Language that COULD be construed as racist is not the same thing as language that IS racist.
Mocking someone's racism, but not using racist language in doing so, is not very racist IMO. If Obama said "yeah, that (N-word) Obama", it would be racist, even if it's said to mock racists, IMO.
If Duke said it, he would not be mocking or joking, but agreeing with the racist statement, that's quite racist.
Yeah, the CK thing was odd to me, and racist IMO, funny or not. Professional comedians get a 'pass' in certain situations like roasts or if they're just really funny, but it doesn't make their statements not racist, they are just accepted by most as comedy, which is NOT PC and may be intended to be offensive.
You said it, he said something horrifically racist. He must be some bit racist to even consider such a thing, somewhat more so to say it. Because he has 'black friends' that find it funny does not make it not racist, as I see it. Just because he doesn't mean it, doesn't mean it's not racist, nor does it mean HE's not racist.
Yes, intent and context mean a lot, but not all. If you are completely not racist, you wouldn't think to talk about blacks, Jewish, Mexicans, whites, etc. It's racist just to think of people as different races...there's really only one race, just different levels of melanin in people's skin. (EDIT: I forgot about aborigines which I've read are actually genetically different from non-aborigines, but are still not a different 'race', but are possibly a different subspecies.)
I learned it went Kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species, sometimes subspecies...no 'race' in there.
I think you misunderstand and are thinking binary, as in either you're racist (and a bastard) or not (and a good person?). I'm looking at it in shades, and very few are at either end of the spectrum, most live in the middle somewhere. Most people will act like you described, and infer intent and react properly based on that. I'm saying intent is not the only measure, it's only one variable in the 'what's your racist quotient' equation.
Yes, I would consider you SLIGHTLY racist, just as I consider myself slightly racist. On a 1 to 10, we're probably both well under a 3...but almost on one is a 1...or, fortunately, a 10.
No outrage here about it at all, I'm just trying to clarify that even seemingly innocuous, not intentionally hurtful racism is racism. (Please think, if a random black person overheard you joking as you described, would they not be upset and hurt by the racism? That's kind of my point, intent may be unknown, so can't be the only defining factor.)
Did someone say they would kill someone? That's not good. People don't normally say that jokingly, but fortunately they usually don't follow through on their threats either...that said, don't say it to Obama! ;-)

That space video from @oohlalasassoon tends to proves you right -- there there is no friction on the pivot point, but the top is still surrounded by air. It isn't clear exactly how long it would take before the air resistance would stop the spin, but it seems like it would be quite a bit longer (orders? of magnitude) even than the top in a vacuum.

I wouldn't have called it that way; the pivot point is so small that it has an very small surface area. And the vacuum chamber would leave that variable close to constant, but still resulted in a lot longer spin time -- so the air resistance (friction with the air instead of friction with the pivot point) clearly does have an effect.

Interesting stuff!

@oritteropo

There are analyses floating around by just about every major player. A majority seems to agree that it would be manageable for the Eurozone and better for Greece. Others, including Varoufakis, argue that Grexit would destablize the Eurozone and be a catastrophe for Greece. Too many variables, too many vested interests... who knows what would happen.

The projections on the other hand were a hoot. What a joke they were.

What was the fiscal multiplier in their initial projections? Something along the lines of 0.75, right? Reduce public spending by a Euro and the economy contracts by just 75 cents. Too bad it turned out to be at least 2.5, probably even far more during certain phases. Ricardian equivalence, my ass.

Here is the IMF outlook of 2010. Bill Mitchell made a nice table for comparison. They did a crackerjack job, didn't they.

IMF research admitted their mistake in 2012, but the policy department doesn't seem to care. Shouldn't come as a suprise to anyone, given the role the IMF played in the application of the shock doctrine all over the world in the last decades. Chicago School of Economics, all the way.

If I look at the list of countries that were ruined by the IMF through policy advisory and loans with strings attached, I wonder just how they still manage to paint Syriza as the ones lacking credibility. Is it because they lack the experience of destroying an economy?

