Posts by GrimJack

Well better to head towards San Diego and check out the zoo than stay in stuffy old Frisco.

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=2601+Elliott+Avenue+Seattle

Nothing particularly interesting about that building, but the area has alot of fun places visit.

Go here instead it is Ye Olde Curiosity Shop - a must see stop for anyone looking some really odd stuff.

Also, if you are here on the rare sunny day - go to Mt Constitution on Orcas Island - it is only 1100 feet above see level but you can see from Vancouver BC Canada to Portland OR (well not really but it is one of the best views on the pacific coast.

I suppose that is only part of the equation and doesn't explain the day-to-day fluxuation in the world money market. Like many other things the value of one country's currency is what other countries are willing to pay for it on the various stock exchanges around the world.

Some of the fluctuation in value of currency has to do with the currency traders who swoop in when they think they see a struggling currency. At millions of (units of currency) a difference of fractions of a penny can mean a huge profit and the traders can crash the entire economy - this is believed to be what happened to the Asian currency crash in the 90s (I forget the particular country). These guys are vultures; the destruction of entire economies and the destitution of the population is of no consequence in face of profit.

The USA makes new Dollar bills at such a giant rate that a few billion from NK would just be a drop in the bucket. Yes they are thiefs, more like stealing a candy bar from a large store.

Most money is made on the markets, like the stock market.

Not really true. The amount and quality of the N Korean counterfeiting could actually destabilize world economy. And it is the counterfeiting that supports NK military growth cycles. NK does not have a currency that anyone else in the world will accept so it has to make fake US currency to buy all the missile parts.

http://www.mises.org/rothbard/rothmoney.pdf

Interesting link. In my looking around about him I ran into a couple of interesting items that would cause one to pause:

During the late 1950's, Rothbard was briefly an intimate of Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden, whom he would later criticize strongly. In the late 1960's, Rothbard advocated an alliance with the New Left anti-war movement, on the grounds that the conservative movement had been completely subsumed by the statist establishment.

then later

In 1989, Rothbard left the Libertarian Party and began building bridges to the post-Cold War right. He was the founding president of the conservative-libertarian John Randolph Club and supported the presidential campaign of Pat Buchanan in 1992. However, prior to his death, Rothbard had become disillusioned with the Buchanan movement.

Now there is an interesting example of swinging in the wind.

I don't think I am going to get all the way through your link in time to add anything about it to this discussion but thanks - I had never heard of him before.

>> From were Money Comes???
Many people think it comes off a money tree. And the plastic cards everyone in USA seems to have today have made paper money less useful. I assume many other countries such as UK also has simpliar experience with plastic.

Actually, it is a river and the wealthiest have large net to capture money - the less wealthy are farther from shore. All economic struggle is to get your basket into the river so you can get some for yourself.

Here is an interesting article how on people keep their banking passwords safe

Accidents could happen, one of the ideas I have been working on is a nano-factory making diamond material (diamonds have more tensile strength than steel) breaks loose and begins using all the carbon it finds to make diamonds and, well, we are a carbon based lifeform.

I started thinking about it while discussing space elevators with some friends; diamond rope would be the strongest but it has a weakness for shear so we considered sheathing in graphite nanotubes. Diamonds on demand would have so many uses that it seemed obvious it would be among the first products from nano-factories. In my research I came across an article on the possibility of lakes of diamond on Neptune.

But I digress

Almost invisible nano robots attacking human tissue, ouch! Lots of money to be made there!

But the money is in the defender nanobots. See you have a permanent set of nanos in your system that work to keep your body the way they found it vs a set of nanos working to change it. The nonobot race will follow virus/anti-virus cyber conflicts already taking place.

You need to try understanding the terms you attempt to prove your arguments with. "Marginal Income Tax Rates" have nothing to do with my arguments. Don't just Google a term and use invalid data to justify yourself. If you bothered to check your facts, your 91% was at the top money earners ($400,000+), whereas the lowest was 20%. The majority of the country (middle class) was at the 20-30% level (up to $8000). Try this data instead.

Sorry dude, I read your link and your point still sux.

Nor did you bother to respond to my other points. You see just because you say

You need to try understanding the terms you attempt to prove your arguments with.

does not mean you are making any sense. Let me point you to some helpful information; just to help you along, here is a reasoned response. In both cases, the comments are at least as interesting as the articles themselves. I have included some pictures because it always helps when you can visualize what we are discussing.

All I hear is as long as you don't see the clock tick, time must not be moving...

Your description of bad economy where people suddenly can't afford their life is happening in the States -- just at a slower pace.

