE than every other president before him.

Dear me. you are a sad human. To copy and paste a diatribe from history! My friend, this is the 21st century. And, to use an old quote, use your vote, or lose it. It is very simple - maybe not to you - but people have died to get the vote. If you truly think that the "vote" is inconsequential, you should try voting in China, North Korea or, as a woman, in any Islamic state. Try voicing your ignorance somewhere else, in the free world, intelligent people realise that, though a flawed system, voting is the best we have. Oh, and try thinking for yourself, rather than googling your predetermined prejudice.

You're conflating war time attacks with punishment or maybe even justice.

It's not about declaring the people that died deserved to die or not, because we know for a fact we killed 'innocents' by the thousands. People who unquestioningly were good people and did not deserve to die. It's about saying their deaths were an unavoidable consequence of prosecuting a war that was necessary. It's messed up to talk about a 'just' war, and a 'good war' is an oxymoron. Necessary evil is more the idea I'd say. The Japanese military machine was brutally and systematically exterminating everything in it's path, and war was the only way to stop it. We did terribly things to win that war, and the only defense of our committing those acts was preventing and ending worse ones in the future. It's not a clear good thing, it's messy.

Yes, double standards can be found anywhere and everywhere you look in geopolitics, astute observation there. Are you interested in adding anything more than that to the discussion though?

There is an actual real world behind all of this. People are dying during our discussion. I've lost patience for people decrying an action without being willing to put forward and defend an alternative. The burden of proof lies as much on those championing inaction as it does on those championing action. Do you believe Israel should not intervene while arms are shipped to Hezbollah? Would you prefer that? It's a simple enough position, but unless you are gonna stand behind it or something else then you're not taking things as seriously as they deserve to be.

It just really weirds me out. I should be glad that these convservatives are changing their minds. Support for same sex marriage is over 50 percent and is only going to get higher and higher. It's not an issue that will go away and even the most conservative people have to see the writing on the wall that they're going to lose.

but...

1. Either they are only changing their mind because of the reasons we've already talked about.

or

2. They do see the writing on the wall and know that same sex marriage will ultimately win and they're just changing their mind, not because they agree, but simply because they're a politician and they want to keep having a job.

So it's weird, it's progress, but it's not like the war is over or anything. I just hate that you pretty much have to wait for people to die and be replaced by people who didn't grow up in a time where it was socially acceptable to discriminate for real change to occur.

BTW Guns are not a huge issue here - this talking head trying to create it as an issue boggles my mind - SERIOUSLY- guns, it's a subject that does not factor into my existence, because I am not american. I never even think twice about guns, guns guns guns, leave it to these guys to dredge up a non issue to try an americanize us. guess what? i walk around all over the place in canada without ANY fear of guns. don't think about them, don't fear them. noone fucking has handguns, not afraid of rifles on dark streets, noone shooting up the place. i find the level of violence in canada VERY ACCEPTABLE where we are a human civilization, humans enter into conflict, shit happens. most people here die in hospital of old age so don't think that your gun debate has anything to do with canada, it's a non issue, and you thinking that we're talking about it ILLUSTRATES YOUR UTTER DETACHMENT FROM REALITY.

You don't need high speed internet either, technically (I do, but I am a robot). Technically, you don't need a lot of things, it is all pretty much arbitrary when you talk in those terms. When you make people have to sign up for certain rights via some sort of process, it is the beginning of a real erosion of rights. I'll even meet people half way to say if you want to be in public areas with a gun, some kind of permit is needed like cars...I don't like it, but Ill give you that. But as long as I am not using it to commit crimes, your right to restrict my behavior is over...period. It might be that freedom comes with a hefty prices of dead people, innocent people, innocent people that we could of protected with ever increasing restrictions of social liberties. I mean, look at Saudi Arabia, lower murder rates than even some European countries of pretty good order. But they live in a totalitarian dictatorship, and I am not trying to make a scarecrow argument about totalitarian dictatorships and whatnot, what I am trying to say is people dying isn't the only important metric when talking about rights to do things.


It might be true that more people will die with lacks gun laws, it might be true that more people die because of lacks drug lacks, lots of things might be true about how freedom serves to make economics weak, countries less secure, more prone to internal strife and faction, it might be true that the seeds of freedom and the ability to self regulate cause harms that extend beyond ones self. Even so, I still don't think a better framework exists for conducting ourselves that doesn't cripple and stifle people who have done no wrong. If the price for a drunk driver is abolition, the price of a murder disarmament, the price of wreck less driving horse drawn carriage, then we have failed to address the underlying problem and snub out freedoms ability to creatively deal with complex social challenges via the creative process of problem solving.

I think history has shown that any attempts to snub out action instead of guide it fail miserably. Gun control starts and ends with people, not laws, I suggest we start there. Starting neighborhood gun responsibility programs, safety education for youths, ect...whatever, I don't know, I can't pretend to know what is the best way to address the complex issue of gun control for every community, the point is that is their bag, it can be done without force given the context of the USA. Not every country has that luxury, children roaming the streets with AK-47s is not a real problem in this country, nor would it be if gun control laws were more lacks. We do have problems, I don't want there to be any mistake about that, but I don't think the solution is wholesale elimination of thing that only CAN be dangerous, I mean, anything can be dangerous, ask the folks in Oklahoma about ammonia nitrate...you don't even need a licence to buy that stuff.

