>> They conclude that the teaching algebra is the problem, and are quite >> likely right.. Once upon a time, when schools wanted to sort the >> students from the ineducable, they adminestered IQ tests, which were >> so sucessful that they were decried as discriminitory (well, duh..), >> and outlawed. So now schools have to use something else to cull the >> stupid, and algebra is it. I haven't read all the article in the LA >> times yet, but I expect somewhere along toward the end there will be >> an opinion that algebra is a raceist plot against deserving minorities..A nice sieve; it would have caught me. I made it through geometry, but I never mastered Algebra I. I was able to follow along for a few months, since I already knew rules of precedence from arithmetic. I was eventually able, by trial and error, to factor a trinomial. Once we got to polynomials, I just didn't get it. There were no rules. Well, there were rules, but we were given them *after* being assigned (and failing) the tests; some things, we were never told how to solve at all. And in the end, it was all pointless, moving a bunch of xs and ys from one side of an equation to the other. It's not like we were able to group all the unknowns to one side or anything useful. There was no instruction in the books; they were just lists of problems to be solved. There was no instruction in the classroom. We were supposed to somehow "just know". I freely admit, I wasn't smart enough to figure it out for myself. As I remember, there were only two or three people that made a passing grade in either course. I know at least one of them had her parents paying for an private tutor.
In the intervening 30-odd years, I've never had any use for algebra. I have shelves full of engineering books that don't require any algebra; they're all plain old arithmetic. Some of the newer ones are full of calculus, though. One particularly strange one shows a Fahrenheit-Celsius temperature conversion in calculus. I guess if your only tool is a hammer...
I needed trigonometry out in the Real World. I got a book from the library (one of Asimov's, I think) and learned it myself.
A decade or so later I took the SAT test, trying to get some grant money to go to college. I solved the arithmetic problems, made a flying stab at some of the basic algebra problems, and marked the rest with the usual "C", since statistically the third of a four-question multiple choice is most likely to be the correct answer.
When the test results came back, the college included an analysis and recommended course guide. I should skip Algebra, Analysis, and Calculus I, and jump straight into Calculus II due to my very strong math skills.
Ri-ight.
Further, even though I'd read six to twenty books a week since the second grade, had already written and sold several magazine articles and one book, my English was *horrible*. It was recommended I drop back to elementary-school level remedial English, and they suggested I needed special tutoring or extra classes to "catch up."
In the history section, there were two parts - pre-Revolutionary American politics, and the theology of the Reformation under Martin Luther. Neither, of course, had ever been covered in any school I'd been to, and as far as I'm concerned, the only schoolkids who would be able to discourse on the Reformation probably were coming out of some Catholic school. Their recommendation: no remedials needed, but I should take the football-jock moron classes since I was obviously a moron too.
My response to the test: F*ck you.
By the way, over half of that college's student body was in remedial English classes. And after poking around, I found out their dropout rate on calculus classes was 80%. Per *quarter*.
We got a bunch of "standardized testing" back in elementary school in the Sixties. Some of them were paper-and-pen puzzles. One of them, I "failed" because I strayed outside the allowed drawing area. Nobody said we couldn't. Later, they gave another connect-the-dots problem, which I "failed" because I *didn't* draw outside the grid. That's a very common test; most of you have probably taken it, and it's the origin of "think outside the box." I've always been slightly bitter about that; the fsckers changed the rules, then acted like they'd put one over on me.
"Chance favors the warrior."
- G'Kar and Na'toth, Babylon 5, "By Any Means Necessary"
The Daisy stuff turned out to be some airgun pellets they made in 1966-1968 with a tiny charge at the back, ignited by the hot air to boost velocity a bit.
The other is the H&K G11 assault rifle. It uses a blocky little cartridge shaped like a couple of dice stacked on each other with a 4.something millimeter bullet sticking out the end.
No other hits until I searched on "paper case". This led to a bunch of links to stuff from the 1800s, including several on the Dreyse Needle Gun. The Wikipedia page is as good as any.
Looking at it, it looks like Herr Dreyse got it right 172 years ago. The Prussians thought so, too - they gave him a "von" to go in front of his name, along with other considerations. The decline of the Dreyse design was the gun, which was obsoleted by later designs. The cartridge, on the other hand...
