Comment Re:1.8 (Score 3, Interesting) 91
I'd mod you up if you had said Russia, seeing as we now pay them ~63 million per astronaut we send.
Especially if people keep supporting inefficient land usage, such as ethanol production and "organic" farming.
Personally I don't care that organic food is organic, but I do think it tastes better due to not having been shipped for a week and a half from a country on a different continent.
I get your point, but I think you romanticize it too much. It's not like they are going over a trench in WW1 to save the man beside them, knowing for a fact that, short of some miracle, they will die. Astronaut death rate is only about 7.5% (34 deaths per 450 visitors to space)-- and I imagine it is only getting safer. They become astronauts because the thought of going into space is sweet, it pays lots of money, gives you lots of glory, and in some case, lots of fame. Astronauts compete with many other men to be one of the few to make it into space -- It's not like they do it because "Someone has to do it! And I will do it for humanity!" or something like that. You make it seem as though they are doing something that everyone else is too scared too do. No, they actually competed and won the opportunity into travel into space.
Maybe, a few of them hold the attitude of doing the job as a dangerous and selfless act for the good of humanity, but they are few and far between. Most of them as kids watched the first man step on the moon and spent the rest of their lives wanting to follow in his footsteps (no pun intended). I don't think the dangers are really part of their consideration -- just excitement and the prospect of a childhood dream and once-in a lifetime experience being fulfilled.
If the tax returns are fake, then they don't influence the election. If they are real, they only influence the election by giving voters more information on which to vote. I don't really see the problem here, or why is necessitates a different response than when the same thing happens to Joe Schmoe. My two cents.
In my opinion, the dumbest thing that has happened in this thread thus far is someone comparing this (a third party claiming they hacked Romney's tax returns off of a laptop) to Watergate (The president and the republican party breaking and entering into the other Democratic party's HQ). They are a bit different.
Why do folks live there? Schools. To have their kids go to a better school.
Otherwise stated as "schools without any blacks or hispanics".
No, otherwise stated as "schools located in areas that have a large [property tax]:[population] ratio. You can try to make this a racial thing, but in reality it's a monetary thing. It just so happens that in the US if you are poor you are more likely to be non-white. Many of he problems people associate with non-white people in the US are actually problems associated with poverty.
Money for schools comes primarily from property taxes. If you have big, expensive houses with big yards, and a relatively low population, the schools in the area are going to have plenty of funding. If you pack tons of people on welfare into the same area, guess what? There isn't going to be money to adequately fund schools in the area.
As a person who has played competitive Counter-Strike (the original, not the Source remake) for about ten yen years, i have to laugh every time I read something like, "either to win in a dirty way (campers)." I wasn't aware that "camping" was dirty play? So because when YOU'RE running around the map and YOU are too lazy to check corners and YOU assume no one is there, I am somehow a "dirty" player? Laughable. It's the same response I have to people who complain about the AWP (sniper rifle). It's part of the game, if you don't like it choose a different genre or server. The sniper isn't "unbalanced" just because you as an individual are too inexperienced of a player to know how to tactically deal with. That's part of getting better at the game.
You might as well say, "I like Chess, but I get annoyed by dirty players who use their bishops to infiltrate my front line and check mate me in 15 moves." You're less skilled so you complain about the tactics being used to kill you.
If you're walking in a US neighborhood that a patrolling police officer thinks you look out of place in, he will stop and talk to you and he will likely demand identification. If you really want to you can try to explain to the officer why you don't need to, but you're most likely going to get into a drawn out argument with a police officer. this is how 'Merica works.
"You don't need papers," my ass.
Multiple times the thought to do this has occurred to me, but I don't know how you'd prove your innocence once shit hit the fan. I've thought about sending a letter to myself detailing the plan, only to be opened in the event that I am arrested/accused of a conspiracy to commit murder/terrorism, but how would you prove that you hadn't done that as a safety measure in case someone caught you carrying out your legitimate terrorist conspiracy? "Oh, umm.... I was just trying to see if the government is monitoring people, I don't actually want to kill anyone. I have a letter right here saying so. See.....? You can let me go now."
That being said, I do assume that Facebook automatically scans every chat for keywords and sends the filtered message(s) over to someone for closer inspection. I really, really want to know if this is the case, but I also don't want to royally fuck up my life. I only have one, you know -- and I do care about it. The only way I'd ever do something like this is if I had the backing of an organization like the ACLU and it was uber-well documented. I think that'd be the only way to do it and sufficiently cover your ass. The government doesn't like being embarrassed.
"I've seen it. It's rubbish." -- Marvin the Paranoid Android