Yet with all that in mind, the Greeks actually prefer the IMF as a partner if the alternative is German officials. How depressing for me as a German.

Remember what Christine Lagarde said about Greece in 2012? The Grauniad still has the goods. Or how she argued for expansionary austerity in 2010? Krugman, to his credit, made fun of the concept back then, but even he severly underestimated just how willing these people are to turn this stuff into policy.

But still preferrable to German officials. Ouch.

Depending on the temp of the water and the force at which it is shot at your butt, the experience is completely variable. I can imagine non heated water in the middle of the night in winter would not be pleasant.

In SE Asia, it's goddamn mandatory, particularly when you consume as much hot chili/curry and beer as I do. Instead of chafing your asshole to death before walking out in to 34 deg.cel heat with 100 billion percent humidity, you get a cool soothing clean.

Some of them are literally as simple as a bent metal pipe hooked over the bowl and attached to a tap on the wall. Turn on tap, move butt around to get good coverage, brief dry and go.

Kudos, I'd just like to really highlight two of the good points you make.

First, Tesla motors is huge. When I said electric cars, I didn't mention them by name but was thinking specifically of them. They have proven that electric cars are the future and are coming quickly.

The second is as Tyson pointed out, the most important metric is energy coming into the planet compared to energy going out. Temperatures fluctuate to many other variables. Particularly if the oceans are absorbing or releasing energy, temperatures as we experience them will shift on that and muddy the perception of what's actually happening to the overall planet's energy balance and long term change. In the late 80's we started measuring the energy in and out of the atmosphere with satellites. There was an observed increase between late 80's and late 90's in the energy imbalance. That means not only was more energy coming in than going out over that time, but the excess staying in was getting higher. With increasing CO2 emissions, that is exactly what we expect. An increased overall greenhouse effect should see the energy imbalance growing quite steadily as the effect gets stronger and stronger. Now, the IPCC's fifth assessment report has the the longer term data from those same and new satellites. The data shows that since 2001 there is strong agreement that the data shows NO TREND. That doesn't mean the energy in the planet hasn't been increasing. It means the rate of extra energy coming in hasn't gone up or down statistically since 2001. It means the overall greenhouse effect has been entirely stagnant for a little more than the last decade. Things are warming, but no faster than they were ten years ago.

I hope that's not to technical, but it paints a non-catastrophic picture. It also gives a superb metric to measure climate models against going forward. The models universally are projected on a steadily accelerating greenhouse effect as CO2 emissions rise. If the measured results of the last decade continue to not reflect that much longer, we have more reassessing to do. As noted in the IPCC, the effect of water vapor and clouds to increasing temperature is poorly modelled right now. If we are lucky the uncertainty of the sign on it as feedback is resolved to find it is a negative feedback. Meaning, as things warm, more clouds appear and reflect more energy back out. As things cool, less clouds appear and more energy comes in. And yeah, that's my own hope, and it is not the majority opinion within the scientific community as represented by the IPCC. They do acknowledge it as a possibility, but a less likely one. That said, the models they base that opinion on do not match the satellite energy measurements, and that one uncertainty would explain it rather well. My fingers are still crossed. More reasons for my optimism is the IPCC projections through 2100. If you look close, the actual temperature plotted against the projections has the actual following the very coolest of projections so far. Again, that lends hope that something like water vapor is either working for us, or not as badly against us as is currently modelled.

I've worked the back of the house (dish washer, prep cook, pantry cook, line cook), and the front of the house (bartender, server).

I never got tipped in the back of the house, but I worked harder and utilized more skills. I got paid hourly, and would therefore milk the clock as much as possible to help buy booze and pay the rent.

As a bartender, I've worked at night clubs, dive bars, martini bars, hotel bars, house parties and I was paid a decent hourly, which was essential for those slow and lonely Monday night shifts. But I made good money on the weekends. However, it usually takes time to work your way to those lucrative spots.

