Thank you for the promote and the lyric. It's much appreciated.

In reply to this comment by schmawy:
there was a decorated general with
a heart of gold, that likened him to
all the stories he told
of past battles, won and lost, and
legends of old a seasoned veteran in
his own time

on the battlefield, he gained
respectful fame with many medals
of bravery and stripes to his name
he grew a beard as soon as he could
to cover the scars on his face
and always urged his men on

but on the eve of a great battle
with the infantry in dream
the old general tossed in his sleep
and wrestled with its meaning
he awoke from the night
just to tell what he had seen
and walked slowly out of his tent

all the men held tall with their
chests in the air, with courage in
their blood and a fire in their stare
it was a grey morning and they all
wondered how they would fare
till the old general told them to go home

[CHORUS:]
I have seen the others
and I have discovered
that this fight is not worth fighting
I have seen their mothers
and I will no other
to follow me where I'm going

Take a shower, shine your shoes
you got no time to lose
you are young men you must be living
go now you are forgiven

but the men stood fast with their
guns on their shoulders not knowing
what to do with the contradicting orders
the general said he would do his own
duty bout would not extend it not further
the men could go as they pleased

but not a man moved, their eyes gazed straight ahead
till one by one
they stepped back and not a word was said
and the old general was left with his
own words echoing in his head
he then prepared to fight

[CHORUS]


go now you are forgiven


*promote

there was a decorated general with
a heart of gold, that likened him to
all the stories he told
of past battles, won and lost, and
legends of old a seasoned veteran in
his own time

on the battlefield, he gained
respectful fame with many medals
of bravery and stripes to his name
he grew a beard as soon as he could
to cover the scars on his face
and always urged his men on

but on the eve of a great battle
with the infantry in dream
the old general tossed in his sleep
and wrestled with its meaning
he awoke from the night
just to tell what he had seen
and walked slowly out of his tent

all the men held tall with their
chests in the air, with courage in
their blood and a fire in their stare
it was a grey morning and they all
wondered how they would fare
till the old general told them to go home

[CHORUS:]
I have seen the others
and I have discovered
that this fight is not worth fighting
I have seen their mothers
and I will no other
to follow me where I'm going

Take a shower, shine your shoes
you got no time to lose
you are young men you must be living
go now you are forgiven

but the men stood fast with their
guns on their shoulders not knowing
what to do with the contradicting orders
the general said he would do his own
duty bout would not extend it not further
the men could go as they pleased

but not a man moved, their eyes gazed straight ahead
till one by one
they stepped back and not a word was said
and the old general was left with his
own words echoing in his head
he then prepared to fight

[CHORUS]


go now you are forgiven


*promote

SOMEONE SAYS "IS THIS OKAY" YOU SAY?
911 is a Joke

WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
Times Like These

WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
Never There

HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?
Ana Ng

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE?
Sweet Caroline

WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
Cant stand losing you

WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
Brand new funk

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR PARENTS?
Forget about Dr Dre

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
Like toy soldiers

WHAT IS 2+2?
Norwegian Wood

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
Around the world in a day

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Wonderful World

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
I'm Bad

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
Rat In The Kitchen

WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Love The One Your With

WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
Should I Stay Or Should I Go

WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
Scarborough Fair

WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
Leader Of The Band

WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
88 Lines About 44 Women

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
Thank God I'm A Country Boy

WHATS THE WORST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN?
Fell in Love With a Girl

HOW WILL YOU DIE?
Skateboard

WHAT IS THE ONE THING YOU REGRET?
Maria Maria

WHAT MAKES YOU LAUGH?
Close To The Edge

WHAT MAKES YOU CRY?
Tripping Billies

WILL YOU EVER GET MARRIED?
That Voice Again

WHAT SCARES YOU THE MOST?
The Bitch Is Back

DOES ANYONE LIKE YOU?
Black Dog

IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME, WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE?
Riders on the Storm

WHAT HURTS RIGHT NOW?
Afternoon Delight

Help me out Yehoshua.

What are Israel's long term goals here? Do they think that if they can kill every member of Hamas that all of their troubles will go away? Do they think the root of this problem is mere 'terrorism'? Are they trying to make Gaza so horrible that everyone will leave?

It seems to me that as long as Palestinians lack hope and have nothing to lose, you are always going to find a small percentage willing to strap on a bomb or launch a rocket.