The Dreyse design used a lead bullet with a paper sabot. No leading, no grease grooves, etc. The back of the sabot had the priming compound. Black powder was wrapped in a paper case glued to the sabot. The paper case was nitrated and combustible.
The "needle" punctured the back of the case, went through the powder, and smacked the primer. This gave front ignition of the charge, which was considered the proper way. The bullet and sabot went out the barrel and the case burned completely away.
The "needle" was the famous part of the Dreyse. They always had problems with it; they would break at about 200 shots, and the soldiers were issued two spares. It was inconvenient if they broke on the battlefield, though. I'm guessing it was a problem with material or heat treat - the Dreyse cartridge was short and stubby, a bit longer than a .45 ACP. The Dreyse was the first bolt action, and it had the first firing pin - all Mauser, Springfield, Remington, etc. firing pins are needles five or six inches long, so the Dreyse was unremarkable there. And the 5/8" or so of travel was also unremarkable - many early bolt actions had that much. The "quick lock" conversions for the Enfields shorten the striker fall from 5/8 to 5/16 or so, for example. Basically, the firing pin and travel of the Dreyse was remarkable only for going into the cartidge instead of stopping just past the base plane.
The Dreyse cartridges were delicate due to the paper case and loose powder. But in the late 1800s there was a new development - the .30-30 Winchester and .303 British were designed for solid pellets of black powder. When mixed, black powder turns rock hard - you have to work it while wet. Both cartridges went to smokeless nitro powder very early, and the solid charge idea was forgotten.
However, if you used a hard pellet of propellant with a hole for the firing pin, the cartridge would be *much* stronger; the paper case would just hold it to the sabot at the joint.
Waterproofing and oil resistance are still issues; those held H&K up for several years. They claim they finally solved them; about a thousand G-11s were issued to the West German army about the time of the Reunification.
For DIY ammunition, it's starting to look like the Dreyse is a good design. Making cases on the lathe is expensive and time-consuming, and making primer cups is tiny fiddly work. But the Dreyse doesn't need any of that.
One drawback of the Dreyse rifle, as opposed to the cartridge, was gas-tightness. With the bolt closed, gas escaped around the breech and blew back in the shooter's face. Gouts of stinky black powder smoke directed right into the shooter's face was objectionable even in 1836, but most guns were like that. The primary function of the modern brass case is to be a gasket. Also a place for the primer, a way to extract the case, and a way to hold the bullet. The French "chassepot" design came out after the Dreyse; it was similar to the Dreyse, except it used a rubber gasket at the breech. Hm... a well-supported rubber or metal O-ring would take care of gas just fine.
"I love it when a plan comes together."
The downside of caseless ammo is extraction of an unfired or dud cartridge. The H&K uses a rotary breech and a madly complex clockwork mechanism. Otherwise, you need a rim or extractor groove. Paper shotgun hulls used a thin brass base to provide extra support for the extractor. I don't know if there were any all-paper hulls, but there are all-plastic hulls. Even with nitrated paper the necessary bulk to support extraction might cause incomplete combustion. Worst case would be to have to use a cleaning rod or ramrod to tap the unfired cartridge out, but it seems like an uncouth way to handle it.
- Terry Pratchett
-> citizens. This may just be another case where the Fuhrerprinzip -> fails as a social model. The hive mind simply doesn't -> react quickly enough to changing conditions.Perzackitly.
The Kaiser and the Nazis were great at planning and would work out detailed battle ops and scenarios months or years ahead of time. So when Wilhelm or Adolf said "kick ass there" someone would open the correct filing cabinet and start issuing orders instantly. The Kaiser's General Staff was so effective at this that they were specifically banned by one of the articles of the Treaty of Versailles.
On one hand you have detailed plans. On the other you have the Fuhrerprinzip. Authority, like shit, only ran downhill; very few German commanders had the luxury of being able to make decisions above the immediate tactical level.
This meant the Germans could implement plans quickly and in detail, but the structure of command meant it was very hard for them to adapt to changing situations.
It's common to damn the Germans for this, but the French had it ten times worse; they not only were unable to respond to changes, they only had one plan to start with. When the Nazis went around the Maginot Line the French high command basically ignored it until they were overrun.
