So what? People of like faith asking God for guidance? It's not like their forcing prayer on someone else. The participants are all Christians. If it was any other religion other than Christianity then this would not be news. But today it's so hip to bash on Christianity and protect every other signal religion. I used to like some of Rachel Maddow's commentaries but this is such a none-issue that it seems like she has nothing better to do.

>> ^Fjnbk:
The Democrats should calm down, have a nice drink, then either pass the Senate bill along with procedures for fixing it via reconciliation, or rapidly finish negotiations on the merged bill and pass that, all before Brown is in office.
By the way, if you're in the U.S., now would probably be a more effective time than ever to call your representative and encourage them to take one of those paths (the first one is probably more feasible). Right now, none of the Democrats have any idea what to do, and they could really use some guidance in a direction away from caving to the Republicans again.


Oh, yeah!

That's always worked wonders.

"Hi, I'm the thousandth person whose name is nobody and who is worth nothing."

Neigh...

We must steal their heart.

The Democrats should calm down, have a nice drink, then either pass the Senate bill along with procedures for fixing it via reconciliation, or rapidly finish negotiations on the merged bill and pass that, all before Brown is in office.

By the way, if you're in the U.S., now would probably be a more effective time than ever to call your representative and encourage them to take one of those paths (the first one is probably more feasible). Right now, none of the Democrats have any idea what to do, and they could really use some guidance in a direction away from caving to the Republicans again.

"How many avatars have you had since being a member? What were (are) they?
I only remember this last one, the underwater force-field. I stoped changing avatars after someone complained they only remebered "faces" but not names. Seemed fair."

Yes, as many wimpo's I have encountered, doing whatever they think is desired by someone outside themselves. Well, I am complaining that you DON'T change Avatars. What NOW ? !!!

I would really like to know if you had guidance and instruction in applying the spermatazoa that you utilized to avoid a complaint from the female. Obviously must have, to create such a beautiful infant!!!

^
In many rallies (including WRC) drivers are allowed to pre-run the stages with their co-driver and create their own pacenotes. Other times the organizers provide official pacenotes that all teams must use.

Each team has their own style, but pacenotes are a sequence of shorthand created to describe the course. Particularly, the distance to, and severity of corners along with other track anomalies such as jumps or cautions. This particular team (crazy as they are) used speed guidance as well, by means of proper gear selection.

In example:
100 K right 2 into 400 flat

Would be read on the course to mean 100 meters to a level 2 severity kink to the right which then opens to a 400 meter flat. Bend severity is generally rated 1-5/6 where 1 is tight and 5/6 is loose (this can be flipped, depending). Flat means floor it!

Check the Wiki for additional info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacenotes

Good man. He never ceases to impress me.

I only wish I had such a mentor in my early days, otherwise I'd have been in the field. Living in a near vacuum as far as far as family and my school was concerned, and zero guidance along the way. Eventually I did follow a path along computer science (which is nice), though I occasionally do wish I chose that path. Though I do make up for it by having my own private observatory. So I do get to dabble. Who knows, there is potential to leap into that field to a degree with the background I have. Though, I'll certainly be the mentor to my child that I did not have when I was young.

>> ^raverman:
Most importantly the state is, constitutionally, in writing and sworn to = separated from the church.
Christian Marriage, Hindu Marriage, Buddist Marriage, Chinese Marriage, Muslim Marriage, Pagan, mother earth goddess - tree worshiping marriage... and Gay Marriage are all equal in law due to freedom of belief and religion.
Choosing to oppose Gay marriage based on Deuteronomy? That's using freedom of religion as a moral guidance to prejudge, and oppose equality.
You can't say, my god says you and your lifestyle is evil and you cannot be legally equal - but I'm not a homophobe, i don't hate you! You're just evil and you do not deserve freedoms.


How does Separation of Church and State have anything to do with me (hypothetically) being against gay marriage? I am neither Church nor State; I can have the opinion that gays should not be married all I want.

A homophobe who says they're not a homophobe is still a homophobe. PHJF's comment is a perfect example of someone being against gay marriage without a drop of hatred for gays. People seem to be getting hung up on the argument that an opinion like the one proposed by PHJF is unreasonable. Whether it is or not is beside the point. The point is that someone can be against gay marriage without being a homophobe and attempting to drown them out by calling them such is a disservice to everyone.

I am very much in support of people who are gay, but I am slightly sick of hearing that when people make voting decisions based on their beliefs, they are somehow violating the "separation of church and state" doctrine, which I believe wholeheartedly in, but which is not an explicit part of the Constitution. Jefferson suggested that the doctrine is an inherent part of the Constitution, and nobody "sw[ears] to" it, but they misunderstand it on a regular basis.

People shouldn't vote on issues that they consider moral based on their religious beliefs? Well, maybe their religious beliefs are wrong, but it is completely unreasonable to suggest that they shouldn't vote based on their beliefs, and it is even more unreasonable to suggest that this is somehow a violation of the separation of church and state. It isn't. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. All laws are enforcements of someone's concept of right and wrong. Granted, this particular issue is based less on ethics and more on faith that almost any other. Although the decisions themselves may be unconstitutional, there is nothing unconstitutional about making them based on religious beliefs. The separation of church and state is irrelevant.

