bascule

This link brought to you by the liberal media conspiracy, a.k.a. FOX News: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,330637,00.html The US House of Representatives is poised to vote as to whether two of Bush's advisers are in contempt of court for failing to testify in accordance with Congressional subpoenas. Joshua B. Bolten, White House chief of staff, and Harriet E. Miers, former White House counsel, were summoned to testify as to whether several United States attorneys were dismissed for political reasons. You may recall this issue as the one which effectively forced former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales from his post, unless you have a memory like Alberto Gonzales and simply do not recall. Is this a dead issue, or is the lid about to be blown?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23073316/ According to an AP poll, 68% of Americans feel that getting out of Iraq, a war which, for America, has been second only to World War II in total cost, would benefit the US economy, with 48% saying it would fix the country's economic problems "a great deal." This belies a recent decision by the US Congress to pump cash into the hands of low and middle income citizens as a potential band-aid for an ailing economy, however the same poll reveals the majority of Americans think this is an unwise decision. Do you feel that pulling out of Iraq would benefit the US economy? Would there be a human cost to such a pullout, and if so, would the economic savings be worth it?

Short answer: no

While the ban passed the Senate (despite an anticipated veto), it received a rather odd nay, from John McCain: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/washington/13cnd-cong.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin McCain was tortured as a POW has been an outspoken critic of torture in the past. He also has a pretty resolute opinion on the matter of whether waterboarding is torture: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/us/politics/26giuliani.html?ref=politics What does this make him? A hypocrite? A coward bending to the will of the White House? Or maybe just a flip-flopper...

a meaningless cliche

No, I believe "universe" defines the totality of all existence, therefore by definition there is nothing outside the universe. We don't know if space is never-ending or not. Perhaps the universe is spatially curved, and hence closed, i.e. if you go far enough in any one direction you will eventually (after a journey of incomprehensible length) find yourself back where you started.

I preferred Ed Begley Jr.'s motor than ran on his own sense of self-accomplishment That said, don't forget magical electrolysis and burning water

She's suggested she'll have a withdrawal plan within 60 days of her taking office, not that we'll withdraw our forces in 60 days. So, in other words, we have no idea what her withdrawal plan will be until 2 months after she takes office. Before that she said that our tactics in Iraq are working, and that we should increase the size of US military by 80,000 troops. Are you curious why I don't think she'll stick with a withdrawal plan?

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=290513 I'm going to chalk this up to another case of sarcasm detectors failing to register...

Well, the point's moot now. I don't support either of them. While I think McCain would be worse, Clinton certainly seems all for the status quo in Iraq. Sadly, I'm starting to hear clamors of "stay the course" again, as violence in Iraq approaches levels similar to what they were circa the 2004 election...

It's the compromise nature made between a larger neocortex, a head that can fit through the birth canal, and females with both enough mobility to evade predators and a big enough birth canal to fit giant-headed children

Perhaps I was mistaken in my assumption that "iconoclast" carries pejorative overtones

I guess you don't remember it, but about a year ago I was endorsing McCain over Hillary. My signature was something to the effect of: "If the 2008 presidential race comes down to Hillary vs. McCain, I am so voting Republican". Here's a thread referencing it, from last March: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=25222 More Hillary bashing, from last June: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=27170 Yet more Hillary bashing, from last July: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=27333 I don't think it should come as any surprise that I'm perpetuating the trend now. It's not that Obama doesn't have anything to do with it... he does. But it's not as if my opinions have changed as of late. I'm failing to see how the two aren't related. Massive budget shortfalls resulting in rampant foreign borrowing, largely to finance the Iraq War, has destroyed the dollar in the international marketplace, driving up the cost of all those foreign goods Americans are addicted to, and compounding the problems of the mortgage crisis. Bush has just proposed a $3 trillion budget, with a $400 billion budget deficit. The national debt has reached $9.2 trillion, up 61%, or $3.5 trillion, from when Clinton left office (it was $5.7 trillion then). Nearly one third of that $3.5 trillion has gone to Iraq. By the time Bush leaves office it will be nearing the $10 trillion mark. It's for this reason that I think someone like Ron Paul, who advocates massive cutbacks in government spending of all kinds (the most obvious of which is ending the Iraq War) would be the most viable candidate for restoring the US economy. That's all quite awesome, and if you check the above links from my past post, those are the reasons I've continually endorsed Obama over Hillary. Hillary is not only politically backwards by my standards, but also a more divisive candidate who is more likely to alienate moderates.

