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Last 30 Comments
- On Windfall, davidst said:
Here's an interesting comparison of various types of alt energy taking into account 10 factors (abundance, difficulty of building/operating, intermittentcy, how good each is for electricity, heat or transport, etc.) http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/02/the-alternative-energy-matrix/ On a scale of 1 to 10, wind scores a 3, solar a 5, and oil/gas 8 (no 10's; 8 is the highest). The main problem with oil and gas (in this guy's mind at least) is their lack of abundance. It's interesting to note that he doesn't dock any points for carbon emissions. Not sure if he disregards climate change hype entirely, or is just more concerned with the immediate problem of oil supply not keeping up with demand.Posted Feb 23, 2012 - On Callin’ Jesse Jackson & Al Sharpton! Money to be made.., Mississippi Yankee said:
Still, the demographics are 65% white, 25% black. Yeah, that's just a little misleading figure from my experience. Although I'm sure it's the official census tally. Being 'white' south of I-10 certainly isn't the same as 'being white' in Kansas. The diversity of blood (Spanish, French, African and American Indian) is incredibly complex amongst Cajuns. And the farther south the more convoluted it gets. Not to mention all the blue eyed black girls that go back almost two centuries. Damn I miss Louisiana!Posted Feb 22, 2012 - On Tracking Nothing, HARLEY said:
1. Interchangeable parts. 2. Isn’t it relatively easy to modify the ballistics marks on a barrel anyway? and/or don’t they slightly change over time with use Fire-lapping........... and you can keep your own barrel.Posted Feb 22, 2012 - On Tracking Nothing, hist_ed said:
1. Interchangeable parts. 2. Isn’t it relatively easy to modify the ballistics marks on a barrel anyway? and/or don’t they slightly change over time with use Bingo. Every shot fired down a barrel changes it. The first shot changes it the most; eariler shots change it more than later, etc, I;ve got about 1000 rounds out of my newest 9mm, bet you dollars to hollowpoints that its "signature" is different from my first round. Oh and #1 is true, too. Change a couple of parts and you have a new fingerprint. Change one part and collect your brass (or fire a revolver) and same deal. #3 is that most murders aren't committed with a gun owned by the first buyer. #4 There is no way to compare thousands of bullet automatically. It takes a human eye to look at two bullets and match them. If every gun in th US was ballsitically fingerprinted, there would be 100 million of them. You could narrow them down by caliber, but imagine a 9mm murder. You would have to...Posted Feb 22, 2012 - On Tracking Nothing, JimK said:
Miguelito , it is literally as easy as taking a fine, polishing grade of sandpaper (or some metal polish) and taking about three minutes to rub various parts. Bam. fingerprint changed.Posted Feb 22, 2012 - On Flagging Fools, Monolith said:
I like when the post commander refers to giving the young man a few options and he volunteered to be taped to the pole. Hilarious.Posted Feb 22, 2012 - On Tracking Nothing, Miguelito said:
If you are reading this and thinking “Wow, what a great idea” then you probably don’t know anything about firearms. You know, I don't really know much at all about firearms, but 2 things pop into my mind just based on common sense.. 1. Interchangeable parts. 2. Isn't it relatively easy to modify the ballistics marks on a barrel anyway? and/or don't they slightly change over time with use? I really need to actually exercise my 2nd amendment rights.Posted Feb 22, 2012 - On Useful Idiots, Poosh said:
Saying Islam is the same as Christianity is about as absurd as saying Christianity is the same as Buddhism. There are simple glaring differences however, if you don't want to get bogged down in the details (for example a lot of the worse Islamic claims are not found in the Koran but in other texts, which themselves are not accepted by all Muslims). Keeping in mind a religion as recorded in the texts cannot be responsible for those who deviate or choose to only practice a few parts of the fine print, whilst ignoring the major themes, and not assuming God is real or not - the following all help shape the consciousness of the practitioners: 1: Christianity has a built in doctrine of "to be Christian is to suffer" and to accept suffering as part of life. Basically to roll over and take it. Islam does not teach this. It does teach to sacrifice in the name of Allah but not to accept suffering as a natural state or to turn the other cheek (QUITE the opposite). 2: Christianity's God is all forgiving and is open to forgive almost all sins, so long as you repent: all men are sinners. Islam, on...Posted Feb 22, 2012 - On The Spirit Over The Letter, TxAg94 said:
