Yes, 6000 years. Don't take my word for it..look up the artifacts he mentions. The bible says that before the flood humans were quite advanced..and this is evidence for it. Can our understanding of history account for ancient batteries that generate electricity? How about a computer that can do addition subtraction multiplication and division? Models of modern airplanes? Heiroglyphics of helicopters? Obviously we have it wrong if any of those things existed. Wake up, you're being lied to.

>> ^kulpims:
shiny, you christians are total idiots. you advocate that the Earth, universe, everything is like, what - 6000 years old? and now you come up with this bullshit ...

Again, you are using old information. Kevin Page's estimate is for the cost of the planes over the course of 30 years. The government's estimate is the cost over 20. Plus, those last 10 years, by the very nature of aircraft, are going to cost more money than the previous 20.

Of course the planes are going to cost more over 30 years than over 20. Page's estimates have been ridiculed by most independent sources for this very reason.

As for Harper's military spending, the Canadian Forces were decimated by the previous government in what many have called "the decade of darkness". Massive military spending was necessary to ensure Canada was able to maintain a military at all. And, after all that spending, Canada still spends less on the military as a percentage of GDP than nearly every western country, a measly 1.5%. Believe it or not, but nations need a military that is able to maintain their sovereignty - no amount of bubblegum and rainbows can protect a nation.
>> ^notarobot:

@^Skeeve

Now, as far as my math on $300 Million I'll walk you through that:
29 Billion divided by 65 warplanes is (about) 446 Million per warplane. Subtract the price of the warplanes (I used the average price from the wikipedia page for my ballpark but we can use your numbers and see how they work out) $138 Million equals (about) $308 Million dollars.
Now, I guess that's WITH engines. But Canadians are still going to be paying about $308 Million dollars in costs above and beyond the purchase price announced advertised by "The Harper Government" to own and operate these warplanes. A total cost of nearly $1000 for every man, woman and child in Canada.

@^Skeeve



I'm not going to bother quoting your facts. It is not necessary. They are not really applicable to my original comment nor to my point. It also does not mean that King Steve is any less of a monger of conflict. Not identifying others as warmongers also does not mean that Harper is not one. (Sure there are worse people in history and in the world but I see no reason to compare Harper to them--A list of people better leaders would be longer and more fun anyway.)

Nevertheless, King Steve is placing the biggest push on expanding military spending since World War Two. Our troops were supposed to be gone from Afghanistan in 2011. They are still there. Harper wants to extend the misson. It is a drain on our tax-dollars that we cannot afford. They should be leaving. Period.

Now, as far as my math on $300 Million I'll walk you through that:

29 Billion divided by 65 warplanes is (about) 446 Million per warplane. Subtract the price of the warplanes (I used the average price from the wikipedia page for my ballpark but we can use your numbers and see how they work out) $138 Million equals (about) $308 Million dollars.

Now, I guess that's WITH engines. But Canadians are still going to be paying about $308 Million dollars in costs above and beyond the purchase price announced advertised by "The Harper Government" to own and operate these warplanes. A total cost of nearly $1000 for every man, woman and child in Canada.

If you want challenge some real lies, try www.harperlied.com you can tell them how wrong, wrong and wrong they are.



* Being ignorant of the real costs of those warplanes does not make them a defensible purchase. *

Precedent...an interpretive error repeated, popular or otherwise? Nothing but slippery slopes here.

Plenty of precedents on this matter...and a plethora of interpretive variance by very experienced and intelligent individuals and groups alike.

A dupe is a dupe is a dupe(.)(?)(!)

An excerpt is not a dupe? So, let's see now. Someone posts an hour and a half video. One hundred Sifters divvy it up with little to no overlap and the resultant flood of videos are viable for submission? A line or a paragraph out of a speech or a dissertation is illumination of a specific point, contextual coloring by isolation from the whole makes it a viable and independent submission? Every video sifted is ripe for dissection and resubmission?

How about spatial variation on the same incident? Two vantage points represented by two recorders of the said incident that are spatially side by side separated by inches is or is not a dupe? Yeeha! What degree(s) of separation of vantage therefore might be considered variant enough? Certainly ninety degrees or more in any plane, right or not? That can get interesting.