Hooray, I can't wait to contribute to the devaluation of US currency!

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/76270/ Michael Moore sez: "I'm morally prohibited from voting for Hillary" Why? Her votes, and stance on the Iraq war. Can Hillary gain traction with the anti-war crowd? Is resentment of the Iraq War responsible for her waning popularity?

An inventor has constructed a perpetual motion machine. The device, which he has dubbed the Perepiteia, runs on an endless supply of media stupidity: http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/300042?746

Looks like he may have topped Clinton in total delegates after Super Tuesday: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0208/8358.html?reddit Anyone else happy about this? I sure am...

How can you quantify the perception of pain in regard to "animals"? How pain is perceived will vary greatly from species to species...

I'll call it pixels, because that's what's actually different.

What you're describing sounds like a difference in luminance. What might surprise you is HD discs are encoded with 4 bits of luminance, the same as what DVDs have. The "intensity" is the same for either DVD, HD-DVD, or Blu-Ray. Your typical Blu-Ray disc is subsampled with 4 bits of luminance and 2 bits of chrominance per pixel (i.e. 4:2:0 YCbCr), which is identical to DVD. Most DVD players and Blu-Ray players will upsample this to 4 bits of luminance and 4 of chrominance for output (i.e. 4:2:2 YCbCr). In reality, the only quality improvements HD discs have over DVDs are higher bitrates, better codecs, and higher resolutions. The "dynamic range" (i.e. luminance) is not improved. Scientifically speaking, there's no reasion to expect the "intensity" or "contrast" of HD-DVD or Blu-Ray to be any better than DVD: they use the same amount of bits to store that information. Furthermore, there's a substantial tradeoff with bitrate and resolution: scaling a lower resolution video with a higher bitrate to resolution ratio is typically better than watching a video of higher resolution which is bitrate starved. This isn't typically a problem with HD discs as they generally have an ample bitrate for the resolution, but that's a problem relating directly to how the master was encoded. Personally, I'll take a lower resolution video with adequate bitrate over a higher resolution one which is starved for bits any day. I'd really have to see it to believe it. As someone who works with digital video all day every day, I'm really averse to any comparisons that aren't side by side. I can't tell you how many times I've been fooled when asking for quality assessments of video. Often I've been shown the exact same thing, expecting a change, and remarked "That's way better!" only to be told "We didn't change anything." Even worse is when I'm given a set of video samples played side-by-side and choose the one with the lower bitrate. I'm firmly convinced that any relative comparisons of either audio or video, when compared only to what you remember and not what's immediately visible/listenable/tangible, are fraught with error, and even side-by-side comparsions can be. And it doesn't just end with media. If you're firmly convinced that thing X is better than thing Y, a double blind test is really the only way to go. I like subjecting myself to them on a regular basis, and find my opinions of things constantly reformed by absence of confirmation bias.

I would disagree with that most people can tell the difference at a glance. There's a lot of criteria to consider, most notably the quality of DVD master as well as the quality of the source material. Some of the best mastering houses (Criterion) aren't yet producing HD releases of their content. For a very small selection of movies, the difference is outright obvious (e.g. 1080p Blu-Ray release of Planet Earth). However, for most movies, I have my doubts the average joe can tell the difference. Many people have asked me "Is this HD?" when I play movies on my projector. The answer is: yes, it is (thanks to the projector's upscaling), however the source material is not. Upscaling is enough to give noticeably improved picture quality. I would really like to pit a Criterion master of a DVD on a system with a motion compensating upscaler against a non-Criterion master of a Blu-Ray disc of the same film, and gauge some opinions on which is higher quality.

Actually, on the contrary I find most people are surprised by how well upscaling actually works once they see it. The issue is a bit more nuanced than that. Motion compensation algorithms can create additional resolution by operating on a set of frames which represent motion in the scene. The process is far different than simple scaling algorithms that apply to still images.

Of course, who needs Blu-Ray when an upscaling television can accomplish largely the same thing with a DVD? http://www.economist.com/daily/columns/techview/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10610923

I personally believe that the richness of our (i.e. human) conscious experience is to no small degree rooted in our capacity for natural language.

Why anyone thinks additional government spending is a solution to this problem is beyond me. If the government is going to pump money into something, it should be a program to provide sustainable mortgage payments to those who were suckered into unsustainable subprime mortgages. Instead... give everyone money! Yay! That'll fix everything.