As a server, I get paid a little more than $2 an hour plus tips. But the tips are so impossible to calculate because of a myriad of factors -- how many servers are on, how many tables are reserved, how many parties, what's going on at the Arena, what's going on at the Lied, is it snowing, is it raining, is there a sporting event going on, are they splitting the bill, have they worked in the industry, are they from a country unfamiliar with tipping, was the food good, was the food cold, was the drink stiff, was the wine paired well, was the host pretty, was the bathroom out of paper towels, ad nausea -- that budgeting is impossible. I don't auto grat (gratuity of 18 percent of the bill for parties of seven or more) unless it's a sorority party, Mormons, or New Year's Eve, and that's only because I've been burned so badly by these groups.

What most diners don't realize is that it's really a matter of real estate -- and on a busy weekend night one server may be lucky to 'have' four to six tables with a variable of two and four seats. Dinner is generally served between the hours of 5-11. So, this gives the server a set number of data points for the evening (side note, so for the love God don't linger at a table if you're not ordering anything! When a server is forced to refill your water at $2 an hour, it's rude and disrespectful. That's what bars are for). In addition, most servers 'tip out' the host and bartender staff. On a weekend night, I typically tipped out 22 percent, and I never knew if I'd make $30 or $130.

So I know the business fairly well (I even studied hospitality in Vegas for a minute), and as a server I can make your experience remarkable. Ironically, the best tippers are younger college-era students working in the industry.

I think if anything is going to eliminate tipping in the service industry, it'll be some sort of computerized experiment where you sit at a table and punch in what you want. Till then, be conscientious and considerate when you wine and dine.

Well, first you must determine the average lifespan of a species...impossible until we survey the entire universe.
Then you must determine the average distance between populated planets.
Then you must determine the 'lifespan' of all possible transmission technologies (on average). (how long 'they' emit that kind of transmission)
Then you must determine the maximum range and speed of any transmissions, and what form those transmissions are in, which is what most of this video is about. Now we're looking in 2 small ranges of possible wave form communications for the first time. Subtract any with a maximum range lower than the distance from transmission to us (another unknowable).
Then you must determine how many ranges of not just wave form energy are we ignoring, but how many other forms of communication/emission/energy might there be that we aren't looking for or even conceiving their existence (another impossible question to answer)?
Only once ALL those (impossible) questions are answered (and I'm certain more that are unknown but important variables) can you do even preliminary calculations to determine how statistically likely it should really be to 'find' evidence of extra-planetary species/civilizations, and that number is almost definitely tiny by any standard.

To think they might be 'here' already, you must either assume they are a space fairing species (which would also indicate a species that 'raids' planets and moves on, not one that settles and/or trades, so lets hope not) or you must assume they have much faster than light travel, which if true, should mean one would expect to see aliens 'teleporting' everywhere, and likely some crazy looking evidence of the transportation method. If neither of these are true (space fairing or faster than light travel) you would not expect to ever hear or see them.
Since technology evolves, so do the types of transmissions that technology produces. To think that in the time frame a single type of transmission is used somewhere in the universe (+ travel time) we'll be searching for exactly that type of transmission form would be such an INSANELY unlikely coincidence that many would see it as proof of god (because it couldn't statistically happen naturally, like a babble fish).
What this means is, unless we become space fairing raiders ourselves, or find faster than light travel ourselves, we'll likely be alone forever, even if there is other intelligent life out there.
There's just too much to search in too many ways over too long a time span, like looking for a single protozoa in the entire ocean, when you don't know what it looks like or even what a protozoa is, and the protozoa only exists for one random week in your life time.
That's where I think they are....unfindable.

If you want to deleve in to it yourself, hidden variables are a good place to start picking holes in QM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_variable_theory

Also if you're interested I keep my mother's website online, which still gets interest from scientists and students researching it http://freespace.virgin.net/ch.thompson1/

Like most of Sorkin's bloviating, this empty rhetoric is undermined by the incongruency of the climate change alarmists' own ballooning carbon footprints while attempting to use the government to impose force upon others' behavior. Until global warming alarmists themselves walk their talk (i.e., drive hybrids -- if they drive at all -- cease flying in airplanes, eat strictly vegetarian diets, have few if any children, and withdraw their consent from the worst polluter on the planet: the state), then no amount of freaking out, ranting, incentives, or attempts at policy will serve to avert the "impending catastrophe."

