SO you would go into a Laundromat and leave your clothes there unattended and popping in and out every so often to change machines?

Here is the deal, or at least how we like to do it in the US. We generally have a set of clothes not fit for every day social interaction but covers everything enough not to be indecent. We put those on and spend a day or a portion of the day doing laundry. But we don't just throw it in a basket and call it done, we fold things, hang things up, match pairs of socks and so on. Most of this can be done in the time it takes for the next load to be finish so you put in 5 hours, have about 4 loads done start to finish and then do whatever.

It seems like that in Europe, you would have to find something to do in between loads and that 5 hours would end up being 10 or more if you didn't have multiple machines.

It doesn't matter where you are. the point was the two are different and not the same- not where you are located at.

But if I have to go to that level of explanation, I do not think it is be possible to ever use logic or reality to change your mind. I guess we are done here.

This is Slashdot. They have to post topics like this once in awhile to make up for taking away the bill-borg icon. Or the nerds would revolt.

Why that's definitive proof of something or another!

As long as we are pretending fan fiction is close to workable reality, we might as well also inject the claim that it could have been avoided long before G.W. Bush was president if President Clinton would have supported the Kurds when they attempted to overthrow Saddam back in the mid 90's.

Of course a lot can be said about other actions if they had been taken. For instance, President Clinton also had the opportunity to take out Bin Laden before 9/11 but chose not to for probably good reasons (too many civilian casualties would have incurred)

Hind sight is always better then the fog of reality in real time I guess. It's fun to look back and think what if something was done differently but if seems to be a mighty powerful word. If the dog didn't stop to shit, he would have caught the rabbit. If the rabbit didn't stop to shit, the dog would have never caught him. How true either of those statements could be is just a guess, but if we knew, it still wouldn't be as real as what really happened.

Out of curiosity, does the phrase "50 cent army" mean anything to you?

...Pelosi meant that he doesn't get it, I think she meant that he doesn't get that it's over. That the sun has set on American republicanism, and it only serves as an irritant, as that of a buzzing fly, to prattle on as if there were any going back.

Completely disagree with Bill there. Literature is completely lost on children, and is a big waste of their time. Like things like economics, it should be higher education only, and just prepare the yutes with the three R's so they can function in society. And I would say teach critical thinking, so they can protect themselves from being ripped off (in the various ways; i.e. not just financially).

What's sad is that college is wasted on the youth. Like I suspect the vast majority of college grads in the last few generations at least, it was to just get through it. People complain that college is now viewed as vocational training but I don't think it's even that. I think it's predominantly viewed as just to get that piece of paper, that so many jobs (often unnecessarily) require.

But now that I'm more grown-up (okay, only slightly, since college), I could totally see myself in retirement (voluntary or involuntary, however it turns out), when I actually have the time to pursue such things, taking the time to read the great works of literature et al. That is, the time to truly consider all that flowery language and ponder it. But while we have busy lives, most of us just won't feel like we have the time for giving ourself a truly higher education.

If they've got half their galaxy colonized and they're "close" say within a few tens of millions of light-years to us, then they might already be colonizing our galaxy. My view is a few tens of millions of light years is not that much bigger a jump than a few tens of thousands of light years. For example, even if they didn't have a clue how to break down and store whatever components they use for their AU-scale system, they could always send a small star cluster over at a significant fraction of the speed of light.

For them or for us?

And once again, you continue to use a pet definition of "authority" which does not mean "authority" and a definition of "science" which doesn't mean "science". Any argument which relies on changing the meaning of core conceptions is inherently not scientific or all that relevant in any other useful context.

I think that's what I find really ridiculous about the climate change debate. This insistence on using a long list of fallacies and projecting all sorts of silly psychological issues on people who disagree (for example, this is my "face-saving" refutation by your decree) rather than basic rational rhetoric and argument. Just point to the evidence. Don't waste my time with unscientific arguments.

If you're entirely oblivious to American politics (fair enough if you're not from here) then some facts: The Republicans are the pro-gun side. The Democrats are the anti-gun side. Public schools in the US are profoundly dominated by the Left (or was passes here for the Left).

Also, the left here is pro-"that religion that cuts girls clitorises off", the right is anti-that-religion. (But I thought that was true in most of Europe too?)

Please inform your future hate-filled rants with these simple facts.

Just making shit up doesn't help your argument any. I can only guess you're talking about the incident where we heard the gunship crew radio that they saw a group of hostiles (true) and a guy with a tube-like device on his shoulder (true) and requested permission to engage. They were given permission to engage. There was no laughing. There was no evidence they knew there was a reporter embedded with the enemy troops. (There's also no such thing as a 50mm gun.)

"good old boys"? If you think that anyone with a southern accent is a bad person, you are simply a bigot.

Based on what? The official numbers published by China? China executes so many of it's people that they need custom-built execution vans for logistical convenience. America is a China-wannabe when it comes to human rights violations. We try (Delaware apparently bought 1 execution van in 1986), but we always fall short. Write a story about violence in Tiananmen Square and see what happens.

But that doesn't change the fact that the US has gone absolutely fucking insane about both guns and drugs in schools. When you punish a student for eating a Pop-Tart in such a way that it briefly looks like a gun, it's time to back slowly away from the levers of power and let someone sober, sane, and rational take over. And at least that incident has prompted a couple of state legislatures to take action in defense of sanity, but clearly not in South Carolina.

Through all of history, every place with a remotely hospitable climate was eventually governed by a nation with a strong military. If on government didn't have that, it would be conquered by one that did. There's no evidence that it's even possible to not have a strong central military for a long time (unless you live someplace where the environment is so hostile it's not worth anyone's effort to conquer, but sometimes even then).