I also mulled laying off gambling before I went broke.

Therefore I am, morally speaking, thin and rich.

Which makes sense. Sea level rise in the last 50 years has amounted to about 4 inches, probably not enough to make drains run backwards.

The way sea level rise will make itself known isn't through changes in day to day phenomena, but in exceptional phenomena like storm surge flooding. This is a place where inches may well matter. People plan around concepts like a "ten year flood" or a "hundred year flood", and this creates a sharp line on the map where there is no sharp line in reality. Depending where on the domain of the bell curve their chosen planning horizon is, a few inches could turn a ten year flood into a five year flood, which has immense practical implications.

When people way that there is nothing intrinsically worse about a globe that's four degrees hotter they're right. But *change* that undermines human plans represents a big challenge. Change also represents a big challenge to species populations that can't relocate on the timescale of change.

She can't hear reality over the roar of the hundred million dollars she was paid for halving the shareholder value of HP. Clearly she isn't deluded; she just lives in an alternate reality from the rest of us.

Not precisely correct from an anatomical standpoint. The rocks in question are superior to the c1 vertebra.

i stopped reading there

russia has no right to invade a sovereign country. do you understand? of course they have a "reason." do you have a functioning brain? can you see through their bullshit?

russia meddled in an *internal* georgian dispute that occurred within the internationally recognized borders of georgia. then it divided the country into a "new" bullshit country abkhazia

is it ok if the usa invades the mexican district of sonora and announces that it is a new country? why can the usa do this? uhhh... drug smuggling. yeah, that's our reason. perfectly good reason, totally understandable, right moron?

what was russia's reaons for invading georgia? guess what: it has no fucking right to invade and divide a sovereign country on those hopped reasons. do you understand what sovereignty is?

can the american fbi go into canada and arrest people? no? why not. can the us army occupy ontario? why not? because canada is a sovereign country, you dumb fuck

why do you think it's perfectly normal and ok for russia to invade and divide it's smaller neighbors? it's not normal. it's not acceptable

no country, anywhere in the world, does what russia did to georgia and ukraine without consequences. not south africa and mozambique. not china and vietnam. not brazil and uruguay. countries do not invade other sovereign countries and that's just normal and fine. do you understand?

if you do, continue speaking on this topic. but if you continue to assert russia invading and dividing georgia and ukraine is "reasonable" then you do not understand what the fuck sovereignty means and are therefore announcing yourself as a complete moron or a propagandized idiot on this topic and you should shut up

if you know your history, the area is ottoman, tatar, lithuanian, polish...

history can be used to justify any ignorant adventurist shit you can devise

what's actually important is the fucking borders of a fucking sovereign nation, and that modern states respect that

you didn't notice the imperial bullshit russia did on georgia in 2008?

russia is doing imperialism 1850 style. it needs to be, and will be, punished for being a stinking pile of destabilizing shit because of insecure nationalism. oh glorious russia has fallen from historical highs, boo hoo. and it will fall further now

they call ukraine "new russia"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...

i suggest the usa call kamchatka "new alaska"

china can reclaim outer manchuria they lost to russia in the mid 1800s

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O...

fuck you russia, imperial bullying douchebag

we should not be doing any space program with these assholes, we should be shutting down programs

OK, when you put it like that it sounds pretty awesome. And delicious.

I'll bring the sauce, aloe vera and skin graft kit.

A study on anonymous hiring practices in France showed that anonymization resulted in fewer minority candidates getting hired. Their explanation is essentially that the companies who care enough about diversity to participate in this sort of study are already subtly biased in favor of minority candidates, and anonymization put a stop to it. Considering the amount of focus big tech companies are putting on diversity, there's a fair chance the same thing is happening here too.

I take it you don't use a charcoal barbecue

I'm not sure how you do it where you're from, but up here in the North we generally don't barbecue from 30 feet away.

Is anything legal in California these days?

Medical marijuana, gay marriage, conceal/carry.

Say you're not really pissed that fucking flamethrowers aren't legal there, are you? I don't know if you've gotten a look at your fellow man in the United States lately, but are these really people you want to be able to have flamethrowers? Geez, louise, there can't be more than maybe 1 in 100 that I think should be allowed to drive a car. Maybe 1 in 10 should be allowed to have shoelaces for chrissake.

Although I'm sure we can find someone reading this that believes "More flamethrowers = Less crime".

Having fun isn't necessarily stupid. Having fun with flamboyantly dangerous things isn't necessarily stupid. It's endangering unwilling bystanders that's stupid.

Some people like to build and shoot powerful crossbows, or even replicas of medieval siege weapons. These are extremely dangerous and useless things. The dangerous power of a trebuchet to throw an upright piano 150 yards is part of the charm.

But a trebuchet is something that takes certain amount of thought and sacrifice to obtain and use. This flamethrower thing is more like a powerful handgun. There's been a recent fad for ridiculously overpowered handguns, which pack superfluously fatal power into a convenient, affordable form factor. The recent brouhaha over "armor piercing" ammunition was a side effect of a manufacturer selling a cut-down semi-automatic carbine as a "handgun", even though if you look at videos of people using them they're obviously terrible as handguns. This raised the question of whether 5.56 NATO ammunition should be regulated as "handgun ammunition", and in the end I think the decision not to was reasonablee. These aren't cop-killing or military handguns. They're extremely dangerous toys designed to get your rocks off.

There are some who'd say that because these guns are dangerous and impractical they should be banned. But I don't agree. "Impractical" isn't the same as "useless" because getting your rocks off is a legitimate use for a thing. I think people should be able to enjoy their ridiculous firearms as long as they do it at some kind of appropriate range. I also think there's a real danger though from stupid people who will go plinking in the woods with the things like they were BB guns.

That's really the only problem I have with this flamethrower, whether it's gold, chrome, or gunmetal gray. Any idiot can buy one, but it'd take someone reasonably intelligent and determined to find a place where it can be used safely. I'm not against people buying them, but I am for coming down hard on people who use them where they're a danger or public nuisance.

yeah, i despise the plutocracy, the abuse of our political system by corporations, how wall street and bankers are allowed to get away with terrible crimes, etc.

but a bank is a fucking completely normal institution we all need. it just needs to be heavily regulated to function fairly

to call all banks evil and and all bankers evil just makes you out to be a complete moron

good luck with not getting robbed once people find out you stuff your money in your mattress

yes, i am familiar with this faulty line of reasoning

the simple response to your logical fallacy is: because grey areas exist doesn't mean black and white don't exist

it might not be possible to draw a hard line on behavior. but there is behavior which is clearly not in a grey area and clearly calls for a judgment against you

this pilot had clear signs of being untrustworthy to fly commercially. it's not fuzzy and unsure

if you don't believe me, wait until a few years when the first verdicts come down in this case. a judge/ jury will decide on his employer/ the govt fucking up. the facts as they appear now show a clear problem that should have precluded him from piloting any plane with people on board

- Mahatma Gandhi

i will not laugh at you, mr. scary insect politician man