In China and India (where pollution is no doubt a significant problem), there are hundreds of millions of people who have far bigger concerns and more pressing problems than some remote notion of a "warming planet" or some looming "catastrophic collapse of civilization." (In fact, the same can be said for the majority of the population of the planet.)

And this is to say nothing of how ALL of the models used to support "evidence" for the case of a warming planet have ALL (not some, but ALL) been consistently undermined by serious skeptical science (PDF) while the claims of the political entity of the IPCC remain inconsistent with the data.

Since when do politicians get to decide the veracity of scientific fact?

EDIT: ALL of the climate-change alarmists' predictions, dating back to the 1980s, have all failed to come true. When this trend continues for the next few decades, there will be no shortage of "Told You So" moments that will undoubtedly be explained away by some unknown variable -- like the heat that is "hiding" in the ocean -- that, once "corrected for," will serve to further prop up this political ruse.

There was a DB setting our new hosting automatically "fine-tuned" by setting it to a value about 7x what it was on our old server (along with setting lots of other variables). Turns out this one value needs to be small (or disabled completely).

Fortunately, I just moved Neatorama/NeatoShop to new servers at the same host and the problems there were more prominent and specific. After over a week of trying to figure it out there, I caught a break yesterday and learned what the problem was and fixed it promptly.

I then made the same change on VS and immediately our curse of latency was lifted.

One person has voted the site's not faster. I wish they'd elaborate on what still seems slow.

It would be more correct to consider religion one of many paths leading away from enlightenment than secularism as one leading toward it. That would usefully sidestep the sophistry involved in the rebranding of oppressive but secular ideologies as a special kind of religion. Secularists don't need to account for the actions of other secularists any more than people who aren't thieves need to answer for arsons committed by other non-thieves. Muslims, conversely, have signed up for a particular club with a particular set of club rules and practices; they are accountable.

Islam is a homogeneous whole, as much as a global movement can be. Its foundational text is intact and whole, not arbitrarily selected from masses of contradictory documents of dubious provenance. That text explicitly rejects the possibility of interpretation or allegory and there's an established, foolproof mechanism for resolving contradictions. It has a single author, really a single author rather than the fiction of the will of god being channelled through the accounts of various liars, a single founder, and a single exemplar.

The popular view of islam as "a religion that is as varied as any other in the world" is unarguably born from ignorance. It's about as variable as scientology, and substantially less reputable.

lucky760's reasoning is sound.

Anyone that has researched and/or trained on weapon on weapon defense, in this case knife vs. firearm knows the Tueller's Drill. It has been a standard for over thirty years. Basically,

The Tueller Drill is a self-defense training exercise to prepare against a short-range knife attack when armed only with a holstered handgun.
Sergeant Dennis Tueller, of the Salt Lake City, Utah Police Department wondered how quickly an attacker with a knife could cover 21 feet (6.4 m), so he timed volunteers as they raced to stab the target. He determined that it could be done in 1.5 seconds. These results were first published as an article in SWAT magazine in 1983 and in a police training video by the same title, "How Close is Too Close?"[1]
A defender with a gun has a dilemma. If he shoots too early, he risks being charged with murder. If he waits until the attacker is definitely within striking range so there is no question about motives, he risks injury and even death. The Tueller experiments quantified a "danger zone" where an attacker presented a clear threat.[2]
The Tueller Drill combines both parts of the original time trials by Tueller. There are several ways it can be conducted:[3]
The "attacker and shooter are positioned back-to-back. At the signal, the attacker sprints away from the shooter, and the shooter unholsters his gun and shoots at the target 21 feet (6.4 m) in front of him. The attacker stops as soon as the shot is fired. The shooter is successful only if his shot is good and if the runner did not cover 21 feet (6.4 m).
A more stressful arrangement is to have the attacker begin 21 feet (6.4 m) behind the shooter and run towards the shooter. The shooter is successful only if he was able take a good shot before he is tapped on the back by the attacker.
If the shooter is armed with only a training replica gun, a full-contact drill may be done with the attacker running towards the shooter. In this variation, the shooter should practice side-stepping the attacker while he is drawing the gun.
Mythbusters covered the drill in the 2012 episode "Duel Dilemmas". At 20 feet the gun wielder was able to shoot the charging knife attacker just as he reached the shooter. At shorter distances the knife wielder was always able to stab prior to being shot. (Wikipedia)