When I was a kid, one parent would work and the other parent could stay home.

That is not true today. In most households both parents must work just to keep their head above water. And in only 50 years. And if you take a close look, it wasn't a linear change.

It's not going to be long until 2 incomes will not be enough. How many families do you know right now have in fact 3 jobs just to get by? An anomaly or a symptom?

Is this the government's doing? Not completely, but a good large chunk of it. At a minimum, they are the ones that add and raise taxes without seeming regard for the people they are governing.

How many new taxes and tax increases have you yourself voted for?
And what is the current count of taxes we are paying daily?
Are these numbers even close to each other?

OMFG! A when I was a kid story - ooh, that explains everything NOT. When I was a kid I could take a quarter to the movies get in for .10, then get a soda and popcorn. In 1801 England, an income of 80 pounds ($160) per years was a 'lordly' sum. in …

Are you implying money today is worth something?

"I don't want to overthrow the government. I wanna fire 'em."
-- Gallagher

Yes, money is worth something. You can walk into any store in the US in the morning and the same store in the evening and (generally) the items for sale will be the same price. When money is not worth anything, eg. in highly inflationary economies, working people have to be paid 2 times per day because what the money buys in the morning will have changed by more than 100% by the evening. The German hyperinflation was so extreme that from Feb 1920 to May 1921 the inflation rate was 39.2% but fron July 1923 to Nov 20 1923 the inflation rate was 560,000,000,000% - what cost 1 dollar in July 1923 cost $560,000,000,000.00 on Nov '23. Yes that is $560Billion.

All I know is if governments were people, every one of them would be committed to asylums. And not one seems to have any fiscal sense, nor responsibility.

With a "government of the people, by the people, for the people", how is it the people keep getting screwed?

Look, try to look at it with a little more sense. Governments are not people and should not act like people nor should they be expected to. Do you have an idea of what 'fiscal sense' is? What does it mean to you? Same with responsibility - what do you think a government acting responsible means?

Not sure that the virus is from humans - more likely that we co-evolved together (using 'we' in the grandest sense to include most terrestrial mammals). If a person is bit by a rabid animal, there is a 72 hour window in which the person can be saved by the rabies vaccine. Once the virus gets into the CNS you can expect symptoms such as paralysis, hydrophobia (fear of water), confusion, hallucination, anxiety, and insomnia. Once these signs appear, it's probably too late for you to receive the post exposure vaccine (the vaccine given to victims immediately after they are bitten).

If you see any mammal behaving in a way not true to its nature, run away. I mean nocturnal animals active during the day, shy animals approaching humans. The reason that bats infect people is that some twit says "ooh, look a bat - let's go pick it up" whereas, raccoons will actually attack. The vaccines are no longer a painful series in the stomach - they are now a painful series in the butt.

Hi. I recently read that the current US federal budget predicts the US debt to GDP ratio will reach over 70% in 2011 and about 80% by 2020. This analysis assumes fairly strong economic growth. The question that springs to mind is, if a budget surplus can't be achieved during a ten year period of growth, when can it?

Steven.

I would be interested in a link to look at to see what is really being said. There is so much 'mushy' use of language wrt budget deficit vs national debt, I like to see what underlies the conclusions.

Serously....in our country, rabies was believed to be in nature with the dogs, if u get bitten by a dog... it means you got rabies. they dont believe that rabies is a virus which they got from other infected animal. they believe that rabies exist in every dogs even in new born puppy unexposed to any animal... puppies are believed to contain more rabies than adult dogs.

So your country believes wrongly. Rabies is an old, old virus called Lyssavirus. It is one of 6 members of that family. The word 'rabies' itself is a Sanskrit word (meaning something like 'to do violence') noted around 3000 BCE. Since Sanskrit is considered the first written language, it is possible that rabies is as old as mankind (perhaps as old as mammals). It is worldwide and was believed to have come the the New World across the Bering Strait 50,000 years ago with mankind's migrations so Rabies is closely related to human activity.

The French word rabies is le rage (leh rahg); obvious where the name comes from.

My first full month of employment - no more time to game but much more money. Mas a menos - asi asi

Heh,heh - there are already self-repairing surfaces. The robots that come for you might not look like what you expect:
spot,
love-doll,
living in your body,
in the air,

we are all doomed

Finally! Congratulations are in order!

Hope the job pays enough for you to survive on.

It might even be a career - I am working for the Department of Treasury; starts at GS 5 and every year (2080 hours), I get a bump until I hit GS 8. Previous government experience counts so I might actually hit GS 8 after I get past my probationary period. It ain't much but it is better than 18 months of unemployment and a lot less that I was making in 1999

Time to tweak your paranoia again - this time at panopticlick. The Electronic Freedom Foundation wanted to know how easy it would be to identify you with supposedly non-PII. Just visiting any site provided a lot of data that can be used to 'fingerprint' you.

