To counterweight the amazing stupidity and ignorance on display in this video, I suggest you now go listen to Christopher Hitchens on morality and the "ten commandments" over at this page:

http://www.rom.on.ca/media/podcasts/display.php?id=78

>> ^imstellar28:
^When I see a cat eating a mouse, I think the same thing as when I see a human eating at KFC.

That's either coldblooded, or you're a vegetarian. Or you're full of it.

So tell me, if the mouse has liberty how can the cat be tyrannous?
Tyranny against any group is a tyrannical system. We are arguing for the complete absence of tyranny, aka, a system of complete liberty.

Okay, I think we're in agreement about this. If we have a system where liberty for the cat doesn't mean tyranny for the mouse, we're in a good place.

But how do we give liberty to the mouse without imposing tyranny on the cat?

Your answer has to do with innate human mammalian rights; again, so would mine.

Suppose both wanted to live in the same house, and had the homeowner's blessing to do so.

The cat knows that he has to respect the mouse's right to life, so eating the mouse is out. However, he does get to enforce property rights, and let's say the cat's parents were rich, so he claims all the floorspace in the house except for the basement. He thereby orders the mouse off his property, and threatens to use violence in defense of his land.

If the mouse wants to live in the nicer spaces of the house, he has to agree to terms of the cat's choosing, and since the cat thinks the mouse is a lesser being, he's never going to agree to a fair deal. At best, he might grant a couple square feet to the mouse in exchange for 30 years of service...at worst, he'll come up with a contract that allows him to demand the service up-front, and add years of service for transgressions (which are entirely within the purview of the cat to asses). Then he can just trump up unfair reasons to add service (he looked at me funny!), and keep the mouse enslaved forever, probably servicing the house's furnace with dangerous, unpleasant tasks.

See, liberty for everyone! The cat gets access to all the livable space, and the mouse has to live in crawlspaces and the basement, or possibly work in service of the cat. If the mouse steps foot onto the cat's property, he becomes dinner (like KFC).

I suppose the mouse could ask the human for help, but that would probably lead down the path of terrible, terrible socialism. The human might redistribute the wealth by forcing the cat to give a pittance to the mouse...and that would be slavery, unlike the glorious voluntary liberty the mouse had before.

To turn my metaphor into prose, I think the bottom line is that "liberty" includes one's access to the resources of the world, and under your system there's no counterweight of any kind to massive inequality of wealth, which can wind up looking pretty tyrannical.

All I really differ from you on with most things is that I think there should be a floor on how far people can fall to because of their lack of economic utility, and that there are many ways to structure our world that are or should be illegal or proactively regulated since they can lead to harm to society (like the problems OSHA, EPA, SEC, FCC, etc. were created to prevent).

I suppose I should echo your insult back at you; you don't seem to understand that to get liberty for all, people's actions need to be constrained in equal ways, not that they need to be free to constrain each other in whatever ways they can get away with.

Very cool but it left me with a lot of questions:

1. Is that a little pool of water on the top?
2. Is it intended to let another car park on top of it, and if so, I'm assuming you can't lift it up with the second car on top?
3. Was it designed with counterweights so that if the motor dies, or you don't have electricity, you can still get your car out of there?

>> ^NetRunner:


I Admit I don't know much about what happened in Lebanon post-bombing, but going on that it's a defendable position, although the consequences as can be seen in allowing Hamas to participate and win the Gaza elections can be devastating.

Untied foreign aid to Pakistan was irresponsible but I still can't really see the connection to Bhutto's assassination. I can imagine what you're implying but it sounds tenuous at best to me.

I've always thought of North Korea's nuclear belligerence as a means towards extorting foreign aid, dumping them in the axis of evil and essentially ignoring them certainly didn't help, but their behaviour almost seems inevitable anyway.