The police simply can't and won't tolerate competition. If we protect ourselves then how will they justify spending more and more money on brand new police cars and SUVs every year, new computers and fancy gadgets, and more and more guns for themselves? Besides, it's always easier to find a way to go after the otherwise law-abiding citizen who may have some money in his pocket versus a criminal who can't be changed or fleeced for cash.Posted Feb 22, 2012 - On Tracking Nothing, Seattle Outcast said:
I have one of those guns. Seriously considered buying a new barrel and firing pin just to make their database even less useful.Posted Feb 22, 2012 - On Useful Idiots, hist_ed said:
Religion = Insanity I am an atheist who thinks al lthe sky pixie talk is wacko (I really like the cargo cults, though). I have know a lot of really smart (and nice) religious people. Assuming that everyone is a gropu is jsut like your worst stereotype of that group is simple bigotry.Posted Feb 22, 2012 - On Tracking Nothing, hist_ed said:
Yeah, my wife is a prosecutor (happily she now does civil code enforcement-doesn;t have to hang out with violent dirtbags anymore). She has so many idiot criminal stories (bank robber who intimidated a clerk by pressing his ungloved hands against the plexiglass, bank robber who took the money across the street to Starbucks for a latte, bank robber who robbed bank with his car stereo, etc.). There are a few smart criminals out there. They are the ones that don't get caught. A smart criminal isn't going to go buy a gun from a licensed dealer that will then get back to him. Smart ones will buy a stolen gun and dump it in a lake. The registry is just another "Look we did something instead of actually doing something" idea. Do you guys remember a few years ago when the Dems wanted to create a ballistic database? "Finger print" every gun sold? Every gun would be fired once and the bullet stored before the gun was sold so that they could use that info to match up...Posted Feb 22, 2012 - On Callin’ Jesse Jackson & Al Sharpton! Money to be made.., davidst said:
Yeah, Cajuns are very nice people across the board. Still, the demographics are 65% white, 25% black. If there was an MLK on the east side of the Intercoastal Waterway, I'm sure it would follow the usual pattern. Everything is older over there, so naturally poor people move in and it gets worse instead of better. Not to mention there are tons of undocumented Mexicans living on that side as well since Katrina initiated a (re)construction boom in 2005. 2010 census says there are only 2000 Latinos living there... there's got to be at least twice that many.Posted Feb 22, 2012 - On Tracking Nothing, Seattle Outcast said:
I've met more than a few criminals in my day - most of them were idiots and very poor liars. Jury duty has reinforced perception. A marital arts buddy that worked as PD would every now and then tell stories about the types of morons he defended on a regular basis - the banal stupidity of their crimes was appalling. Makes you want to consider forced sterilization of inmates as a benefit to society. Suffice to say, the most complex thinking I've ever seen on someone that's served jail time for petty criminal crap was how to score drugs and hookers on any given night of the week.Posted Feb 22, 2012 - On Useful Idiots, Kimpost said:
Already answered, if practicing Jews were Old Trestament complaint and were regular practitioners of Leviticus style nutjobbery, then I would rag on them as well, but they don’t. In one instance you claim to know what the Koran teaches, but when it comes to Judaism you are wiling to cut the Torah some slack because its followers are largely good people? Wtf? :) That's all I wanted to see, but for all religions. Fuck bigoted fundamentalist arsehole followers of any religion! Just don't claim to understand the true meaning of their respective texts. There is peaceful Islam, that's just a fact. One major reason for it appearing to being more violent than others is that it happens to be the dominating religion of some pretty messed up regions, lacking in democracy, personal freedoms, education, other basic human rights, infrastructure etc. Which scholars? I could provide you with about a hundred youtube videos of “scholars” perpetuating that belief and calling those not of that belief false and abominations. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is as far as I have been able to see a voice of reason. I'm not into counting scholars though. The group [peaceful Islam] is large enough for me to contend that it...Posted Feb 22, 2012 - On Tracking Nothing, Hal_10000 said:
