kimmy

I certainly agree with the part about the romanticized idea of how great "the Golden Age" was. I have long maintained that people who talk about how great film or TV or music used to be compared to now have a very selective memory about how things used to be. I am also anticipating Augusts remarks, and am writing a parody as we speak. -k

Warrants? We ain't got warrants! We don't need to show you no steekin' warrants! Here's an NSA training material PowerPoint presentation that Snowden provided to the Guardian. Sure. Don't do anything that gets you flagged, and you'll stay below the radar. I've bought bulk quantities of ammunition online. You've written several times about the overprosecution of child pornography. I bet we're both flagged, Argus. If I'm not flagged yet, then... fertilizer backpack pressure cooker white power Quran allah akbar occupy nobama patriot don't tread on me ...how about now? Yeah, if the politicians and law enforcement people were all Good-Guys, giving them access to tools like this wouldn't be a concern at all, would it. But they're not all Good-Guys, and many of them are not even Average-Guys. Earlier on we learned that there are a half-million private security contractors with Top Secret clearance, and the number with lower security clearances in the millions. And that's not even counting federal employees. Early in the thread I quoted an analyst who said that the sheer size of these programs made a leak inevitable. This has become a huge industry in America. -k

Tim Shields is back in the news! As one of the RCMP's media representatives during the Braidwood Inquiry, Tim Shields was prominently involved in lying to Canadians. Now he's back in the news for more reprehensible behavior: he's being sued for sexual harrassment by an RCMP civilian employee. (Coincidentally Pierre Lamaitre, the RCMP's Head Liar in charge of misleading the public after the slaying of Robert Dziekanski, died just this past week, at the age of 55. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/rcmps-public-face-during-dziekanski-incident-found-dead/article13560595/ ) Tim Shields is of course not the only RCMP officer connected with the Dziekanski case who has legal trouble right now. The four RCMP officers who murdered Dziekanski were charged with perjury. One of them was just acquitted. It was not exactly a resounding exoneration for Bill Bentley... the judge just said that he wasn't convinced beyond reasonable doubt. The status of the perjury charges against the remaining 3 is uncertain as a result of Bentley's acquittal. One of the four murderers has already had legal trouble since the Braidwood Inquiry. Benjamin Robinson, the supervisor of the group, left a party after drinking 5 beers, and proceeded to kill a motorcyclist in a collision. Rather than stick around, Robinson ran home and banged down 2 shots of vodka ("to suppress pain"), then returned to the scene of the accident. Robinson was charged and convicted of Obstruction of Justice, as drinking the vodka at home was a ruse intended to make it impossible to administer a breathalyzer test. And, well, it worked, because instead of a jail sentence for drunk driving causing death, the best they could charge him with was obstruction. So instead of jail time, Benjamin Robinson served 1 month of house arrest and was ordered to write an apology to the family of the victim. (yep, for real.) -k

Well, here's one in which Ellsberg says that Manning and Snowden were right to leak the information. Ellsberg says that he wasted years trying to go through "proper channels" and believes he cost thousands of lives by not leaking the information sooner. http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/08/03/208602113/pentagon-papers-leaker-daniel-ellsberg-praises-snowden-manning And here's one in which Ellsberg says that he doesn't blame Snowden for not sticking around: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/08/daniel-ellsberg-edward-snowden-asylum_n_3562505.html -k

Perhaps if I had not attended school, I would be free to enjoy this new Pliny world that's free from the fascism of facts. I imagine it must feel quite good to be able to simply choose which facts are right for you. Interesting article... I especially liked this part: -k

