Sure did blow up good....real good.

I wonder if it would be possible to make it so that if it failed like this, which is actually quite a close, gentle fail (take a look at the Barge PoV to see how close it actually was,) that it wouldn't actually completely explode...

I suppose there must be reasons that the whole thing just blows up but... why not build it so they could recover it if it's basically standing upright and falls over sideways like this?

The sacredness of life is subjective, which makes it a useless measure.

A Palestinian mother thinks her son's life is priceless, an Israeli mortar team don't even consider it. An American husband thinks his wife's life is sacred, the terrorist that blows up the plane she is on does not.

Think about the dispassionate way we regard yearly statistics on road fatalities or death due to chronic disease. Do we weep our hearts out for every one of those deaths? Of course not, those lives have no worth to us beyond the abstract "fellow human being". They don't really bother us emotionally because we have almost no care for them.

If life is only subjectively sacred, then it's not really sacred at all...

The people that picket abortion clinics are the same ones that vote down social support mechanisms to promote and enhance people's lives. Life is so sacred that they oppose things that would make the live far more worthwhile living...

I'd say "ironic" but it's not surprising in the least.

That blowed up real good!

*quality Blowed up real good!

In the current situation, "structural reforms" is used to subsume two entirely different sets of measures.

The first is meant to remove what you previously mentioned: corruption in all the shapes and forms it takes in Greece, from a (intentionally) broken tax system formed over decades of nepotism to a bankrupt national media in the hands of oligarchs. The institutions of the Greek state are precisely what you expect when a country has been run by four families (Papandreou, Samaras, Mitsotakis, Karamanlis) for basically five decades.

This kind of structural reform is part of Syriza's program. Like you said, it'll be hard work and they might very well fail. They'll have only weeks, maybe a few months to undo significant parts of what has grown over half a century. It's not fair, but that's what it is.

The second kind of "structural reform" is meant to increase competitiveness, generally speaking, and a reduction of the public sector. In case of Greece, this included the slashing of wages, pensions, benefits, public employment. The economic and social results are part of just about every article these days, so I won't mention them again. A Great Depression, as predicted.

That's the sort of "structural reforms" Syriza wants to undo. And it's the sort that is expected of Spain, Italy and France as well, which, if done, would probably throw the entire continent into a Great Depression.

I'd go so far as to call any demand to increase competitiveness to German levels madness. Germany gained its competitiveness by 15 years of beggar-thy-neighbour economics, undercutting the agreed upon target of ~2% inflation (read: 2% growth of unit labour costs) the entire time. France played by the rules, was on target the entire time, and is now expected to suffer for it. Only Greece was significantly above target, and are now slightly below target. That's only halfway, yet already more than any democratic country can take.

They could have spread the adjustment out over 20 years, with Germany running above average ULC growth, but decided to throw Greece (and to a lesser degree Spain) off a cliff instead.


So where are we now? Debt rose, GDP crashed, debt as percentage of GDP skyrocketed. That's a fail. Social situation is miserable, health care system basically collapsed, reducing Greece to North African standards. That's a fail.

Those are not reforms to allow Greece to function independently. Those are reforms to throw the Greek population into misery, with ever increasing likeliness of radical solutions (eg Golden Dawn, who are eagerly hoping for a failure of Syriza).

So yes, almost every nation in Europe needs reforms of one sort or another. But using austerity as a rod to beat discipline into supposedly sovereign nations is just about the shortest way imaginable to blow up the Eurozone. Inflicting this amount of pain on people against their will does not work in democratic countries, and the rise of Syriza, Podemos, Sinn Féin, the SNP and the Greens as well as the surge of popularity for Front National and Golden Dawn are clear indicators that the current form of politics cannot be sustained.

Force austerity on France and Le Pen wins the election.

Meaningful reforms that are to increase Europe's "prosperity" would have the support of the people. And reforms are definatly needed, given that the Eurozone is in its fifth year of stagnation, with many countries suffering from both a recession and deflation. A European Union without increasing prosperity for the masses will not last long, I'm sure of it. And a European Union that intentionally causes Great Depressions wouldn't be worth having anyway.

Yet after everything is said and done, I believe you are still absolutely correct in saying that the pro-austerity states won't blink.

Which is what makes it interesting, really. Greece might be able to take a default. They run a primary surplus and most (90%+) of the funds went to foreign banks, the ECB and the IMF anyway, or were used to stabilize the banking system. The people got bugger all. But the Greek banking system would collapse without access to the European system.

Which raises the question: would the pro-austerity states risk a collapse of the Greek banking system and everything it entails? Spanish banks would follow in a heartbeat.

As for the morality of it (they elected those governments, they deserved it): I don't believe in collective punishment, especially not the kind that cripples an entire generation, which is what years of 50+% youth unemployment and a failing educational system does.

