"I don't even have to go on about all the examples of the Tea Party's racism and immigrant hate, or gun love."

Yes, yes you do. Please provide concrete video, audio, or pictoral evidence of Tea Party racism. I've only heard circular arguments of 'the tea party is racist because the media says it's racist because people have told them it's racist (because they heard on the news it's racist).' The typical "proof" is the shouting of racial epithets and the spitting on of a member of the CBC, but many (many) videos have shown that no racial epithets were shouted, the spitting was accidental from some guy yelling (you can clearly see this in the videos), not him spitting a loogey.

Hell, you could make some $$$, as far as I know, Andrew Breitbart is still offering $10k for verifiable proof of racism at Tea Party rallies.

And before you go all 'but the tea parties are all made up of whites!'...OWS has disproportionate racial representation of white protesters, the tea party rallies tend to be equal to the overall racial makeup of the general population. Again, look at the videos.

So please, provide some physical evidence for your assertion.

Nah, I can't speak for USAFA, but USNA is a very, very good engineering school (ABET accredited, no less). I majored in Aero/Astro, and am currently working on my masters in Astro Engineering at NPS, which is also a very well known and regarded engineering graduate school. By trade I drive submarines around, but my interests, clearly, are in space...so there is latitude to get an excellent education at a price that is hard to beat (if you don't mind signing away years of your life) in the subject you like. And best of all you'll be very attractive to companies due to your military background and the connections you've made.

But you do sign away years of your life...

As an aside, I left UCSD to enlist in the navy with no intention of going to the Naval Academy. So there are alternate routes to get in if you really decide you want to go.

Here's a thought experiment for you.

How many innocent people have we killed? How many innocent people have terrorists killed? By killing terrorists will we see a net reduction in the number of innocent people killed?

I submit to you that terrorists have killed a far, far larger number of people than we have, and that NOT killing terrorists would result in a higher death rate than what we see now. To put it more generally: through inaction, we would be killing more innocent people than we currently are through action.

Yeah, if she had left out the last sentence, I would say that GP left the post intentionally vague to whore some karma from both sides.

We are already seeing increases in violent storms and flooding and heat waves, and that costs money and lives.

Fail, you are confusing weather with climate, a common fallacy. Try again.

+5, Insightful

To paraphrase from THHGTTG, the Earth is a mind-bogglingly big place. In the modern age of jet travel people may forget that. There is a LOT of mass associated with our little planet, and to assume that we have an effect on it's long-term rhythms really smacks of a modern day 'geocentric-view'. People had models that proved, PROVED that geocentrism was correct, and the science had been settled for over a thousand years. All scientists agreed on that point.

It may turn out that anthropogenic climate change is true, but it may also turn out that we just have faulty models and poor data. Occam's razor would favor the latter over the former due to the sheer complexity of the system.

Insightful? Bah. Giving big numbers is nothing without something to compare them to. What is the total mass of the atmosphere? about 5 quadrillion tons (look it up). What percent of 5 quadrillion tons is 10 gigatons? I get .0002%. So the number the parent spewed out may look big, but in context it is really, really tiny...some would say insignificant?

*Some* scientists have concluded that man is responsible for global warming. There is not a general consensus, the science is not settled.

However, if do you believe that humans are the cause of climate change (global warming, btw, went out of style years ago), feel free to do your part of reducing your "carbon footprint" and saving the planet by killing yourself. Thanks.

Well, except for the fact that spending on the wars have been far, far outpaced by spending on entitlements and growth of government. Although the numerical number has risen, the fraction of GDP that is used by the military has been fairly constant since the fall of the USSR. So cutting taxes during WWII would have directly impacted the war effort. Cutting taxes now would have a greater impact on social programs...which no one in the political class wants to touch so they try and push it off on to the DoD which is unpalatable to the majority of the population (which you can derive from the fact that if such cuts were wanted by the general population, congress would vote for them with the knowledge that they would get reelected. Since congress does not want to cut the military budget, it implies that there are enough districts out there who would not reelect a congressman who voted for such cuts that those bills fail).

