Pangloss

My point is that this represents a staggeringly blatant contradiction in the President's stance. It's not possible for him to take the position he has with the Schiavo case without contradicting himself regarding that law. After all, his position was based on moral grounds, not legal ones. I do agree with your analysis. I have some reservations about the law in question. But one thing I've always admired about the president is his willingness to allow issues to come to the fore and be put to the test. He's not afraid to walk the walk. But in this case, either he's completely about-faced, or he never considered the potential moral predicaments of the Texas law in the first place.

Which I presume is why you hear a lot of Russians leave it out, and end up talking about "going to park", leaving you wondering whether they mean the same park you were talking about five minutes ago, or some other park. How would you know the difference in Russian? I assume they have some way of making that information known to the listener....

Thomas Friedman's column in today's New York Times is worth a read, and is refreshingly not about Terri Schiavo. (chuckle) http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/27/opinion/27friedman.html Requires subscription, but I believe you can get login info from this URL without having to register: http://www.bugmenot.com/ The most interesting bit: Well put. Lawmakers in this country are completely focused on divisiveness and distraction, because that's what the lobbyists want them to be focused on, and the voters simply don't care enough to knock them out of office when they vote that way.

Haha, that bit about using a coax cable to serve as an antenna brings back memories! (chuckle)

This past week there was an interesting right-to-die case in Houston that I believe graphically illustrates the President's hypocrisy on this issue. http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/editorial/outlook/3103113 In a nutshell, a baby named Sun Hudson was allowed to die based on hospital decision, against the family's wishes, based on a judgement offsetting cost against quality of life. The law that allowed the hospital to make that call (again, against the will of the family), was signed by then-governor George W. Bush. Now this was an extreme case. I cited the above article specifically because it gives a non-partisan analysis of this poor child's miserable condition and the fact that he had zero chance to survive. But it's still a perfect illustration of right-wing hypocrisy in the Schiavo case. That woman has no chance either. Zip, zero, zilcho, none. Why would you "err on the side of life" in the Schiavo case, but not in the Hudson case? Where was the last-minute bill to save this child's life?

Yeah, it's, like, THE way to accomplish that.

ZAP! You have been scienced!

So what? Several million men screaming "Deutschland uber alles!" did not a legitimate government make either.

Hehe, wow. I must have missed that one.

Just to kinda keep the discussion going, it's worth noting that some House and Senate members were proposing that taxpayer money be spent on digital set-top converters for the poor. Think about that one for a minute.... (chuckle)

rofl Okay, so why is something like "Grand Theft Auto" okay then?

The US Congress has been debating this issue in subcommittee and on the floor of the House and Senate for weeks, taking up a huge amount of time. Basically the issue is whether or not to allow broadcasters to shut down their old over-the-air antennas -- the ones that are NOT broadcasting digital TV. You know, the stuff you used to jerk around the rabbit ears, or have to hold onto at arms' length to improve the picture. Allowing broadcasters to do this will accomplish two things: 1) Let your local network affiliates save some money. 2) Free up a LOT of bandwith in the spectrum. The second feature above is really what has the lawmakers salivating at the moment, because that bandwidth can be divied up and resold to new providers of various other kinds of services. Some projections put the income as high as $17 billion. That's money that goes right into the budget. Plus, of course, the benefit of potential new data services. Sounds like a win-win, right? But of course, as with all things, there's a catch. Some surveys show that at least 21 million and possibly as many as 73 million Americans continue to watch television this way. No, really. That's what they say. The problem I have is that I can't think of *anyone* who does. So one thing I thought it might be interesting in this thread is just to see if any of you all know anybody who has an old-style television that's NOT connected to either cable, satellite, or Internet television service. I expect we might hear from a few folks who have secondary sets in kitchens or back bedrooms or such. Something they only watch once in a while, and it's just not located conveniently near a cable or satellite outlet in the home. If that's the case with most of these sets, then I think they should throw the switch. The benefits are great. What do you all think?

Pfft, real men learned it by playing Diplomacy.