The last part is not correct. Energy is not being used to hold the elastic in position. Energy is being used to keep your muscles contracted. The energy is applied to the elastic to stretch it. No further energy is applied to hold it in place. Once the band has been stretched, it can be held in place forever with zero expenditure of energy, by (for example) looping it over a stick. No further energy being added to the system by the stick. The stick is merely preventing the elastic from releasing its stored energy. So if holding the elastic in place requires no energy, then why does your hand get tired from holding the elastic? Because your muscle fibres are living cells that continuously burn energy. When muscles contract, they are spending continuously forming chemical bonds between muscle fibres. When the muscles run out of chemical energy, they can't form any more chemical bonds, and they cease to contract. They loosen, your grip on the elastic loosens, and the elastic is free to release its stored energy. It is much like the difference between an electromagnet and a permanent magnet. The electromagnet is like your muscles; both require a continuous input of energy to generate force. The stick is like the permanent magnet is like the stick; it generates force due to its inherent properties. Yes, but he is fundamentally wrong. *Moving* something from a state of lowest energy requires energy. *Keeping* it in place (whether that state has the lowest energy state or not) does not require energy, it only requires an equilibrium of forces. Lifting a brick from the ground to on top of a shelf requires energy. Staying on the shelf doesn't require energy, it only requires that the downward force of the brick's weight be balanced by the upward force provided by the shelf. And as wrong as it gets. Fair enough. As I've made mention of my grade 10 physics background, I'll also add that I also took grade 11 physics, grade 12 physics, and first year "honors" physics courses at the U of A. -k

Yay! If you're not a terrorist, you have nothing to fear! -k

Teen stopped for traffic infraction; while one officer deals with the teen, his partner covertly pepper-sprays the kid's pizza. http://www.philly.com/philly/news/nation_world/Prosecutors_Deputy_pepper-sprayed_teens_pizza.html What an asshole. -k

You mean like in Logan's Run or Soylent Green? -k

Sure, but how effective is this massive surveillance program at actually providing safety and security? As mentioned already, they're able to come up with very few examples of these programs leading to arrests or stopping terrorist activities. Did they stop the Boston bombings? Far more Americans are injured and killed at railroad crossings than by terrorists. If providing safety and security is the goal, spending a few million bucks putting up gates and flashers at all level crossings would go a lot farther than spending billions on surveillance. Hey, how about proper oversight of fertilizer plants? I bet that could provide safety and security! -k

Indeed. Einstein's theories were fiercely opposed by established physicists with extremely formidable credentials. These theories were hotly and furiously debated when they were published and for many years afterward. Einstein's ideas were not welcomed with open arms; when they were published they were not "establishment", and the "establishment" view was looking for any and all ways to challenge Einsteins theories. The idea that the greatest minds of the last century just "overlooked" an obvious algebra error while debating these theories is super-retarded. And the idea that scientists keep quiet about flaws they know exist in Einstein's theories is so galactically stupid that it defies comprehension. A scientist could win instant fame and fortune and a place in all of history by demonstrating flaws, and especially "simple algebra errors" in the theories of relativity. -k

You're attempting to make the case that physics as we understand it is wrong, and has "anomalies". But the example you have provided-- fridge magnets-- fails to make that case. McCutcheon argues that physics as we understand it is wrong and can't explain any of these phenomena that he lists on his website, which he claims is why modern physics is a failure and that the world needs his new theory. But the claims he makes on his website are wrong. He hasn't demonstrated flaws in modern physics, and he hasn't demonstrated any way in which his theory is useful. The irony of that comment could not be stronger, as it is a completely accurate comparison to your attempts to debunk real physics. "Physics says that energy is conserved, but my magnet won't fall off the fridge! Physics is wrong! Ahahahhaha!" I don't believe we've even started discussing what's wrong with McCutcheon's theory (Bonam dismissed it with some comments about orbits early on, I think). Rather, we have been discussing your (and McCutcheon's) spectacularly stupid attempts to demonstrate the flaws in the current state of physics knowledge. -k

I didn't mean to compare the overall size of spending. The point was that that money could be spent on things that actually produce tangible benefits. -k

