Pangloss

Being rude to one another in public, for example. New York ranked third in this study on road rage in 2006. Examples of "New York City Behavior" can be found in every aspect of entertainment, from the phrase "Hey I'm walkin' here!" to practically any movie or TV show set in the tri-state area, from "Taxi Driver" to "The Sopranos". I'm not saying that stereotype embodies every resident of the Northeast, I'm just saying that there's a certain mode of preferred behavior common to some inhabitants of that region that is deliberately invasive, obtuse, aggressive and stubborn. Some people may well find it compelling behavior, and obviously it must work for some people or they wouldn't do it, but my point is that behavior has consequences, and if this foolish shut-in wants to call a radio station and blast a politician in person, he should be prepared to pay the consequences for that action, which in this case means being deemed a pointlessly aggressive idiot by more level-headed, less ideologically-motivated people. And if Rudy Giuliani wants to embrace that behavior to garner a few votes, then he shouldn't be too surprised if it costs him a few elsewhere.

State sales tax is deductible? From what? Federal income tax?

I'll go along with what ecoli said above. There's a certain Yankee attitude that I've always found disgusting and arrogant. It's incredibly ironic that New York is a center of liberalism, given that they often embrace and embody the very attitudes that the world hates most about Americans. They run around exclaiming "Don't blame us! WE're not the BAD Americans -- it's those red-staters who just won't vote the right, I mean left, way!!!!!" Then they proceed to act in the dumbest and least responsible ways imaginable towards one another. Giuliani sometimes employs this New York attitude, yes. But the caller's behavior was bad, and he got exactly the reaction he asked for. The fact that he's disabled and has Parkinsons is irrelevent. Nobody gets a free pass in the behavior department, no matter how many liberals wish it to be so. This item, this video that someone actually SPENT TIME on, is about ideology, falsely premised to look like a discussion about proper human behavior. This is a perfect example of the kind of nonsense that's polluting the electoral atmosphere and contributing to the division of this nation. It should be stopped and ridiculed and ostracized, not perpetuated.

That works too but I was thinking of Glorfindel's fight with the king of the balrogs in the Silmarillion. (Glorfindel is killed, though somehow he's still around several thousand years later to face the nazgul when the fellowship shows up at Rivendell. Go figure.)

Oh dear... given the video, that's actually quite an ironic and amusing reply!

I'll answer that. There's quite a lot I like about Barrack Obama. I like his intelligence, his maturity, his perspective on race, and his respect for all points of view. In his short time in the Senate he's sponsored some of the most thoughtful, balanced and measuredly progressive legislation that that body has presented during the last few years. And I think of all the candidates currently running for president, Barrack Obama probably has the best chance of being "a uniter not a divider". Are his policies really that different from the Clintons'? No, they aren't. And that's hurting him quite a bit. And people should be asking why that's the case, and whether that's an indication of the better candidate winning out, or whether it means business as usual. I also have plenty of reasons why I wouldn't vote for him, but that wasn't your question so I guess I'll stop there.

The caller directly, deliberately insulted him. What, Guiliani was supposed to read his mind and recognize the guy had Parkinsons and then eat crow for something he didn't have anything to do with? This is almost as stupid as the idiocy over holding McCain accountable for one of his supports asking how they were going to "beat the b*tch".

Interesting. I've read that the decades-long practice of stopping all small fires in forest areas near human-populated areas has actually lead to more forest fires because of denser buildup over time. That sounds like an example of this. The key point seems to be that these feedback factors are not always immediately obvious, and have to be studied and examined carefully over time.

Sounds like an interesting homework assignment. What's a feedback process?

Well the speech he did give didn't do him much good either, and he still had to go Glorfindel on him.

I see the SFN Politically Correct Talking Points Memo* has been written on this issue, but I don't think this question has been answered either way. One thing that might help is if some of you people accusing agentchange of not drawing a link were to go out and find another way in which some of those cases could have been prosecuted under existing law. That's not a case of proving a negative -- if what you say is true then it should be possible to show how some of those cases could have been handled differently. Just a suggestion. But I think part of the problem here is that the press doesn't know either. It's one of the things that (justifiably, IMO) irks critics of the Patriot Act -- the way the press just repeats what it is told on this subject, because they simply don't have the resources or motivation or just plain intelligence to dig any deeper. That should annoy everyone, regardless of ideology or opinion. * © 2007, Best-of-all-worlds Enterprises, Inc.