What about footnotes, subtitles, added music, added commentary in what language(s) or the lack thereof, color added or subtracted, graphic artifices added or subtracted, different playback speeds resultant in different timestampings or video lengths, or additional dubious footage before, during, or after an incident of note? When do these variances qualify for independent submission and *nondupe/*notadupe status? The initial citing and often repeated criteria by the implementors of the dupe invocation of adding substantive comment at once a blessing and bane due to the inevitable interpretive dance that ensues.

The points regarding ownership, identification, current or active status or lack thereof of submitters, and competition are salient and contributory to the exacerbation of the problems.

The issues can be more simply laid out and have been innumerably. The first submission is sacrosanct whether submitted one second ago or five years ago and the submitter active, inactive, alive.... Submissions are not the submitters' property or they would/should be banned for selflinking. Votes, rankings, comments and such accolades are desirable for most here but are they or should they be the only reason to be present and contributing here? Not providing substantial additional content, what is hard or hard to take about that? Is the meaningful content of the video represented on the Sift already in another's submission?

Dupes take up Sifters' queue space and detract from the site. New Sifter's have not seen a video? So what? I have been to every PQ under the 500 mark save certain new arrivals having moved up quickly. If a noob or otherwise is so inclined, there is the archived videos of the Sift to by enjoyed, appreciated, worshipped...but not served up again by another submitter intentionally or unintentionally.

I do not believe I have added anything new to the tableau of discussion. It has all been said here before somewhere sometime. Better perhaps...certainly more succinctly. It is fairly simple to implement using the guidelines originally cited. Personal interests and desires serve and do so quite capably to obfuscate. Significant additional content, present or no, dupe or not.

Change...acceptable...inevitable. Have at it and good luck. Truly. The above cited proposal of promoting and transferring promotion to the original of a dupe is interesting. The specter of abuse is always lurking, however. Grace periods and fanciful or imaginative interpretations serving to hold onto votes or position are problematic.

Mistakes...I've made them. Fortunately they were minor except to the submitter at times and easily rectifiable. I have seen one dupe that was consummated, deemed erroneous and caught by the invokers themselves, and fixed by lucky760. Hard feelings, hurt feelings, disagreements, outrage, and more over duping(s). Yes. Actionable? How many so far and how often? That may be telling. If there were more wrongful dupes, truly wrongful, there would be more attention from on high I think.

Is there a real or perceived lack of original videos to submit or must the bones of successful or unsung videos be picked over imaginatively in order to derive some benefit of participating?

Yes, as well, the system of checks is imperfect. Some dupes are inevitable. However, I submit the are a few here that seem to manage finding dupes on a regular and consistent basis. Ant, pardon me sir, I have seen dupe his queue's capacity and otherwise one or two daily for good periods. He unfailingly was and is a gentleman about it when a dupe occurs often upvoting the dupage comments. He almost never dupes for an extended period of time now. Others are ongoing, some struggling some gracefully confronting the phenomenon. I duped once and only once. Granted, I am possibly to probably the least of those represented here but diligent titling and tagging has proven an antidote to the plague. I have seen cases that I felt almost certain dupes were intentional using imaginative titles and tagging or a lack thereof.

Too long...I'm sorry.

Yes, you are patronizing; it oozes out of your posts. No, you don't know what you're talking about.

The correct answer is that there is not enough data to prove one way or another. Even the organization in the link you provided admit the severe limitations of their technique, which primarily relies on media reports. Your obvious pro-cop bias (nothing wrong with that, but at least admit it) leads you to think that the very scant data supports your point.

Even your back-of-the-envelope calculation show your bias. And do you really think that 54 cases of brutality in a year is so insignificant? Probably because you think you or your loved ones will never be on the wrong end of a stick. 54 is quite alot for one city. Hell, one is too many, to be frank. Setting a low bar for our officers is not helping them.

