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Everything posted by 213374U
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Haha, I hate when that happens!
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Fighting secessionists is imperialism ? Oh, come on. You know there is no single answer to that and that it's a matter of historical perspective—and history is written by the winners. Were the British being imperialists by fighting the armies raised by the Continental Congress? Were the French being imperialists by fighting the Algerians? etc. The secret of politics? Make a good treaty with Russia. — Otto von Bismarck Won't be surprised to find that she's a fan.
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Oh, I don't know. How about leading by example? "Authority"? What authority do you have over anyone?
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Really? How many people die in the US of "extremist" attacks yearly? And how many just die of gunshot wounds? Please explain to me how exactly extremism is the bigger threat. What in the world are you talking about? edit: I guess if you want to just address the wounds, we can discuss a skin treatment plan that makes us bulletproof? Seriously though, what in the world are you talking about again? Yeah, nevermind me. I'm in a total read fail-mode this afternoon. I apparently missed the "this means nothing with regards to gun control" part. Time for a time out. Herpity derpity doo.
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Really? How many people die in the US of "extremist" attacks yearly? And how many just die of gunshot wounds? Please explain to me how exactly extremism is the bigger threat.
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Increase what? Looks like you are plenty active already. You have any particular goals you are working towards or...? edit: oh sorry, I re-read. With your current level of activity, you are probably just going to have to cut back on calories. You could theoretically keep increasing energy demands (HIIT, plyometrics...) but there comes a point where you are just pushing too hard and there's a price for everything. Changing the relation between fats/carbs/protein to favor the latter two to the detriment of the former will probably yield results fairly quickly for someone so active. From what I've read also it seems that the lion's share of the fat burning efect from EPOC is due to the body's adaptive and repair processes, so spicing up things a bit in the weight room may also be to your advantage if you've been doing more or less the same things for a while.
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<image deleted> Leaving the international community (read: the US and her proconsuls) to deal with a fait accompli that's achieved without bloodshed and with, at the very least, acquiescence of the locals may be less risky than letting "diplomacy" run its course and then defying everyone by applying force anyway if the backroom dealing doesn't go their way. As you said, I can't see anyone being thrilled at the perspective of having to dislodge the Russians from Crimea and eastern Ukraine. We may be looking at Munich Agreement Redux, depending how things play out. Not really new means, and I'm not sure the comparison is fair. Plurinational countries don't exactly have a stellar track record of success and stability throughout history, and breakup after an uneasy while is the usual outcome. Also Crimea had been a part of Russia for longer than (modern) Ukraine has existed, so it's not surprising that the majoritarian ethnic group is Russians. This is not Russians coming into Crimea in the past 20 years and voting for secession after completely changing the demographic composition of the peninsula. Looks like you are trying to establish a parallel between Russians in Ukraine and immigrants in Europe, but it's a bit of a stretch.
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I don't know about the British Army, but in my experience standard-issue boots are murder on the feet if you need to do any actual ground stomping in them. Non-standard issue is not surprising here. The degree of gear customization seems to increase the more "elite" a unit is. As for Stalin's russification of Crimea, I'm not so sure. Crimea has been part of Russia since the 18th century and there were already large amounts of ethnic Russians by then. Soviet russification policies are infamous, but the Soviets didn't actually invent them. And with regards to your subsequent comment on Obama's inaction, I'm actually more inclined to believe that US Prezs are more likely to embark on a war when they have nothing to lose politically, i.e. near the end of their second term. What with the general public opinion against more wars and all. I doubt the rest of NATO would be happy to issue a DOW on Russia over this, either. As I said, at this point it's a strategic defeat for Russia anyway and I don't see how they could salvage the situation. Even reclaiming Crimea "for the Motherland!" wouldn't make up for the loss of Ukraine as a partner.
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Wouldn't be surprised if the net result of this were Crimea ending up like Transnistria.
