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Comment Re:How do you read title pos or neg? (Score 1) 263

Fewer people is a good thing. So far, though, I am unsure how to accomplish that goal without using a very unpleasant venue to get there.

You think widespread access to birth control is an unpleasant venue? We could drastically reduce the population within a generation, while continuing to fuck like rabbits. It's a win-win.

Comment Re:My friends and I saw something unexplainable (Score 1) 441

It is almost as if you think a "radar lock" is a magical thing, instead of a binary electronic indicator with a non-zero rate of false positives.

Not, it's not like that. These are not one-off sightings, or incidental glitches. Hundreds were reported by multiple pilots, that we know of. If they could have been explained away as hallucinations, or electronic errors, they would have been. These pilots are seeing things they cannot explain. I'm not sure why that threatens your world view so much.

Comment Re:Terms (Score 1) 441

I'm not so sure. Yes, we have more cameras than ever before, but do you see the images from those cameras? For the most part, no, you don't. We only see what is elevated by the media, or goes "viral" on social media.

Did you know that the internet exists beyond what you can sit and passively watch while staring at your screen like a vegetoid octopus slug?

It turns out that you can actually search the internet for specific content, you don't actually have to passively consume whatever somebody else decided to push out to your screen.

Did you know that the vast majority of people do not do that? Did you further know that most cell phone videos are not posted on the Internet? My point stands, regardless of your condecention.

Comment Re:Terms (Score 1) 441

Some of these Navy pilots have seen things like balls of light, with no wings or IR exhaust signature, doing things that are way beyond our understanding of state-of-the-art technology.

It's called ball lightning and it's quite real. There's quality digital video of the phenomenon along with 0.78 seconds of high speed video, plus spectrographic recordings of the same incident. It's a thin plasma of vaporized silicon, calcium, iron, nitrogen, and oxygen. Basically vaporized dirt in air. Reasonably good artificial ball lightning was created in 2007 by intentionally vaporizing silicon with high voltages.

There may be more than one type of ball lightning. There are a raft of different theories and exactly why some ground strikes generate it but most don't is unclear. It certainly exists though. That covers a great many incidents. It's not an unexplained technology. It's a not-very-well-explained natural phenomenon.

Does radar lock onto ball lightening? Does it stop and then move again at great speed? I don't know if you have read the articles, but what these pilots describe does not seem to be explainable as ball lightening.

Comment Re:Here come the surface thinkers. (Score 1) 154

Abortions are legal in America WAY past the point of being "just a clump of cells". There are no federal restrictions at all, and eight states allow abortion-on-demand right up until birth.

Sorry, that's bullshit. You make it sound like healthy babies are being killed. The laws you are alluding to allow abortion in cases where the mother's health is at risk or the fetus is not viable.

No one is carrying a healthy baby for 9 months, just to kill it before birth. If you don't know that, you should.

Comment Re:Here come the surface thinkers. (Score 0) 154

(Yes ok, in the name of anti-misandry let me note that sometimes the dad wants the baby and the mother wants to abort.)

This certainly can be true. The fact that women control reproduction is part of the reason men have wanted to control women for millennia. But really, that's just the way it is. Men participate in the pleasureable part at the beginning, and then women have to do the work of carrying and delivering the child. Frequently, they end up doing the bulk of the work raising it as well.

Given that, IMO it is proper that women get the final say in whether or not a pregnancy is brought to term (I am male, BTW). Ideally, it would be a joint decision between the man and woman. But we don't live in an ideal world as yet. I agree with your previous post, as well.

Comment Re:Turning UFOs into IFOs is their job (Score 1) 441

I'd go with #1 over #2.

My guess is some advanced, skunkworks type technology that is still in the engineering stage. They can get it to do crazy speeds and maneuvering, but can't figure out how to haul weapons on or otherwise weaponize it. Flying it around the Navy is kind of a beta test as to whether its detectable or identifiable by advanced military weapons systems.

For the Chinese or the Russians, if they were fielding commercial planes good enough to put Boeing and Airbus out of business I might believe they had other advanced aerospace capabilities. But they're mostly just copying and stealing US technology and not really demonstrating they're way ahead of the game.

If its not #1 or #2, then there's a lot of questions. Aliens may not be the answer, but non-Earth probes or drones doesn't seem totally impossible with the idea that its likely that advanced aliens would either have gone cybernetic or would be doing a lot of drone/AI based deep space exploration.

If it were secret projects, they would have their own testing equipment. They would not have to fly them by people without need-to-know in order to test them; especially "regularly" as described in the article. I don't know what these things are. Shit's just weird. Earthly possibilities should be considered first. But them being extraterrestrial should not be dismissed either.

Comment Re:show me the footage (Score 1) 441

Just like The Amazing Randi squashing psychic powers, the power of information sharing has eliminated alien conspiracies for any reasonably skeptical thinker. I'm enough of a skeptic to be happy to consider just about anything, but nothing has convinced me yet.

Randi is a fraud, just like those he sought to expose. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cu...

One better known complainant was Dr Rupert Sheldrake, the Cambridge biologist whose controversial idea of morphic resonance allows for the theoretical existence of ESP. To test his notion, Sheldrake ran a number of studies on a dog that seemed to know when its owner was coming home.

Following a burst of publicity for Sheldrake, Randi told a journalist, “We at JREF have tested these claims. They fail.” But when I met Sheldrake, at his Hampstead home, he made a serious charge. “Randi’s a liar and a cheat,” he said. “When I asked him for the data, he had to admit he hadn’t done any tests.”

According to Sheldrake, his direct requests for data were twice ignored. After appealing to others at the JREF, Randi eventually wrote back, explaining that he couldn’t supply the data because it got washed away in a flood and that the dogs he tested are now in Mexico and their owner was “tragically killed last year in a dreadful accident.”

