Russia doesn't want to establish a moon base, but they're obligated to step up and protect all the Russian speakers on the moon. Moreover the moon is historically Russian, not only did a recent referendum establish that 98.3% of the moon wants to join Russia, but the moon is so close that on a clear night you can actually see it from Moscow!!
Lets just see how well those post-apocalyptic bands of cannibals can find their way between supply caches without someone who knows how to perform an A* search!!
I don't see a problem.
As long as the people aren't fed on wild fish it should be sustainable.
I think the lack of party discipline is the worst feature of the American system. In the Canadian system Michelle Bachmann, Ted Cruize, and Jim Inhofe would just be random backbenchers no one listens to. But in the US because there's no discipline each of them has a voice on the national stage.
MPs with lots of independence means political power goes local, instead of debating things on the national stage with everyone it's debated by hyper-partisans because those are the only people obsessive enough to get involved in politics at the local level. Moreover you get drawn into a lot of dumb symbolic stuff because there's not enough time to debunk all the dumb symbolism.
In the Canadian system nuanced debate happens inside the party, when they think they have the best argument they take it public and now the public has just a handful of positions to evaluate. I think a lack of discipline (and that includes an elected senate) is a horrible idea because it makes our political debate into the cacophony the Americans are dealing with.
Ideally the Constitutional Monarch should have just slightly more power. Currently in Canada the Governor General does whatever the PM tells him to do, right or wrong. This has resulted in Harper proroguing Parliament when the shit was about to hit the fan a couple of times including once when he's government was going to lose a vote of confidence the next day, then he went on about how it wasn't democratic if the opposition parties ganged up on him and formed a coalition government like the UK and Australia currently have. A government consists of which ever part[y][ies] can pass a budget and if none can then Parliament is dissolved and there are elections. The voters get pissed off if this happens too often.
That prorogue situation was a bit of a mess, the Conservatives had just won the election (as a minority) and introduced a controversial election funding bill they hadn't discussed during the campaign. But the voters understand that the minority party forms government, giving the voters a coalition government they didn't expect isn't really Democratic. I think the proper thing would have been to say withdraw the the bill or we'll defeat it and force another election and let the voters decide whose fault it is.
I think the governor general made the right call, the coalition didn't even last till the conclusion of the prorogue.
I've thought of that before, you might end up with rule by bureaucrats but otherwise I think it works pretty well, other than the fact that no legislative body would ever implement it.
Given modern constraints I think constitutional monarchies are the way to go, not because the monarch is useful, but because the monarch takes the "executive" role and all the power ends up in parliament where voters can pay attention.
The problem with the US is power is too distributed. 538 congress critters each with their own agenda, there's too much information to make an informed decision and it's too easy for lobbyists to overpower individual politicians.
I think Canada has about as good a system as you can reasonably get because the parties are so strong. They can stand up to lobbyists or pundits when they think it's in their own best interest (which usually corresponds to what that think is good for the country too). And the opposition can coordinate their attacks a lot more effectively. There's a Tea Party element in the Conservatives but Harper keeps it under wraps. They still introduce some bad legislation like this, but bad bills have been defeated in the past.
But here's the thing. If I pull you over and you have one of our public servant honor tags, you're still getting a ticket for whatever I pulled you over for. In fact, I am less likely to let you go, because of the appearance of impropriety created by these tags. I get a lot more "by the book" when someone starts flashing special tags and membership cards at me.
Is that just you or your department in general? For you at least I buy your explanation, but my question is, considering all the appearance trouble with the tags, if they aren't for nefarious purposes then what are they for?
It's the cops extorting money. It's not just speeding. This creates the appearance that, if you do not buy the membership, you'll be stopped and shown absolutely no mercy, and may even have charges trumped up against you - or otherwise be punished.
This is tantamount to soliciting bribes.
Soliciting bribes maybe, they're not accepting the money personally.
And unless cops go around advising motorists to buy the membership I don't see how it can be extortion, and I don't think the idea that if you don't have a membership "you'll be stopped and shown absolutely no mercy, and may even have charges trumped up against you - or otherwise be punished" is particularly compelling. I'd assume without a card they'd carry out their duties as usual (as good or bad as they usually are).
The cops are obviously doing something very wrong and people should be facing whatever discipline or legal repercussions it takes to make it stop, but I'm not sure what the exact charges are.
Honestly I was being slightly lazy, taking the only per capita figure in the article.
I'll say I'm a bit suspicious how the figures vanish for the last several years until 2003 when Singapore's Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong told the BBC in September 2003 that he believed there were "in the region of about 70 to 80" hangings in 2003. Two days later he retracted his statement, saying the number was in fact ten.
Though I admit it would be very hard for them to hide executions (and there doesn't appear any evidence they did other than that misquote)
Best to be an expert cross-dresser who can choose the safest gender for the occasion.
Singapore has 13.8 executions per 100,000, which is more than the 12.5 murders per 100,000 in Africa (though I don't know the execution rate in Africa).
