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Comment At the end of the day (Score 2, Insightful) 626

Ignorance is the most expensive commodity in the USA today. And we pay for that ignorance on a daily basis.

Hopefully Ken has been able to push the frontiers of ignorance back just a little. Sometimes it requires a jolt to get that moment moving and I think that both Ken and Karen have learned a lot about jumping to conclusions. Here's hoping that Karen will now become an ally to Ken and his project.

Comment Re:No surprise (Score 1) 1601

If anyone is conservative, it's the European Union whose member states ban such things, limit speech, and limit travel.

That's not conservative, that's authoritarian.

In the USA conservatism gravitates toward more power to the individual and less to the government, especially the federal government.

Comment Re:No surprise (Score 2, Insightful) 1601

This is a good example of how journalists should be providing
a lot of useful information, so much so that there's enough
real information there to allow the audience to make up their
own mind and counteract whatever bias might be obvious in those
presenting it.

Exactly. Had the media been doing their constitutional duty rather than merely cheerleading the outcome during the primaries would have been decidedly different for both parties. For McCain the cheerleading had been going on since 2000 and for Obama since his convention speech in 2004. But since the media has gravitated toward large top-down government, these are the candidates they promote, and why there really was no choice between the major party candidates in this election.

Comment Model rockets? (Score 1) 785

No one else got into model rockets? I was introduced to them at age ten and couldn't get enough. For about five years they were my complete and total passion. It sucked when I'd lose one, though.

My painting skills stank since I didn't have the patience for the detail. Now I would understand the joy of the construction process, but then I wanted to see them fly and put them together a bit too quickly quite often. A new Estes catalog would hold my interest for weeks on end.

Comment Re:Erector set! (Score 1) 785

Oh yeah, I had the electric motor that came with a bum connection. It finally quit and I got a second unit from the company. So I took the motor out of the first unit and would couple them together to get more than the standard three speeds. I had super slow or super fast or sometimes somewhere in between. I also had the motor for the tinker toy set and it was more finicky.

We also had race car sets and board games and card games along with all manner of other stuff now since forgotten.

Comment Re:Missing option (Score 2, Insightful) 785

Ah yes, I practically lived in the sand pile as a kid. I can't call it a sandbox as it was an old tractor tire with a pile of sand in it. How I never got bit by a spider or something, I'll never know!

The advantage of growing up on a farm is that the possibilities are endless with all sorts of things laying around. I tinkered with old radios I found, darn I wish now that I'd kept them, which was probably partly responsible for my ham radio interest and a present career in telecom.

Comment Erector set! (Score 2, Insightful) 785

I had them all except Capsela and Construx. The Erector set was clearly my favorite as with using steel and nuts and bolts things didn't fall apart. Lego would pop apart and Tinker Toy pieces would jam or be too loose.

Lincoln Logs were cool, though. I built plenty of simple houses as a kid. As I got older I started playing with a hand saw, hammer, and nails and then graduated to a welder and gas torch.

Those construction toys led me to all sorts of things and are among the best things my folks ever got me for Christmas gifts.

The Media

Olympic Opening Ceremony Fireworks Were (Partly) Faked 488

A complete newb writes "London's Telegraph newspaper reports that some of the fireworks which appeared over Beijing during the television broadcast of the Olympic Opening Ceremony were actually computer generated. But — hold on — it's not necessarily as bad as you think. The faked fireworks were actually set-off at the stadium, but because of potential dangers in filming the display live from a helicopter, viewers at home were shown a pre-recorded, computer-generated shot." To me, the reasoning behind the faked display is no consolation or excuse — it seems hard to swallow that NBC was unaware of this televised deception. I'm glad that it was good-naturedly "revealed" this weekend (according to that Telegraph article), but it's disheartening that such a large crowd can watch (in person, and around the world) such a display and have no reason to realize they've been duped. What about when weightier events are at issue? There's also a slightly more detailed story at sky.com.
It's funny.  Laugh.

Journal Journal: Beauty?

Meta moderating does have its own reward as evidenced: by this thread that devolved into a short commentary on a certain woman's eyebrows.

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