Pangloss

I can understand your frustration at hearing comments made in that manner, but I'm afraid that we can't enforce something like that. It's not SFN policy to require people to have suggestions for improvement before they can post an opinion on a subject. Though I think sometimes that perhaps it should be!

POM, that's twice in this thread now that you've denied being a doomer, but have you forgotten that you haven't changed your avatar since the bad old days when you used to sign every post with your prediction about the crash of the stock market and the worldwide panic that you needed us to know was waiting for us just around the corner? BTW, the defamation and misrepresentation of my actions and positions in multiple threads all over this board stops right now. You've had your say, and everyone heard you. Now knock it off.

Oh it's definitely been suggested out in the popular media.

Right, he talks like he's never done anything wrong, and yet he's never going to sit down and apologize to the victims of the Tawana Brawley incident. But that's okay, because she's black.

Personally I think they took the wrong path. They should have ignored him completely. Not because paying attention to it gives him free publicity, but because the entire incident is beneath them. If I were on that basketball team I'd have a serious problem with the way people were manipulating me. I'd speak out about it, and people would not like what I had to say one bit. But then I pretty much loathe the politically correct entertainment machine, so I'm hardly objective about it.

This is not aimed any anybody in particular; more a response to the tone of the last few posts. I'm not trying to put words in anyone's mouth here, but rather to talk about what I think the real problem is. Companies change their behavior when people force them to by taking their business elsewhere. Regulation doesn't change the motivation, so ultimately it doesn't affect the behavior. The problem is public perception and the black-and-white way issues are presented by the media. That's not to say that more regulation isn't part of the solution. I'm just saying that ideological grandstanding with statements like "we'll never solve this problem until we kill all the greedy fat cats and their big corporations and all go back to living on communal farms" are completely worthless. They have no value whatsoever, and in fact nonsense like that is part of the problem. I used to work for a company that made filters for smokestacks out of high-tech materials (mist eliminators, tower packing, etc). Over the years we kept trying to sell them to Florida Power and Light. We never got anywhere, and to this day FP&L uses virtually no pollution control (yeah ok they have smokestacks, wee). And yet there's a common perception here in Florida that FP&L is a green company and does not pollute. People simply do not understand that meeting an EPA standard does not stop pollution. It simply puts up a number that companies have to fall below. Well, FP&L falls below that number. So for them to spend money on pollution control would actually be counter-productive! It would raise questions in the media about why they're spending more money on pollution control. Weren't they clean before? So from FP&L's point of view it actually makes more sense to spend money on advertising rather than pollution control! And note that this is not because they have to convince people that they're clean. It's because we require them to convince us that they're green! We basically sit here and demand that they mislead us in this way! The public depends almost entirely on what the media tells them, and what the media tells them is completely useless. Something is either "polluting" or it is assumed to be "clean". That's it. There is no in-between. So we go through these ridiculous cycles where something is declared "polluting", and we "clean it up", and then everything is hunky-dory. Children can play in the sunlight and grass grows and everyone can smile. Yay! Oh, what's that you say, something else is polluting? But wait... it was polluting all along? So the sun wasn't really shining? The grass wasn't really green? The kids weren't really laughing and smiling? So.... why did it look all green and sunny? Is it any wonder people get tired of this stuff? Instead of taking the time to explain to people what's actually happening, we toss them back and forth from emergency to emergency, promising every single time that if they just solve this one problem then they'll never be in danger ever again. It's absolute insanity. And we are all responsible for every bit of it. Tossing it all on the shoulders of "greedy corporations" is just useless, unproductive, time-wasting nonsense.

That's the only reason they'll fight regulation, because they're "rich bastards"? Interesting. In that case, to crib from your signature, wouldn't having more regulation be like having a no-peeing section in the pool? The goal is not demonization of "mega-corporations" or "rich bastards". The goal is the salvation of the planet. Chuck the agenda and focus on what's real. You'll be amazed how much more work you can accomplish working with people rather than against them. BTW, the reason you're seeing cold weather in Indiana is because it's early April and you live in Indiana. This notion that global warming has produced noticable weather differences is about as useful as the demonization of the very people we need to convince to change their ways.

What does the tactical situation on the ground have to do with the handling of the political aftermath? I don't understand this correlation at all.

Fair enough, but I was actually speaking about the international community as a whole. Its reputation is certainly blemished as well, but the question in my mind is whether that community is going to stand up for what it believes, or simply repeat itself over and over until its beggings are overtaken by further unfortunate events.

Iraq was a catastrophic mistake, IMO, but I wholeheartedly support what we did with Afghanistan, and I think the status of Afghanistan today is an affirmation of our action there (in spite of the resurging threat of the Taliban -- that's a lack of attention and follow-up, not an up-front mistake). They have a chance now to join the peaceful company of nations that they did not have before. Would it have been better to see them take that step on their own? Absolutely. But they blew it, so we took that step for them. We could have done what Rome did to Carthage, Afghanisto delendo est, killing every man, woman and child and salting the poppey fields. We didn't do that. We simply destroyed its heinous government and replaced it with a new one in a violent and expensive manner, knowing full well that it was not the prefered way, but lacking further tolerance after having been brutally abused for our forebearance. The carrot doesn't do you any good if there's no stick waiting to back it up. Had we not invaded Iraq, the realpolitik situation today would be vastly more positive, egalitarian and progressive, in no small part because of our actions in Afghanistan. Afghanistan could have been the example that that part of the world never forgot, teaching it the price of ongoing stupidity and showing it the way to find the carrot. But we screwed it up, instead teaching that part of the world a worthless lesson in warlike behavior. You're absolutely right, GutZ, in saying that war is never more than a temporary solution. But it's not a question of "us or them". It's a question of being the society you say you're going to be.

