Phi for All

Hey, come on! I had completely valid reasons for invading Afriganist, uh, Aphgann, er, Austghan, no, Afgunder, um, Iraq.

I always liked it better this way. I picture a smug dad trying to show off for his kids but he blows it. "Hey! Check it out! Your dad on a pogos-!", Herb bellowed as he launched himself sideways into the rosebushes. Great image.

Cheney would have had more time to organize Smorgasburton if you'd been sedated. Giving up the drugs was a good thing, Chief.

Sir, Iraq is a cluster****, thank you for asking, SIR!

In the US, the president has authorized the payment of $600 to each taxpayer making under $75,000/yr. There was talk of an additional $300 for each dependent child but I'm not sure that's happening. They're calling it a rebate but they've done this before - once under Bush I and again in Bush II's first term - it's not a rebate. They are loaning you this money from your next year's tax refund (whether you would get one or not). You can spend it now and hope you can make it up to pay for next year, or you can invest it and earn interest before you have to give it back next year. The administration is hoping you won't use it to pay off loans. A bothersome note: they sent us a notice through the postal service telling us GWB will be sending us another notice through the postal service two weeks prior to mailing out the checks GWB is giving us. These are going out to tens of millions of taxpayers.

Stem cell research would've been nice, George. I'm just saying.

Hey, any of you bubble characters* got something you want to say to me? * You can choose from bender, bush, cartman, ermy, gir, hitler, homer, jesus, zim, zoidberg; use a size 3 font.

You forgot this part of the story: "Alarmed by talks of boycotting from blue-ribbon internet forums like SFN, Wal-Mart executives recognized the need for subjective screening of their more stringent policies. They responded with pleased grins when told that ParanoiA had subsided."

This isn't a rebate, it's a loan on next year's refund. I'm going to put it in an investment I can get at next year when I'll owe it back.

Remember, these same people had a secret ballot to vote for funding this "war". I think they knew from the onset how unpopular it would be and wanted to cya so no one could point the finger at who authorized the initial $87B (I think that was the correct figure).

I liked that as well. Whenever I see "ye" the voice reading in my head switches to a pirate accent. Maybe we should have Cappy work up some more for Talk Like A Pirate Day this year.

Moved to Speculations due to content. But I'd like to point out that we require better evidence before drawing such solid conclusions even in Speculations.

Ah, the Mars Express hypothesis. Are you suggesting that the people who labeled this "pyramid" built it?

No, Cap'n's mind wouldn't work that way. Anal types like us just cringe at misspellings. This has blikey boy written all over it.

No, because I will sit on you until you stop texting your posts and Private Messages.

Do they have a first-class section? I don't want to be stuck in coach with ExtraSense for 260 days.

Substituting all instances of the word "scientist" with the word "theologian" was diabolical. Using the swear filters to make all those substitutions was pretty clever and easily fixable. And the Admins could rig it themselves and keep the rest of the Staff in the dark. Rigging usernames was funny since they only showed up in quotes. The best was switching all instances of "global warming" with "omg ponies!" Well done ye squiffy red-letter Aprilministrators!!

Thank ye for taking teh pity on us.

Gaaaah! Whole new thread, remember?! That. Debate. Over. This leads me to an interesting conclusion. What if boycotting those who are suppressing technology to prop up their current markets was the aim of my advocacy group? It really burns me up that some smart scientist comes up with new technology and it gets bought by someone who sits on it to keep it from hurting sales of old technology. That's not what patents should be about.

Let's see how you feel about a particular instance, doG. Right now, through a subsidiary company, Chevron is sitting on a patent for NiMH battery technology that could give us a completely electric car practically overnight, improving on GM's EV-1 technology with a large format NiMH battery that would give it well over 100 miles on a charge. Chevron will only allow the large format NiMH technology to be used on gas / electric hybrids and refuses to sell to anyone building a completely electric car. I feel this is wrong, a violation of the spirit of the US Patent Office. If I can get my advocacy group to boycott Chevron's products and services until they stop suppressing technology which makes us dependent on them and on foreign oil purchases, would that be blackmail by your definition? Chevron is legally sitting on this technology but in this instance their suppression of one market to preserve their current market is helping to feed terrorism and give economic stimulus to questionable governments. If I boycott them for this reason is it blackmail?

The movie service is unavailable again so I haven't watched it, but the above is definitely true. I think the war was a neoconservative effort and there were plenty of Reps and Dem neocons. I must admit to a bit of prejudice when it comes to neocons because I remember a time in the 90s when Irving Kristol and other neocons came out in favor of creationism and wrote magazine articles full of anti-Darwinism rhetoric. There is no doubt in my mind that 9/11 changed GWB's mind about neoconservatism. He was being criticized by the neocons as no better than Clinton up until then. I think neocons like Cheney and Wolfowitz had planned for an Iraq invasion and had so many contingencies already in place that GWB was easily led to invade (after a brief stop in Afghanistan to look for someone). It was an emotional time and the neocons had done the groundwork to make it look completely natural for a Republican to agree to be the world's police, a platform most Reps would disagree with, especially moderate ones like GWB claimed to be.

It's the Tacit Argument from Incredulity fallacy. He just keeps enhancing / cropping the pictures and implying that we need to look closer because he can't believe we don't see it.

I believe typing out the full word gives you time to think about what you're doing so you make fewer mistakes.

Absolutely not. That's why I started a whole new thread. I agreed with you that Walmart, in that situation, was probably not a good target for boycott. I'm merely trying to get a consensus because I don't agree with you that all boycotting is blackmail. Just to be clear, I'm considering starting some sort of web-based citizen / consumer advocacy group, and boycotting could be a part of that group. doG convinced me in another thread that Walmart wasn't a good target for boycotting but not because I felt it was blackmailing them.

Stop that. You're just going to get ridiculed here if you keep making statements like this. You can't draw this type of conclusion based on looking at these photographs. You can say "it *looks* like a damaged or ruined pyramid but you can't say it *is* one without more evidence. Believe me, this is an important distinction.