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That's... an interesting view. The absence of a central figure of authority having absolute power, instead being distributed among a myriad elected and unelected officials and private sector bigwigs may indeed be "balanced" in a strict sense. But it's decidedly undemocratic, and the results are manifestly terrible—widespread waste, reduction of civil liberties, inequality increases and perpetual war. And all in the name of greed.
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You'd have to have a pretty big heart to love that pitbull of a man, I must say.
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The thing is you cannot selectively justify the encroachment on civil liberties. For all I know, Uganda is a tyranny in the same sense Germany is one, even if functionally they are not the same. You do need to pick your battles though, you can find civil rights issues everywhere. Nobody is saying that it is fine in one country but not another, it's simply a matter of time, resources, and prioritizing. Well, I may be mistaken but there was some defense of hate speech laws back there somewhere. This was a general commentary on that tangent is all. I agree that everything cannot be tackled simultaneously and fixed overnight. But how do you suggest we choose which civil liberties issues take priority? My pet peeve is with "us" telling others how it's not nice to do something, when we are doing the equivalent ourselves. This makes any pretense of moral authority crumble.
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The thing is you cannot selectively justify the encroachment on civil liberties. For all I know, Uganda is a tyranny in the same sense Germany is one, even if functionally they are not the same.
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Not being fluent in Russian or Ukrainian, All I see is that Muzychko character bitchslapping a suit. Who is that and what is Muzychko ranting about?
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You needn't say that—drawing parallels between a series of current events and events past that everyone knows about is subtly but surely laying out a slippery slope. You said: But it actually works both ways. A group takes power and decides that trait "X" is abhorrent and needs to be eradicated "for the betterment of society", though the excuses vary wildly. This trait can be religious beliefs, ethnic ties, economic status, affinity with certain political ideas, and yes, even sexual orientation; it can be pretty much anything. Backed by the majority and riding atop a self-reinforcing sense of moral righteousness, laws are passed to suppress the expression of this trait, damning the members of society targeted by these measures to an existence outside of mainstream society, as pariahs—using the power of the state to persecute people based on what they are. Once this is justified for "X", it can be justified for anything based on precedent. At this point a tyranny has effectively been enabled, and all bets are off. CAR, South Sudan, Iraq... it's old news brah. News pieces are consumption articles and nobody likes stale bread.
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^ Maybe it works with the 1.2 beta patch?
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Yeah, and that is the exact opposite to the slippery slope that "first you legalize hate" and then BAM! Treblinka. Given the subjective properties of language, hate speech laws are either extremely difficult to enforce, or an excuse to implement ideological tyranny. If you are indeed in a situation in which the particular audiences that can be convinced of whatever it is you want to suppress are large enough that their actions cannot be controlled, hate speech laws aren't going to do much good anyway. And if they are not large enough, the state already has broad powers to keep order. Hate speech laws are measures aimed at superficial symptoms of much deeper problems at best, or concealed attempts at social engineering at worst. To use your own example, the Third Wave experiment would not have infringed on any hate speech laws; it still took off no problem. I also contend that at a fundamental level, you cannot simultaneously sustain the paternalist stance that the existence of some ideas is inherently "dangerous" or "unacceptable" to society (and therefore manifesting them is in breach of the law) and also the postulate upon which democracy is based that a society can produce sensible, responsible adult individuals free to form their own opinions and exercise their political rights accordingly. Conveniently, it's always going to be those unaffected by free speech limitations that believe that it's the "others" that need their dangerous thoughts reined in, by virtue of how groupthink works in societies at large. <insert comparison in accordance to Godwin's law>
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That's a good question. The weight of water above them is compensated by the normal (upwards) force exerted in reaction by the seabed that is transmitted through the column of water under the fish, as per Newton's third Law. This places an enormous pressure on fish, but as they are basically made of water, they are therefore as incompressible as the water that surrounds them. They just don't care about the pressure, provided they remain within the pressure ranges that are safe for them. As for the swimming through concrete idea, the internal property that describes the resistance of a fluid to shearing (to put it roughly) is viscosity. Viscosity is not a function of pressure, but of temperature. But even at the lowest temperatures at which water is still liquid and ostensibly still behaving as water, its viscosity is 1,000 to 10,000 times less than that of, say, chocolate syrup. http://www.research-equipment.com/viscosity%20chart.html Also, consider that when a fish swims, it's not fighting against the pressure, because the inroad it's making "against" the water in front of it is compensated by the empty space behind it that it no longer occupies, which is immediately filled with water. Pressure is not a factor. Again, I'm not a physicist, but I think that's the general idea.
