Wrong, I'm holding in my hands an amendment mandating every single female US citizen to have an abortion immediately. As soon as its passes it is the law. I also have one about reducing gravity, which I suspect will be more popular.

You do understand that you do not amend the constitution by passing a law right? There are two distinct processes to amend the constitution and as a practical matter, it would never be ratified.

Glad you have heard about amendments though, amazing power they have, assuming it is the will of the people. We can also amend ourselves hte ability to not be able to amend our constitution further, also we can amend ourselves into a communist dictatorship.

And if it ever happened, then what I said would still be true because of the time it was said. But it is impractical that any constitutional amendment like that would be ratified. Also, the amendment process has little to do with "the will of the people". The people do not vote on them nor do they have much of a say on them. It's left to the states and congress which the people have influence over.

True, but this is a particualrly loud, if inconvenient voice. Osama won in 2001, it may have been a pyrrhic victory for him personally, but if you didn't notice the insane increase in police power, TSA power, FBI power before and after you must have been under a rock. Osama scared people.

I guess you wouldn't get the point if you stepped on it and it went through you shoe. People can complain and bitch all they want, it doesn't make them correct or wrong because of it. It just makes them loud enough for you to listen to.

I'm talking about the citizens of the United States, who are the only thing that actually matters.

and that still does not negate anything I have said. You are taking people that people do not know or understand the purpose of the federal government.

That's missing the point of being constitutionally limited and directed in powers but it is also still contrary to the GP's assertion of

"Very clearly the constitution says the US government is supposed to do what the collective we want it to do, there was no "intent" beyond creating a stable, balanced government that could self-modify."

However, yes, if enough people go through the processes, they can change the constitutions to give the government newly created powers or even restrict the government even more.

I can see that you have never read the US constitution or passed a government and civics class. Do they even have those in high school any more?

Very clearly the constitution says the US government is supposed to do what the collective we want it to do

Wrong, completely wrong. For instance, if the majority of the collective wanted to force every single female US citizen to have at least one abortion in her life time if she should get pregnant and for all men to purchase, practice with, and keep ready at all time, military style riffles and handguns, the US government would be beyond their abilities in making these laws.

there was no "intent" beyond creating a stable, balanced government that could self-modify.

I don't know why you brought up intent, I certainly didn't. But the only way to self modify is to amend the constitution granting the government more powers or taking them away.

Honestly intent doesn't matter for shit, the guys that wrote it are dead.

It matters simply because it is what constitutes the federal government. Without it, we would have 50 different countries more or less. That is how the USA was formed, the 13 colonies became 13 countries and they surrendered some of their sovereignty to a central government when they constituted one which is why there is a constitution.

When I leave my young urban mecca and visit more traditional venues, all I hear is how the Obama isn't doing enough to stop crime, terrorists, drugs, etc.; how he's weakened the government and pussified the United States, that we need a republican back in there to kick out the muslims and put some order in.

You can walk into a sport bar and hear how some team could have won a game or what will make them winners (usually something stupid like catch the ball or something). But that doesn't make them authoritative of correct.

These people aren't bothered by spying, torture, or big government interventions. They want safety and they do vote. Their message is no doubt inconsistent, they also complain about "big government" and "regulation" and "wasting money". But listening carefully they don't consider the military, a well stocked police force or an elaborate spy network to be 'wasting" and they consider it a priority.

Maybe they know more than you do or something? The military and spying is actually constitutional duties of the US government. Well, not spying in particular but national defense under which the spying is excused away.

The young urbans, by contrast, largely don't care about this at all, and instead want the government focusing its efforts on other things, mostly economy & socially oriented; listening carefully to them speak they merely have contempt for the police state, they don't vote strongly against it.

I'm seeing a theme here. You are taking people that people do not know or understand the purpose of the federal government. They even look at Keynesian economics as if it will somehow save things when it is the reason they want improvement. I'm not saying anything specifically is better, I'm saying these uninformed idiots should take a course on government and civics and realize they have a lot more control directly at local levels starting with themselves.

Yes, making war is a constitutional provision.