SO, one of my coworkers is married to a defense attorney. Almost all criminals cases end in a guilty plea because your typical criminal has neither the impulse control nor the intelligence to carry out a crime that's remotely difficult to solve. That's why they're criminals. A typical case is where they went to the liquor store, found it closed, broke in and stole some liquor. It never occurred to them that a surveillance camera was there. He's been in criminal practice for 25 years and has never had a case so difficult thst it needed DNA evidence. Complex forensic stuff is a good idea. But let's not labor under the illusion that CSI is a documentary, it's very rare that things go beyond a few interviews.Posted Feb 22, 2012 - On Tracking Nothing, bgeek said:
Maybe we should take a poll; if you were planning on killing somebody, how would you do it? By any means necessary.Posted Feb 22, 2012 - On Tracking Nothing, Seattle Outcast said:
Maybe we should take a poll; if you were planning on killing somebody, how would you do it? I've going for a gallon of gasoline, a car tire, and a road flare - if I hate you enough to kill you, you're going to suffer....Posted Feb 22, 2012 - On Tracking Nothing, hist_ed said:
But surely that 4.7% is still 4.7% and better than nothing? So you didn't bother to read this far? Even in those 62 cases, Canadian authorities concluded the registry made no difference. Traditional police work and straight-forward confessions solved most of those.Posted Feb 22, 2012 - On Tracking Nothing, Poosh said:
But surely that 4.7% is still 4.7% and better than nothing?Posted Feb 21, 2012 - On Useful Idiots, drunkkus said:
Religion = Insanity Made it simple for you. The more religion anyone has, the crazier they are, and increases their prospects of criminal behavior. For the most part, I've kept my mouth shut for the whole existence of this blog, from Lee's beginnings onward, but I'm old enough and have had enough to drink tonight that I just gotta say something about this.... Thank goodness we have the all-knowing voice of reason here to speak out against all the religious crazies who say things like "Wow, that guy needs to be taken out and beat to death with baseball bats in a public square," about the evil monster at fault in a car accident. Have the religious "fundies" been trying to break into your house in the middle of the....uh Saturday afternoon....and forcefully convert you to Christianity again, SO? ....you know, like the ones who you say, even though you're not Catholic, tried to force you to partake of the germ-ridden Catholics-only Communion wine cup that one time you attended a Catholic Mass with your wife? For some reason, I think the person who brags about assaulting religious people with a deadly weapon for knocking upon his door to hand him a pamphlet...Posted Feb 21, 2012 - On Callin’ Jesse Jackson & Al Sharpton! Money to be made.., Mississippi Yankee said:
There is a MLK blvd in Houma LA (a city of 50 to 100k). It’s in the better half of town and all the new things are built there. Actually I've been there and it is in in a pretty nice neighborhood of sorts. Business district if my memory serves. Of course Houma being that far into Cajun country it only mildly shocked me. Coon-asses tend to sort themselves out quite well.Posted Feb 21, 2012 - On All you need to know about jobs is in these graphs, hist_ed said:
bbbbuuut….remember….evil Boooosh spent more than his predecessor and got us into all those nasty wars and tortured all those people. Uhhh Evil Booosshhh and his GOP cronies in Congress did spend out the ass. Obama took it to the next level, but we should not forget that the GOP did its part to bankrupt us (and mostly not on tax cuts and wars, mostly on usual social welfare and other crap). We need to remember that so we can keep an eye on President Romney and the newly GOP Senate next year.Posted Feb 21, 2012 - On Personal note: I got hit by a truck, hist_ed said:
Agree on the Chiros. I got a free exam from one (came with a free massage and both the massager and chiropractor were really hot). They showed me this weird electrostatic reading on my spine that showed that I needed a long series of work that would cost 5 or 6 grand. The thing that gets me is how they try to link it to every fucking thing you can think of. My bad posture makes my sinuses have problems? Are you sure it wasn't all the coke and other shit I shoved up my nose in the 80s?Posted Feb 21, 2012 - On Callin’ Jesse Jackson & Al Sharpton! Money to be made.., davidst said:
There is a MLK blvd in Houma LA (a city of 50 to 100k). It's in the better half of town and all the new things are built there.Posted Feb 21, 2012 - On Useful Idiots, richtaylor365 said:
am looking forward to your rebuttal Already answered, if practicing Jews were Old Trestament complaint and were regular practitioners of Leviticus style nutjobbery, then I would rag on them as well, but they don't. Further more I also accept vastly different interpretations of Christianity as Christianity. Ditto, but since this is a free country and we don't have idiot blasphemy laws that Sharia demands, I can criticize beliefs I find nonsensical. I heap the same amount of scorn of Fred Phelps and his band of fools because their interpretation of a loving God and what he asks of his followers is vastly different from mine. For instance I accept it when Mitt Romney calls himself a Christian, even if the New Testament says nothing about John Smith. I also accept tens (more likely, hundreds) of millions of Catholics as such, even if they are pro-choice or use contraceptives. Or homosexual Christians who claim that their God has nothing against homosexuality, even if I myself can read the passages against it (as they appear to me) in their holy book. I also accept it when they claim that one passage trumps another, or when they suggest that another thing isn’t important in a modern...Posted Feb 21, 2012 - On Obama’s Pot Wars, hist_ed said:
Option Four: Obama doesn't to be attacked on another from during the election. Weak on drugs is a tried and true attack line. As long as he is busting cancer ridden grannies getting their meds, no one can throw that line at him.Posted Feb 21, 2012 - On Callin’ Jesse Jackson & Al Sharpton! Money to be made.., hist_ed said:
Is there a Martin Luther King Jr street, avenue or highway that isn’t located in a rough part of town. A few years ago King County in Washington decided to change who it was named after. The was some old Washingtonian named King, 19th century racist apparently, but the powers that be decided that we woulnd now be named after the more famous King. Does the MLK street curse also apply to counties?Posted Feb 21, 2012 - On Useful Idiots, hist_ed said:
Both Christianity and Islam share one thing: later books tend to supercede earlier ones. Thus "let he who is without sin cast the first stone" and "judge not lest you be judged" supercede all the crap in Leviticus. The New Testiment is a lot more forgiving than the old. The emphasis is reversed in Islam. The earlier parts of the Koran tend to be more forgiving, the later parts (and the hadith) more vicious. The biggest problem is that 99.9% Christians came out of the Dark Ages. A much smaller percentage of Muslims have. I wonder if Mr Stone will later add another religion to the portfolio-then he would be an apostate and under a death sentence.Posted Feb 21, 2012 - On Useful Idiots, richtaylor365 said:
FWIW, I never intended this to be a religious post, I just thought it humorous that someone would travel to the land of terrorism and murder to convert to the religion of peace. And quoting Bible verses back and forth is not only boring but an exercise in futility, but the simple fact is that The Old Testament has no hold or relevance on any Christian, except maybe an historical context. Yes, Jesus did mention SOME of the 10 commandments, but the OTL was written for the Jews, Christians are not Jewish. the Jews are bound by the Old Testament So I guess we can pick any Jerusalem newspaper and read about animal sacrifices, those afflicted with a disease separating themselves from the village and living alone, eating fish that don’t have fins or scales or birds of prey, killing fortune tellers/witches, or kids that strike their parents, or have strict punishment afflicted on those not eating kosher/wearing mixed fiber clothes/wearing forbidden facial hair? The Jews, nowhere on earth, religiously follow The Old Testament laws 1 Timothy 6:1 You realize, don’t you, that slavery in the first century was a bit different from that practiced by the southern states pre civil war? Many sold...Posted Feb 21, 2012