>> ^Lawdeedaw:
I never patronized you, longde. I don't know why you're so defensive Second, I thought that when you said, "and they happen quite often in my community, not rarely," that you knew what you were talking about. Obviously, since you would "have to do homework" on the issue--instead of being able to state the cases you know--you don't know what you talking about.
Here, let me show you I know what I am talking about. Let's say that "quite often" in a large community (A large city) is once per day or a little less. Now, the site I use is definitely biased against cops with the language they use... However, that goes in my favor--since even biased sites seemingly cannot show systemic police brutality.
http://www.injusticeeverywhere.com/?p=2218
The calculations here are only 3 months of reported cases, so we should multiply it by at least 4 to make it as close to year's worth as possible.
Note, for simplicity, I use the information under the header "Law Enforcement Agencies Employing 1000+ Officers".
Note, let's also say that the reported cases are not inclusive of all cases--so let's add 50% more (In your favor.)
Last note, only about 30% of these cases are "force related," I.e taser, brutality, animal cruelty, etc.
So, the highest noted city, Atlanta Georgia, has 38 cases for three months. Multiply by 4, 152... let's add that .5 for non-reported, and that's 228... But wait, let's subtract a few that are perhaps bullshit. (I remember around my area a guy was abused in a wheelchair. The offending officer got a felony, lost his pension, and other charges that he deserved. Right after that though, a guy literally threw himself from a wheelchair without being touched, and another reached up and tried to pull another officer on top of him, all so they could get that big payout of a lawsuit...ass-hats should look for cameras.) So let's take out 20%, even though it's probably higher because you can sue the state easier than Wal-Mart... So about 182 at most...
Since only about 30% of those cases are abuse-related, that means police beat citizens in Atlanta Ga about 54 times in a year!!!! OMG!!! That's so rampant!
Now, my math sucks, so I could be off a lot, or a little, who knows. But the point is, people tend to exaggerate shit when they have emotions predisposed against a group. I know bad police exist, and that they should be punished, I know this because I am not blinded by either admiration or hate.
>> ^longde:
To the contrary, instead of patronizing me with a homework assignment, how about providing proof of your original assertion about the rarity of such violence. In fact, your original response to me has many unproven statements.
>> ^Lawdeedaw:

I never patronized you, longde. I don't know why you're so defensive Second, I thought that when you said, "and they happen quite often in my community, not rarely," that you knew what you were talking about. Obviously, since you would "have to do homework" on the issue--instead of being able to state the cases you know--you don't know what you talking about.

Here, let me show you I know what I am talking about. Let's say that "quite often" in a large community (A large city) is once per day or a little less. Now, the site I use is definitely biased against cops with the language they use... However, that goes in my favor--since even biased sites seemingly cannot show systemic police brutality.

http://www.injusticeeverywhere.com/?p=2218

The calculations here are only 3 months of reported cases, so we should multiply it by at least 4 to make it as close to year's worth as possible.

***Note, for simplicity, I use the information under the header "Law Enforcement Agencies Employing 1000+ Officers".

***Note, let's also say that the reported cases are not inclusive of all cases--so let's add 50% more (In your favor.)

Last note, only about 30% of these cases are "force related," I.e taser, brutality, animal cruelty, etc.

So, the highest noted city, Atlanta Georgia, has 38 cases for three months. Multiply by 4, 152... let's add that .5 for non-reported, and that's 228... But wait, let's subtract a few that are perhaps bullshit. (I remember around my area a guy was abused in a wheelchair. The offending officer got a felony, lost his pension, and other charges that he deserved. Right after that though, a guy literally threw himself from a wheelchair without being touched, and another reached up and tried to pull another officer on top of him, all so they could get that big payout of a lawsuit...ass-hats should look for cameras.) So let's take out 20%, even though it's probably higher because you can sue the state easier than Wal-Mart... So about 182 at most...

Since only about 30% of those cases are abuse-related, that means police beat citizens in Atlanta Ga about 54 times in a year!!!! OMG!!! That's so rampant!

Now, my math sucks, so I could be off a lot, or a little, who knows. But the point is, people tend to exaggerate shit when they have emotions predisposed against a group. I know bad police exist, and that they should be punished, I know this because I am not blinded by either admiration or hate.



>> ^longde:

To the contrary, instead of patronizing me with a homework assignment, how about providing proof of your original assertion about the rarity of such violence. In fact, your original response to me has many unproven statements.
>> ^Lawdeedaw:

@RedSky @dystopianfuturetoday

Let me see if I can split the difference on what you guys are talking about, because I think both of you are right, and that your ideas aren't mutually exclusive.

