Prove to me that smoking causes cancer.

Also yes, if only the leaders at the time knew that isolated populations would survive thermonuclear war instead of ending humanity with certainty, they would have immediately
abandoned their foolhardy and wasteful attempts at non proliferation and denuclearization!

Well, after fiddle farting around, and trying to isolate a screen shot that shows all their little heads going up at the same time.... I didn't succeed.

So it appears that the simultaneous head lifting was an optical illusion and not a video manipulation.

Time shift is definitely going on. But it appears they are really doing this.

Nature, you freaky.

Isn't that cute? He thinks that the fact that the citizens and city of Dubai pander to millionaires and celebrity and are willing to let him spend his millions there is indicative of the muslim world's views of the west!! I hope he doesn't go walking around
Mosul with that swagger.

I'd be more interested in hearing Will Smith slam a cult that steals from it's members, enslaves it's members, isolates members from their families, and falsely imprisons it's members. Sorry, as long as Smith supports Scientology and David Miscavige who gives a fuck what he thinks about political figures like Trump or dangerous religious beliefs.

I am no engineer, but could they install some kind of latch doors system that can isolate a section if there is a pressure problem ? Of course the trains in the area would be stopped whenever these latches are used... Every 5km or such.

I agree in principle. I don't see how it could work out in practice, though. If we embargo Libya, it is ineffective because someone else will buy their oil, and effectively the only thing we impact is the economy and the plight of it's citizens, as we have clearly seen with Saddam. This will lead to further claims of racism because the people of the country are being made to suffer.

So, I suppose we could blockage them to really enforce their isolation. But unless we are willing to sink russian and chinese ships trading with them, all we are doing is issuing empty threats. And clearly if we do start sinking those ships, we will start wars and again be called racist.

The only alternative you leave, is to completely ignore their suffering, hope that nobody else intervenes for their own ends, and await the eventual overthrow of the government, which could take hundreds of years. This seems like the least empathetic and most disregarding approach imaginable. Being so afraid to do bad that one refuses to try to do good.

I think the most moral approach would perhaps be the most chauvinist of all. I'm thinking about Japan post WWII. But then I never bought into the post modern nihilistic view.

Alien: Isolation is probably the finest game ever to come from a movie franchise. It's one of the best games ever, imho.

Hmm... Democrat failure of 8 years? I seem to recall the Republicans have controlled the budget, more or less for 6 of those 8 years, and solidly for the last 2. I seem to recall we were in a budget surplus before Bush Jr took us out of it for an unjust war built on, at best misinformation, and very possibly lies. All the while the same people crying about the deficit now said then that deficits don't matter. What happened is a failure of Obama, it's a failure of the Republican policies as Obama's weren't even given a shot as the modern day Republican doesn't want a democracy, what they want is a dictatorship where they dictate the rules and compromise with the other side of the isle, formally known as politics, is bad and it's my way or the highway mentality is the rule of law for the party. Hell, the party abandoned its very own plan for affordable health care and now call it one of the worst things ever... their own plan... the same plan, funded the same way with the same penalties for not participating, that they tried to pass into federal law 3 times is now one of the worst things that our government has ever passed.

Cruz and Trump will isolate America from our allies, especially if Trump won. None of our allies (save perhaps Israel) would want to associate with us. They are already mad at us for Bush's wars and both Cruz and Trump want to escalate those wars and "carpet bomb" millions of innocent people to get to a few bad people? Trump wants to kill their families, which will make it easier to radicalize more and more people... and before one says that is the brutality of that religion, which religion is the one wanting to carpet bomb innocent people to kill a few guilty people and torture people and other crimes that their Christ would never support? Of course everything the Republicans want to do is exactly what ISIS has publicly stated they want other nations to do, so perhaps the Republican party is in league with ISIS?

Their policies, especially Trump's, regarding items made out of the country (jobs sent overseas by the same people that Republicans love... the same people who take for themselves while they refuse to pay living wages to their employees for pure greed reasons) would result in an economic melt down in the US as countries and businesses refuse to do as much business with us... or they move from the US dollar as the standard currency as retribution, which again wrecks the US economy.