A coil of wire with a current flowing through it creates a magnetic field. Insert a piece of iron into the coil, and the magnetic field becomes much stronger, because the magnetic poles of the iron atoms will align themselves to the magnetic field generated by the coil. Each iron atom's own magnetic field adds to the overall magnetic field, and the end result is the magnetic field created by the electric coil plus the sum of the magnetic fields of each iron atom. But note that even though the magnetic field in one instance is much stronger, the amount of energy we put in in both instances is the same. It takes the same amount of energy to move the energy through the coil of wire whether there is an iron core there or not. And then suppose we take that coil of wire and unspool it so that it's just a pile of unorganized spaghetti instead of a coil, and put an electric current through it. It still requires the same amount of energy, except now there is no net magnetic field being created because the wire is now arranged at random so that the magnetic field generated by any given length of wire is cancelled out by the field generated by some other random length of wire. So what you should be getting from this is that the magnetic field isn't a function of the energy that we put through the wire. And when that coil of wire and its iron core are acting on a spring to create an electrical contact (this is called a "relay"...) the energy you put into the coil of wire to create the magnetic field whether the little metal contact is present, or whether that coil of wire were creating the field in empty space. Break open your relay, remove the spring and the metal contact, and apply current, and you'll find that your relay still uses the same amount of energy. Conclusion: holding that spring contact closed does not consume energy. So what about permanent magnets? Remember earlier we had the loop of wire with the current going through it, and found that when we insert an iron core into the loop, the magnetic field becomes much stronger because the iron atoms line up with the field and each atom's magnetic field adds to the overall field. With a permanent magnet, it is the same, except that the permanent magnet does not need the external field to line up the atoms. The atoms are already aligned. How did they get aligned? They were aligned when the magnet was created. One way to do this would be by heating a piece of magnetic material so that the atoms can move freely, putting it inside a magnetic field to align the atoms, and then cooling the material to lock the atoms in place. -k

On a related note, Bradley Manning has been found Not Guilty of "aiding the enemy", but still faces up to 136 years in prison for a variety of crimes relating to releasing evidence of US military cover-ups of civilian casualties. None of the soldiers who slaughtered civilians are facing 136 years in prison. None of the officials that participated in cover-ups are doing 136 years in prison. It seems clear that embarrassing the authorities is considered a much bigger crime than the actual wrongdoing itself. So, personally, I don't blame Snowden for not sticking around to "face the music". -k

I strongly disagree with both of those assessments. On the claim of "perfectly legal", I call BS because the contractors have access to more than just the "metadata" that the programs' defenders have been talking about. In fact others have come forward to corroborate Snowdens' claims that he had access to pretty much whatever he felt like. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/government_programs/july-dec13/whistleblowers_08-01.html http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424127887323997004578641993388259674-lMyQjAxMTAzMDAwMTEwNDEyWj.html As for "not harming anyone", I disagree with that too. "You don't need to worry unless you're on the phone with terrorists!" In the NSA thread I provided examples of how "terrorist" can get redefined to mean whoever's inconvenient to people in power. In Missouri, somebody who attempts to defame a factory farm by exposing animal cruelty is a terrorist. In several US states, TransCanada Pipeline is working with local law enforcement to use anti-terrorism laws to suppress pipeline protests. If the people in power can decide who is a terrorist, then anybody is potentially a terrorist. And "not harming anyone" is also questionable because of the vast amount of government funds being sunk into this surveillance effort. You could pay down the debt, repair crumbling infrastructure, maintain social security and Medicaid, ... or you could hire a whole army of Snowdens at rich salaries, build a multi-billion dollar fortress in Utah for the computers, ...for programs that have yielded little tangible benefit. When pressed for details about what terrorists they've actually caught, they come up with one guy who wired a few thousand dollars to a known terrorist in Somalia, and a couple of other minor plots. On a benefit vs dollars-spent basis, these programs must be one of the biggest failures in history. They could save more lives and provide more security by installing crossing gates at railroad crossings. And the questions of "is it legal" and "is it hurting anybody" miss the bigger question "is it something we should be doing". If what Snowden did is such a bad thing, why is Team Obama suddenly talking about how they welcome spirited debate on how to balance privacy with security? They welcome spirited debate on programs that 3 months ago they didn't want people to know even existed? Really? -k

Good grief, Pliny, the electromagnet requires energy to create a magnetic field because it requires energy to create the electric current. Pushing the electrons through the resistive material requires energy. The electromagnet uses the exact same amount of energy whether it is attracting the spring, or whether it is creating the magnetic field in empty space. It also uses the exact same amount of energy as putting an equal current through an equal resistance that isn't creating a magnetic field, such as a typical carbon-film resistor. In short, the energy is being spent moving electrons, not attracting the spring. -k

Good grief, Pliny, you are making an epic fool of yourself. I don't have time to help you right now, but I will get back to this soon enough. In the mean time, could you remind us again what kind of electrical background it was that you have? -k