I don't think I've ever actually heard Savage. I tell you who I like is the guy who does all the voices. I forget his name, but he pretends to be his own guests, doing both his own voice and the voice of his guest, which will be someone really controversial. For example, he'll have on "the president of the national association for the advancement of men", and the "guest" will say something really stupid, and then a whole bunch of people will call in all outraged and stuff. Cracks me up every time. Wish I could remember the guy's name.

Absolutely. But throw another 9/11 on the table and all bets are off.

People think it's used up? Let them test us and see what happens. It might be interesting to see what we can do when we decide to spend more than 0.77% of our annual GDP on a military venture.

I think Oz is slang for Australia. I've heard our land-down-under friends use it before. BTW, don't forget to ask one of our British friends about your uncle "Bob". Not theirs -- yours. (Kind of a "who's on first" thing.)

Haezed do you mean Bill Maher by any chance? Not sure if you mean someone else by "Bill Mayer". If you mean Maher, I think he's quite funny, but then my funny bone (or for that matter my "entertainment" bone) has never been attached to my political/moral/ethical bone. I also enjoy reading Ann Coulter, even when I passionately disagree with her. Ditto Limbaugh, Franken, etc. (I don't find them all interesting, though. I've never been into Imus.) I suppose if they weren't good at what they did then they wouldn't be very effective demogogues. I'm a huge Neal Boortz fan, btw. Boortz was responsible for first igniting my interest in politics (as well as self-motivation and critical thinking), while in a dead-end job sitting in a photo development dropoff booth in the early 1980s.

I've come to the general conclusion that fans of "The View" must see Rosie as that annoying next-door neighbor who always takes her children to anti-war rallies and brings petitions around for people to sign. You nod and look interested when they're talking to you and then when they walk away you just roll your eyes and change the subject. Kinda like the way I've noticed many SFN regulars treat crackpots when they show up here. It's just easier than calling them out. YT's old saying about rolling with the pigs comes to mind.

They already do -- every time I pedal hard!!!

I've read that as well about frequent cycling shortening CF lifespans. I think the answer to Sisyphus' question is "just shorter than they would be otherwise". I don't know if a study has been done on this, but with the rapid development of new CF bulbs it may be something that has already changed. But the main point there is that it's something you'd only notice if your cycling was VERY frequent. Something that might trigger several hundred times per day, for example. Geoguy: What's more efficient at warming air, a heat exchanger or a light bulb?

Yah I think the "confinement beam" bounced off some sort of atmospheric phenomenon. Amusing point about the wages. But of course if they're a moneyless society that just replicates all the food it needs then that wouldn't matter. But I was thinking they'd just leave the copies lying around on the explored planets, or just phaser them from orbit after they deliver their reports. They're only copies, after all -- not "real" humans. Then they could have an episode where they learn all about "copy rights".

We didn't get much response in the LED thread, so I thought I'd just go ahead and start another one specifically for CF. I'm just curious how many other folks have made the switch. I suspect I came a little late to this game -- some of our friends have had them for a while now. I bought a bushel of these things a few weeks ago and shoved them into various sockets all around the house. My main motivation was actually just because I'm so tired of changing lightbulbs! As I understand it replacing one 75 watt incandescent lightbulb with a comparable compact fluorescent light saves 55 pounds of carbon per year. Wow.

Wouldn't it make more sense to put them a bit closer?

Right, which always caused me to wonder why they took the time to destroy the shipboard copy. Two is better than one, right? But of course they always maintained this convenient notion that the transporter was different from the replicator in that the transporter didn't create new matter, just transposed existing matter. I believe the idea was that the "pattern buffer" was unable to hold an entire human being in "stasis" for an extended period of time. (Unless of course you looped it through the deflector array, in which case you could store them for 75 years and even revive the careers of aging Starfleet officers, just so long as there was a Dyson Sphere in the vacinity!)

You're right of course, they did their best to bring is as close to science as they could, given the technical framework that existed and the story constraints that were imposed. They did a better job than any show in history, and I'm sure inspired many young people to go into science and/or engineering careers.

You mean she apologized? For what? Selling her story to the press?

As I understand it they actually had people on staff who knew enough science and engineering to be dangerous, and the script writers would just enter blocks like "<insert technobabble here>" and one of the geeks would fill it in with randomly generated nonsense, which would then be smoothed out to be as consistent as possible with earlier scripts. Mike Okuda used to be a regular on a lot of discussion boards. Not sure if he still does that but I remember many interesting discussions with the guy back on the old GEnie and CompuServe SF boards. He did all the control panels and display screens and a lot of other set design work for all of those shows. I believe he's just about the only person at Paramount still working on Trek (he oversaw the recent HD and computer regeneration of the original series shows).