Unusually for Randi, he was polite. “I over-stated my case for doubting the reality of dog ESP based on the small amount of data I obtained,” he wrote. “It was rash and improper of me to do so. I apologise sincerely.”

But, publicly, Randi then attacked Sheldrake. Of his own failure to provide the data he wrote, “A search of our site would have supplied [Sheldrake] with all the details he could possibly wish. Alternately, I could have supplied them, if only he had issued a request. That’s what we do at the JREF.”

Comment Re:My friends and I saw something unexplainable (Score 4, Interesting) 441

One evening I was standing outside when I saw just abpve the tree line what seemed to be an aircraft, a light in the sky, moving in ways that planes don't, and can't. (I have some pilot training and aeronautical engineering training). Zipping back and forth, up and down in ways that human-built craft can't do. I pointed it out to my friends, who also saw it. All agreed an airplane made by man doesn't fly that way. Nobody had ever seen anything fly like that.

Then the strange, out-of-this-world object flew *in front* of a tree. It was a lightning bug, also known as a firefly. We had thought it was much further away nowand going much faster. One the problems with objects in the sky is that the eye can't tell how far away it is, and therefore how big it or how fast it's going. Another problem is that when a small light is moving toward or away from you it seems to stop, so a regular airplane can "hover and immediately reverse direction", as seen by the observer who sees only a 2D version of its 3D movement.

Did your radar lock onto that object? That is what some of these Navy pilots have reported. They have tracked them doing "impossible" maneuvers. They could certainly be experimental drones. But I think you are minimizing what is being reported by relating it to your experience with a firefly.

Comment Re:Terms (Score 2) 441

Yeah, this whole discussion is so moronic. Navy: "Our pilots see things they can't clearly identify." Everybody else: "Oh my god, the Navy just confirmed that aliens are zipping around in our skies constantly!" We now have more people with more cameras than ever in human history. If there were aliens zipping around our skies, and they were inept enough that Navy pilots can see them all the time, we'd have pictures. We'd *know* that they're here.

I'm not so sure. Yes, we have more cameras than ever before, but do you see the images from those cameras? For the most part, no, you don't. We only see what is elevated by the media, or goes "viral" on social media. And even then, we only see the images or video. What does it depict? We can all see the evidence but disagree on its meaning. We didn't know about this until the Navy decided to tell us. Otherwise we would have no knowledge of it, even though it exists.

Some of these Navy pilots have seen things like balls of light, with no wings or IR exhaust signature, doing things that are way beyond our understanding of state-of-the-art technology. One described what he saw as a cube encased in a sphere, as it came close to his plane. That is quite odd and does not conform to our knowledge of flying machines that we can build. Could these be secret, experimental aircraft? Yes, of course they could. However, why the runners of such secret programs would be having their craft come so close to conventional airplanes is a mystery. You'd think they would want to keep them secret, and have minimal or no contact with those not involved with the program, even if they belonged to the Russians or Chinese. Yet these pilots report having hundreds of such encounters.

I don't think we would know if these craft are actually extraterrestrial. First because such notions are generally dismissed out of hand. You can't find something that you have already decided does not exist. You will always come up with some other explanation. Second, because how would you determine that definitively? Secret programs could have developed technology that is beyond public understanding. And their existence would not be acknowledged. We just don't have enough information to discern what is advanced secret technology and what is extraterrestrial.

I don't know what these UFO's are any more than you do. But it is foolish, at this point, to think that life does not exist elsewhere in the galaxy. If some species were able to travel here, and overcome the problems presented by the interaction of speed, space and time, we would have no idea what their craft might look like. I'm not saying these UFO's are aliens. But to dismiss the notion out of hand seems foolish. We simply don't know, and likely won't.

Comment Re: On the RIGHT of a two lane highway? (Score 1) 196

If they are not passing, they should move over.

Consider this. Two lane road, speed limit 50. Everyone in the right lane is going 55. I move into the left lane and start going 65. A minute later, someone comes up behind me having been going 75 but who now must slow down to 65. Am I required to move over? Why? My 65 still ensures that I am passing all of the drivers going 55 in the right. And in order for me to move over, I would first need to slow down to 55. Why does the other driver's desire to go 75 outweigh my desire to go 65?

I said, if they are not passing, they should move over. In your example, you are passing. I'm not sure where the confusion lies.

Comment Re: Can it get me home safely when I'm smashed (Score 1) 196

" When the GP's hair, teeth and eyes are all over the highway, someone else is going to want to know who was responsible."

Yes, the lawyers of the involved insurances deal with that, nobody really cares.

Do they do so without a policy holder? I would think the policy holder would care. You know, since they filed the claim in the first place.

Comment Re: On the RIGHT of a two lane highway? (Score 1) 196

Define "going slow"? I often see Smart4two or Priii going at the posted limit in the left lane. It would be illegal to go any faster even though 90% of drivers will, provided they pass that idiot on the right.

They still shouldn't be there. The left lane is for passing. If they are not passing, they should move over. They are not law enforcement and should not impede the flow of traffic.

If 90% of drivers are breaking the speed limit, it's an indication that the limit is too low, IMO. But that's another topic.

Comment Re:On the RIGHT of a two lane highway? (Score 1) 196

"initiate a pass on the right on a two-lane divided highway" I don't know but isn't that illegal in EVERY state with right-hand drive? That's some fail-o-pilot, holy shit that would get people killed right and left. But mostly right!

No, it's not. At least in Massachusetts it is not illegal to pass on the right. I avoid it if I can, because it is less safe. But as mspohr points out below, too many drivers don't have any kind of lane discipline. Hell, most people think the left lane is the "fast" lane, rather than the passing lane. And they're going fast enough already!

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