The US government is not supposed to take care ofits citizens. The US constitution lays out what it is supposed to do and the only reason it can get by with what you complain about is because clueless people think it is supposed to do crap it was never intended to do.

Well- i do not condone terrorism or terrorist organizations - but i do have a about 250 bazookas in a fresh tub i could bargain sell you. They are the topps.

If interested, write tuity fruity on an envelope and slip it under the coin return for the third payphone past the news stand at the corner of elm and high. I'll have a dropped a price there tonight.

Well, not only is it entrenched in that way, there are a lot of laws and regulations that detail the mechanics of an elevator. This is even before liability issues and indurance consideration even come into play. So it isn't that just anything else could be used either. Of course there is no telling how much of those regulations are because of what you mentioned and what is pure safety.

Something being banned or made illegal does not prevent it from happening. It just prevdnts it from happening legally. See speeding for reference.

I eonder how that will trickle to ISP provided Email if the make ISPs common carriers?.

Sigh.. your reading comprehension seems to have taken a walk while you were sleeping.

You replied to a post with someone bitching about paying extra for pickup trucks. I replied with that in mind and now it seems you forgot and want to change the goal posts s bit. That's fine lets look at big rigs. California has a state tax on diesel of 40.6 cents per gallon and the fed tax is 24.4 cents. The national average mpg for an 18 wheeler 5.9 mile per gallon. Now it should be noted that if you cannot provide records to show otherwise IFTA willdefault to 4.7mpg. So the same 500 mile trip in a semi will use 84.75 gallons of fuel.

If we take this 84 gallons of fuel and multiply it out, we see they pay about $34.10 to the state and $20.49 to the feds for a total of $54.60 in fuel taxes. In a years time that is $2839.20 in diesel taxes. So if we bring the prius and pickup back, we compare that to $328.64 and $697.84 respectivly. So that is about 8.5 times as much as the prius and a little over 4 times as much as the pickup.

Now i know you believe something and want it to be true because you have shaped your world view around it. But this information is not hard to find or calculate. You could have engaged that critical thinking portion of your brain and discovered all this on your own years ago. And no, do not assume that the smaller vehicle is not overpaying in the process. Last i heard, about 15% of federal gas tax and roughly 25% of state fuel taxes go to programs other than building and mainraining roads.

Lol.. i explained why i wouldn't have to. I see you are ignoring content in order to focus on red herrings so i guess this conversation is over.

But here is a recap in case big paragrapg scare you. The context was obvious, no explaination needed as the article was talking of the government of california and the GP was talking of the article.therefore the attempt to associate anything that ever happened in california is misplaced and out of context.

I think the point was not in asking but telling people under pain of law through executive decree.

In a free society, you make the case and ask people to be reasonable. Most will be and the rest you can easily deal with if something is needed. In a non free society, a single overlord uses the policing powers of the state to demand you do or not do something regardless of the costs to the citizen.

Asking myself the same question, I went with MDisc technology, in the BluRay capacity, in addition to my hard drive backups. MDisc uses an inorganic pigment as opposed to the organic dyes that are common on CD/DVD/BluRay recordables (and degrade over time).

I'll do an MDisc burn every year and move it offsite, to keep with the 4TB ZFS drive I rotate offsite weekly. The MDisc won't get my mp3 or mp4 files, but the stuff I can't recreate.

My best idea currently is to write PAR files of loop-back mounted LUKS volumes and include the PAR software source and ISO of the distro on the disc, in case I need the data in 20 years (emulators should be readily available for 2015 hardware).

I needed a BluRay writer anyway, so I went with this LG and it's been a great drive so far, and at the right price point for me.

I don't think it's an interferometer. It's a standard diffraction lens, just like the Canon one you linked, that produces a real image, not an interference pattern. You could stand at the focal point and see an image.

It would be an interferometer if you put a ring of telescopes on the rim instead of at the focus.

So long as you're not looking at something really close, the little bit of parallax you get by going around the planet isn't going to cause too many problems. And if you're looking at something where it does matter, you just take shorter exposures and stack them. As a bonus you get 3D measurements.