Pangloss

From the lawmakers' point of view, that's the only problem, and it's the same beef they have with the President's scheme. They would view your suggestion along similar lines.

Is the marker off slightly to the north? That's how it looks for my house, about 50 yards off to the north of where I actually live.

I am only an egg.

rofl....

You're not that far off. I can make out my own foliage. A big live oak in the back yard and some palm trees in front. And it's pretty obvious you could zoom in a lot further if they weren't concerned about mouse-grabber scolling speed. There are better sat photo sites around the internet, though. What's really interesting about this one is the way it's integrated with the map and directions functions, and the mouse-grab scrolling deal.

Well I don't think she was a great writer, but she had a knack for convictive essay writing that I think was significant. I'm a sucker for a good rant (even if I don't agree with it), and she wrote some rants that are absolute classics. Most of her best work is non-fiction, though.

Go here: http://maps.google.com/ Punch in your address. Zoom in real good. And then click the "Satellite" button in the upper-right corner. Sorry, Americans only right now.

Yeah if you think about it, that's almost 10 passengers per second going down those chutes. Doesn't seem real likely, does it? But they say it's actually possible. There will be eight chutes operating, in theory....

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05087/478649.stm Interesting article about the upcoming evacuation test of the A380. I had no idea that could be so dangerous, but I guess it makes sense. But the test is important, and needs to be done. Unfortunately it happens all too often that a passenger plane will be involved in some sort of incident requiring the rapid evacuation of the passengers. There've been a number of hard landings and fires aboard planes readying for take-off. The airplane business is one of those morose industries in which most of those safety regulations have a large body count behind them. But what's really interesting about the above article are the political overtones. This issue (the A380 evac test) has been the subject of a very high level fight between the EU and the US for several months, for a number of reasons that ultimately derive from globalization. There are only two significant passenger aircraft manufacturers left in the world: Boeing and Airbus. Boeing gets handouts from the US Gov in the form of tax incentives. Airbus gets direct funding from the French and the EU to pay for the development of new airplanes ($12 billion for the A380 alone). Both of these payments are in violation of the WTO, which has made corresponding judgements against both governments for those payments (more or less ignored by the respective countries). The final piece of the puzzle is that the US and the EU have an agreement to honor each other's aircraft certifications. If the alarm bells weren't ringing before, they should be now. A few months ago it was looking like the test was going to be run with the lights on and the chutes already extended (that's not in the article). As the article mentions, they were later planning to run the test one deck at a time. There are other disparities as well. Boeing's (and Airbus's previous) tests were much more stringent. Apparently the FAA managed to get someone over there and make enough of a racket that some changes were made. Unfortunately the FAA has an axe to grind here as well. Part of their function is defending domestic airlines and manufacturers, and is certainly aware that Boeing would love to see the A380 fail. One can only imagine the endless parade of phone calls these days from Capital Hill to FAA headquarters right down the street. There's a lot of engineering and safety logic behind both sides of the dispute, and the issues need to be resolved by clear, dispassionate, objective people. Unfortunately both sides are clearly dealing with major conflicts of interest. The concern here is that the terms of the test are being decided by politics rather than concerns for safety. The A380 is not the only plane affected by all this political nonsense, and a lot of observers feel it's just a matter of time before it becomes a serious problem, if it hasn't already.

I love it! You and I should work for the Onion. No offense Coral, I know you're really thinking of more clearly non-partisan groups, but there are also groups like these: http://www.americanprogress.org/ http://www.heritage.org/ Groups which should clearly be 527s, and clearly violate the principles of non-profit non-partisanship laid out in 501. It was shameful the way they acted in 2004. But this thread is really just for fun. I'm not a two-wrongs kind of a guy.

And I think we all know how good 501©(3) orgs are at keeping their noses out of public affairs....

Churches get tax exemptions, which mean that arguably they're being supported by the government, right? Therefore shouldn't science get equal time at the pulpit? Can I get an AMEN?!

I understand, I was just rambling.

By the way, I'm not sure if this is clear to folks outside the US, but there's a big difference between "Fox News" and "Fox News Channel". Often when someone says "Fox News" what they're actually referring to is a local television station's nightly news broadcast. If that station is affiliated with the Fox (entertainment) network, then they generally call that station "Fox News", as in "Fox News at 6 and 11". These stations are not affiliated with the Fox News Channel in any way. Some of them contract with Fox News Channel for national story feeds, but they also contract with CNN and other outlets. There's no actual "tie" to Fox News Channel, the relationship is not direct as it is with, say, an ABC affiliate and ABC News. Some of the local Fox entertainment network affiliates are also owned by Newscorp (Murdoch), and I presume they have a closer relationship with Fox News Channel. Anyway, this comes up a lot in discussions, and it seemed relevent here. I don't know which one Hellbender was referring to above, for example.

I can't imagine why not. Fascinating country and culture. A nation full of people who generally recognize society as an entity, complete with its own set of rights and obligations (as opposed to just obligations), and with a high level of significance that can be compared and contrasted with the individual. A culture in which how governance takes place is actually of secondary importance compared with whether the government is "getting the job done". The ultimate extreme of recognizing the importance of "daily life" over the "media circus". Absolutely fascinating.

What is the value of having the public judge/condemn? Oh I see, you're talking about non-criminal judgement in general? Like for example "judging" that Rush Limbaugh is a right-wing conservative?