DFT is right in saying that the motivation for teachers should largely derive from enjoying the work itself -- the joy that comes from equipping children with knowledge so they can do better in the world, and the impact that doing this over a long timespan can have on the society they live in.

RedSky is also right that money does matter, and that we shouldn't be asking our teachers to be taking vows of poverty, and be forever denied getting individualized reward for individual success...but DFT is also right to be suspicious of monetary incentives becoming a distraction from the actual point of teaching.

So my answer to that is that we just need to be careful about how we design monetary incentives. I think we can do better than seniority, and I think DFT (and Ravitch) are right about this whole idea that it should be based on the performance of your students against some standardized test being a load of bullshit.

The problem with doing things that way is that it doesn't present a monetary incentive to be a better teacher, it gives you a monetary incentive to make sure your class is populated with the smartest students. Just look at how "prestigious" private universities operate -- the bar for getting accepted is so high that just being accepted as a student there is all most potential employers care about, not some sort of test scores. If they were really good at educating people, why would the barrier for entry be so high? Do they really think people with only a 1200 on their SAT can't learn anything from any of their classes? If so, doesn't that suggest that the "education" they're providing is really just a set of reading materials and exercises that the students use to teach themselves, and not a unique professional service worthy of the 5-figure pricetag?

My own idea on monetary incentives is that it should be based on how much a teacher improves their students. Give students a standardized test at the beginning of a semester, and give them another test at the end of the semester. Subtract the first score from the second score, and use that number as a basis for giving teachers a bonus.

Teachers who consistently wind up with negative numbers should be fired, teachers with consistently high numbers should be given permanent increases in their salary, and opportunities for advancement (such as they are). Teachers who do best nationwide should probably be studied, to see if there are techniques other teachers could learn from. Likewise, nationally underperforming teachers could be used as a roadmap of what not to do.

At an institutional level, we probably should also offer incentives for teachers to work in schools with generally underperforming students.

Off the top of my head I'm not sure how we set up good incentives for school administrators, but the same logic applies -- try to design the incentive to reward actual performance, and not how well someone games the system.

>> ^notarobot:

Magnets? How do they work?


I think you missed a "fu&king" in there somewhere.

Can someone tell me how an integral, derivative, trigonometry, algebra, geometry, division, multiplication, adding, subtraction works and what these constants are (the ones I keep hearing about)? I've figured out the square root of -4 so no issues there.

We should cut these things out of school. THEY NEVER HELP YOU!!1!

/extreme sarcasm...

I've seen little in WoW that has surprised me. There are a few things here and there, but it really is a game copied from another game that, that game copied from yet another and then they polished it. And..as The Mythbusters proved you can polish a turd; so taking this old-outdated-prehistoric-you-get-the-point concept of go fetch times 5 per level and go gather times 5 per level plus the times 5 per level go kill stuff -- this is WoW's main feature o'fun and is the core to leveling.

The items are okay, some quests are awesome: there's a Plants vs. Zombies type quest that is well done and VERY refreshing, some of the NEW new newbie areas (goblins and furry humans) have great opening quests and have "phases" which are essentially instances "on the run" -- you don't notice it load and others don't know your in it unless they're grouped -- essentially a personal instance, there are a few "red pill" vs. "blue pill" such as making you realize you need to jump off a cliff to complete it, some of the class specific are great due to their obvious care and attention to detail in teaching you how to play your class effectively (the rogue has some of these that are a joy to play), etcetera -- oh wait, there isn't really much beyond that except instances, raids, and "PvP".

Instances can be great with your buddies and when the group size is a nice manageable size, but the fact they don't have randomized group size and level based dungeons is ridiculous, with this much time having passed. The fact that some of the boss fights start of at super hard and never bother to ramp up is stupid (as wiping should minimized to affect only idiots; trust me it doesn't matter if everyone has l33t gear, everyone should have the chance to have a character they feel is special and a force to be reckoned with). Where the hell are unique, non-soulbinding items; i.e., there are these "named" (I know they've made a few, laughable, *requires a raid* to get the guild leader the super item, which means you've got a better chance to win the lottery if you're an average player ) items that could be made into the thousands available (non-soulbinding so that they can be sold on the auction house -- which would fight gold-farmers and allow ANY player to get: THE GOODS) that drop once per server and have a 100% chance of being found for everyone...?