Within our dataset of several hundred thousand visitors, only one in 1,033 browsers have the same fingerprint as yours.

Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys 10.01 bits of identifying information.

I believe that the word you meant is 'eve' as in the night before rather than eave as in the edge of the roof.

In the whole "Is this word really used" debate no one brought up its use in Organic Chemistry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauche_effect). Scores of college sophomores are introduced to it and they don't even know how lucky they are.

@GrimJack, I always find it fun to pronounce adroit as English. It feels like I'm rebelling against that French class feeling. Now if only I can get that gow-chee pronunciation to catch on.

Don't you just love the French!? If you are clumsy and socially awkward, you are left but if you speak well and move gracefully, you are right. I don't think anyone who speak English/American pronounces 'adroit' properly (er, Frenchly); nor would anyone even understand what they meant if they did.

Too-shay is wrong it should be pronounced toosh - so you can keep up the rebellion.

I got a job - cuts back on my gaming and posting.

All y'all understand that the word 'gauche' is French for left, right? Like the Latin from which French (d)evolved, it is anti-left-handed - sinister is Latin for left.

Here is fun experiment to try:
the next time you see someone look at their watch for the time - ask them what time it is and they will look at their watch even though they just did.

New York cut prime steak from free-range cow - of the 40 pound only these steaks and a couple of t-bones left (we did trade some for Muscovy duck with some farmer friends). Bourbon and coke coming up.

I sometimes use a noun, a color, and a number that I can see from where I sit then add a *.

When I was part of a operations team that had to change passwords monthly and keep the team around the world up to date, we used a set of 5 volumes of sniglets and added a number. We could freely pass around the password because the reference would be something like 6,22,1 which meant the volume 6, page 22, word 1. Unless you knew what the source was you could not get to it easily and yet, they were easily remembered.

I am pretty sure that I asked a question before this post but....

Wrong. The constitution prohibits the government from forcing anyone to adhere to a specific religion, nothing more or less.
It's a perversion of the constitution (which was written by devout Christians based on Christian values and infused with them all over) to claim nothing the government does can endorse any religion or be based on religious principles, as long as that action doesn't force people to adopt that religion as their own.

Still wrong - in fact wrongity-wrong-wrong. The founding fathers were theists some of whom were christian.

see

Guess what kids, there is no secret whatsoever, no conspiracy, no nothing.
The manufacturer uses references to bible sections as part of their serial numbers, nothing more or less.

DoD should get the best possible gear for their people irrespective of what some atheists and muslims think.
In fact, as we're fighting a lot of muslims right now, pissing them off might be a good idea and having God (if he exists, I keep my options open) on our side even more so.

Wrong on all counts.
It was not part of their serial numbers; it was specifically put on their products as a form of evangilism.
Atheists and Muslims are not the only non-xtians - right, you are saying that all Muslims are against us so we might as well piss off all Muslims, atheists, Hindis, Jews, etc.
So this Christ dude who is all peace love is also about killing?? That is pretty screwed thinking.
This god guy - why does he want us to kill in his name?

HEY GUYS
I am an Indian...so listening to some good Bollywood music

Links please!!

Here is what I am listening to now

Actually, I did not see that - it just popped up on my NEW list so I posted - that is what ADD does for you

I probably got about a 7 - but I have ADD, many of the questions could be affected by ADD:
3.
maybe 10
11
13
14

I actually lost a lot of girlfriends because, if they weren't right there, I would forget them (er, sort of, kind of - well okay, I was bimbo).

Most people are self-delusional and dishonest even to themselves, which is why such tests should never be done based solely on yes/no statements made by the person being tested.
This is especially true of psychopaths.

I don't want to gross anyone out but there is a question that separates the liars from the truthtellers and is supposed to work every time. I actually don't even like thinking about the question! so maybe I should just shut up now.

11.

There's a customer who comes into the shop i work at who's always swearing at people, even went up to the cashier and said "i don't want to be served by you you're a fucking idiot, fuck off" and to another "the police are after you, they've bugged your phone. I live next to Inspector *some name* and they've bugged you and David Beckam is going to get killed". Made a customer cry today after they offered to let them go infront and they replied along the lines off fuck off.

People reckon she's shizophrenic

Glad to see your back (snicker)

Welcome back; I have taken you out of my sh*tcan, the next mention of whatshername and you are back in it (grin).