The British *would* have had a similar problem, except the British military was composed of dozens of rigidly ostrich-like pieces, each one with its own chain of command, responsibility, and supply. These chains were cross-linked here and there just to make things more amusing, which is why the British Navy wound up shelling British troops in Norway, knowing full well who they were shooting at, because they were "just following orders."
Conventional thinking promotes the idea that the USA's vast contribution in men and materials was the key factor in winning the war in Europe, but if you read enough about WW2 you start getting a different slant. One of Churchill's very first actions - even before formally signing the treaties with the USA - was to agree to turn over complete command of all Empire forces to the United States. In retrospect this seems logical, but at the time... ah, things were different then. In the Empire, no English soldier could serve under any officer from Canada, South Africa, or any of the other colonies. Any English officer outranked any colonial officer, and they were in separate chains of command anyway. It seems silly now, but it was important then; important enough to effectively cripple the entire Imperial military. Churchill's master stroke was to place this collection of wayward units under *someone else*; it was not politically feasible to put English troops under a Zed commander, but it was okay to put them under an "alien" US commander. The USA also brought a logical, simple, and clearly defined structure and chain of command to the Imperial chaos. And more than half a century later, the remnants of the Empire still operate under the American system.
Guns and bombers are great, but first you have to have a chain of command!
-> All the hysteria about the "Nazis marching again" every time the -> Bundeswehr sends a small-arms platoon on a peacekeeping missionYou ought to read about the political squabbling during the formation of NATO. Truman and Atcheson wanted the Germans, or at least the West Germans, to comprise part of the NATO forces. The French and Italians went completely orbital apeshit every time it came up, deadlocking NATO's creation for many months. Oddly enough, the British were also against the inclusion of German forces.
Truman got his way, but only because the USA was paying 90% or better of the cost of supporting NATO during those early years, and he who has the gold, makes the rules.
> "Heat the fuel" setups have been around a long time, usually based > on the assumption that hotter fuel will vaporize better and give more > complete combustion. I expect that auto manufacturers have experimented > with this and, if there are gains to be had, have already designed the > system so that the fuel will be in the desired temperature rangeThe fuel temperature limit is determined by vapor lock.
Motor fuel can contain quite a bit of entrained volatiles such as propane and butane. The fuel system has to handle worst-cast fuel in a worst-case scenario - pulling a maximum load over a 10,000 foot pass in New Mexico, for example.
Even EFI systems can have problems if the fuel starts to boil in the rail; cylinders go lean and the engine sets a code if you're lucky.
Generally, for best fuel economy you can do the tried and true basics:
Put 36 or 40 PSI in the tires to lower the rolling resistance, keeping an eye on the wear patterns.
(special low-rolling-resistance tires are now available in a few sizes, OEM on some hybrids)
If you have drum brakes, adjust them so the shoes don't drag.
Run the hottest thermostat you can get away with (ping). 215s are available for some engines.
Make sure the hot-air tube on the intake snorkel of your older carbureted car is hooked to the shield on the exhaust manifold, and that the flapper valve works correctly.
Adjust the choke pull-off to the quickest operation, or better yet, go to a manual choke.
If using a Holley, pick an accelerator pump cam that doesn't do much for the first bit of throttle travel, and the least stroke you can get without a flat spot. The cams are plastic and easily modified. For an AFB, use the inner position for the pump link to reduce the stroke.
Adjust the spark advance in 2 degree increments, forward, back, check a full tank each time.
If EFI, you can do similar things to the fuel and spark curves.
Make sure the EGR is hooked up and functioning correctly.
Goosing the ignition output can make a big difference on some cars, no difference on others. Nice sharp plug electrodes, high output coils, multistrike or high power spark boxes can be tried.
Going from a standard to a projected-tip spark plug can also be worth a tiny amount.
A full course of synthetic lubricants is worth a bit - motor oil, trans fluid or gear oil, diff lube, wheel bearings. You might give one of the new 0 weight engine oils a shot, or 30-wt Syncromesh or ATF in your manual trans if it calls for 90wt.
Reducing the frontal area will help - lower the vehicle, or at least the front, as much as you can get away with.
Convert from an engine driven fan to an electric.
Make sure the front end doesn't pull to one side. If you have power steering, the pump will drag on the engine all the time if the steering wheel isn't straight.