That a firearm, particularly a handgun, will instantly incapacitate an individual is not a working concept and is fallacious. Variables such as adrenaline and drugs are attributable. Shot placement is trumps. Anything but a CNS. central nervous system, shot is not efficacious in safely stopping the threat. Not an easy or sure target sans movement, stress, etc.

Law enforcement put their lives and safety in harm's way every day. They are not there to die needlessly. An individual with suicide by cop or a LEO's death in mind is a serious threat to be dealt with with prejudice.

By the way, research knife wounds vs. handgun wounds. There is much data, ER, medical examiner, law enforcement. The deadly seriousness of knife wounds are well documented.

Tasers...I would not want to risk my life behind one or anyone about whom I care.

Newness have been submitted recently and have a very short staying time. Often replaced with more current videos. There are many variables that go into how newness works. Maybe @lucky760 could give you a better understanding of how things work. I'm guessing its been discussed in a sift talk somewhere just not sure where.

Me, I like my science-fiction when they don't cheat and make up silly stuff like a 'selectable' blower. Anyone who knows even a tiny bit about how a roots supercharger works sees those scenes from TRW and groans. The blades of the impellers need to spin because the carburetor is sitting on top of it. No impellers turning, means no air or fuel passing it, means the engine no worky .

That being said, I could see how a Paxton (basically a belt driven turbo) style supercharger could be set up to work, using an electric clutch from a air conditioning pump and some interesting intake plumbing. Instead of the best of both worlds, it's probably the worst of both.

You'd be better off with a variable boost NO2 system.

Now, don't think that I don't know about the 1920s Mercedes engageable roots superchargers, it's just that the one on the Interceptor in the movie isn't that style, and they merely shot the engine starting up when Max "pulled the switch".

" At present, a little more than half of all Americans own the sum total of about 320 million guns, 36% of which are handguns, but fewer than 100,000 of these guns are used in violent crimes."

Per year. You don't cite your source, but this is looks to me to be an underestimate. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics' National Crime Victimization Survey there are half about half a million people claiming to be victim of a gun related crime over the course of a year. I remember being a victim of a gun crime in America (the perp was an British-born and educated woman) where the police said that they weren't going to follow things up because they were too busy with more serious crimes and they weren't confident of successful prosecution, they didn't even bother to look at the bullets or interview the perpetrator. I'd be surprised if it was even officially reported for crime statistic purposes.

"So gun ownership tends increase where violence is the least."

You didn't discuss the confounding variables.

But nevertheless, nobody is saying that owning guns makes you intrinsically more criminal. The argument here seems to be that criminals or those with criminal intent will find it much easier to acquire firearms when there are hundreds of millions of them distributed in various degrees of security across the US.

And those that have firearms, who are basically normal and moral people, may find themselves in a situation where their firearm is used, even in error, and causes harm - a situation obviously avoided in the absence of firearms and something that isn't necessarily included in crime statistics.

"In the UK, where guns are virtually banned, 43% of home burglaries occur when people are in the home"

Yes, but here's a fun fact. I've been burgled a few times, all but one of those times I was at home when it happened. You know what the burglar was armed with? Nothing. Do you know what happened when I confronted him with a wooden weapon? He pretended he knew someone that lived there and when that fell through he ran away. When the police apprehended him, there wasn't any consideration that he might be armed with a gun and the police merely put handcuffs on him and he walked to the police car. He swore and made some idle and non-specific threats, according to the police, but that's it. In any event, this isn't extraordinary. There are still too many burglaries that do involve violence, of course.
Many burglaries in Britain are actually vehicle crimes, with opportunity thrown in. That is: The primary purpose of the burglary is to acquire car keys (this is often the easiest way to steal modern vehicles), but they may grab whatever else is valuable and easy too.