>> ^raverman:
>>> ^xxovercastxx:
You can oppose gay marriage without being a homophobe.I actually agree with everything else in ^xxovercastxx's post except for this.

Most importantly the state is, constitutionally, in writing and sworn to = separated from the church.

Christian Marriage, Hindu Marriage, Buddist Marriage, Chinese Marriage, Muslim Marriage, Pagan, mother earth goddess - tree worshiping marriage... and Gay Marriage are all equal in law due to freedom of belief and religion.

Choosing to oppose Gay marriage based on Deuteronomy? That's using freedom of religion as a moral guidance to prejudge, and oppose equality.

You can't say, my god says you and your lifestyle is evil and you cannot be legally equal - but I'm not a homophobe, i don't hate you! You're just evil and you do not deserve freedoms.

>> ^xxovercastxx:
You can oppose gay marriage without being a homophobe.


I actually agree with everything else in ^xxovercastxx's post except for this.

Most importantly the state is, constitutionally, in writing and sworn to = separated from the church.

Christian Marriage, Hindu Marriage, Buddist Marriage, Chinese Marriage, Muslim Marriage, Pagan, mother earth goddess - tree worshiping marriage... and Gay Marriage are all equal in law due to freedom of belief and religion.

Choosing to oppose Gay marriage based on Deuteronomy? That's using freedom of religion as a moral guidance to prejudge, and oppose equality.

You can't say, my god says you and your lifestyle is evil and you cannot be legally equal - but I'm not a homophobe, i don't hate you! You're just evil and you do not deserve freedoms.

I think every high school guidance counselor should be taken out and shot. When I was in high school in 1987, I dreamed of becoming a special effects artist and working at ILM. I even called them on the phone one day, just to talk to someone from there. I told my guidance counselor, some crusty old bastard who immediately denounced it and said "No, no, no. There's no future in that! You want to be a doctor, or a lawyer!"

Gee, no future huh? Asshole.

Ok, so enough with my bitterness. I'm glad you're are going back to your roots and re-discovering one of your first loves. And don't think you're ever too old to get back into it, even career-wise. With enough time and perseverance, you'll most definitely do great things. My first recommendation would be to grab one in which you were somewhat familiar with before, ie. lasers. Then springboard from there.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
Federal firemen, who knew


Wrong again!!

USFA - United States Fire Administration

or, how about these guys?

The National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) in Boise, Idaho, is the physical facility that is home to the National Interagency Coordination Center (NICC), and the National Multi-Agency Coordination group (NMAC or MAC).

The center works closely with and is an arm of the National Fire and Aviation Executive Board (NFAEB), which provides unified guidance for fire agencies in the United States, and handbooks and guidelines to provide common procedures. It was created to implement the Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy. The NFAEB has created the Federal Fire Policy Directives Task Group, which coordinates with state agencies in order to implement cooperative agreements.


But apparently GeesusFreak would rather have zero national help for wildland firefighting. I guess he'd like a citizen bucket brigade to drive out to devastating forest fires (like the one that's on it's 4th week here in Los Angeles) and douse the flames with bald eagle tears.


*edit: I almost forgot these guys:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Forest_Service#Fighting_fires

If in doubt, as dag for guidance. And put a dollar in the box.

Thanks Jon! I have no clue where the world would be without your unbiased guidance. When you say that there's no difference between cities and suburbs, you're dead wrong. When I lived downtown for 5 years prior to now I had my SUV stolen once, stereo stolen from the SUV year before that, and replaced FIVE windows from all the break-ins. I was stuck up at gunpoint when coming home from work and had to put up with beggars daily. I moved to the burbs and no crime, no violence, and nothing but neighbors who complain about trash cans staying outside a day past trash day.


Also, who gave you the right to determine which political party the entire Jewish faith should subscribe to?


Jon you were definetly in with the right crowd on Emmy night the other day. Why can't the liberal left take a day off from preaching about which political party he people at home should support? Can't stand it when the Jehova's witnesses do it for Jehova, same applies to entertainers about Political Parties.

I've come to extremely dislike your show because you have the audacity to think that your audience just isn't smart enough to make political decisions without your omnipotent input.

Jon .. You're a fucking comedian, not a political analyst. When I turn on the television to see you I want to laugh, not watch some political hack disguised as a comedian. I don't care how smart or right you think you are, you're opinion's have baggage and always berate Republicans and prop up Democrats.

Go work for CNN if you feel obligated to defend the Democratic party at every given opportunity.

You work for COMEDY CENTRAL, now stop the propaganda and do what you're paid to do. Make me laugh you fucking monkey.

Games aren't rated by anyone but the companies themselves. Everything comes down to Parental Guidance being suggested.