My own country, Germany, in particular gets no sympathy from me in this case. Parts of our system were intentionally reformed to channel funds into the market, knowing full well that there was nowhere near enough demand for credit to soak up the surplus savings, nowhere near enough reliable debtors to generate a reasonable return of investment without generating bubbles, be it real estate or financial. They were looking for debtors, and if all it took was turning a blind eye to the painfully obvious longterm problems it would create in Southern Europe, they were more than eager to play along.

Boy Howdy ... that blowed up real good!

Shit Blows Up: The Movie.

The problem I've had is that both in Ferguson and the New York case, the Grand Jury both seemed to vote on guilt/innocence, not if there is merit for a trail. Ferguson could have ended up with an innocent verdict had it actually gone to trial, if only because of massive conflicting testimony (people would still be upset, but at least if there was a trial it'd probably have been minimized). The New York choke hold is a bit harder to see how it didn't go to trial, there's a flipping camera recording it.

The Cleveland one that seems to be blowing up is a bit different, though the family wasn't treated with proper respect, I'm a bit more on the cop side there since the orange cap was off (and who can fully trust that if all you have to do is paint the tip of a real gun orange) and it looked real in the time they had. One could argue they shot too soon, but hard to tell how long to give. The problem in that case is they didn't call for medical care quick enough (not that it probably would have helped) and they blocked and arrested the family, treating them without any respect to a dead/dying child that by that point they knew had a toy gun. Let the mother get to her kid, let the sister go and don't make the mother choose to stay with her daughter or ride with her son... That's where the Cleveland one went south.

They didn't have any problem mocking Jesus, but they sure did shy away from blowing up the Koran in that opening sequence...

Oops. He says he didn't blow up a Saturn. Never worked on the moon missions, unmanned missiles only.

I asked him why he blew up the Titan. He said it was breaking up so he "sent the destruct signal to disperse the fuel" in the safe zone.

I gotta find out what that other big missile he blew up was. Taller than an Titan. All these years I thought it was a Saturn....

Why did he blow up a Saturn!? Was that the ill-fated yet wildly successful test of the escape system?

You like Saturns?

My dad blew one up. And a Titan.

He was a Range Safety officer with the Air Force in the late 1950's, early 60's. Would blow up missiles that were going off course, so the debris would fall in safe areas. Blew up LOTS of missiles.

I have a really cool image of his going away present when he left Cape Canaveral -- a cartoon with him astride a rocket, in space, over Cape Canaveral. There are silhouettes of all the missiles he blew up over his time there on the side of the rocket he is riding -- with hashmarks for HOW MANY he blew up.

It's really cool.

He BLEW UP A SATURN. Which isn't as powerful as the Titan he blew up!

I gotta say, I love how emotionless these guys always are. Rocket blows up; not a word is said about it other than "launch teams, be advised: stay at your stations."

Not even a single utterance like "Well, shit."

The website may be biased, but the polls listed are world recognized polls that are mostly above reproach. Christianity is not at the table on this, nobody is saying that there aren't wackos involved in any religion, but realistically how many christian holy war incidents can you list in the last 20 years? I mean real incidents, not just some random guy doing one thing to a doctor or clinic, but a group of holy christian fighters blowing up swathes of people or beheading them. It's not in the same ballpark, in fact it isn't the same league, or sport.

As far as US international policy goes, we do stupid shit a lot of the time. Other times we get dragged into shit because people complain if we don't. Personally I wish we would cut our defense budget in half and tell the rest of the world to go pound sand when they ask for help, but again it is not the issue of discussion we are looking at.

The issue is whether or not Islam, due to the nature of it's teachings, promotes certain things that lead to war and/or brutal acts. The fact is that it does, assuming you follow the tenets laid forth in the Koran and other works, such as the Sunnah and the anecdotes of the 12 Imams.

What other religion currently follows these tenets in it's religious laws?

- Leaving Islam is a sin and a religious crime. Once any man or woman is officially classified as Muslim, because of birth or religious conversion, he or she will be subject to the death penalty if he or she becomes an apostate, that is, abandons his or her faith in Islam in order to become an atheist, agnostic or to convert to another religion.
- If a person has never been a Muslim, he or she can live in an Islamic state by accepting to be a dhimmi and pay a Jizyah tax. They cannot practice their religions openly and they also do not have the same rights and legal protections as Muslims.
- Death penalty for Homosexuals
- Numerous women's rights violations and restrictions
- Child marriage
- Jihad is an important religious duty for Muslims. It is only very recently that it has started to be redefined by a small amount of Muslims as being possible to be non-violent in nature.

As it stands, Islam is not a religion of peace but of strife. Unless you are a casual follower, you will be trying to promote tenets of this religion either through non-violent or violent ways. As we can see around the world and even through the events of the Arab Spring, the violent ways are far more likely.