Of less importance is that a Trump presidency and likely a Cruz as well would result in a guarantee that we'd lose the bids for the 2024 Olympic games and the 2026 World Cup, both of which we have a decent lead on as of now, but if men of hate and discrimination get in, then why would games of peace come? Trump wants to refuse to let Muslims even visit, and that would make a huge percentage of those who'd come for either or.

Anyhow to the subject of Bernie. Yes the Republican's would block everything as they do with Obama, but the conversation is moved and advanced for the people. I'd fear that if Clinton got in, the Republicans would spend all their time trying to impeach her rather than go about the process of governing. Bernie they'd just try to ignore and then get caught off guard as the nation caught onto his ideas and wanted to run with it and gave him a congress that would work with him.... of course a Trump nomination means they'd likely lose the Senate anyhow... which will be hilarious, doesn't matter if it's Clinton or Sanders in the office, because moments after the election, Obama pulls the moderate Supreme Court Justice nomination that the Republicans asked for by name before it became a political issue, and they instead get a more liberal justice... (I'm further amused by how they say they just want American's to vote on it... they did folks, 4 years ago, everyone knew there'd likely be an opening or two during his terms and he still won.)

Yeah, I think nobody has ever isolated a specific chemical that humans produce that you could describe as a pheromone. But there have been studies that suggest that there is more to smell, than just, you know, the the odour.

At any rate, not washing your armpits/pubes probably not the best way to attract a mate. (Altho... horses for courses...)

And I know they could be testing me
The data might be wrong
A preplanned concocted recipe
And played up all along
But at least my graphs are beautiful
With sigma 5.1
This I know
This I know

They told me don't worry about it
Analyze the chirp and
No more
They told me be careful
And doubt it
But I've seen a merger
Of black hole-ole-ole-oles!

LIGO feels when space is rippling through
With a wave of
Gravitation

LIGO feels when space is rippling due
To a tensor
Perturbation

Vacuum sealed interferometer
An L 5-mile long
Split a laser, bounce 300 times
Compare the distance gone
One built in Louisiana and one more in Washington
That's LIGO
Yeah LIGO

A Billion lightyear journey
To cover
Then it hit the Fabry-Perot
Lengthening one leg then
The other
Making fringes dance on
The dio- o- o- ode!

LIGO feels when space is rippling through
With a wave of
Gravitation

LIGO feels when space is rippling due
To a tensor
Perturbation

LIGO feels that space is rippling through
From an ancient
Amalgamation

LIGO feels that space because it's crew
Gave it seismic
Isolation

This event's power is
Enormous
Fifty universes
Of suns
We had indirect clues
Before this
All you GR haters
You were wrong -ong -ong

LIGO feels when space is rippling through
With a wave of
Gravitation

LIGO feels when space is rippling due
To a tensor
Perturbation

LIGO feels that space is rippling through
Can you feel the
Excitation?

LIGO's view of space is rippling through
Our collective
Imagination

"The administration of George W. Bush attempted to portray the abuses as isolated incidents, not indicative of general U.S. policy. This was contradicted by humanitarian organizations such as the Red Cross, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch. After multiple investigations, these organizations stated that the abuses at Abu Ghraib were not isolated incidents, but were part of a wider pattern of torture and brutal treatment at American overseas detention centers, including those in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay. There was evidence that authorization for the torture had come from high up in the military hierarchy, with allegations being made that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had authorized some of the actions." - Wikipedia

@radx

I tend to see controlling the quantity of money along with the interest rate as a valid way for central banks to influence the economy when necessary but I admit in or after crises they are generally almost useless. Economics being a social science is always going to be notoriously unreliable in both prediction and in isolation the causes of a prior event, some would say almost useless.

Controlling purely the interest rates on overnight bank deposits for banks at the central bank (what setting the rate is, as opposed to the commonly held belief that the central bank dictates lending and borrowing rates) is if anything of little impact. These rates can be at 0% and if banks consider economic prospects poor, that will not cause them to lend any further.

Such was the case in the US in the immediate years after '08. i would argue the only action to have real economic impact was the buying up of distressed mortgage securities by the Fed. The parts of QE1, 2 that involved injecting money into the banks basically just led to them investing in low risk securities and earning interest (effectively just sitting on it) because they were not willing to risk lending it.