From: http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/ricetalk.htm

Transcript:

President Pitzer, Mr. Vice President, Governor, Congressman Thomas, Senator Wiley, and Congressman Miller, Mr. Webb, Mr. Bell, scientists, distinguished guests, and ladies and gentlemen:

I appreciate your president having made me an honorary visiting professor, and I will assure you that my first lecture will be very brief.

I am delighted to be here, and I'm particularly delighted to be here on this occasion.

We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in a city noted for progress, in a State noted for strength, and we stand in need of all three, for we meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance. The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.

Despite the striking fact that most of the scientists that the world has ever known are alive and working today, despite the fact that this Nation¹s own scientific manpower is doubling every 12 years in a rate of growth more than three times that of our population as a whole, despite that, the vast stretches of the unknown and the unanswered and the unfinished still far outstrip our collective comprehension.

No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50,000 years of man¹s recorded history in a time span of but a half-century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only five years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than two years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than two months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power.

Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America's new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight.

This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers. Surely the opening vistas of space promise high costs and hardships, as well as high reward.

So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait. But this city of Houston, this State of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward--and so will space.

William Bradford, speaking in 1630 of the founding of the Plymouth Bay Colony, said that all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage.

If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in the race for space.

Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolutions, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it--we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding.

Yet the vows of this Nation can only be fulfilled if we in this Nation are first, and, therefore, we intend to be first. In short, our leadership in science and in industry, our hopes for peace and security, our obligations to ourselves as well as others, all require us to make this effort, to solve these mysteries, to solve them for the good of all men, and to become the world's leading space-faring nation.

We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say the we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.

There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

It is for these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the office of the Presidency.

In the last 24 hours we have seen facilities now being created for the greatest and most complex exploration in man's history. We have felt the ground shake and the air shattered by the testing of a Saturn C-1 booster rocket, many times as powerful as the Atlas which launched John Glenn, generating power equivalent to 10,000 automobiles with their accelerators on the floor. We have seen the site where the F-1 rocket engines, each one as powerful as all eight engines of the Saturn combined, will be clustered together to make the advanced Saturn missile, assembled in a new building to be built at Cape Canaveral as tall as a 48 story structure, as wide as a city block, and as long as two lengths of this field.

Within these last 19 months at least 45 satellites have circled the earth. Some 40 of them were "made in the United States of America" and they were far more sophisticated and supplied far more knowledge to the people of the world than those of the Soviet Union.

The Mariner spacecraft now on its way to Venus is the most intricate instrument in the history of space science. The accuracy of that shot is comparable to firing a missile from Cape Canaveral and dropping it in this stadium between the the 40-yard lines.

Transit satellites are helping our ships at sea to steer a safer course. Tiros satellites have given us unprecedented warnings of hurricanes and storms, and will do the same for forest fires and icebergs.

We have had our failures, but so have others, even if they do not admit them. And they may be less public.

To be sure, we are behind, and will be behind for some time in manned flight. But we do not intend to stay behind, and in this decade, we shall make up and move ahead.

The growth of our science and education will be enriched by new knowledge of our universe and environment, by new techniques of learning and mapping and observation, by new tools and computers for industry, medicine, the home as well as the school. Technical institutions, such as Rice, will reap the harvest of these gains.

And finally, the space effort itself, while still in its infancy, has already created a great number of new companies, and tens of thousands of new jobs. Space and related industries are generating new demands in investment and skilled personnel, and this city and this State, and this region, will share greatly in this growth. What was once the furthest outpost on the old frontier of the West will be the furthest outpost on the new frontier of science and space. Houston, your City of Houston, with its Manned Spacecraft Center, will become the heart of a large scientific and engineering community. During the next 5 years the National Aeronautics and Space Administration expects to double the number of scientists and engineers in this area, to increase its outlays for salaries and expenses to $60 million a year; to invest some $200 million in plant and laboratory facilities; and to direct or contract for new space efforts over $1 billion from this Center in this City.

To be sure, all this costs us all a good deal of money. This year¹s space budget is three times what it was in January 1961, and it is greater than the space budget of the previous eight years combined. That budget now stands at $5,400 million a year--a staggering sum, though somewhat less than we pay for cigarettes and cigars every year. Space expenditures will soon rise some more, from 40 cents per person per week to more than 50 cents a week for every man, woman and child in the United Stated, for we have given this program a high national priority--even though I realize that this is in some measure an act of faith and vision, for we do not now know what benefits await us.

But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun--almost as hot as it is here today--and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out--then we must be bold.

I'm the one who is doing all the work, so we just want you to stay cool for a minute. [laughter]

However, I think we're going to do it, and I think that we must pay what needs to be paid. I don't think we ought to waste any money, but I think we ought to do the job. And this will be done in the decade of the sixties. It may be done while some of you are still here at school at this college and university. It will be done during the term of office of some of the people who sit here on this platform. But it will be done. And it will be done before the end of this decade.

I am delighted that this university is playing a part in putting a man on the moon as part of a great national effort of the United States of America.

Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, "Because it is there."

Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.

Thank you.