I could go on, but I think my point is made. There is little thought going into game creation and mechanics. Everyone stole from the MUDS, Ultima Online, and what little originality Everquest had; and no-one ever looked back. I know it will take some hard work to make a NEW TYPE of MMO that isn't guaranteed to be a slight upgrade in graphics, item crafting, or *pick your one "special" thing* the next MMO does...

So many of the current crop of MMO's have their own original and great ideas. If it would be sifted through and made into a "best of all worlds" (which is what WoW did, but they left in aggro which is a HUGE disservice to ALL players) we might get something unique and great; it would only need expansions as the core would not need much change ever (unless the engine becomes the "hindrance" to development).

Right now the aggro system n e e d s t o g o . It's archaic and mystifyingly still used though it was made for games that couldn't handle AI running (Ultima Online, Everquest,etc...) full-blast. But, with the power servers have available plus the bandwidth and the users' computer this should be a very easily solved or solvable issue. Second, comes two things that walk hand in hand: dungeons and loot. I addressed both above and what I propose should solve a lot; but imagine semi-random dungeons created that lead to great cities (very doable just from what I've seen in Warhammer and WoW's "phasing"), think: D&D's Forgotten Realms - Undermountain™, anything approaching something that massive would be equal to creating a dungeon the size of the world map, but every-time you enter you procedurally move forward to a new creation (so if you join a party your "dungeons" join to make a "seed" that is unique to those to characters. I'll stop there as it would into full-on programming techniques that aren't used either because of the complexity, non-skill, or doubt that they can make a "performance" acceptable version. Items have just as much ability to be enhanced (their own level-ups with skills, AI weapons, vehicular type, etc...).

Quests are the last concern. Fetch should only be around if you're character is going there anyway. Collection type quests should ONLY be used if you are keeping some of said items and are useful in some way. Hero quests do need to teach you to be a better "x = your class + type of class + modifiers", using instances or "phasing" (which I like more as I hate load screens). Quests need to have an main-arch that branches, but it needs to available to even the solo player; not the 60 man raid (which is a joke in the first place). Quests need to be rich in diversity: send, fetch, lead, fight, find, steal, games, test, challenge, dungeon, redemption, vengeance/wrath, ability, skill, un-lockable/lockable, class, species/race, race/time, item, creation, destruction, defend, follow, help, should I keep listing....?

I hope the programmers, I don't really care who hits the trump card first (although a low monthly cost team would be nice), figure this out. As it is getting boring even though there is "more" to do, how it's presented in WoW makes me less inclined to get involved, because it requires dedication and at that point, as he pointed out is almost as fun as shooting yourself.

As @MilkmanDan points out there is a lot of content that I don't use and at the lower levels I believe this to be fine as you'll make a mage, a shaman, a warrior, etc... Doing the same quest over and over is terrible. However, much of the high level content you CAN see, but you'll never get the riches (lottery again) and doing THE SAME EXACT DUNDEON 30 times to find that one head piece is ridiculous -- that is their idea of fun "high-end" content. F*%K YOU! This is all due to the notion (and I believe you see this in action at the auction houses, if you can compare the past to present) of inflation; the numbers go higher for the sake of going higher -- if it's higher it's better, right?!?. I'm better due to a number increase and I'll add to that number continually, mainly, because as is said above I'm now level 10 and no longer 5. I want the numbers to be in a "set" range so that you know, whenever you find or get something new, immediately how this new addition (or subtraction) will affect you. (Ultima Online got that partially correct and it made fighting on their a unique experience, STILL, although Warhammer Online uses a set number of action points instead of mana so it has a fun PvP experience, but ultimately fails due to the level problem. Oh and PvP is a joke as level and gear are the deciding issues in battle (which is funny as the winners get the better gear, thus making them win more and you can see where that goes...) and as long as you aren't stupid your talent specs (you really can't screw this up anymore as Blizzard decided that you can only go down one tree at a time rather than all three, until you've got talent point 32).