Some cars have substantial toe-in to give them a more stable feel. Going to less or zero toe reduces sideways scrub, and therefore rolling resistance, on the tires.
Weight isn't much of a factor in highway driving, but in town, all the weight has to be heaved up to speed from every traffic light or stop sign. Not much you can do about the basic vehicle, but cleaning all the junk out of the trunk or bed can't hurt.
Wing-things on the back don't help mileage, and in extreme cases, can hurt.
EPA tests showed no difference in mileage with pickup trucks, tailgate up or down. The air is so turbulent it's "invisible" to the air flow.
A camper shell or "topper" on a pickup can help a *lot*. On my Mazda B2000, it was worth four miles per gallon. Downside: visibility sucked in traffic, and in the winter the windows frosted over too.
Air conditioning can take a lot of fuel. The AC knocks 4mpg off my Malibu, but some cars it's barely noticeable. NOTE: most cars run the air conditioner if you have the defroster selected, so you might be paying for AC even if the heater is on. I unplug the connector at the compressor in the wintertime.
An engine preheater can help a lot, even in summer weather. Both carbureted and EFI cars run rich when cold, and it can take several miles for the car to warm up and lean out. If you make predominantly short trips the heater can make a noticeable difference.
Avoid oxygenated fuel if possible - that's ETBE, MTBE, E10 and M10.
If for some reason you can get "heating oil", kerosene, or jet fuel for less than the price of unleaded regular, most cars won't even notice a 25% blend with gasoline. I've tested blends down to below freezing with no starting problems, and in the summer without pinging problems. Actually, I was using Diesel fuel, back in the days when it was cheaper than gasoline...
Try one of the "Diesel-Kleen" cetane improver additives in your fuel. Yes, in gasoline. Start with about 1/4 of the recommended ratio and try more or less on successive tanks and see what happens. In my tests it was worth about 1 mpg with no tuning of any kind, just dump it in the tank. [this is complex chemistry, but it's not magic - Glassman's "Combustion" (third edition) will explain why this works in detail if you're really interested in the nitty gritty]. With the price of gas at $1.59 the additional cost of the cetane improver balanced the fuel savings, so other than running nicer, it was a wash. With modern fuel prices, you'd gain enough to notice.
For driving, remember many vehicles use the same amount of fuel from idle to 30mph or so. (flowmeter on two of my carbureted vehicles, Diacom datalogs on a couple of injected cars) For urban driving, the engine uses about the same amount of fuel per minute whether the vehicle is moving or not. When stopped, your fuel mileage is ZERO. If you're rolling along at 15-20mph on a detour around traffic, at least you're getting SOME miles per gallon, and increasing your average.
There are driving techniques that are proven to optimize fuel economy. These basically involve cycling between full-throttle acceleration and then coasting in neutral. Interesting, but not practical in the real world. DaveWorld, anyway.
- Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg (The Fifth Element)
> One thing that could be done would be to force the HS teachers to > take the manditory graduation test, and fire those who failed.The isn't any "graduation test" here, or at least there wasn't when I escaped. Governor Frank White enacted something like you're talking about in Arkansas in the early '80s. Teachers had to pass the G.E.D. test.
A bunch failed. One committed suicide, or at least the teachers unions claimed so. The teachers' unions went nuts, and they backed White's opponent in the next election with massive PAC money, TV ads, and propaganda. His opponent promised to remove the teacher test, *and* remove White's gifted-children programs since they were 'discriminatory.'
White's opponent? He served several terms as governor of Arkansas. You know him as "The Education President," Dollar Billy Clinton.
...and that kind of thing is why public schools suck.
However, near the end, there was a dialog that was interesting:
[snip]
"...our country was founded on the principle of the destruction of the wild by the civilized. Let me - if Mr. Stubb will excuse it - go back thirty thousand years before Christ, when the ancestors of the Indians crossed what are now the Bering Straits to occupy what some people have called an empty land. Those Indians represented civilization. The beavers felled trees and built lodges, but the Indians killed the beavers and skinned them."
Barnes said, "And then the whites came and skinned the Indians."