Anti-sodomy laws in all US states were struck down by the US Supreme Court in 2003. Even if Cuccinelli were able to get this law, it would be struck down. As an aside, this is an example of why pieces of dog-crap like Rick Perry and Rick Santorum are "States Rights" supporters. Rick Perry's mad that the Supreme Court struck down Texas' anti-sodomy law 10 years ago, but it's not because he's anti-gay, it's because he's pro-States Rights. Rick Santorum thinks that the Supreme Court ruling that struck down the Connecticut law against contraception was wrong, but it's not because Rick Santorum is anti-women, it's because he's pro-States Rights. -k

Cuccinelli will be an excellent partner for E. W. Jackson, the Republican candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Virginia. E.W. is a fundamentalist minister who believes that yoga is from Satan, sin causes birth defects, and evolution is a lie because monkeys haven't learned to talk. And there's going to be a massive wealth transfer, and it's not going to come because of government policies, it's going to be supernatural: people who believe in Jesus are going to reap a windfall! And by the way, homosexuals are mentally ill and worse than the KKK. And Medicaid is worse than slavery. And by the way, if you decide not to vote for E.W. Jackson because you think he's a religious wacko, you're discriminating against his religious beliefs and violating his rights. They may sound pretty wacky, but Cuccinelli and Jackson will win, because they're Republicans and Virginia is one of those states. -k

Article: 7 ways the Obama administration is accelerating the militarization of the police. These come under 3 basic headings: ramping up the "war on drugs", supplying military-style equipment and weaponry for police forces, and supporting increasingly heavy-handed tactics. -k

Some here... August, Tim, Pliny, have scoffed at the notion that CEOs and bankers would cause long-term harm to their businesses in their pursuit of short term gain. And yet, that's exactly what happens. There's a phrase that sums up their thinking: "I'll Be Gone, You'll Be Gone". I'll have my commissions, you'll have sold your shares, and neither of us needs to care about the long-term health of this company. "IBGYBG" isn't just a description of the behavior, it's an actual slogan... the Wall Street version of #YOLO (You Only Live Once... the slogan of teenagers about to do something stupid.) http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/brettbogus/2013/06/26/ill-be-gone-youll-still-be-here-n1627772/page/full http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/03/putting-an-end-to-wall-streets-ill-be-gone-youll-be-gone-bonuses/ -k

I suspect that President Obama is happy to have the opportunity to talk about anything other than government surveillance. Trayvon Martin could have been my son! Man, we really need to do something about income inequality in America! How 'bout them White Sox? -k

My concern is that a sports owner's agenda is not necessarily to benefit the city. He might have little care whether the arena causes revitalization in Detroit, so long as he gets his arena. However, from what I am reading, Red Wings owner Mike Ilitch has been a tireless champion for Detroit. From what I am reading, the public money raised for this will be raised by selling a special bond issue, so it seems to me that it's not like the project is taking money away from schools and policing. It sounds as if people will have the opportunity to opt in if they wish. And, they do have to do something. I'm not sure who exactly "they" are or what they need to do, but it's a city full of cheap land right next to major shipping infrastructure... there should be lots of possibilities. Anyway, the headline ("Bankrupt city to spend $444 million on hockey rink!") certainly sounds worse than the reality. -k

I mentioned the arenas in Ottawa and Edmonton earlier. They both illustrate that plunking down an arena doesn't just generate a food and entertainment district. In Ottawa, when I lived there at least, the only thing outside the arena was an off ramp; in Edmonton the area around the arena has been a run-down part of town for decades, and the presence of an arena has not generated any sort of entertainment district. People get in their cars and leave as quickly as possible after the game. I had quite a few game-night evenings out when I lived in Edmonton; often involving eating out and drinks; none of that food and entertainment money was spent anywhere near the arena. My question about "hanging around Detroit" has a negative connotation, because the idea of "hanging around Detroit" itself has a very negative connotation. It's no secret that the city has an incredibly negative reputation, and I don't think game-night revelers will want to spend time or money in the area before or after the game. On its own, I don't think an arena will change that. Trying to create an environment where people will want to spend time before and after the game will be a very ambitious project that will take more than just building an arena and hoping that positive environment just magically appears. -k