Point is, the world is dangerous, and I think freedom allows for a certain amount of that danger to exist. It is the price we pay. We should look to the unwritten code that manages us, the code of culture and community.

"The freedom which we enjoy in our government extends also to our ordinary life. There, far from exercising a jealous surveillance over each other, we do not feel called upon to be angry with our neighbour for doing what he likes, or even to indulge in those injurious looks which cannot fail to be offensive, although they inflict no positive penalty. But all this ease in our private relations does not make us lawless as citizens. Against this fear is our chief safeguard, teaching us to obey the magistrates and the laws, particularly such as regard the protection of the injured, whether they are actually on the statute book, or belong to that code which, although unwritten, yet cannot be broken without acknowledged disgrace."

Pericles' Funeral Oration from the Peloponnesian War

Sounds like the rampage ended when his gun jammed. The CC was fortunate. Right place, right time. But I wonder if our hero would have pulled his gun and saved the day had the shooter continued to fire unhindered. Your "real story" is a product of your imagination. Our hero still allowed two people to die, didn't he? Now, many people would the shooter have killed if he didn't have a gun, or even access to a gun?

Apologies to the CC. I'm sure he did what he could, when he could. My point is that having CC around doesn't ensure jack shit, except that there may be more bullets flying around a crowded area, if they even stick around and shoot. I don't believe people CC primarily to protect other people. I think the mindset is largely self-preservation.

And how many more people would die if they were allowed to bring guns to work? How many people would get fired? How many bosses would have the balls to fire someone? How well would job interviews go? How many other questions are needed to highlight the absurdity of your argument?

Indeed, I am all for reactor simplification, the reactor I want to see constructed could theoretically be nearly completely made on a factory line then shipped and installed very simply. The molten salt reactor concept is just a bunch of pipes with a graphite core. Most of the Gen4 reactors have this goal, and while large construction projects do mean jobs, usually good jobs...they are also costs, and if we want China and India to adopt greener power systems, they need to be cheaper than coal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2vzotsvvkw

I am going to sift this after I post, but it is a short look into reactors in general, and why the MSR and other potential Gen4 concepts could eliminate that huge capital and labor cost. And nearly completely eliminate radioactivity problems to the general public.

300 billion is actually not to much money when you get down to it. Each year, the global economy spends up to 10 trillion dollars on dino fuel technology. Considering the reliability of NPPs and the nearly 90% load rate over the course of many years...those costs are really really good! Typically speaking, when you consider the costs of decommissioning, waste transportation, nuclear generally ends up being about on par with coal...mostly because nuclear plants last so darn long, over 60 years for some of our gen2 plants in the US and still going strong! Compare that to the 150 billion or so Germany has spent on solar project to their total ACTUAL output and it is a very telling tail. Even more so when you look at total carbon emissions of Germany compared to France.

Waste is actually what made me anti-nuclear myself. My introduction to caring (negatively) about nuclear was the Fukushima Daiichi incident. But after learning more about that situation, I actually really started to appreciate nuclear more. No one died as a result of FD failure, the containment building stopped most of the most harmful radiation, and the stuff that did get out is the really mild stuff (stuff with the million year half lives). I don't want to downplay this, it is still a very serious industrial mess to clean up, but compared to the 20 thousand people who died in the Tsunami and the tons of fuels, trash and other crap that got souped around in Japan as a result, the old reactor help up respectably, and is a credit to the operators (all of whom are currently alive an well).

I had a common misconception about radioactivity, I thought something with a long half-life was bad because it was going to be radioactive for a long, long time. That is mostly wrong. What that means is it is going to be hardly radioactive for a long time, elements that are short lived are VERY radioactive, but disappear very fast. I don't want to mire you in most of the gritty details, but the fission products reactors produce don't last very long, most only hours, a fewer some decades, and only a few longer than that. Stuff that has billion year a billion year half life...well, you don't really need to worry about it at all, it just isn't that radioactive. Most of the worry is based around "transuranics". That is just fancy speak for "stuff heavier than uranium". This is the stuff like Plutonium and Curium ect. The great thing about modern, Gen4 reactors is they don't really make those things...the thorium reactor I like starts with thorium, which is a long, long way from making anything heavier than uranium (less than 1% theoretically possible). So micrograms per year...not really that much to worry about (there is also no way to really get that to go into the environment because we don't use pressure vessels, but I will leave that to Kirk to explain).

I don't want to make it sounds like there isn't any risk or anything, but the risks have been way overplayed by political interests and not technical ones. For instance, many of the exclusions zones for FD were way overblown, they were no more radioactive than my home in the mountains ...but that isn't want you heard in the news.

But I think I will leave it like that. Nuclear has a bunch of mystic joojoo around it. Don't take my work for it, please, give "bill gates nuclear" a google, or other "gen4 reactor" stuff a chance before you completely write off nuclear as a green option for the future. I personally think it will have a big role to play if we want to stem off CO2 production AND bring more people into a western quality of life. Thanks again for the back and forth.