Pangloss

Oh I see. Well I share the concerns about mega-corporations, but as a moderate I feel obligated to temper that with the validity of points like the one I mentioned in another thread about how the WalMartization of America, while scary, has not lead to rampant unemployment or a drop in average income. The only thing holding back the economy at the moment is the spiraling price of energy. (I say "only" as if that were a small thing, but I don't mean to actually imply that.) But of course your question was really more along the lines of morals and social impacts rather than economics. Setting aside for the moment the notion that that's not really the primary concern of most Americans (they're much more interested in where they get their next paycheck than who they have to kiss up to to get it), I agree that this is where most of the concern has to be. Do we want to live in a country that's wildly successful economically but has a culture as thin as Lucius Malfoy's house elf gruel? (Sorry, serious Harry Potter withdrawl going on here.) I think this is something that this country needs to have a debate about. For every original idea (like Harry Potter! Dammit, sorry...) there're a dozen prefabricated, corporate-created, focus-group approved "boy bands" waiting in the wings. And that's NOW -- what's it going to be like later if we don't do something about it? I guess I see this more as a cultural problem rather than a social problem. I don't see it as a matter of welfare and homelessness so much as a matter of hearts and minds. If that makes any sense.

Well first, how are the mega-mergers bad for the country? Second, why does the existence of mega-corporations imply a weakening of the boundary between church and state? (Or am I misunderstanding you?) (Might be better to start a new thread on this. We haven't had a good free-trade and corporations discussion in a while, have we?)

I saw a sign in an ABC News story last night. I Googled it, and sure enough it's all over the blogosphere. I'm sure you're right about "fundamentalistas". I just loved the whole "sandanista" implication. But nobody remembers them anymore anyway, which I should have known. Ah well. I'm afraid I don't know much about Randi Rhodes. Tell, tell. That's his definition, people who do business in church after the sermon?

10 points to Gryffindor!

My "fundamentalistas" catch-phrase has been trumped, sadly. The new buzz-word is "fristians". I actually like Bill Frist on a personal level. He seems like an upright guy and kind of a polar opposite from a moron like Tom DeLay. There was an incident last year where he was travelling through my area and stopped to help an accident victim (he's a surgeon). Credit where it's due, after all. But it's a great catch-phrase and fairly applied.

They weren't there for drug interdiction. That's like asking why we couldn't set up a permanent moon base while we were there in 1969. Sure you could have the soldiers run around and burn some poppey fields, but what difference is that going to make after they leave the area? There are only three things that will stop the opium trade in Afghanistan: 1) The use of a permanent, established, resident force (what the Taliban did) 2) Build a socio-economic structure that offers better alternatives 3) Stop the demand for opium

This is interesting stuff. The Times appointed a committee last fall to try and figure out some ways in which the paper could regain public trust and popularity (the loss of which is demonstrated by plumeting subscription rates). Some of the recommendations are interesting, and I hope the Times adopts them:

Thanks for the response. FWIW, I don't think you're being cynical, or at least not overly so.

Fallacy of distraction. 10 points from Slitherin!

So how will you form your new government? - Will you withdraw our troops from other "developing" science forums? - Will you stop the train of money to admins from anti-forum special interest groups like "Mothers Against Drunk Posters" and "Focus on the Television"? - And what exactly will you do about the high price of electrons?!

I don't know where you live, but I think "balance" is what we have now, at least in my country. Not that it's perfect, but IMO the problems in the US are, by and large, due to bad behavior and political grandstanding, not flaws inherent in the system.

Are you a Howard supporter in general, or opposed to him across the board? Just curious, it doesn't invalidate your opinion on this issue if you are the latter, as far as I'm concerned. Sam Donaldson on "This Week" Sunday said he thought it was interesting that all three of the English-speaking leaders who promoted the war in Iraq have now been re-elected. I have to admit that I'm a little surprised at that, given the reported unpopularity of the war in the UK and Australia. But I don't want to change the subject on you.

I'm afraid I don't know anything about softwood lumber, so I will reiterate my point about statements about such-and-such country imposing tariffs being irrelevent without further information. IMO any debate which begins with such a statement should be immediately stopped and full background about those tariffs disclosed immediately before continuing, so everyone knows both sides of the story. Funny you should mention that, because Japan has banned importing of American beef since our one case of BSE in 2003. The US made a statement to the WTO today about this that was in the news. Yup, you're quite right, protectionism does work both ways. We're arguing to the WTO that Japan is being protectionist, while we're being protectionist about Canadian beef. I agree. It seems like all governments are busily pursuing two-wrongs agendas. Of course, that doesn't let Canada off the hook, and it doesn't disprove my speculations in the second point of post #1 of this thread.