It seems that Israel's options are a) Give the Palestinians a homeland or b) Genocide

Are there other options? Is there something I am missing here, or is this all as short sighted as it looks?

I hear a lot of 'but they started it', 'but they're worse', 'they want to kill us, so we need to kill them first' talk out of the Israeli camp. Is this just a pissing contest? Bloods and Crips east?

Is this leading to any kind of rational conclusion?

Do you have any empathy for the innocent Palestinians that are being killed by the Israeli military? Is an innocent Israeli dead at the hands of Hamas any worse than an innocent Palestinian dead at the hands of Israel's military? Isn't all of this aggression intended to terrorize?

I hear the frustration in your voice and don't mean to attack you, these are just some questions I'd like to hear answered.

Now all of a sudden you want to keep this private?

Losing? You have to be kidding. I don't know what that means, but fine. You win! Congratulations!

I don't recall starting the name-calling or continuing to bother you when you asked to be left alone. I'm not the one who makes comments like "See you next Tuesday," "And the Tuesday after that," "CHEESE," and "The second 'm' in 'mormon' is silent" after the matter seems to be closed. You just can't let it go. You like to pick at people until you provoke them. This latest incident (the one where I objected to your troll-like comments to Deedub81) was not meant to start a fight and I'm sorry I even spoke to you, because it obviously never ends! I tried to apologize, I tried to be nice, I tried to understand your point of view, but you are a first-class instigator and a troll and you obviously DON'T want to be left alone. It is painfully apparent that you are trying to keep this going with every ounce of spite you can muster. LEAVE ME ALONE!!!

>> ^UsesProzac:
You started it, thepinky. It's ok for you to fuck with me until it looks like you're losing. Then you declare that you want to be left alone. I told you to leave me alone many times.
>> ^thepinky:
UsesProzac, I think you accidentally made this private, or maybe you're just afraid that your friends might see you for the troll that you are? Stop trying to provoke me. I prefer that you leave me alone.

>> ^UsesProzac:
The second "m" in "mormon" is silent.

In reply to this comment by thepinky

Dan Gilbert doesn't understand Daniel Bernoulli's theory. He has over simplified it and removed the value of expected utility. Poor people make much better usage out of a lottery winning than rich people do. This utility value has to be factored into any equation placing a value judgment on an investment, even a lottery ticket.

When Dan insults lottery players, from a strictly numbers point of view, he's right, of course, but playing the lottery is not a strictly numbers kind of game; it's about utility. He doesn't take into account the actual value of winning and losing to the people who play.

Here's a demonstration of the difference utility adds to the simplistic equation of expected value:

You bet on a coin toss against an outstandingly wealthy opponent. If you win, your opponent will instantly triple your net worth, including your cash, assets, and salary. If you lose, you lose everything, including your job and employability.

The odds of winning are .5, and the reward is 3. Multiply these together, and you get 1.5, which means that you are getting 2:1 on your money. Looks good on paper. But of course not even economists would play this game --not even if the reward were raised to x10 or x100-- because the consequence of losing everything, though less in monetary value than the reward, is unthinkable, even compared to the relative gains from having x100 your wealth. The expected utility to you of your first "net worth" far exceeds the utility that the second and third would give you, so it's a bad bet.

Back to the lottery: if you lose a dollar, you don't noticeably lose any economic power, even if you play every week and lose $52/year. In other words, you lose a negligible amount of utility. You may even get $52 worth of enjoyment out of waiting for the results to come up, talking about it and bonding with your pool of coworkers, or daydreaming about the good life and getting distraction from the reality of your trailer park McJob life. But if you win something big, it will instantly end all money troubles for you and your whole family, maybe for generations to come. In other words, massive utility. It's not a stupid decision at all to buy a lottery ticket if you factor in utility.

Edit: Oh, and now that I've actually watched to the end, I see that someone in the Q&A made one of my points, but they both still missed the boat on the strictly financial utility of losing $1 to winning millions when you're poor.

Good Luck. Kill some bad guys. save some good guys. do whatever you must, but STAY SAFE. as safe as you can be over there, anyway. the sift would hate to lose you. good luck, bro.