I guess I can't really rail against TV personalities rather than supposed unbiased media reporting having biased or selective opinions from ideological standpoints. I guess I'm more annoyed at that there doesn't seem to be a thirst for investigative reporting. People watch the straight out news to learn the facts, but they go to these personalities to grab an actual opinion on the events transpiring. Perhaps it's because people feel they are too pressed for time or lack enough interest to become involved, while modern culture dictates they ought to have a presentable opinion on a variety of world events leaving them with the only seemingly plausible decision of stealing someone else's. Investigative reporting ought to be there so you can make up your opinion based upon the facts at hand, and yes I know I live in my own utopian world, but it damn well doesn't hurt to dream!

Plus television the main source of news nowadays was never made and isn't really plausibly capable of conveying large amounts of facts, so yeah I guess it's basically a pipe dream. Considering that, I can't really argue with Olbermann/Maddow being an inevitable counterweight to the Bill'O's of the world, a 'they started it first' approach isn't exactly ideal but then nobody really wins elections or consensus on culturally divisive issues based upon superior policy or logic. I equally have no doubt that there are plenty of people in positions of power who have no interest in an actual debate and are entirely content funnelling points of view through their television personalities, and would very much like to keep it that way so I agree with much of what you say.

The Republicans have been wrong on most things I agree, but the divide is not just political, it's ideological. I mean you're not going to see the benefits of the free market/invisible hand being argued on Olbermann/Maddow for example.

>> ^misterwight:

Sycophant!

I believe theirs is the largest counterweight in the world.

I've actually never heard of it being for quakes, just for the sway from the powerful winds so high up in the air.

Neat stuff.

Full diapers act as a natural counterweight, that's how he can stay upright so well.

And it looked like it was supposed to be the falling counterweights from the crane which would have made juuuuuust a little more noise both breaking free and the impact.

To really understand the issue one needs to know how DU is used, mostly as a kinetic force penetrator in ammunition. DU is very dense; at 19050 kg/m³, it is almost 70% denser than lead, thus a given weight of it has a smaller diameter than an equivalent lead projectile, with less aerodynamic drag and deeper penetration due to a higher pressure at point of impact. DU projectile ordnance is often incendiary because of its pyrophoric property.

So upon impact the DU tip vaporises and spreads into the air, since DU rounds usually hit a combustible target and there is a subsequent explosion the spread of the material is wide. This was all covered after Gulf War when DU first started getting used widely and created the now commonly known Gulf War Sickness or Balkans War Sickness.

Various goverment studies keep pushing the question back and forth between goverment committees as the issue of exposure, since no scientific based way can be worked about how DU gets into the human system, so some reports say there is too little to cause harm and others say it depends on exposure and the issue basically starts to revolve on how people get it into their system, how much is lethal, etc etc.

At the end of the day the fact is that even though we have various treaties prevent the use of chemically and biological arms, DU is not covered within any of them, and the issue is such that nothing can really be done until a treaty can be worked out on DU usage. That is not likely to happen anytime soon. The US, France, UK and other nations actively use DU as the cheapest form of kinetic penetrator known to man, and shot down various treaties designed to go against the usage of DU.

Regarding this debate, the above mentioned working paper published in 2002 by the United Nations Sub-Commission on Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, at paragraph 171 under the title "Moratorium" reads:

“Considering the disturbing reports on the ill effects of DU weapons in the Gulf and the Balkans, it is saddening to note that so far appeals for a moratorium coming from different quarters have not yet prevailed. Killing first and asking questions later has, however, never been a sensible solution.

Ironically

Aircraft may also contain depleted uranium trim weights (a Boeing 747-100 may contain 400 to 1,500 kg). This application of DU is controversial. If an aircraft crashes there is concern that the uranium would enter the environment: the metal can oxidize to a fine powder in a fire. Its use has been phased out in many newer aircraft; Boeing and McDonnell-Douglas discontinued using DU counterweights in the 1980s.

