Pangloss

The best is any time a student tells me it was the best class they've ever taken. The worst was last week: Failing a student and knowing that it caused them to hit the maximum allowable financial aid overrun under federal rules. Meaning they would not be allowed to take any further classes, would have to repay 150% of the normal debt, and have no degree to show for it. And it was the last class they needed to graduate. And you know, I could talk all day about irate students who complain to me or my dean, but what really haunts me is the idea of screwing something up, like some piece of misplaced paperwork, or missing a signal that a shy student needs help. It's bad enough when I have to fail them for legitimate reasons -- the idea of messing up someone's whole life because of a careless mistake -- that's scary stuff.

I really don't think McCain was making a statement about Arabs. He recognized the path she was heading down and cut her off before she went further down. You can kinda see him doing it in that video, too -- interrupting her before she can finish her nasty thoughts -- he's responding to more than the word "Arab". I don't fault iNow's concern of unintended racism beneath that, but it's more of a larger, societal issue than a McCain-specific one, IMO.

Woohoo! Victory!!!

JohnCuthber, you promised me you would learn how to use quotes! I've been using a CFL in my garage for the past year+, and never had a problem. I do use a more powerful one than normal -- a 100-watt equivalent (I forget what the actual wattage is). That way even when it first starts up it's still fairly bright. Also in my experience the warm-up is not as bad as people make it out to be. Why don't timer switches work with CFL?

David Brooks is the New York Times' token moderate conservative columnist. This week he takes a look at how the Republicans have lost intellectuals. I think he's spot-on with this analysis. In fact it's gotten so stark that most young people today probably see the idea of "intellectual Republican" as being about as alien as the idea of a "conservative Democrat". http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/10/opinion/10brooks.html?em He goes on to talk about how Palin brings out the worst in this, and gets into how the Republicans have now lost the working class as well, because of poor policy. It wraps up with this gem: line[/hr] BTW, it's not really directly related, but I thought I'd just mention that if you get a chance check out Maureen Dowd's column this week as well. It's written in Latin, aimed I suppose at intellectuals, and she has some hillarious bits in there about Sarah Palin and "lipsticka in porcam", and comparing John McCain to "V" (think about it). VERY funny stuff. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/opinion/12dowd.html?em

He does let his supporters talk, but mostly in face-to-face walk-arounds. He doesn't seem to favor the "town hall" format the way McCain does, preferring a traditional stump speech. Here's a video and article of McCain calming a crowd about fears over an Obama presidency (and getting boo'd for it). http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/politics/2008/10/10/mccain.not.scary.cnn http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/10/11/mccain-to-crowd-dont-be-scared-of-obama-presidency/ That's actually going a bit beyond the point of just being polite. Some observers are speculating that McCain may be anticipating a loss.

It's worth emphasizing that they're not mandating CFL, they're banning incandescents (as stated in the OP and above). Should better tech come along people can definitely opt for that; there's no slippery slope argument here. I can understand the annoyance objection that some will have, but if you accept the basic premise of some level of regulation in society, this particular regulation makes perfect sense. It would encourage the last few hangers-on to make a switch that's actually in their best interests. I think it would also affect certain businesses. I do some work with a company that installs those little motors that raise and lower a garage door, and each one comes with two easily-replaceable, standard-size light bulbs installed on the sides for lighting up the garage when you pull the car in. I've suggested several times that they replace the normal bulbs with CFL, but they cost three times as much and their customers (home builders, not home buyers) aren't interested, so they just keep shoving in good ol' 75-watters. A regulation like this would, of course, change that immediately.

Saying something to that effect would have been nice, yes. That point of view that that woman had is remarkably common, I'm afraid. I run into it all the time, even amongst relatively moderate and reasonably intelligent people (and not all of them conservative/Republican). I blame most of it on people not paying attention to what's going on in the world around them and getting snagged on some biased programming they happened to catch somewhere. But just to be an optimist for a moment, perhaps that will be a positive outcome of this election -- shedding some light on that sort of prejudice, and/or getting people used to a little more diversity at that level of politics.

Why do you feel incandescent light bulbs should be banned? Can you state the case for us, please?