Wow, you took a clean sweep through my queue, thanks for that! Good luck losing you P

In reply to this comment by bamdrew:

YES! I very much do disagree! If you took 9.9million from this dude with 10 million dollars he's still got 100,000 bucks! If you take 9,900 from a dude with 10,000 bucks, that guy is going to have a much, much harder time then that dude who lost a lot more but had a lot more to lose. You see what I'm saying? Again this is oversimplifying the situation to such a degree that its not worth arguing about, but I'm not comfortable leaving my position unclear on this point.

What person is going to be okay with losing 9.9 million dollars or 99% of their wealth? Why would anyone risk losing 99% of their total wealth when they can protect it by paying a mere 7% on their annual income? My guess is that everyone would donate to police and national defense because no one wants to lose 99% of their money. My point was that even if all the poor people didn't contribute the rich people would pay for it in its entirety because given the choice between 7% of their income or 100% of their wealth, any economically minded person is going to choose the former!

One however, can take it to the extreme to show that your logic breaks down. Imagine an example where one man has $1 trillion and another has $1 dollar. Who benefits most from a police/national defense system? if you take away 99% from each man, does your argument still work? How can changing the dollar amounts possibly change the principle? All that matters is those who have more, have more to lose, and thus benefit most from protection of what they have.

What you're really saying is that the millionaire is a better target, thus he would want to have better defense of his assets. But why couldn't he do this privately? Buy some guns, some dogs, some fences, some security guards. And what neighborhoods are the most crime-ridden? I'll give you a hint, ... no I'll just tell you answer; its poor neighborhoods. So maybe now you have a grasp as to why I thought this was the most outrageous of your claims.

How are the fences and security guards going to help him when China invades, or when 1000 poor people form a mob and storm his house? How much would you have to pay a security guard, in a system of anarchy, to guard $10 million? How will he live a normal life when everyone knows who he is and how much money he has? How can he walk down the street? Is he to remain in his fortress, if so what kind of life is that? This is the point I was making--everyone benefits from a police system and national defense, but the rich people benefit the most precisely because they have the most to fear, and the most to lose.

Maybe what you're referring to are Non-Governmental Organization, and not Non-Profit Organizations? Non-profits are not able to compete with private businesses if their funding/property/assets/operations are taxed. There would be absolutely no point to have a non-profit company if there was no tax incentive to do so. If there were no taxes on any businesses then nonprofits would not exist as they do today... their entire structure is based around being tax exempt. So,... um... yeah! Sorry to break the news to you!

Thats just not true. The majority of todays non-profits were formed in the 19th century (red cross, salvation army, art museums, etc.) when there was no income tax, and taxes were a very small portion of peoples income, and there was little to no regulation in the economy. If you think that people only donate blood, or only appreciate art, or only listen to operas, or only donate clothes, food, or help the homeless because of tax incentives, then you really have a sad view of humanity.

A person strictly interested in their individual choices would by necessity disregard the choices of everyone else! There are not individual rights in strict individualism, because there is no community to guarantee these rights. Its every man for himself.

Thats not what "the right to life" is about. Did you read my definition on my bio? It clearly says this: "As to his neighbors, his rights impose no obligations on them except of a negative kind: to abstain from violating his rights." It specifically says you cannot violate the rights of others.

Brad Dourif was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for this role. He lost to George Burns, which, if you're going to lose, you should lose to a legend.

Dourif went on to become a successful character actor, appearing in Foreman's Ragtime, David Lynch's Dune and Blue Velvet, Mississippi Burning, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, HBO's Deadwood, and he's also the voice of Chucky, the doll from all the Child's Play films.

Not that this has anything to do with anything, but when did Arvana go from looking like Patrick Swayze to Jeff Bridges? Did we lose you in that 50-year storm, Bodhi?

Let me explain. The "game" is a game that you lose whenever you think of it. So you've just lost. And you're playing for the rest of your life. You can't choose not to play, because you're playing no matter what. When you lose, you're supposed to announce it out loud to everyone and then you'll have a 30 minute grace period until you can lose it again.

Have fun playing, mua hah hah.

In reply to this comment by my15minutes:
in this game? we're all winners, fjnbk!

In reply to this comment by Fjnbk:
I just lost the game.