Clearly when used in ammunition it doesn't catch fire... The NATO countries of France, the United Kingdom and the United States have consistently rejected calls for a ban, maintaining that its use continues to be legal, and that the health risks are entirely unsubstantiated. The UK government further alleges that cancers and birth defects in Iraq could be blamed on the Iraqi Government's use of chemical weapons on its own citizens.

Depleted uranium (DU) was used in tank kinetic energy penetrator and autocannon rounds on a large scale for the first time in the Gulf War. DU munitions often burn when they impact a hard target, producing toxic combustion products. The toxicity, effects, distribution, and exposure involved have all been the subject of a lengthy and complex debate.

Because uranium is a heavy metal and chemical toxicant with nephrotoxic (kidney-damaging), teratogenic (birth defect-causing), and potentially carcinogenic properties, uranium exposure is associated with a variety of illnesses. The chemical toxicological hazard posed by uranium dwarfs its radiological hazard because it is only weakly radioactive, and depleted uranium even less so.

Early studies of depleted uranium aerosol exposure assumed that uranium combustion product particles would quickly settle out of the air and thus could not affect populations more than a few kilometers from target areas, and that such particles, if inhaled, would remain undissolved in the lung for a great length of time and thus could be detected in urine. Uranyl ion contamination has been found on and around depleted uranium targets.

DU has recently been recognized as a neurotoxin. In 2005, depleted uranium was shown to be a neurotoxin in rats.

In 2001, a study was published in Military Medicine that found DU in the urine of Gulf War veterans. Another study, published by Health Physics in 2004, also showed DU in the urine of Gulf War veterans. A study of UK veterans who thought they might have been exposed to DU showed aberrations in their white blood cell chromosomes. Mice immune cells exposed to uranium exhibit abnormalities.

Increases in the rate of birth defects for children born to Gulf War veterans have been reported. A 2001 survey of 15,000 U.S. Gulf War combat veterans and 15,000 control veterans found that the Gulf War veterans were 1.8 (fathers) to 2.8 (mothers) times as likely to report having children with birth defects. In early 2004, the UK Pensions Appeal Tribunal Service attributed birth defect claims from a February 1991 Gulf War combat veteran to depleted uranium poisoning.

In 2005, uranium metalworkers at a Bethlehem plant near Buffalo, New York, exposed to frequent occupational uranium inhalation risks, were alleged by non-scientific sources to have the same patterns of symptoms and illness as Gulf War Syndrome victims.

The NATO countries of France, the United Kingdom and the United States have consistently rejected calls for a ban, maintaining that its use continues to be legal, and that the health risks are entirely unsubstantiated. The UK government further alleges that cancers and birth defects in Iraq could be blamed on the Iraqi Government's use of chemical weapons on its own citizens.

"Considering the disturbing reports on the ill effects of DU weapons in the Gulf and the Balkans, it is saddening to note that so far appeals for a moratorium coming from different quarters have not yet prevailed. Killing first and asking questions later has, however, never been a sensible solution"

- United Nations Sub-Commission on Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, at paragraph 171 under the title "Moratorium" for the use of military DU rounds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium#Military_applications

EDIT - Unfortunately I don't see this issue being addressed by anyone soon, because pulling DU out of the entire military ammunition apparatus did not happen since 1991 and Gulf War Sickness when VA vets complained, and I don't see it happening now. This being all sickly ironic given that --

Aircraft may also contain depleted uranium trim weights (a Boeing 747-100 may contain 400 to 1,500 kg). This application of DU is controversial. If an aircraft crashes there is concern that the uranium would enter the environment: the metal can oxidize to a fine powder in a fire. Its use has been phased out in many newer aircraft; Boeing and McDonnell-Douglas discontinued using DU counterweights in the 1980s. Some amount of depleted uranium was released eg. during the Bijlmer disaster, when 152 kg was 'lost'. Counterweights are manufactured with cadmium plating and are considered non-hazardous while the plating is intact.

So unsafe in airplanes, safe in war zones. Huh.