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I'd be interested in seeing a video of a cogent Tea Partygoer. -- In other news, Gallup did a poll of these people, if you're interested in their demographic. Surprise surprise, they are mostly Republicans: http://www.gallup.com/poll/127181/Tea-Partiers-Fairly-Mainstream-Demographics.aspx?utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=syndication&utm_content=morelink&utm_term=Politics

What are you referring to specifically? The fact Ron Paul has a platform different from your average Republican and therefore gets booed by members of his party?

"Celebrate" the Civil War? What? Honor the dead... sure. But celebrating?

I'd like to cite this thread as evidence that the systemic problems with Fox also affect their web site. My apologies to toastywombel for attributing problems with Fox to him. The original article contained a flagrantly untrue headline and was littered with what I can only describe with lies. These same lies were repeated on the Fox cable channel. The entire argument within this thread is predicated on lies spread by Fox and was completely unnecessary. While I stand by what I said, it's now clear to me that Fox is deliberately spreading disinformation and I am sick of it. I'm taking a stand on this and will never link to a Fox article again except to criticize it. I'm also going to stop referring to Fox with the word news in their title, since they're not a news source. I will not consider their articles sources of substantive information and will request those who post Fox articles post one from a real news source instead. I've had enough.

Really? Can we expect these people to vote for a third party (or Ron Paul), or perhaps seek another avenue for changing the government, or will they simply vote for Republicans in the next election? Republicans who will not solve any of the issues the Tea Party brings to the table... That's really my problem. Whine whine bitch bitch socialism spending taxes big central government! Except they don't want to solve any of these problems. Their central goal seems to be getting Republicans back into power. And the last time Republicans were in power, we saw massively expanded federal government and unprecedentedly increased spending. While the Tea Party seems to purport an image of economic conservatism, this is not backed up by their behavior. Really they're social conservatives rallying around an economically conservative theme, who don't really care about economic conservatism and instead just want Republicans back in power. The entire thing is little more than a hypocritical partisan circle jerk.

Long ago American colonialists protested British control of the American colonies: no taxation without representation! Last year on April 15th, a bunch of disenfranchised conservatives decided they felt the same way, except they're unrepresented because their candidates lost in a legitimate election. However, why not evoke imagery of colonial America? TEABAG THE WHITE HOUSE! Of course, given certain sexual connotations of "teabagging", the movement would eventually shed this label. I still enjoy it While this movement originally began as a populist uprising fundamentally rooted in libertarian principles of government, Fox News personalities, particularly Glenn Beck, latched onto the movement. The Tea Party was soon swallowed up under the auspices of Glenn Beck's "9.12 Project", and subsequent protests were held on 9/12, one day after the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks (leave it to Glenn Beck to equate terrorism to Democrats in power) Now, there's a large and vocal group worried that America has been taken over by socialists. Sane conservatives are aware such an accusation is laughable, however many in the Tea Party movement prefer to liken Democrats, particularly our President Barack Obama, to Hitler and Stalin. Video of the protests may be found here: q_s-lvpRj00 pilG7PCV448 What I've described doesn't even come close to representing the viewpoints of these people. It's difficult to describe their viewpoints as they're so multifaceted, but among other themes of these protests: the government (a euphemism for Democrats) is run by communists, the government are Nazis, the government wants to rob us of our freedom, the government keeps raising taxes, the government is recklessly spending money on healthcare (the healthcare bill seems to be the central thrust of their concerns about government spending). As you may have guessed from the concerns I voiced earlier, there is considerable overlap between the viewpoints and rhetoric of Glenn Beck and the Tea Party. Certainly the 9.12 Project explains this to a large degree: a popular media outlet is telling these people exactly what they want to hear and organizing these protests. I think it's safe to say if it weren't for Glenn Beck and Fox News, there would be no Tea Party. The outcome of the Tea Party seems to be resounding success for the Republicans. Early estimates of the November election show Democrats losing as many as 70 seats in the house. The conservative base is energized in a way that liberals are not. They are firmly convinced that the Democratic Congress and Obama are destroying our country and leading us towards "armageddon" (to quote House Minority Leader John Boehner). While I'll certainly admit the Democrats could be doing better, the sheer level of rhetoric being leveled both by the Republican Party and the Tea Party makes me wonder if all of these people have spent too much time in a hyperbolic chamber. Apparently, in a little more than a year since Bush left office, Obama has practically destroyed the entire country and converted us into a socialist/Nazi state (and of course things were peachy keen when Bush left office). While I'm slightly annoyed by the Tea Party itself, what really annoys me is people who should really know better arguing these people are making a cogent argument that deserves my attention. The message of the Tea Party rings true with some otherwise well-thinking conservatives, who don't think it's fair to completely dismiss them out of hand. What do you think? Is there absolutely any merit to the Tea Party whatsoever, beyond the fact that it will influence the 2010 election? Is there any merit to their argument, or are they simply parroting the ideas of Glenn Beck?

My apologies. It would appear (even in the Daily Show footage) that Fox News has been unabashedly misrepresenting this change in policy. Hannity and Newt Gingrich were lobbing hypotheticals about a biological weapons attack, apparently completely unaware that exemptions against biological attacks were in place. So this is just yet another case of Fox News spin distorting what's really going on.