Its wierd how certain superstitions can lose you the election while others are a requirement. I move to hear an entire debate on Science, philosophy and superstition, and I want questions like "Do you REALLY believe, based on 3rd party accounts from an highly ignorant era, that a jewish carpenter rose from the dead?" or "Whats your stance on improving education and preventing us from raising a generation of ignorants?" "How about exploring space some more?"

This isn't right surely, what you are saying would mean that I would only have to knock out about 8 inches of my house for the entire thing to collapse into rubble. There isn't enough time for the falling part to gather enough inertia and therefore total mass.

In reply to this comment by Irishman:
When you calculate total mass, the value of the mass you are using should already take into account its inertia.

In reply to this comment by Irishman:
The total distance fallen by the taller building was 416.97 metres.

g at sea level is 9.81m/s

t (time taken for collapse) is 10 seconds from the seismic records and video footage.

416.97 metres will take 9.22 seconds to fall in a vacuum. The taller tower collapsed in 10 seconds.

That means that the 80 lower floors offered less than one second of resistance; this is not including air resistance.

That leaves less that one second for the amount of inertia to build up, not the 11 seconds that I think your equation needs. But correct me if I am wrong.



In reply to this comment by MycroftHomlz:
Yes.

http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs_8_2006.htm

Go to 6. There is the answer.

Right, so let me know if I lose you, and I will try to make it more clear-

The basic idea is that as the mass collapsed the initial collapsing floors collapsed at a total acceleration less than gravity at STP. At the floors collapsed onto each other their total momentum increased.

Or an easier way to see it,

F= (M+dm)*a = (M+dm)*g_STP-Fimpulse

Here I represented the force downward as an increasing quantity and Fimpulse as the force due to the collision of the total mass at time t-1 to time t. So, as the mass falls it gains more mass, until eventually the total force of the mass falling can be approximated F~(M+dm)g_STP.

Not that more mass falls at a faster rate, rather as more mass falls the effect of the other forces becomes negligible.

This means that for the most part the acceleration can be effectively described by something in freefall, and hence g_STP~a.

Note Fimpulse is a constant as a function of time.
In reply to this comment by Irishman:
I back Choggie's comments.

My own thoughts,
The thermite theory addressed the problem of the freefall speed of the tower's collapse.

There is still no official or third party theory that addresses that problem.

A freefall speed of collapse explicity implies no resistance, and that is impossible for 3 of the buildings that collapsed at freefall speed unless they were demolished.

If someone can explain how the freefall collapses were caused by the fire, then they will have solved the riddle.

When you calculate total mass, the value of the mass you are using should already take into account its inertia.

In reply to this comment by Irishman:
The total distance fallen by the taller building was 416.97 metres.

g at sea level is 9.81m/s

t (time taken for collapse) is 10 seconds from the seismic records and video footage.

416.97 metres will take 9.22 seconds to fall in a vacuum. The taller tower collapsed in 10 seconds.

That means that the 80 lower floors offered less than one second of resistance; this is not including air resistance.

That leaves less that one second for the amount of inertia to build up, not the 11 seconds that I think your equation needs. But correct me if I am wrong.



In reply to this comment by MycroftHomlz:
Yes.

http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs_8_2006.htm

Go to 6. There is the answer.

Right, so let me know if I lose you, and I will try to make it more clear-

The basic idea is that as the mass collapsed the initial collapsing floors collapsed at a total acceleration less than gravity at STP. At the floors collapsed onto each other their total momentum increased.

Or an easier way to see it,

F= (M+dm)*a = (M+dm)*g_STP-Fimpulse

Here I represented the force downward as an increasing quantity and Fimpulse as the force due to the collision of the total mass at time t-1 to time t. So, as the mass falls it gains more mass, until eventually the total force of the mass falling can be approximated F~(M+dm)g_STP.

Not that more mass falls at a faster rate, rather as more mass falls the effect of the other forces becomes negligible.

This means that for the most part the acceleration can be effectively described by something in freefall, and hence g_STP~a.

Note Fimpulse is a constant as a function of time.
In reply to this comment by Irishman:
I back Choggie's comments.

My own thoughts,
The thermite theory addressed the problem of the freefall speed of the tower's collapse.

There is still no official or third party theory that addresses that problem.

A freefall speed of collapse explicity implies no resistance, and that is impossible for 3 of the buildings that collapsed at freefall speed unless they were demolished.

If someone can explain how the freefall collapses were caused by the fire, then they will have solved the riddle.