Pangloss

Fortunately we don't execute people over ideological differences. At any rate, I think we can all agree that it would be nice to avoid sleeziness in the next administration.

I suppose the biggest pardon he didn't do would have to be the self-pardon that liberals feared. You mean because there haven't been as many people depart under negative circumstances, ala Scooter Libby, as compared with previous administrations? Perhaps, but maybe the Bush administration hasn't had to pardon as many of its own former officials because they haven't done as many things wrong as previous administrations. I know the left wants there to be underlying flaws in this administration, but I think the judgment of history is going to be more along the lines of specific errors and lapses in judgment, not a deeply-rooted management problem leading future students of the subject down a primrose path towards a less flawed ideology.

The quote is actually from 2010. In typical movie fashion the story convinces you that it's a line from 2001, but it actually isn't, it's just implied.

Video of the plane landing on the water:

Boy you guys are easy marks. http://skepticwiki.org/index.php/Websites(index)

Fair enough -- I could have mentioned that in my original post.

Now for the $64,000 question: Would Hamas have done that were it not for Israel's attack? You can say that they are pretty callous and don't care how many of their own people died, but it's pretty hard to ignore the international attention that this event has drawn to Hamas' actions and the tremendous amount of support Israel received (even as it also drew much criticism). In short, it worked. I don't like it, I think it stinks, but I don't blame Israel, I blame the United Nations and the ridiculous inefficacy of international politics.

Some of the big names that were seeking clemency but did NOT get attention from the West Wing include Randall "Duke" Cunningham (bribery), George Ryan (racketeering), and Michael Milkin (fraud). But perhaps most significantly, there was nothing for Scooter Libby or Ted Stevens. Here are some interesting statistics. (Technically he could do more before he leaves office tomorrow at noon, but the press office says he's done.) Bush: 189 pardons 9 commutations Clinton: 396 pardons 61 commutations (source)

Most countries joined Kyoto too, but the consensus of this membership (SFN) is that Kyoto was flawed. Just because the US is the only country that hasn't joined something doesn't automatically make it right. I'll be more interested in having the US join the ICC when I'm convinced that its proceedings won't be unduly focused on the US, either to make it look more fair to other nations or to exact retribution for US foreign policy decisions. Nobody is immune to political pressures, least of all the United Nations. Justice has to be blind.

Actually if you'd been here for some of our earlier discussions a few years ago you'd know that I'm actually a frequent critic of Israeli policy on these boards, especially with regard to the 1960s and 1970s. But that's the difference between you and me, Bombus. I'm capable of judging these two entities independently of one another. I think you see them as inextricably connected by their behaviors toward one another. You're unable to judge Hamas/Gaza/Palestine without bringing Israel into the picture, because you believe that the harm that Israel has done to these people is the source of their behavior. Not justified -- still wrong -- but caused by Israel's actions. Yes? But you yourself have pointed out examples of how human beings don't have to behave that way -- e.g. Northern Ireland -- you used that to show that Israel doesn't have to do what it's done here. But in fact that's a double-edged sword -- Hamas doesn't have to behave that way either! They don't have to respond to Israel's "terrorism" by throwing rockets across the border. Which means you SHOULD be able to condemn Hamas REGARDLESS of whether Israel is right or wrong. And yet you can't seem to bring yourself to do that -- you have to make it Israel's fault. (The real problem with that kind of fundamentally flawed analysis is that leads to a much more serious problem: The inability to recognize when the situation has changed. Your predetermined conclusion requires you to process any new information such that you produce exactly the same conclusion. Which is why I say that all ideological partisans are always wrong, all of the time, even when they seem to be right. But I digress.) At any rate, I think you'd do a lot better in this discussion of you condemned Hamas's actions, full stop, with not another word for an entire post. But I'd almost be willing to bet my entire four years of experience on this board that you can't do it. (And I don't mean this as an attack, by the way. I generally enjoy your posts and I don't think anything less of you for your position on this -- it's just politics, and we're just talking here. I wouldn't even venture a post like this if I weren't reasonably sure you'd be okay with it based on your long membership here and general compatibility with the community. I hope I'm not wrong on this, but if I am I apologize. It's not my intent to get the community to dog you around and make you feel bad.)

Calm down please, there's no call for that here. It's interesting to me that you accuse other people of wearing "bias goggles". But at least we agree that Gaza should not be lobbing rockets into Israel, so I give you credit for that. I don't interpret you as supporting terrorism, I interpret you as determinedly opposed to Israeli defense practices regardless of their justifications. Put another way -- pacifism. And I respect that, even if I disagree with it. Peace at all costs is too high a cost, IMO. But you feel differently, fine. But you lose me when you say stuff like this: Why you would think that Israel would want to actually create more militantism is beyond me, and just reeks of nutcase conspiracy theory. The fact that Israel illegally annexed the occupied territories does not make them evil. It just means they don't agree with your pacifist preferences.

Aaaaaand here come the rockets, right on cue. http://www.reuters.com/article/homepageCrisis/idUSLI526807._CH_.2400 I disagree with that article, though -- Israel is definitely not "back at square one". Now the issue is getting attention. Not that it will make much difference, I suppose, but if the Palestinian people want peace and prosperity, they're going to have to stand up and reject the culture of militant response.

A "cease-fire" went into effect a couple of hours ago. So I guess we're back to the one-sided business of Hamas shooting Israelis and Israel just taking it, and the rest of the world being just fine with that.

Yeah and the Pope called Gaza a "concentration camp". Both men should know better than to use such a crass characterization, but hey, never let it be said that with great power comes great wisdom.

This thread seems to have gotten rather bogged down in overgeneralization and agenda-pushing from both sides.