Nice find, thanks for passing that along.

So we're not going to discuss iNow's excellent question? We're just going to fall back to the usual ideological positions?

Ad hominems and a degeneration into questionable arguments on BOTH sides. I think an interesting question has been answered here and I'd hate to lose sight of it just so some black-hat conservative could get hammered by the white-hat liberals. I dont't think that was the purpose of iNow's question, was it? George Bush and Barrack Obama agree that certain provisions of the Patriot Act were necessary in order to give law enforcement specific tools needed to fight terrorism. They've even said what those tools were. But what I have not heard answered, even by them, is iNow's specific question: What specifically was prevented that could not have been prevented by any previously existing means? I think it's an excellent question, I don't think it has anything to do with partisanship, and while I doubt we'll find an answer here, I think the question is worthy of some level-headed discussion. Just remember that a lack of an answer doesn't mean there isn't one. It's important.

That's certainly a point of view that's frequently put out there.

Thanks. I wasn't trying to suggest that they didn't want intelligence and wisdom to win out over fear and ignorance, just that they wanted fear and ignorance to be presented and heard and rationally discussed (and thereby exposed and understood as wrong), as opposed to being, say, ridiculed and ostracized and driven underground. One way represents a path to societal progress; the other does not, it only seems to. I think we basically agree on this. By the way, this suggests that one aspect of our society the founding fathers might wholeheartedly approve of is modern skepticism and scientific popularism, vis-a-vis James Randi, Carl Sagan, etc. And of course one can't help but wonder how all this would be reconciled with their overwhelming support for (and participation in) Christianity. I would feel wrong accusing them of hypocrisy -- these were men of integrity whose word meant something to them and to others, and they said they believed -- but how much of their faith was a product of their environment and their society? Alas, as we can't ask them, this may just be one of those things we never fully get to know.

I believe most of the Democrats in the Senate, including Obama and Clinton, voted in favor of the renewal of the Patriot Act after amendments were passed which they felt added protections to civil liberties. Obama's statement was probably the most widely discussed at the time (early 2006). http://obama.senate.gov/speech/060216-floor_statement_of_senator_barack_obama_on_s2271_-_usa_patriot_act_reauthorization/index.html IIRC that was discussed here at the time, in that Democrats were accused of saying one thing (wiretaps are wrong) and doing another (authorizing their continued use). Although I think there was a more recent piece of legislation passed on that issue, in 2007.

Joseph Ellis wrote the fabulous 2002 book "Founding Brothers", which took the unusual approach of pairing off famous figures from the American revolutionary period and showing their differences. It was interesting in the way it challenged the standard, high-school-history-class belief that the founding fathers were perfect people with perfect goals and perfect arguments. His new book is called "American Creation", and it just came out a couple of weeks ago. I haven't read it yet (darned holiday -- I have to actually wait to see if someone buys it for me! What a nuissance!), but the "buzz" on it is really interesting. Take this New York Times review, for example, written by the editor of Newsweek: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/11/books/review/Meacham-t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin Fascinating stuff, as is this direct quote from Ellis himself: It's an interesting point of view, and very different, I think, from the conventional wisdom. One of the things that makes our country great is the way we foster and support dissention and disagreement. But I think sometimes people miss the point of that fostering. It's not so that we can rip ourselves apart in madness and despair, and it's not even so that we can ensure that wisdom and intelligence win out over foolishness and phobia. The point is simply to give everyone a chance to participate in the process in the most realistic manner possible that still allows for some kind of forward motion. One thought that occurs to me upon pondering this is that it seems to render moot the old point about whether the founding fathers would be disappointed in us or approve or our actions. This seems to suggest that they wouldn't care, or that they would generally approve of, say, the 2000 election! At least they're still hashing out their disputes, they might say. I wonder.

I guess none of us deserve any liberties, since we've all sacrificed some of them in exchange for certain securities.

Right, I think the last thing anybody wants is a rehash of the long-pipeline debacle. It wasn't truly until Core2 Duo (not even Core Duo!) that Intel fully recovered from that nonsense. I agree with you that better-designed processors are a good thing, I'm just concerned that we may have gone overboard on the "megahurtz is bad" angle. Making a chip faster is a perfectly valid way to speed things up. ALL chip improvements have their share of limitations.