Sappy DNC fundraiser videos aside, there remains this question which I think is a valid one -- has the McCain camp gone too far in its criticisms of Obama on a personal level? I think it has, and I think it's a sign of the times. This Week this morning had a clip of McCain stopping a woman from berating Obama on a personal level. I thought "good for him, putting a stop to that", but he wouldn't be hearing comments like that if he wasn't contributing to the problem in the first place. I think it's also a sign of a larger disconnect (or at least a lack of concern) amongst candidates over the damage they may be causing with their partisanship. An interesting example of that came out on Saturday when Sarah Palin stated that she was happy that she had been cleared of any wrongdoing! No, she actually said that. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/12/politics/main4516113.shtml But in fact the investigation did no such thing. It's almost as if she's setting herself above information. Have we become so jaded by spin and misinformation that we can't even recognize when a candidate blatantly ignores the facts and simply states the opposite of the truth? This is what partisanship produces.

Okay well at least we've finally uncovered the true purpose of this thread. It's unfortunate when people hide an ideological message within a question that they aren't really willing to seriously discuss, and I'm glad that you're willing to discuss it. Every single developed nation on this planet controls immigration. The primary purpose of controlling it is to ensure that infrastructural systems are not taxed beyond their capabilities. Education, water, sewage, emergency response, criminal enforcement, all these things have to respond to increases in population. If they can do so at a measurable, predictable rate, the expense is much lower and the quality of service is maintained at an acceptable level. These aren't just minor convenience issues, they're important problems. That's why the majority of Americans support controlling the border (and most of them favor decreasing the current rate). This article in the Wikipedia contains several sourced articles for studies showing the relative popularity of various aspects of immigration in the US. It's worth noting, by the way, that neither US presidential candidate favors an "open border". And while many feel the Democratic candidate (Obama) is more favorable towards immigrants, he does support the idea of securing the border more fully, and saying so is a regular part of his stump speech. This is a regular part of the Democratic Party platform as well. Regarding your last point, yes, visitors to this country pay taxes, and that's true whether they want to stay here as citizens or not. The issue of whether we want them to become permanent citizens is really a separate issue from whether or not they pay taxes.

I forgot SNL was in re-runs this week. I think she's appearing on 10/18 or 10/25 (next week or the week after). Not that I think folks here are particularly pining for this, but I apologize for the bad info.

Well they could do that, but that would certainly pose a serious problem to any first-time traveler once they arrived at their destination! That sort of approach makes sense if your goal is uplifting pre-sentient species in the distant future. But if your goal is short-term travel for your own people, a universal system is probably better. I suppose you could carry around some sort of address translation device, but if you lost that you'd be stuck on the destination world until you could figure out all the symbols and their relationship with known landmarks around the galaxy.

A long time ago, I forget where, I read a concept for a galactic society without FTL travel or communication, sleep-travel or generation ships (I think it might have been an essay by Asimov). The interesting thing was that it could still be a galactic society, complete with a rich history, shared technologies and a deep sense of galactic culture and perspective. Sure, it could take hundreds or thousands of years just to answer a phone call, but that doesn't mean you couldn't share a great deal of information -- just over a VERY long time frame. I loved the idea -- it's very romantic. Island civilizations shouting to one another across the background noise of cosmic radiation and the eons of time. It would certainly emphasize the need for ecological responsibility! But it could still be a very interesting thing to join -- such a society could easily construct an "Encyclopedia Galactica", for example. Trade could take place in the form of information, or possibly physical goods via robot ships on very long timelines. And it would be a SAFE society, since war would be next to impossible (though I suppose those robot ships could do some damage, if you made someone angry enough to want to kill your grandchildren!). Not a bad possibility, really.

That was really interesting. His reasoning is very familiar to me, particularly the Palin-as-embarrassment angle, and the phrase "Right Wing Sanhedrin" was amusing. He's right on target talking about how McCain should have been a perfectly good candidate -- the champion of moderate conservatives. Even moderate liberals supported the guy -- how many times did we hear the phrase "he's the only Republican I could ever vote for"? But the far right just would not let the guy alone, and let's face it, he's caved in to their will. I think I'll pass that along to a few of my conservative friends. Thanks.