"Precisely. But the frontiersmen who destroyed the Indians and their culture were destroyed themselves, with their culture, by the settlers who followed. Those settlers lost their farms to the banks, and the banks sold them to companies who brought the advantages of corporate existence - immorality and amorality - to agriculture.
"In the cities, the same thing occurred. The early city of independent shops and restaurants is properly being destroyed by the chain outlets, so that progressively greater control is exercised. Perhaps none of you has ever understood why they are called that - chain outlets."
None of the three spoke.
"You see the progress? The old stores had to sell the things their customers wanted. As they are eliminated, the need for their kind of slavery is eliminated too, and the chains can sell whatever they want. I ask you - all of you - how often have you gone into W.T. Grant's and found there was nothing at all you wanted?"
They stared at him. Barnes said, "Sometimes I feel like I'm in the wrong movie."
[/snip]
"Cats."
"Cats. I'm being nibbled to death by cats."
-- Londo and Vir, Babylon 5, "Chrysalis"
I tried a couple of other dollar stores with the same result. Since the only other store with cheap paint is the Wal-Mall, I made an early-AM run the next day. Wal-Mart brand paint at $1.09... in flat black, gloss black, white, or tan. No red primer. No blue, yellow, red, green, or any other color.
WTF? There's a paint shortage or something?
Rust-Oleum and Dupli-Color paints went from $3.99 to $4.99 or $5.99, most places. SIX DOLLARS for a freakin' can of spray paint?
Every week, rising prices mean we slide a little further below the poverty line. Prices for food and car parts have gone up 20 to 30% since November 2008, and I guess they'll keep climbing. No, our income hasn't gone up to match. [sigh]
> Metric tap drills are stupid easy. Subtract the pitch from the diameter.Except with your simple formula you can wind up with a nonstandard metric tap drill size. Which varies, of course, depending on the amount of thread engagement you're shooting for - 100% threads are very rare; real production threads run 70% to 80%.
That's why the Unified system has fractional, letter, and wire drill sizes. These all date back before US industry went decimal around WW1, which accounts for the different systems and the steps in sizes. The three systems overlap neatly, giving running fits, zero fits, press fits, and a variety of tap drill sizes for everything. You decide what thread engagement you want, and you look it on on the chart, which gives you the nearest equivalent bit. And, no, nobody bothers to remember how large a "Q" or "27/64" or "#38" drill is; the chart lists the sizes in decimal inches, and you only use the names to identify the proper drill.
The Unified system was designed by machinists, for production. Not by academics, for political accomodation.
Just remember, in WW1, WW2, and the Cold War, the Unified countries kicked metric ass.
A note on "drill" - nowadays, a "drill bit" is the fluted piece that makes a hole, and the "drill" is the motorized or hand-cranked tool that spins the drill bit. This usage dates back to somewhere in the 1950s or 1960s. Prior to that, a "drill" was the fluted part that made a hole, and a "drill motor" or "hand drill" or "drill arbor" was the thing that turned it.
While common usage is "drill bit", most machinists still use "drill", as do the companies that manufacture them.
-- Larry Niven
The new phone has a user interface that's pretty eccentric anyway. There is a large button marked "TALK." "TALK" is multifunction; you TALK to turn the phone on, then you TALK to turn the phone off. I'm not sure what wizard thought that one up. AB had used a phone like that before, and had to show me how, or I might never have figured it out on my own.
The other day, in response to one of my complaints about Thud's user interface, John mentioned clicking on the "+" in the header box to reduce the amount of information shown so I could get some screen space back. In the menu bar, I had "standard" headers selected. I'd tried "extended", which filled most of the message window. The "+" cut it down to a single line, though the arrangement is very annoying.
You can't select that header format in the regular menus, just with the "+". But in any other program in the known universe, "+" means *more* information; I expected it would expand the headers to take even more space. What "+" meant was really "-".
I expect I could zork through some of this stuff, trying every possible combination of left, right, and double clicks, shift-clicks, control-clicks, shift-alt-control-doubleclicks, or whatever, but as I get older I get less and less inclined to do so. I'm not inclined to waste too much of my time trying to figure out software that has tacked-on random features and ships with no documentation.
Normally, all I get is the Cow Look of blank incomprehension.