Woohoo, actual computer science discussion! (/cheer) Those are good points, and in general I think the multi-core trend has been positive. We'd reached a point where linear speed improvements were only producing modest overall gains. In simple terms, we don't need 4ghz machines, we need *8ghz* machines, in order to see a real improvement in overall speed. Followed next year by 16ghz chips, then 32ghz chips, etc. It was a deadly spiral of radical demands piled one on top of another -- a no-win scenario. But have we really solved this problem, or just replaced it with another, even more complex scenario? Chip complexity is greatly increased, and it's unclear (at least outside Intel's labs) what will happen when they begin to try to ramp up processor speeds again. What I think is hoped is that a linear progression in processor speed (adding, say, 500 megahertz with each iteration) will now (because of multi-core) translate into a geometric progression in overall processor speed (2x, 2x, 2x...), which will return us to a linear progression in overall computer speed (50% faster each time you replace the old iron at CompUSA). But whether or not that actually turns out to be the case is, I think, anyone's guess at this point.

Jesus. I'm trying to elevate the discussion here. You know, computer science? Work with me, for pete's sake. That is the popular meme today -- that clock speed is no longer relevent. The industry has done an excellent job defraying attention from gigahertz, and initially that would seem to be a good thing. We should all be happy with 3 gigahertz, which as we all know is the universal "lightspeed" of computing. I believe this was first measured by Michelson back in 1885, wasn't it? But in fact there's really no reason why computers can't also have faster clock speeds than they currently do. I suspect it has more to do with marketing and general engineering direction than actual physical properties of the chips, but one of the concerns I have is that it will become HARDER for them to increase clock speed in the future because of all the additional cores (with, presumably, different fail speeds).

I know you're just being humorous there, but saying it again like that actually forces me to post this in public, because if I don't then some -- fool -- wil assume we're letting you off the hook. So for the record, if you call someone an idiot again you'll receive a flame infraction. If you want to discuss it further, my inbox is open.

Well results 1-3 don't have anything to do with the subject we're discussing here. In fact none of the results on the first page do. It looks to me like you got the same result I got when I googled this up -- a lot of stuff on China, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, etc -- unrelated subjects and little if anything about Hiroshima or nuclear theory. It looks to be a very rare conspiracy theory. Good catch on the sciforums thread, though. It doesn't even appear on the first page of a google on "nuclear hoax", so I don't know where you got it (maybe the second page?), but that's some good digging there. I wouldn't be surprised if that was the same guy who posted here (and it's interesting to note that he was banned there as well, and apparently for the same reason). And thanks for asking that the thread be revived, btw. It was your PM that prompted action.

It's not early -- Nehalem is only one year out. Historically we know a lot more at this stage of development. Intel has become distinctly cagier about its roadmap in recent years. And BTW' date=' not one CPU on the roadmap has a clock speed over 3.2 ghz. That's actually DOWN from 3.8. (It's "Core2 Duo", btw, not "Core Duo 2". It may seem like a trivial distinction but it allows them to brand things like "Core2 Quad", etc.) Actually the underlying presumption of all this multi-core focus is that in fact multiple cores help everyone. And to a certain extent, of course, they're right -- we all run many programs at the same time these days, and operating systems and programs have become far more complex. And faster processers are NOT just for specialized applications. When you increase the speed of the processor, you incease the speed of every subsystem in the box. That's because for all our efforts at decoupling systems from the processor, all we've really done is reduce overall CPU load. The CPU is still involved in every single aspect of the system. Bump the processor, and the video, disk, and memory all get (apparent) bumps too. But my main point was that the industry seems to be saying "megahurtz bad, multicore good", and I don't think that's a smart plan. Not only is there nothing really wrong with increasing processor speed (so long as you understand the limitations that go along with that), but it just puts all the eggs in a different basket that can never fully solve the problem. Adding cores can often cause an apparent speed bump, yes. Writing that write-behind cache file from that dump you took from the Flash drive a few minutes ago has never been smoother. But what are my OTHER 30 processor cores going to do over the next half hour? Search for extraterrestrial intelligence?