Got this idea from Flareon's post in the USA thread. I thought about making this a poll, but really I'm more interested in hearing what people think about their sources and why they chose them, rather than getting some numbers on which sources are most popular. Thoughts? Just to kick things off, I'm subscribed (paid sub, for a course I'm taking) to the Wall Street Journal, and I have free online subs to the New York Times and the Washington Post. I also drop by CNN and MSNBC from time to time, but I usually start news runs at Google News (useful because it often slaps international links right alongside domestic ones for domestic events, so I can quickly see how the foreign press is reporting a national story). Of those sources, I probably get the most out of the NY Times and the Washington Post. Especially the Times' editorial page, which counterpoints neatly with the OpinionJournal (WSJ's external opinion page). These are useful not only for the liberal and conservative perspectives I get from each, but also in the conservative and liberal counterpoints they run. (Gee... maybe I am a little too hung-up on the whole middle-of-the-road deal....) This doesn't count the tech pages I generally hit in the morning, like Neowin, Wired, Slashdot, The Register, and... um... Okay, I seriously need to get out more....

That's interesting. For a long time you could get a massive tax break for buying an SUV, because of some loophole about farm equipment (no really). My brother-in-law bought a Cadillac SUV under that deal. I don't recall the amount but I think it was a lot more than that. But they were talking about closing that loophole last I heard.

<<shudder>> "Democracy is the worst form of government. Except for all the others." -- Winston Churchill

Hybrid Efficiency Overstated? http://cbs.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7BB21CF567-A36C-4EF0-8E64-D8177D37D004%7D&siteid=google&dist=google Interesting article. Note that it's almost a year old, and gas prices are significantly higher now (more than a dollar higher in California than the example in the quote below), but I still think it's interesting. This quote seems particularly on point: I wonder why the EPA's tests are off by a higher percentage with hybrids versus regular cars.

Sure. Americans are complacent in much the same way that many people are -- we're not exceptional examples of this by any means. Most folks don't want to deal with problems that don't immediately concern them. So time and again we let things slip and slide until they reach a point where we have to deal with them, and usually with fewer options at that point. But the real danger with complacency is that is breeds demagoguery. And believe me, demagoguery is alive and well in the US of A. (And it's not just coming from the right. What Al Franken is trying to sell you is every bit as dangerous as what Rush Limbaugh is trying to sell you.) A good example of this are the right-wing fundamentalistas who are convinced that "activist judges" are ruining our democracy. Sure, there have been a few examples where (mostly lower court) judges forgot about the concept of judicial restraint. But generally speaking judges are put in the impossible position of having to make an unpopular decision that happens to be exactly what the law requires. The real problem is with the people who unscrupulously put them in that position in the first place, either through inaction or through rabble-rousing demagoguery. This is exactly what destroyed the first great representative democracy -- the Roman Republic. Demagogues like Saturninus and the Grachi brothers riled up the people against the ultra-conservative factions and forced a series of monstrous cause-and-effect events that ripped that country apart. It wasn't overnight, either, it was a cumulative effect. It took over a century of increasing waves of nastiness before Augustus finally threw in the towel. I believe we would have gone down a similar road years ago if it wasn't for the Constitution, the judges willing to defend it, and the unwillingness (thus far) of politicians to exert power over the unarmed judiciary (thank god). But as with the Romans, demagoguery in our time is also a cumulative effect. What riled folks up one year isn't enough the next -- it takes more. I worry that it's just a matter of time before that constitutional wall breaks down from the constant tidal flow of uninformed and/or mislead public opinion. The Romans knew it was happening to them too, by the way. Catalina, Saturninus and Crassus exploited it. Pompey was exploited BY it. Cicero flowed with it. Cato ranted endlessly about it. Caesar knew it, and used it against itself because he had no other option (hey TT, that's the true meaning of the phrase "crossing the Rubicon", by the way). They all knew it. But in the end, none of them could stop it. This is slightly off-subject (peripheral), but it's one of my favorite quotes from Plutarch: Anyway, those are my thoughts on the subject in a nutshell. It's not really bad that Americans are that way -- we have our strengths as well. We are what we are, there's no sense losing sleep over it. But there are times when we need to spur ourselves into action. It's been my general observation that these times have been coming more and more frequently. I worry about it more than any other issue.

Yup, you're probably right in looking at it that way. It's just business. I'm sure our congress looks at it the same way when it gives massive tax breaks to Boeing. Maybe the WTO should be abolished and we should use a completely free market approach to world trade. The purpose of having organizations was to avoid "tragedy of the commons" type problems. But of course what ends up happening is that the boundaries are just looked at as hurdles that have to be surmounted or circumvented. Maybe Ayn Rand had it right.

This has been predicted for many years, but I think it's still important for Americans to be aware of. Complacency is the real democracy-killer.

The EU and Canada are planning to slap 15% tariff's on US trade goods beginning May 1st. This is the outcome of a ruling by the WTO which allows the tariff as a punitive measure due to the Byrd Amendment. Two things about this entertain me: 1) The WTO continues to ignore enforcement of its own rulings against the EU and Canada. This whole business smacks of anti-Americanism and going-after-the-deep-pockets syndrome. (But in all fairness, for every Airbus subsidy from the French there's a Boeing subsidy by the US, and there's no question the US has got to step up and stop being two-faced about free trade. I blame it on our constitutional requirement of treaty ratification by a bicameral, politicized congress, but it doesn't matter -- we've got to get with the program here if we want to play the Big Game.) 2) I wonder if most Euros and Canucks actually view this as a "stick it to Bush and the ugly Americans" issue. Do they realize that Robert Byrd was a Democrat, the law was signed by Clinton, and it's the Republicans that oppose it and have been trying to overturn it? Free trade is a conservative issue in this country. (Actually Clinton was opposed to the Byrd Amendment, and also called for Congress to overturn it. He was a big free-trade guy, something many in the far left will never forgive him for.) Some background reading: http://www.ebearing.com/legislation/2000act.htm Wall Street Journal article, may require subscription: http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111226492909294164,00.html?mod=home_whats_news_europe