Sure the executed Singaporeans have (generally) broken the law, but how many murder victims are killed because they're involved with crime? And if you can blame someone for getting caught up with a gang that pressures them to commit crime then why can't you blame someone for remaining with a violent spouse who might harm them?
I'm not sure I'd feel much safer there after all.
Because some states released their numbers. If you actually RTFA you would have noticed that 21 states +DC which released enrollment numbers averaged about about a 30-50% increase in the last month. Doing the math, the other 29 states which did not release numbers would have had to average a 90% increase in order to hit 7.1 million.
So, there might something be wrong with IBD's math, there might be innocuous reasons which states released numbers, or there might be something fishy with the 7.1 million supposed signups which might conflict with your ideology.
Which begs the question of what's the difference between the 21 states releasing numbers and the 29 that didn't. Well 14 of the 21 states were running state exchanges. With all the hype about the federal exchange you'd expect the state exchanges to get a smaller deadline bump (they either had people sign up early or more people miss the deadline).
As for the 7 remaining states. For the most part they're probably Republican (that's why they didn't set up state exchanges), so they might have released their numbers specifically because they were underwhelming and they were trying to show their state didn't want ObamaCare anyways.
Are you self-aware enough to admit that you are doing the exact same thing? You have decided that a book you have not read is false, and so you accept without question evidence of that falsehood. Any evidence that supports the Mormon narrative you dismiss, without examining it, as the work of apologists. Yet, if as you say, atheists, other Christians, Muslims, etc., become convinced of the Book of Mormon, would they not then become apologists, and in your view lose all credibility? What source could convince you, then?
A false equivalency, the bible contains many historical claims you can believe without being a christian. Many atheists believe there is a historical Jesus who was crucified, or that some of the historical events did happen. They don't believe Jesus is the son of God.
To believe Joseph Smith found some ancient gold plates and a medieval sword at a site in the US I wouldn't have to believe they were the work of a prophet, or he saw an angel. I could simply believe he was a religious fanatic who stumbled across an archaeological site. The Book of Abraham could exist,, be a proper translation, and simply be some ancient belief.
There are lots of ancient religious sects no one believes, a pre-viking European migration involving another religious sect doesn't mean we would believe that religion either. So atheists could believe those claims from the Book of Mormon without believing in the religion itself, none do which suggests that the evidence is quite poor.
have a couple of missionaries come by your house with a Book of Mormon, read it, and try the experiment contained in its very own pages. (What have you got to lose?) If you then learn that the book is its own best evidence, then it follows that Joseph Smith was the prophet he claims to be, because good fruit does not come from a poisoned tree. Everything else is just window dressing.
But if there is evidence besides the Book of Mormon then the Book of Mormon shouldn't be necessary.
Its slightly harder to believe that someone could record the complete narration of such a film without getting some idea of what it was about - or at least getting suspicious. Nor does it pass the plausibility test that the makers would go to the time, expense or legal risk* of large-scale manipulation when there are plenty of real life Troy McLures out there would will read out whatever the hell they were handed if they needed money or lizards.
You seem to think she watch watching the film and narrating at the same time. But I suspect it's pretty common to say "here's a bunch of things we want to record you saying and here's the context", she might not have seen any clips nor even expected to watch the final product. She probably thought she knew what it was about, they probably gave her the context and backstory for every line, but if it was a lie and she trusted them it would be pretty trivial for them to get her to say incriminating stuff.
They could probably even get her to say something nice about geocentrism if they framed it right, ie "Ok, we're talking about the origins of astronomy when they first got the idea of planetary bodies, so we want you to read 'The geocentric model of the universe answered many questions that had baffled philosophers for ages'"
That sounds like it could be a credible statement, but can obviously be used in a very different context.
As for the "Troy McLures", they certainly exist, but they don't have credibility. The subset of actors who do narrations and have decent geek cred isn't huge. And it doesn't take a genius to realize that appearing in one of those things would cost them far more than the measly amount of money they'd make.
Like lots of former Trek actors Mulgrew still does a lot of genre work, you think she's jeopardize her career so for a tiny paycheck from a geocentrist documentary? Her claim that she was deceived is far more credible than the idea she was willing to destroy her reputation for this documentary.
That's a little harsh. Lawrence Krauss was also tricked into appearing in the documentary, are you going to claim he's stupid as well?
It's not like she was writing scripts and part of the editing process. They gave her a list of lines, probably a few provocative trailer bits like "everything we think we know about the universe is wrong" which might be not ridiculous if you're talking about dark energy or something (they got the physicists to say similar things) and add a bunch of innocuous introductions and such. You don't even need to cut and paste her words together, just change the context they're delivered in and she sounds like she's endorsing crackpot loony stuff.
Maybe she could have asked around to figure out more about the people involved, but what reason would she have for thinking that the whole thing was a giant conspiracy?
Top Ten Things Overheard At The ANSI C Draft Committee Meetings: (5) All right, who's the wiseguy who stuck this trigraph stuff in here?