> > But the city can't afford to pay them overtime, said police > > spokesman James Tate. So the majority [of the overtime] is going to > > be paid for by the federal government, thanks in part to grants from > > the Department of Homeland Security, said Tate.Homeland Gestapo is giving money to a local PD, for more police coverage for a FEETBALL GAME?!
Let the freaking Stupor Bowl promotors pay for it! They're going to make a zillion dollars off the damned thing anyway. Why should *I* have to pay for security for a sporting event?
> > Might as well get used to I think. Any major event will be considered a > > potential terrorist site from now on. > > Right down to the Macy's parade or the Rose bowl, etc etc ad infinitum.Shit, I gotta find out a way to get some of that Homeland Security free money... I wonder if they'd pay me not to be a terrorist?
A few weeks ago I was watching a BBC special about some Egyptian papyri the British Museum had recovered. They were written in Greek, which was the official language of Egypt for quite some time. There was a scene cut to a guy writing a document in Greek. He was using a split stick with a triangular face, dabbing it at the paper to form the characters.
A light dawned. Greek was a variant of cuneiform. Sumerians used a similar tool, I assume, to letter their clay tablets. The Sumerian letters were symbol groups; collections of stabbed triangles in various orientations, each group making a letter. The Greeks joined the triangles up to make single symbols instead of groups, but the basic process was the same. The Greeks did use some curved lines, though.
I read a Greek primer in junior high, and learned the alphabet. It's awkward to do with a ball point pen, and never looked much like the characters in the text. Long afterward I learned about "fonts".
Note: penned Greek uses a different fonts than the inscriptions they chiseled in stone, or the fonts you see in math.
Watching the guy write Greek with a stick, it was obvious why the characters were shaped the way they were - hold the pen against the paper more than a split second, and you'd get an ugly blot.
Cursive English, and presumably Arabic, probably came about in an attempt to write a bit faster with a quill pen. You had to keep the pen moving at a fairly constant rate. If you look at pictures of the Constitution of the United States, you'll see blots where the framers didn't manage that trick all the time. Of course, several all-nighters and alcohol probably didn't help...
Though I once could write cursive, I've never been able to read it. Never needed to; the only cursive I ever saw was as I was drawing the words. Since they couldn't be changed once on paper, proofreading was a waste of time. And I've seen very little cursive since - a few company logos, and once or twice a letter that took me ages to decrypt.
So what killed cursive? I figure it was the ball-point pen. Fountain pens would blot, just like quill pens. You had to keep them moving, and drawing separate characters drastically increased the chance of a blot, since they occurred when the pen contacted or left the paper.
Cursive appears to be dead. Let's hope it stays that way...
Most of these offers come with no contract or fine print. I always toss them in the trash. This one had a contract in fine print. Down near the middle, just casually, they noted that if I accepted their offer, my interest rate would change slightly.
To 30.99%.
Wow. I didn't even know interest rates went that high... after duly considering their offer, I carefully filed it with the empty corn chip bags in empty Coke cans in the special place I have beside my desk...
-- (Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay)
> > The adapter plate for the 82-83 Turbo will interchange with the 83 900. I > > guess that is what I was trying to say. I am not sure why I didn't say that > > to start with...In the Middle Ages, they used to blame that sort of thing on demonic posession...
> > Like this afternoon, during the first-in-many-months DBA meeting at work. In > > that meeting, we were informed that an "Opportunity" was being placed before > > us: The Opportunity to get involved in 24/7 support for all of the various > > departments. I'm outta here.What the hell. Stay on, foment rebellion in the ranks, and tell them you don't have a cellphone or landline home any more.
I had something similar happen at a place I worked, and I jacked them up on the phone subject. They acted like buying a company phone for $35 per month was equivalent to buying a new corporate jet; by the time the flap echoed up and down the levels of management, I was at least able to get a few bucks to cover on-call time.
Fomenting rebellion is good too. The sheep are probably thrilled at their new job description. It's your *duty* to disillusion them! Quietly, of course.
"You want me to make an emergency flight to Ecuador? Oh, no problem, I'll meet them at the airport in Galveston. Galveston, Texas. By the ocean. Right. What do you mean, what am I doing in Galveston? It's only $75 for the redeye flight on Friday nights. By the way, have the airport send a cab, I'd probably be blowing a 0.8 about now. What? I just puked on your phone."
