I'm not sure what to make of this. On one hand, I approve of the message.

On the other hand, every time I hear Julia Gillard speak I want to drive a screwdriver through my ear drums

It is on the one hand only about 1km/h faster than the Veyron (435.31km/h vs 434.3) but on the other hand they ran out of runway while still accelerating, or they could have gone faster (and this was from a standing start, whereas the Veyron had banking for a rolling start).

I wonder why they couldn't do the return pass for an official figure?

Happy to be the 10th vote for this.

That guy was a total twat. I only wish the camera had showed his face so that if I passed him on the street I could call him out for being a twat.

The actual comment from Paul Robinson in the New York Times in 1979 (which Chomsky paraphrased in this talk) is as follows:

"Judged in terms of the power, range, novelty and influence of his thought, Noam Chomsky is arguably the most important intellectual alive today. He is also a disturbingly divided intellectual. On the one hand there is a large body of revolutionary and highly technical linguistic scholarship, much of it too difficult for anyone but the professional linguist or philosopher; on the other, an equally substantial body of political writings, accessible to any literate person but often maddeningly simple-minded. The 'Chomsky problem' is to explain how these two fit together."

Chomsky's coming to Japan next month and my wife and I are going to try to see him give a talk on linguistics (unfortunately his other talk on democracy and capitalism booked up as soon as it was announced).

I'm conflicted about Snowden..on one hand I'm glad the abuses were revealed..on the other hand, I have a hard time believing that China and Russia didn't get copies of all the files, or that he just ended up in Russia. There is definitely something fishy underlying the story he is giving us.

While on one hand, I've always known that foreign aid is barely a drop in the bucket of our budget, but on the other, I'd still be hesitant to increase foreign aid to be completely honest.

so much shit that needs fixing and investment here domestically.

If we really could make a decent dent in military spending...then I'd be more comfortable with more foreign aid.

hate to say it but don't these people need to overthrow their own dictators and overlords? I'm ok with giving them some aid and giving them intel and other kinds of non-hardware military support. but they do need to fight their own damned battles.

I dunno man, the non-linear antics of monkeys seems to be on the rise in both frequency and absurdity-Some folks are just dying to get off-planet by any means necessary....as evidenced in the amazingly lame-brained practice of eating a hamburger with one hand while driving and texting with the help of their other opposable digit with no concern for just how close they are to getting consciously rammed by some shitty car from behind

Michiganite average winter's day skill, by jingo! One hand on wheel, e-brake with precision and aplomb

➑ Speed
➒ Timing
➓ Overall Execution

Salt Lake City has an odd dichotomy. On the one hand it's the heart of the Mormon church. And if you do go to the temple and meet one of their leaders, he will be an old white man who takes himself way too seriously.

But on the other hand it's also the most liberal and democratic leaning part of Utah. One recent example. Last Friday when the federal court judgement came which struck down Utah's same-sex marriage ban. Clerks stayed late at the County Clerk's office and ministers flocked to volunteer to marry the hundreds of gay couples who showed up immediately after the news. I know a very devoted lesbian couple who were married by the mayor of Salt Lake City that night.

Why would losing a hand cleanse the current gene pool in any way?

He can clearly hoist that gator one-handedly.

I got a better one: Roll-type-caps, they still sell those, right?...for cap guns?

Take a roll or two-at-a-time, place on concrete ends-out, bash with mallet or the end/tip of a baseball bat. *NOTE: If using a baseball bat, hold the bat with one hand firmly by placing the knob of the bat in the center of your strongest hand and from about a foot above the caps, bring the bat's barrel-end down directly on the cap rolls.

One rolls' as loud as a .38 caliber round, two, a .45......Wear ear protection.

This dart-cap is lame and impractical, and destroys perfectly good darts, AND, there is no thrill from the smell of gunpowder, simply a lingering sulfur stink complete with lame "pop!"

On one hand, it's Aronofsky, who I really like as a director, and have seen every movie except The Black Swan. The Fountain is actually one of my favorite movies.

On the other hand, it's one of the stupidest biblical stories for which I have absolutely no respect at any level.

@bcglorf
how come it always take you 4-5 posts to get an idea across that i can relate to?
its frustrating.

dont know how you got i feel america is some kind of 'special" place.
again i seem to have failed in conveying how wretched i think my government has been for the past few decades.

irregardless...
not american eh?
interesting.....
so you think america should play the global police?
and what exactly gives us that right?
because we have the bigger guns? bigger military?

since it cant be on moral grounds it HAS to be military might.

and america only likes to play with those countries it wants/covets/desires in order to perpetuate this global hegemony thing is has going on.

god you are confusing.
on the one hand you wish to see injustice brought to its knees and are willing to make a deal with the devil to do it.

yet on the other hand you reference history as if you have a semblance of understanding and if THAT is the case then you KNOW nothing is a delineated black vs white dynamic.
nothing is ever as simple or easy as it appears.

so you choose to use american military might to crush the religious zealots and in doing so create more...
but your argument appears to be:if we use drones LESS jihadists will be created and this is a good thing.

no.
it..is ..not.

you cant have it both ways.
you cant have your justice with zero (or less) consequences.
there will ALWAYS be consequences.

do you allow a country to work their problems out (as horrific as it can become).
OR do you go in and possibly extend the suffering of normal folk?