Indeed, the way the passengers talk about it it was a regular e-ticket ride.

Interesting argument from a law professor at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. He says that the recount was unconstitutional, based on the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, as applied to election law by the 2000 Supreme Court decision in Bush v Gore, which essentially said that because no equal standard was applied to the determination of ballots, none of the questionable ballots could be counted. In other words, because there's no standard for what constitutes a vote and what does not, and that standard equally applied to all ballots, the election cannot count. It's an interesting argument. His conclusion is not that Coleman won, mind you, but that a new election is mandatory under both state and federal law. I'm not sure I entirely buy the argument (who says it's not a valid standard?), but it might be enough for Coleman to take it all the way to the Supreme Court with. That would be interesting, because I expect Franken will be seated the moment the state of Minnesota certifies the results. But if the Supreme Court ruled the election invalid, I'm not sure what would happen then.

It was an Airbus A320, but they're about the same size. Bird strikes are a familiar and frequent problem for aviation, with special measures often taken around busy airports to reduce their numbers. When they're ingested they often (usually?) break fan blades, which in turn cause so much damage that the engine more or less breaks apart. The planes can fly on one engine, but in this case it sounds like BOTH engines were struck, so he had no power at all. The 320 has a little propeller it drops into the airstream when that happens in order to give it flight controls so it can glide under control, but they don't glide real far, especially at that altitude. Interestingly, the 320 also has a "ditch mode", and when the pilot smacks that rarely used button all openings in the air frame (and there are a lot of them) close up in order to facilitate floating. I haven't heard yet if the pilots used it here, but it's a safe assumption given how long that thing stayed afloat even after the doors were opened. It's notable that in this image the plane is perched *exactly* as it's supposed to be in this situation: Note the nose-high attitude caused perhaps by the floats on the front doors. You just know there are engineers today at Airbus who are clapping each other on the back over that. It's absolutely perfect. 150 thousand pounds of aluminum and aviation fuel, drifting along on the surface like that was its plan all along, saving the lives of its passengers as if it were no big thing. Wonderful. It also looks like the pilot managed to avoid the problems that the Ethiopian 961 pilot ran into when trying to dead-stick his 767 in 1996. Ever since that accident there's been a kind of standing question of whether an airliner with two engines mounted under the wings could ever land on water. That question was answered today -- a very rare thing in air accident investigation. On the whole it's an incredible story. My first reaction when I saw that thing in the water was "welp, there goes the streak". The US has been deadly-accident-free since August of 2006, when Comair 191 took off from the wrong runway in Kentucky. But as with the walkaway in Denver a few weeks ago, the streak continues.

Poor Rush. He never will get it.

Windows 7 vs Ubuntu. But seriously, George Will probably pontificated about the affect of the election on the upcoming baseball season, and they all snickered about Sam Donaldson's new hairpiece. But really seriously, I think they probably talked about the campaign. Bill Kristol probably apologized for the gaff over his mistaken reporting that Obama had attended one of Rev. Wright's more outrageous sermons (as he did publicly earlier).

The Wikipedia is a good starting point covering the basic math involved. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalman_filter In terms of converting that into a usable programming algorithm for matlab, you can probably start here: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=yBs&q=kalman+matlab&btnG=Search There are several links there that appear to be related to what you're looking for. Good luck!

It's funny how fast this has changed. Just a couple of years ago there were NO other WAPs in my area, but now I can count half a dozen close enough to get a connection from. I'm actually surprised that some of them are secured, and even more surprised that some of them aren't named "Linksys". (lol) Not one of them is secured with WPA, though. Go figure. (Well, except mine of course.)

Which apparently is what's going to happen. We tortured, the evidence is therefore tainted, and that evidence has been thrown out. They may not even bring the guy to trial. http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jbmP3o8XOJzzejOL73973dlF_tzQ

Not to digress too far, but it's worth noting that it's not just Scientologists who have concerns about medication on young people. Doctors have expressed time and again how understudied the issue of dosage determination is, and we've seen a number of recent bans and warnings applied to medications because of this problem. Just the other day another one cropped up regarding the use of Vick's VapoRub. No, really. http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=&q=vick%27s+vapor+rub&btnG=Search+News It gets even worse when we talk about psychiatric treatment, but I'll just leave it at that because I think we're all familiar with this issue in general. The problem, of course, is that there's a difference between "having concerns" and "taking children off medication entirely". Therein lies the vapo-rub. (Boy that was a long way to go for that joke.) I agree with those wholeheartedly, and I would add that it's the parents who have the best observational knowledge of their child's behavior, and the parents have a greater degree of reliability in terms of keeping the child's best interests in mind. Doctors have to make huge decisions based on very little evidence, and they typically write prescriptions on a challenge-and-response basis -- apply the medication, then wait and see what happens. Why run thousands of dollars of tests for a tummy ache? All of which of course emphasizes the importance of responsible parenting. But I think it also makes the point that parents shouldn't necessarily assume that the doctor always makes the right call. Getting a second opinion or at least reporting back to the doctor that the plan doesn't seem to be working is critical. (Taking matters entirely into your own hands, however, is a completely different thing, I agree.) But there's no particular reason to think that religious people aren't capable of working with doctors in this manner, and since most of the country has a declared religion and most parents seem capable of this, obviously most of the time it works just fine. I'm not either. And I see your point -- if their pseudo-religious beliefs prompted them to conclude that modern medicine would not be unable to aid their child, and they had to therefore take matters into their own hands, then indeed a crime may have taken place. Hypothetically speaking, of course (innocent until proven guilty, etc).

I think telling parents they cannot have a say in their children's medication is a dangerous and ill-advised proposition. And I don't think there would be as many objections to it here if "religion" weren't a factor in this case.