While I'm not a big fan of ceding authority to a largely independent organisation, I have to admit that since central banks have become independent, inflation in those countries has become a thing of the past. Now granted they get things wrong (e.g. Greenspan inflating the '08 bubble) but their main advantages is being willing to take measures that cause short term pain but long term gain. I don't think any elected politician would have been willing to take the measures Volcker did to curb inflation for example. In fact, while he was at the Fed, Reagan's government effectively inflated the Savings and Loans bubble.

Yeah, I'd love to hear him on Trump and Cruz...I think he'd be all about Sanders. He blasted the Tea Party, so we can be fairly sure he'd be blasting the leaders of the current field. He'd probably admire that Trump is at least honest enough to say what he wants without a filter, but also reflect how dangerous it is that his views are so accepted among a scary percentage of Americans. How if Trump, or even Cruz, get's elected, it would isolate the US from our allies. They are still upset about Bush, and going that far to the right would endanger our relationships with all of them, save perhaps Israel, which is all the Christian right care about anyhow. He'd be giving a Hitch Slap to the media for the way they are following the Trump circus just for ratings, and building up Clinton while largely ignoring Sanders. Of course the political right would use that people like Hitchens would support Sanders and reason enough to ignore and fear him. "That demonic Atheist supports Sanders, so that's what you get with a vote for Sanders. Satanism wrapped up in the disguise of Atheism... and we all know that every knee will bow and every tongue confess, and we know they honestly do believe, but are just mad at God about something and trying to turn others against him", or something along those lines.

What I get as the "point" of the One Ring is
A) backup / fallback plan in case Sauron is killed so he won't be completely destroyed (containing some of his soul / essence)
B) a trap to facilitate his control of the other races by tempting and corrupting them

And I think your take on the reason for the invisibility is correct according to the way Tolkien intended it. But it still doesn't sit real well with me. To me it feels better to imagine the whole ring story as a take on "power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely".

The other rings of power are interesting. The three for the elves are largely free of the influence of the one, because Celebrimbor was already very suspicious of Sauron / Annatar when he made them. So the elves can and do continue to use them, though warily.

The seven for dwarves aren't discussed a lot, but hinted that they help corrupt the dwarves natural appreciation for gems and gold into a darker greed for those things. That dovetails into stuff in The Hobbit pretty well. So, while they don't corrupt dwarves in the same way they do men, they DO lead to isolation and and factionalization of the dwarves, which I suppose could have been Sauron's intent.

The nine for humans seem to work quite well as judged by Sauron's intent for them.


I guess that overall, I just feel like temptation and corruption of wearers of the one ring seems like a very elegant way to achieve Sauron's goals when he made it. A ring that grants the wearer the single ability that they most desire but also will be most tempted to abuse would be very difficult for people (and elves or dwarves or whoever) to resist. Gandalf and Galadriel are directly offered the ring but refuse only because they both *know* that they would be corrupted by it. I don't see invisibility as enough of a game-changing ability for either of them to be so confident that they couldn't handle it.

I listened to an interview with some connected folks to this situation a few days ago, and there's a bit more to it.

(I don't remember any detail, but the gist was ...)

The ranch is directly adjacent to the refuge, and the government has been trying to grow the refuge.

The government has been trying to get the particular rancher's land for a while, offering to buy it, and generally making living there inconvenient, to encourage him/them to leave.

There was some funny business with the arson charge, like there being some hunters on the land that had a different account of the events, and their account was at odds with what the government asserted happened.

Folks have the opinion that the arson charge was a convenient way of dialing up the 'get out of town' message - and so this occupy whatever response is some sorta backlash. Something like : "You want us to leave so you can have our stuff? Oh yeah? Well why don't YOU leave and we'll take YOUR stuff?! Take that!"

Also, the group has not been isolated. People and media come and do all the time, and the group makes daily statements to the media. One reporter noted that he has only seen one person carrying a firearm the entire time (a single man with a pistol in a holster), and everyone else has no firearms on their person (regardless if they have any in general, they aren't walking around armed).

-scheherazade

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