I'll stop there as I'm getting nauseated talking about this much (which is a lot). But, this is my view point on almost any RPG. Why is it so hard to make a fun system -- it seems obvious how to go after these issues. I think they're (the programmers and publishers) are lost in the woods with 100 foot tall pines and I'm on a outcrop that can see over the forest -- I see them occasionally, but even if I yelled (and I've made some of these points before) they'd still never gather a clue of what I mean. Or as it's usually said at this point:

"I'm afraid you can't see the forest for the trees."...

Damn, that was long, phew (hopefully a programmer reads it -- or I'll just cut & paste ) !

For something like 87*98 I'd likely start with 87*100=8700 then subtract 87*2 from that unless I had a calculator, of course.

Hmm... pretty interesting. It's a bit slow, especially with larger numbers, mostly because you have keep repeating the process until you're dealing with double-digit numbers.

I wanted to figure out how to do the procedure with triple digit numbers so I tried 180 x 195.

It turns out that you'll need to reduce the value you're working with down to 100 and then add rather that subtract. So for instance it would be...

180 80
195 95

180 + 95 = 275
195 + 80 = 275
80 x 95 = 7600 (in order to get this without doing normal multiplication, you'd have to do the process over again with the smaller numbers which is why it's time wasting)

I don't know how to explain this very well, I lack the words, but basically, to get the correct answer, you need to increase 275 to 27500 and then add the 7500 to it

27500 + 7500 = 35100

180 x 195 = 35100

No.

It was 1200 too low.

>> ^sometimes:

while cute, that's a more complicated and convoluted way of doing plain old regular multiplication.
your solve-time is affected by both the number of digits, and the value of those digits.
regular boring multiplication solve-time is only affected by the number of digits.
It's kinda like that phone number puzzle that's been going around. at first it seems clever, but if you think about it for more than a second, it should become clear that it's not particularly special.
1. Grab a calculator. (You won't be able to do this one in your head.)
2. Key in the first three digits of your phone number (NOT the area code).
3. Multiply by 80
4. Add 1
5. Multiply by 250
6. Add the last 4 digits of your phone number
7. Add the last 4 digits of your phone number again.
8. Subtract 250
9. Divide number by 2
Do you recognize the answer?

>> ^Trancecoach:

If only people dated by the mathematical numbers.


Well, sex is like math; add the bed, subtract the clothes, divide the legs and hope to hell you don't multiply.

@Gallowflak

What you're describing does not pertain to the debate of religion vs. atheism per se, but of human psychology, social hierarchy, etc. Of course there will always be dumb people that need to be spoon-fed what to think. The question is, will they function better with religious ideas or atheistic ideas? For now, since atheism is frowned upon by the majority, atheists will indeed represent more of brightest members of society, those that can think for themselves and that can stand up for their convictions. The same can be said of original prophets and their first followers, who decide to go against the flow of society in order to gain what they perceived as an advantage: they invent a new religion and stand up for their beliefs. The difference, again, is in the aims and consequences of religion vs. atheism. Religion restricts your thinking to a subset of the "world" with added "unworldly" dependencies like god that enforce the limited "world", whereas atheism expands thinking to the "world" with nothing more or less added/subtracted. I think atheism is thus a better suited worldview for everyone and is especially liberating to those in-between the brightest and dumbest, the "middle class" of intelligence, those that can think for themselves but may fear the risks associated with it in a religious society or do not know where to start or how to think correctly/productively (avoiding fallacies, etc.). You may think, like Voltaire, that this is only a matter of tolerance. Maybe it is, but again I would argue that tolerance is a value easier to maintain in an atheistic environment than in a religious one (mostly because atheism, being neutral, does not fix a priori what the boundaries of the "world" are since it has no arbitrary dependencies, except maybe for human experience itself; but that is something we cannot do anything about as long as we do not evolve into something more than homo sapiens, whether through natural selection or technology).

He' absolutely right about eleven being a gay number. I know this because the street address of the nearest gay bath house is 430 and if you multiply the 4 and 3 you get 12 and subtract the zero you get eleven because as I proved in a previous comment you cannot subtract zero in gay math so you must round up to the nearest prime number.