Since a lot of wars are fought because of religious beliefs, it makes sense to apply a little religion to the weapons used.

Er, that is not really the point but it is true that religion is the excuse many use to go to war.

I am about to eat some bbq pork ribs (oven style) and drinking a bourbon and coke.

Has anybody seen that 2012 movie?

I imagine that the trailer was the best part of the movie. The physics sucked - no downdraft; when the whole world is falling apart, where are you going to land a plane?

sigh

So, picture this man, on his stomach, each hand and leg hand-cuffed to the for posts of the bed, on his back is a woman in leather, spiked heels, cat-o-nine-tails flailing while she jumps up and down on him - and he says

"so this is love!"

Well, how about Tom L, then?

Why?

Er, see this

Trijicon has a HUGE civilian market. It might sting a little bit to lose a military contract but it is, by no stretch of the imagination, anything close to a coup de grâce.

Yeah but ... they aren't stupid. They want gov contracts and probably do not want to produce 2 different products.

They are. You can start a non-government company, such as Trijicon or EOTech, produce high quality optics such as ACOGs, print whatever you want on every single product you make, compete fairly against other businesses in the same market sector for a government contract based upon the merits of said product, and win the contract and you'll have achieved exactly what you've described above...and what Trijicog did.

The Marines have a different perspective - they are probably going to find another provider - they really don't like stuff that throws off the mission. That company can keep its christ-centric crap, but if the US armed forces stop buying their crap who they going to sell it to?

Then there is Weird Al

We are not giving up anything -- you can't give up something you never had in the first place. I'd choose sex anytime over immortality via cloning -- see Multiplicity

That was a metaphorical 'we' - animals and/or multi-cellular creatures that reproduce by binary fission are essentially immortal (barring predation). Once life-forms started having sex and/or reproducing using the binary sexual differentiation, then death was inevitable (including predation). That was a binary choice, an either/or 'choice' procreate by fission = immortality; procreate via sex and death in inevitable.
Parthenogenesis will make men obsolete (the 'y' chromosome is just a broken 'X' anyway, heh,heh) - and may restore immortality.

Who can beat EAP and Tim Burton? What a team - go Vincent

Not really music but music to my ears

That reminds me - star fish. Their produced the same way clones are. So yea clones would be exactly like starfish making them just as part of evolution as us humans are. So I can see why human clones would have exactly the same rights as humans because they are still part of the same evolutionary process. Thanks. That word asexual reminded me a few things from biology where a organism can reproduce by splitting or in this case cloning.

Yes - it reminds me that we gave up immortality to have sex - worth it?

Oh dear, from the English quater!
There are two or more type of christianity, one is the meek and mild non political religion in hte clouds type.
The opther,is like the picture of Jesus using a whip to dirive the moneylenders out of the temple.
Perhaps the modern moneylenders need driving outof the temple of wall street!
Another final thought: The buddah when asked by a greving mother what to do told, her to go and find another mother who had nothing to grieve about (we all have lost ones). such a journey through Haiti weighs heavy .. yeah.
Perhaps this thread has met its end
M

What does this say about the Mega-churches having ATMs in their buildings? Money-lenders? Whips?

There is no such thing as "separation of church and state". The US constitution just prevents the US government from passing certain kinds of laws concerning religion, it does not prevent it from practicing a religion. And the US government has passed a few laws governing religion, such as tax laws. Indeed -- religion is actually sanctioned by Office of the Chaplain, United States House of Representatives

I agree; I was using a shorthand and misspoke. What I really believe is that if Christian biblical quotes are being imprinted on military hardware, then any other religious group that wishes to have quotes from their holy books should be offered the same access to government support for their religious views.

This usually can be translated as 'separation of church and state' in that if one particular religious belief is given preference by the government, it can be considered de facto to be supported by the state. Quite often, those who wish to have the government support their particular view of god/no god do not want any other view to be supported by the gov. This tends towards the government supporting no particular view rather than supporting all views.

I sorta disagree. My Definition - A clone is an organic product produced in a non natural way and without a god (like a machine but organic).

"Cloning in biology is the process of producing populations of genetically-identical individuals that occurs in nature when organisms such as bacteria, insects or plants reproduce asexually. Cloning in biotechnology refers to processes used to create copies of DNA fragments (molecular cloning), cells (cell cloning), or organisms. The term also refers to the production of multiple copies of a product such as digital media or software." Twins are genetically-identical individuals and therefore fit the definition of clones.

Your belief or your feelings about what you want the 'clone' to mean is valueless - we communicate by using words as they are commonly defined. There is no communication if you use your own randomly created definition of words.