"The federal ban on assault weapons from '94-'04 did not impact amount and severity of school shootings."

What impact did it have on gun prevalence? Not really enough to stop the sentence 'guns are prevalent in the US' from being true....

" So, it's likely that gun-related crimes will increase if the general population is unarmed."

I missed the part where you provided the reasoning that connects your evidence to this conclusion.

"Note retail gun sales is the only area that gun control legislation can affect, since existing laws have failed to control for illegal activity. "

This is silly. Guns don't get manufactured and then 32% of them get stolen from the manufacturers warehouse. They get bought and some get subsequently stolen. If there were less guns made and sold there would be less guns available for felons to acquire them privately, less places to steal them or buy stolen ones on the black market, less opportunity for renting or purchasing from a retailer. Thus - less felons with guns.

If times got tough, and I thought robbing a convenience store was a way out of a situation I was in - I would not be able to acquire a firearm without putting myself in considerable danger that outweighs the benefits to the degree that pretending to have a gun is a better strategy. I have 'black market contacts' so I might be able to work my way to someone with a gun, but I really don't want to get into business with someone that deals guns because they are near universally bad news.

" states with right-to-carry laws have a 30% lower homicide rate and a 46% lower robbery rate."

Almost all States have such laws, making the comparison pretty meaningless.

"In fact, it's {number of mass shootings} declined from 42 incidents in 1990 to 26 from 2000-2012. Until recently, the worst school shootings took place in the UK or Germany. "

I think 'most dead in one incident' is a poor measure. I think total dead over a reasonable time period is probably better.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rampage_killers:_School_massacres
The UK appears once. It is approx. 1/5 the population of the US. The US manages to have five incidents in the top 10.

Statistics can be fun, though, huh?

" In any case, do we have any evidence to believe that the regulators (presumably the police in this instance) will be competent, honest, righteous, just, and moral enough to take away the guns from private citizens"

You've done a lot of hard work to show that most gun owners are law-abiding and non-violent. As such, the police won't go door to door, citizens will go to the police.

"How will you enforce the regulation and/or remove the guns from those who resist turning over their guns?"

The same way they remove contraband from other recalcitrants. I expect most of them will ask, demand, threaten and then use force - but as usual there will be examples where it won't be pretty.

"Do the police not need guns to get those with the guns to turn over their guns?"

That's how it typically goes down here in the UK, yes.

"Does this then not presume that "gun control" is essentially an aim for only the government (i.e., the centralized political elite and their minions) to have guns at the exclusion of everyone else?"

The military has had access to weapons the citizenry is not permitted to for some considerable time. Banning most handguns etc., would just be adding to the list.

"Is the government so reliable, honest, moral, virtuous, and forward thinking as to ensure that the intentions of gun control legislation go exactly as planned?"

No, but on the other hand, can the same unreliable, dishonest, immoral and unvirtuous government ensure that allowing general access to firearms will go exactly as planned?

You see, you talk the talk of sociological examination, but you seem to have neglected any form of critical reflection.

"From a sociological perspective, it's interesting to note that those in favor of gun control tend to live in relatively safe and wealthy neighborhoods where the danger posed by violent crime is far less than in those neighborhoods where gun ownership is believed to be more acceptable if not necessary

"From a sociological perspective, it's interesting to note that those in favor of gun control tend to live in relatively safe and wealthy neighborhoods where the danger posed by violent crime is far less than in those neighborhoods where gun ownership is believed to be more acceptable if not necessary"

On the other hand, I've been mugged erm, 6 times? I've been violently assaulted without attempts to rob another half dozen or so. I don't tend to hang around in the sorts of places middle class WASPs would loiter, shall we say. I'm glad most of the people that cross my path are not armed, and have little to no idea how to get a gun.

You don't source this assertion as far as I saw - but you'll have to do better than 'it's interesting' in your analysis, I'm afraid.

No formatting, because too much typing already.