No logic that I know of dictates your flow chart. You're assuming that the person doing the button pushing has a very weak moral standard, and just because he can't see the whites of their eyes he won't have the moral fortitude to realize what he's doing and the implications thereof.

I would submit that you are projecting your lack of moral strength onto the military as a whole, and simply are ignorant of how it trains and operates. To expound: you are saying that if you were in a position to push a button and kill a city then you would ignore the impact of your actions. Thus, it must be the same for everyone.

I will admit that we do have a few bad apples (any large population will have outliers). But to use those as a basis to excoriate us as a whole...my friend, you are sorely mistaken.

No, the last time the USA was attacked "on own territory" was 11 Sep, 2001. Or would you consider flying airplanes into the world trade center and the pentagon (essentially the symbols of US economic and military might) not a real "attack"? If not, where do you draw the line? Remember, Pearl Harbor was essentially a surprise attack which was contrary to the "law of armed conflict" at the time. The Japanese were supposed to declare war with the US prior to the event, but the way it turned out was essentially no different than how the US was attacked by Muslim Extremists in '01.

I have no problem bombing someone else in a far off land if it keeps me safe here. And it has worked...how many terrorist attacks have there been on US soil in the past decade?

Except US bases are US Gov't property, so US laws do apply. Your argument is the basis for extraordinary rendition in foreign countries, but that's another bowl of wax. We keep prisoners in gitmo for NIMBY concerns (not in my backyard). After all, do you want a bunch of extremely dangerous potential terrorists near your family? No one else does either, that's why there was such a big outcry back in '09 and one of the big reasons gitmo still hasn't been closed, despite all of the campaign promises.

Radioactive iodine is bad because it collects in your thyroid. When people talk about radiation tablets, all that is is concentrated non-radioactive iodine. The idea being that you can fill your thyroid up with that stuff, leaving no room for radioactive iodine to collect there. The big thing with plutonium and uranium is that they tend to emit alpha particles when they decay (since they are so big). If you inhale either of these, then they'll be in your body a very long time, bombarding sensitive tissue with helium nuclei sans electrons...highly charged, "massive" particles that don't do good things to cells. The good news is that since alpha particles are highly charged, the outer layer of dead skin tends to stop them, so external contamination isn't so much of an issue.

IIRC, rather than getting collected in the thyroid like iodine, cesium tends to go throughout the body. IANAChemist, but I think it forms a soluble solution in water, so that may be why it's considered the 'greatest concern'...if it contaminates the water supply, suddenly a lot more people get internal exposure. Nothing deadly unless there's a LOT of cesium, but most people don't seem to understand that.

In the midst of reading your comment, I had a beer induced epiphany regarding your engineering thing: "Ah, what? There are plenty of folk I know who were in an engineer program that are doing something totally unrelated after the fact."

Well, first things first, calling them kids is a little ridiculous, they are grown adults and responsible for their actions at this point.

By getting an engineering degree, they have more of an opportunity to enter an engineering field, though they may not due to availability or whatever. An English major could possibly snag an engineering job, but it would be much, much harder. The point is, the engineering degree provides an opportunity, whether the receiver is able to take advantage of it or not. Thus, it may possibly be fair to charge them more for it.

I disagree. Education, specifically higher education, should be run as a business. By implementing this, we could see fewer STEM graduates. The supply of STEM-trained workers dwindles, so their salary improves which lures more people into those fields. If those majors are desperately needed in this country, then they will be paid better, which makes those fields more attractive, despite the higher initial costs.

Now, I agree that primary and secondary education should not be run as a business as they should be providing a baseline education for everyone that will allow those who finish the necessary skills to be a productive citizen. Post-secondary education involves grown adults learning advanced topics to give them a head start in specific areas when they finally enter the workforce. Let those adults decide for themselves where they are best used, based on current market conditions and educational costs.