Sounds like an embedded systems discussion to me. Wikipedia has a good introductory article on the subject, including discussion of the pros and cons and why you don't see that approached used in general purpose (desktop/laptop) computing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embedded_systems Windows CE and Palm OS are good examples of embedded general-purpose operating systems. Microsoft has a page on embedded systems, as part of their initiative in getting "Windows" into all aspects of consumer electronics. http://msdn.microsoft.com/embedded/default.aspx It's interesting to note that this approach was not used by Microsoft in their "Media Center" version of Windows. The "pro" from their perspective would be that CE is more closed and controllable system, but the "con" is pretty obvious -- CE wasn't written for the wintel architecture. Tivo is a good example of Linux used as in an embedded approach in a mainstream (wintel) PC.

I believe the burst itself was detected by a widefield sensor on the Swift telescope, which then repositioned itself automatically and was able to catch the afterglow within 50 seconds of the burst. This is the first time a visible-light afterglow from a short-duration burst has been detected (not to mention photographed). There's still a lot of uncertainty about whether the short-duration bursts represent black hole formation events or not. http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/050509_blackhole_birth.html

That kind of stuff happens here as well, and has been my main complaint about the Bush administration (in terms of specific actions taken, as opposed to general politics or ideologies). We've got American citizens in jail being denied due process and the ONLY reason there's so little hue and cry over it is because they aren't of anglo-european descent. It's shameful.

In simplest terms, and most normal circumstances, it's the former. We elect a president and we elect members of the legislature, and the only thing they have in common is that they take place on the same date. The actual mechanics of it are more complex (you might here quibbles about the "electoral college", but it's not a political entity, it's just a mechanism for conveying the popular vote left over from the pre-industrial age), but in general the only time there's any crossover between the three branches of US government (executive, legislative and judicial) is when there is a failure of the normal process in some way (such as when the Supreme Court had to make a ruling about whether the 2000 presidential election results were valid). Put another way, the concept of "forming a government", of having Congress decide who gets to be the president, of having that happen for political rather than electoral reasons -- these things are entirely alien to Americans. It's the kind of thing that sends shivers up our spines and which we might perceive as an enormous, dangerous flaw in your system. We grow up hearing about the importance of checks and balances and separation of powers between the three branches, and hundred-million-dollar Hollywood productions tell us how even a tiny loss of that separation can lead to disaster, so that kind of difference makes us really uncomfortable. In reality, of course, I imagine that the British people enjoy many of not all (or more) of the checks and balances on power that Americans do. At least that's the assumption I start from, since it would be hubris to think otherwise. As a conservative friend of mine often says, in the end it doesn't matter how many checks and balances you have if the people in charge of carrying them out are determined to corrupt and misuse them!

Anyone looking for a good movie to watch with mom should check out Spanglish, which is just out on DVD. My wife and I watched it the other night and were in stitches. Very funny but still "family" kind of movie, and it has a nice "thanks mom" angle.

Da Vinci has art in the Sistine Chapel? I didn't know that. I thought that was all done before his time.

Who were you when you were unencrypyed? Sorry, couldn't resist.....

I bought my mom a "No Spin Mom" coffee mug from Bill O'Reilly.com. She's a Democrat and we often argue about BOR so she'll get a real hoot out of it. Either that or disown me.

Wow.... doesn't it hurt your fingers to use initial caps on every word like that? That would kill me.... BTW, it was hardly the first time people were "systematically killed for no reason".

I guess the key difference would be that we vote for the president separately, because he's not part of the legislature. And our Congress is divided into two sides, but for different reasons than in the UK. We typically vote for one House representative and one of the two Senators (whose terms are offset by two years to avoid having them come up at the same time). The House represents people by number, and the Senate represents people by state, and a law has to be approved by both sides and signed by the President. That way the big states can't run roughshod over the little states, and at the same time the big states get significantly more representation than the little states. In practice, however, we often run into exactly the same sorts of problems, due to the tendency to vote by party or with the state's block.

I broke your code. It says, "Trinity... Mmmmnmmmemm". Not sure I understand your spelling, but I sure agree with the sentiment. Hubba hubba.

Interesting, thanks for the feedback. So Labor is more popular in the less populated constituencies, leading to an imbalance in overall popular representation? Sounds similar to some of our problems.