Gmail FTW

Democrats are going to have a tough time, but it's only because the passage of healthcare has not energized their base, but instead had the opposite effect of riling up an already enraged conservative base. Again, I won't accuse Republicans of stoking the tea party fire so much as I would blame Fox News, but it was burning before healthcare passed, and healthcare has only caused it to flare up more. I'm really curious how many seats the Democrats are going to lose in the House. 50? 60? 70? Will they lose the majority? It's certainly looking like it at this point. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged I'll certainly agree with that. While I don't like a number of Ron Paul's positions, at least he's consistent, none of this spending when he's in power then whining about spending when his opponents are in power. And hey, he was smart enough to know starting an expensive, unnecessary war after cutting taxes will probably create huge deficits. It's perhaps for these reasons that liberals have embraced him. They look to him as what a better Republican party could be. If more Republicans were like Dr. Paul, America would be a better country. ED: Meanwhile here's what the GOP thinks of Dr. Paul: BfNpRoCbY5E ED2: And Ron Paul says the obvious: despite the repeated claims of the teabaggers, Barack Obama is not a socialist: http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/04/ron-paul-president-obama-is-not-a-socialst.php

Here's a washlet where the blowdryer button is visible: Wavy thing with the yellow ring. You hit the nail on the head there. For some reason many Japanese women have a hangup about being heard farting while on the toilet. For this reason they would continuously flush the toilet so as to cover up the sound. Obviously this is rather wasteful of water, so the Japanese built in the next best thing: a speaker that makes a fake flush sound! In addition, many of these toilets are equipped with a sink built into the top of the tank, so you can wash your hands with clean water that's about to go into the tank. This is especially handy since the Japanese often segregate the toilet into a room separate from the sinks (and often have yet another room for the bath/shower!)

They're not claiming to provide access to the Internet, so no

Furthermore, they're claiming to be Internet Service Providers. As soon as they start restricting or disabling access to parts of the Internet, they are no longer providing the service they claim they are.

Anyone familiar with the band Insane Clown Posse is probably aware they're not exactly the sharpest tools in the shed. Their latest music video, however, takes the cake: _-agl0pOQfs They've got a "theory" about magic and miracles! Rainbows, giraffes, and magnets! These things cannot be explained. They are miracles. Their children look like they do (I assume they mean under the facepaint). It's a miracle! F*cking magnets, how do they work? I dunno, it's a miracle! "I don't want to talk to a scientist. Y'all motherf*ckers is lying and getting me pissed!"

Some of these toilets do feature a high pressure "enema mode" intended to directly evacuate the colon with water

The Daily Show reaction to this was awesome. And in 20/20 hindsight, WTF? This thread is ridiculous. The title of this thread is: Obama: No Nukes- Even in Self Defense W T F? In absolutely no way did Obama declare anything close to a complete abandonment of the potential usage of nuclear weapons. This despite the OP claiming he was quoting a Fox News headline (even Fox News isn't that bad). The discussion then descended into a lot of back and forth about biological weapons versus nukes. Well, Obama's policy "reserves the right to make any adjustment to this policy" in the event of biological weapons threats. Move along folks. Nothing to see here. This entire discussion was motivated by nothing but spin spin spin

(Note: I'd ask this in a Health Sciences forum if there were one. If a mod knows where health science-related questions should go, feel free to toss this thread in there) After visiting Japan and using a Washlet (an integrated toilet/bidet/blowdryer combo) using toilet paper makes me feel like I'm in the stone age. Yet it seems like most of the western world still relies on toilet paper as the primary way of "cleaning" after defecation. When I have seen bidets outside of Japan, they generally take the form of a separate unit beside the toilet with a hand-operated faucet, as opposed to the electronically-controlled Japanese all-in-one models. What's the deal? Are people just weirded out by bidets? Toilet paper simply does not get the region clean. If our hands accidently contact feces, we certainly are not content to simply wipe it off (at least I hope not). We cleanse the region running water (and hopefully soap). Yet most people seem content to keep smearing the region with paper until most of the detritus has been removed. Isn't it much more hygenic to wash after defecating?

You need to think about how to break the problem down into a series of steps. How do you find the largest element in a b-tree? Well, a b-tree is already in order, so finding the largest value is simple. Generally the largest value will be stored in the rightmost leaf, so you start at the "root" of the tree and keep taking the rightmost branch, walking the tree a node at a time and every time taking the rightmost branch until you hit a leaf. In a real "b-tree", this leaf will contain an array of values. The rightmost entry in this array will contain the largest value in the b-tree. If you're having problems doing this, you really need to study b-trees better.

That would definitely be my choice unless the brain/golden spiral relationship is actually scientific

I'm torn... is there really a relationship between the golden spiral and the shape of the human brain?

I'm open to any methods to quantify it but I'd like to evaluate the proposal first. That said, trying to quantify it is silly. However, so is saying we should assume they're equal by default until demonstrated otherwise.

So you're saying we should assume things are equal until you have a "method of inequality"? No. Wrong. The correct answer is unknown, not equal.

WHAT?! Would it be prudent to assume that the masses of all of the elementary particles are identical until we come up a method for measuring them? (yes this statement is demonstrably false as we do have a means of measuring the masses of elementary particles) No, the correct approach is to assume a quantity is unknown unless you have some way of measuring it

I don't know, I'm not the claimant and therefore don't have the burden of proof. I've only shown counterexamples where I see them. I think it's completely ridiculous to assume two things are equal simply because you can't think of a way of measuring them, though.

Given the topic of each thread is effectively the same, with this one focusing on a case instance, it's not derailing the thread. Furthermore, you made the claim: So if anyone's doing any derailing, it's you. Furthermore, that's an argument from popularity, a logical fallacy. You made the claim. You back it up. Can you actually demonstrate the equivocacy here, or do you think it can't be measured and therefore we should just assume it's equal?

As I've made clear in the past, I feel treating both Republicans and Democrats as equally depraved is giving the Republicans too much credit. You claim they're equal, but can you demonstrate it?