That's actually more or less what happens in the show, especially at the beginning when they're pondering the ramifications of the device. Stargate is like Star Trek in the sense that the producers want it to inspire young minds towards science. They're not always successful in that regard, but it's nice that they make the effort. To my mind, the most interesting subset of the problem is the concept of seeding thousands of star systems with some sort of visual aid, like a cosmic PowerPoint slide show, that you could drop onto planets with "potential" (primordial soup, advanced plant life, primates, whatever). It could be along the lines of Arthur Clarke's 2001 monument, or the Stargate device's addressing system, but really it doesn't have to be so sophisticated -- it really just needs to tell these potentially intelligent species that (a) they're not alone, (b) where they are in the accepted galactic coordinate system, and © perhaps how to go about contacting and/or joining galactic civilization. It would be like an invitation, but sent perhaps billions of years in advance. It would have to be incredibly durable and brilliantly intuitive at the same time. (Windows Aeterna?) (grin)

I would agree with that.

Well obviously they were far-gone enough for me to change my vote, but I'm not a typical voter, nor is anyone here. My point to bascule was that those factors were clearly were not enough of a deterrent for the average American to change their vote, and the result was that Bush got re-elected. Americans were (and still are) unaffected by those things, simply going about our business, working, buying Playstations, watching movies, drinking beer and watching football. That's what I mean when I say that however bad you guys view it from an intellectual perspective, the reality was (and is) that stuff didn't affect people enough to matter in 2004 (and that's still true in 2008, IMO). I'll put it this way, if you prefer: People care about Guantanamo Bay and global warming. They "HOLY FREAKING MOTHER OF GOD!" care about gas, food and jobs. The sad reality from the perspective of partisans of the left is that America is about to do the right thing for the wrong reason. Democrats are going to jump up and down and pat each other on the back and tell us that it was all about global warming and healthcare and Iraq and gay marriage, when in fact it was about one thing and one thing only -- the one and only thing that broke months -- MONTHS! -- of statistical dead-heating between the two candidates: The economy. And the only reason that tie-breaking factor is going Democrats' way is because a Republican was in the White House for the last eight years. The single-digit congressional approval rating proves that only a partisan believes that Democrats can or will actually do a better job than Republicans. The people aren't giving Democrats a mandate, they're expressing their displeasure. LOUDLY. And if Democrats aren't listening, the people will explain it to them in very short order by re-empowering the minority party, just as they have with the past two administrations.

Um, iNow, did you make this video?? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRFj_joPn2s /runs for cover!

Since in this case A didn't occur before B, it clearly can't be that. Now can we move on, please?

The inquiry into Alaskan governor Sarah Palin's actions has concluded, with the commission waiting for "take out the trash day" to release the results shortly after the close of Friday network news broadcasts. This was the probe into whether she acted improperly with regard to her former brother in law. She was let off the hook regarding the dismissal of the public safety commissioner, because she has the authority to fire that level of employee without cause. Full article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/11/us/politics/11trooper.html?em

Well the way I always figured it that's a fundamental impossibility. The Stargate addressing system is based on how constellations appear from Earth, so it ignores the fact that the sky looks different as you travel around the galaxy. None of the symbols have any meaning anywhere except for on Earth. In the show they have an excuse for that -- the Lanteans imposed that symbology, because Earth was at the center of their Milky Way civilization. But of course that would not apply in "real life". That's not to say that you couldn't come up with some sort of addressing system for the galaxy and even outside of it. But if you wanted it to be intuitively obvious to unenlightened and disconnected inhabitants and accurate over time, I don't know what it would be based on. Perhaps the positions of pulsars or something -- I believe I've seen that done in some SF books. Outside of the galaxy would be a real stretch of the imagination. The only common frame of reference I can think of there might be a spectral analysis of individual galaxies, comprised into some sort of map.

It was less than half of what it peaked at earlier this year. The death of the SUV was just within the last year, not in 2004. I agree with you and Phi that it was *A* factor in the election, but I stand by the argument -- the extreme case you pose does not apply.

Well first of all, that doesn't follow. As you say, you don't know where they're going to work, so you can't say that they're putting each other out of work. More information is needed. And even if it's true, that doesn't mean it will continue to be true. Presumably there's a finite number of lawns needing care (especially given the fact that no new houses are being built at the moment). As for the second paragraph above, it suggests backwards reasoning. Is this about finding jobs for everyone, or bringing in every immigrant? If it's the latter, don't tell me it's the former. That's why your argument isn't working, because you're starting from an assumption and working your way backwards. Find me some apprpriate data first, then we'll talk.

Yes but that doesn't refute my point. In fact it supports my claim that you're exaggerating. A few people getting tortured or thrown into Guantanamo Bay clearly was obviously not enough to overcome the bread and circuses -- beer and gas were still cheap, football still comes on on Sunday, and George W. Bush got re-elected. I rest my case.