how long?
how long do you think it morally right to intrude on another country and most likely extend conflict,while feeding the rage and resentment creating even more fanatics and zealots who only desire is to bring the suffering to your your door?

and here is what really blows me away.
you are utterly oblivious to just how arrogant your statements are.
yes they are coming from a moral outrage.
yes they are coming from a reaction to horror.
but it is still arrogant all the same.

who are you?
who are you to dictate to anyone how or what they should do?

are there homeless in your country?
are there people starving?
is there injustice?
horrors?

or is it only the countries populated by brown people where the injustices warrant violence?
should america come to your country and clean house there as well?

hell,you wanted us in syria and now pakistan.
any other country you want us to drone?
specific people?

or is it a specific religion?
you seem awfully unsure of those muslim folk.
isreal has been doing all kinds of nasty things to the palestinians for the past 80 yrs.
how come no mention of america droning them?

are you starting to see why your argument makes no sense to me?
it is illogical.

because at the end of the day the poor and less fortunate will always pay the price.
how high a price are you willing to pay for seeing a wrong righted?
does it matter that those people you wept for and were outraged for paid an even higher price?

violence begets violence.
if history taught you anything it had to be that equation.

and a drone strike is violence.
it is intimidation.
it is assasination.
and it is wrong.
without a declaration of war passed by congress and no accountability it is wrong.

i will not make a deal with the devil to get justice today.
because when payment comes due the injustices wrought will tower over everything.
i know you disagree with me.
know that i am ok with that.

Not saying you are wrong (though to my eye it does look legit) but bullet/shell drop is uniform no matter the range as it's an effect of gravity.

If you took a gun in one hand and a bullet in the other and dropped/fired simultaneously both bullets would hit the ground at the same time. The same goes for shells, the fins only keep it steady the shell itself does not "fly" it simply travels fast enough to cover a shitload of ground before gravity has its inevitable effect. i.e. the moment the shell leaves the barrel it is falling at the same speed it would if you just dropped it.

The camera is zoomed in which is making the distance seem shorter than it actually is and exaggerating the visual effect but the shell looks to be behaving pretty consistently with normal gravity to my eye.

One-handed zipper? I'm on board with that plan.

While doing and undoing my sons' zippers all the time lately, I've been feeling like zipper technology is rather antiquated and could use a breath of fresh air. Et voila.

So just to throw it straight out there; I'm a massive biker (though mostly solo so I can't really relate to the gang mindset here). You have no idea what this whole debacle does to my priorities!

So on the one hand provoking the man in the big metal cage (no matter how good the perceived reason) is basically never a good idea if your on a bike. And moreover beating someone to within an inch of his life and cutting him up is very very rarely a good or condonable solution to anything, even if he did just run over a couple of your buddies....

On the other hand......well (and this might only really find any sympathy from fellow motor-bicycleists)..........I can fill in some of the gaps that might explain why one biker felt the need to brake hard in front of him etc. from my own experiences.

Some (very few) drivers go out of their way to fuck with you sometimes over little shit, they get a big head tucked away safely inside their big metal cages and they take it upon themselves to cause you grief in some way or another.
On a regular basis for instance I have car drivers deliverately pull their cars out to try and stop me filtering (lane splitting) despite the fact that A. its totally legal and featured on my fucking licence test! and B. It actually speeds their miserable existence in the traffic flow up as we don't have to take up a car's space (and were fucking gone before most cars are even in gear when the lights change anyway)!

Fortunately I have the perfect solution to this problem, I ride a cheapish looking bike and don't show any signs of stopping for them as they veer over deliberately into my path! You'd be amazed how often they just back off :-D (if not I'm only ever doing 5-10mph so stopping is always an option for that odd psycho)

Not saying I remotely condone the bikers responses, but I do understand how this thing probably escalated. I suspect the bikers had a legit frustration but clearly they dealt with it very poorly. The biker side of the story seems to be that this guy had been deliberately blocking lanes and exchanging insults for a while leading up to when the braking biker escalated things,a situation I've witnessed myself before. Normally prudence makes you leave it alone and back off/accelerate away (or if they are being an extra special twatbag knock off a mirror and accelerate into the distance :-D (never actually done that, but it's seriously crossed my mind a couple of times, Kevlar knuckles are the shit!)). In this case the extra courage that only a 1000 or so fellow kinsmen stood at your side can bring had the usual effect..........Mobs will be the death of us all.

@newtboy is right though, bikers totally killed their own case reacting so aggressively. If they'd followed at a reasonable distance and waited for police to show up things would probably have gone completely the other way legally. Sure the dude that brakes in front of him might get charged but it'd be nothing on attempted vehicular murder/manslaughter running over a handful of bikers. Chasing down and then beating a man half to death in front of his family unfortunately rather overshadows your defence.


Sadly the only sensible conclusion I seem to be able to find is this was ultimately douche nozzles with no self control baiting other douche nozzles with no self control. But I do get it. I also totally get the drivers response once it escalated, I'd have shit bricks and maybe made a run for it through them by that stage too!

I really really really wish I could hear what was actually said between them oh well, back to the fence I go!


EDIT: I just wanted to come back and make it absolutely clear that I also acknowledge that bikes in groups (especially sports bikes and supermoto's as featured here) are just as capable of acting like power drunk fucknuts too. It's entirely possible the bikers started it a way's back and the driver was essentially an innocent man driven to extreme lengths by fear (though I'm still going with straight up hot douche on douche action for now)