So it's not just me at least, thanks. At risk of getting too hypothetical, how would you all feel about serious, non-entertainment-oriented documentaries about the war after it was over? One slightly interesting twist to this is that I watch HDTV using a Tivo device. It's not well-known (though it was much-discussed during the Janet Jackson Superbowl gaff), but Tivo actually collects data on what programs owners watch. Here comes the real twist: They SELL that data to entertainment-industry customers. So in theory my viewing of the show (whether I record it or not) could be a statistic on some National Security Council worker's desk by morning. Kind of a sobering thought, isn't it?

"Now, Che Guevara. Che... Coventry City last won the English Football Cup in what year? No? I can throw the question open. Anybody else? Coventry City last won the English Football Cup in what year? No, well, I'm not surprised you didn't get that. It is in fact a trick question. Coventry City have never won the English Football Cup."

IMO that's a quite reasonable point, but of course not everyone will agree with us. (shrug) Would you (or anyone else) be interested in expanding a bit on what the security council could use an overhaul? That sounds like it might be worth getting into.

But again, even if you stop short of that specific judgement (as I do -- I really don't believe we just go around picking countries to invade), the point is that there's clear benefit here, if for no other reason than the fact that the cost of invasion is so horrendous. But this has really gotten a bit too far along the lines of justifying the UN itself (my fault), and really what I was looking for in this thread was some of the pros and cons behind the restructuring itself. I guess the problem there being that it hasn't been fleshed out enough for any of us to really give it a good assessment yet. I believe they said something about a six-month debate period, so we may know more later this year.

Come on guys, let's not newtonianize this thread too. Everyone's got a valid opin to opine. I think tiny has an important point about the cost of peace vs the cost of war. There's no question about the value of preparing for war, and I don't think anybody is suggesting that the United States dismantle its military. But I think one of the lessons we need to learn from Iraq is that, while the UN may certainly be flawed (and I believe it is), there would definitely have been some value in holding back a little longer from the invasion and checking for those WMDs a little more carefully. How else are we going to do something like that? Your choices are simple, either (a) use a body like the UN, or (b) go in via war, spending a GREAT DEAL of money at great risk of the possibility of being wrong. What else is there? Put another way, our long-term investment in the UN pays dividends even when it doesn't always decide things in our favor. Had we utilized that resource more fully in 2003, even though it was really frustrating and egotistically disatisfying to do so, we could have saved a great deal of money and a lot of lives.

(never mind, deleted)

Is anyone else slightly disturbed by the fact that Discovery HD Theater and Milnet have a special 2-hour show about the Iraq War filmed in HDTV? I dunno, maybe it's just me. It does look amazing, but... it just seems like it's kinda inappropriate somehow. I mean it's *entertainment*, or at least EDUtainment....

I know you are but what am I!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (chuckle)

You might want to look up GBasic. There's still some of that stuff floating around out there. Just in case you don't know, you can also program using old-fashioned Basic in Microsoft Visual Basic. Most of the old QBasic stuff is still supported, if I remember correctly. You can even rework the editor a bit to look more like the old days (line numbers, white-on-black text, etc).

I'm really stunned at the way the far right has latched on to this. It's got to be one of the most obvious cases of political extremism in recent history. Every poll seems to show the public overwhelmingly in favor of exercising her wishes. This woman stated on numerous occasions, not just casually but within the serious context of the deaths of two family members (two different times!) that she never wanted to live in that condition, not only to her husband, but also to friends who testified in court. 23 judges now have come down on that side (when even one shouldn't have been necessary, since there's 200+ years of legal precedence behind this). It really boggles the mind. I can think of worse things for people to want than to give someone every chance to live, but there are FEW things worse than to disregard and contradict someone's stated medical preference in order to impose the will of the majority. This is a perfect example of how the far right actually has no interest whatsoever in freedom. What they want is state-enforced compliance. (Not that the far left is any different, of course.)

(hehe) Don't ever serve on a jury with me, btw. I'm the guy they beat about the head and shoulders and shove out the nearest window during deliberations. ;-)