You could amuse yourself for months with creative reasons not to be available on-call...
Meanwhile, you can show up to work each day centered and content, with the knowledge that if they piss you off, you can put your things in a cardboard box and walk out.
>They were caught in several states filing names of people that didn't exist or no > longer living.Each state makes its own election laws. Within the sovereign state of Arkansas, each county further implements its own election laws.
In Pulaski County, Arkansas, you have to show a "primary ID" (birth certificate, passport, or other document accepted as a legal derivative) to register to vote. Only registered voters may vote. When you get to the polls, they check your name against the list (was big paper printouts, until they went electronic last year) to make sure you're registered, then you have to show a minimum of a driver's license or equivalent to be admitted.
I have no problem whatsoever with that. Election of representatives and voting on public acts is the privilege of the citizens of the United States of America and its subdivisions; if you're not provably an American citizen, you can't vote in Federal elections in Pulaski County. If you're not provably a resident of the state of Arkansas, you can't vote in state elections and referenda. And so forth.
All of which, in my mind, is as it should be. States and local governments that whore out their election systems to protect their incumbent power structures are treasonous entities, subverting the intent of the Constitution of the United States of America, and every state Constitution I've looked at.
Pulaski County doesn't care how I cast my votes. Confidentiality is written into the Constitution. But they do insist that I prove my identity and right to vote in the election. Though I don't know that this is actually provided for in the law, I consider it nothing more than due diligence.
When I read that, all I could think of was:
"Let the Wookkie win."
> That AMT Hardballer Longslide 1911 with laser sight from > the first Terminator movie still sticks in my head even > though that laser is just stupidly huge by today's > standards.A couple of gun magazines covered the movie when it came out. According to both, the "laser" was a movie prop; they sneered at it for being unrealistically small.
I guess technology caught up really fast; a few years later local gunshops had them in penlight sizes.
Kind of reminds me of Max's shoe phone in "Get Smart." A radiotelephone built into a shoe? Well, it was just a silly comedy, everyone knew better. Now I could hollow out a heel and slide my little Kyocera phone in there... and it's not just a phone - it's a camera, a flashlight, a radio-driven clock synced to the Naval Observatory standard, a calculator, a voice recorder, has a dialing directory, sends and receives text messages, has a couple of games I never bothered to figure out, and shows pictures. Fancier phones store gigabytes of data, have full keyboards, record and play back movies, locate themselves by satellite GPS, play MP3s, and probably stuff I never knew about.
"Vir, intelligence has nothing to do with politics."
- Vir and Londo, Babylon 5, "Point of No Return"
> You seem to be operating under the myopic illusion that the 'New Deal' (and > along with it the 'Fair Deal', the 'New Frontiers', the 'Great Society', > 'Guns and Butter', and all the rest of the tripe) were more than > unmitigated disasters !!The main purpose of the "New Deal" was to take political credit for everything the Hoover administration did to relieve the Depression. At that, the New Deal was an absolute success; they not only took Hoover's credit, they managed to shift the blame to him, too.
I've never been entirely sure what the "Great Society" was supposed to have been; LBJ was one of our least-effective Presidents anyway.
> That's what John and Lori Witmer did when their > daughter Michelle, 20, was killed in Iraq last year > serving in the Wisconsin National Guard. Her sister > Rachel, 25, who served with her in the 32nd Military > Police Company, and her twin sister, Charity, 21, a > medic, did not to return to Iraq after their parents > pleaded that they be allowed to remain stateside.Michelle is 20 and her twin sister Charity is 21? Or is it Rachel who is 25 who has a twin sister named Charity who is 21?
Has anyone notified the National Enquirer?
> More than two weeks after he was killed while pulling > fellow soldiers from a burning vehicle in Iraq, the > body of Army Staff Sgt. Jason Hendrix remains caught > in a legal limbo created by a battle between his > divorced parents over who has the right to bury his > remains.Piss on his feuding parents.
Bury him at Arlington; he earned his place the hard way.
> I wish the media would make up its mind. Are we fighting the war in > Iraq with a bunch of middle-aged reservists who left jobs and kids > behind, or a bunch of young hot-heads who dropped out of high > school?What, we're at war with Iraq *again*?
At least the occupation force was already there to take care of it...