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It's not even "US press", as it's not homogeneous—just the big names that enjoy a reputation earned in times past and consequently get the most following and exposure. There is quite a bit of independent critical stuff, but for lack of means and what Zoraptor explained, the effectiveness of their efforts is limited. Do tell, who is the real power-structure in the US? http://billmoyers.com/episode/the-deep-state-hiding-in-plain-sight/ Enjoy.
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Western-style nation-building proceeding at full speed: http://www.kyivpost.com/content/politics/thirteen-more-party-of-regions-members-leave-parliamentary-faction-337356.html http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/yefremov-complains-to-ashton-his-faction-mps-working-at-gunpoint-337587.html http://en.ria.ru/world/20140224/187857643/Ukraine-Parliament-Sacks-Constitutional-Court-Judges.html Yay "democracy". And because we have such short memories: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/nov/26/ukraine.usa http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957 Also, it appears the new cabinet has issued a decree disbanding the Berkut riot police—a demand put forth by Svoboda. I wonder who's going to stand up to the Right Sector nazi militias now? The recently-appointed-by-Russian-mobs mayor of Sevastopol has already declared himself in defiance of this and will apparently continue to finance Berkut regardless, even though Berkut units are outside of the normal police hierarchy and answer to the senior Interior Ministry official for the region. Interesting that these are the same police units that were deployed from Eastern Ukraine to crack down on protesters as Yanukovych wasn't too sure about the loyalties of western-based Berkut units, and the same that were cheered on by the people at Donetsk upon their return. All in all, it's increasingly looking like a major strategic defeat for Russia. Nice timing, too. It's not the first time.. and if I wanted to such arguments, i'd go somewhere were there is a religious sub-forum. Aww, poor boy. He so butthurt. If you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen. You don't get to choose the arguments other people make.
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"Some questioner[sic]" is actually the survey tool used by RWB to gather the data they later collate into the Press Freedom Index. You would have figured this out this if you a) actually read the Wikipedia articles you regurgitate, b) read the posts other people make to graciously explain why the stupid **** you post is baseless/irrelevant/outright wrong and c) put some thought into the discussion instead of saving all your available brainpower to make prepubescent jokes about other posters' aliases. But keep quoting me and talking about me. It's clear that you care.
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I haven't played WoW, but have experience with other MMOs. The most common practical complaint I read related to this kind of thing is that by allowing people to max toons without actually doing the leveling they would make the already difficult problem of finding competent endgame partners a veritable nightmare, filling the upper ranks with "noobs" that would have otherwise quit or learned their toon while leveling. But from what I've read, WoW is hardly hardcore to begin with, so...
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Im inclined to agree with your first paragraph but disagree with your second. Imo, paying my taxes doesn't buy me the right to classified weapons system / intelligence gathering / etc... I feel those type programs must stay secret or basically lose all effectiveness. Thanks for the answer. Right, I think I should clarify that. It's not that paying taxes buys me anything. Knowing what exactly has been done with the money ensures that it's not being pocketed by sleazy officials and that it's not being used for illegal purposes. And in a more practical sense, it may also serve to press for reasonable spending. It'd be closer to auditing than to having any rights over what the taxes money is buying. I mean, read the Washington Post link I pasted. $75bn for intelligence (article was written in 2010), not including "some military activities and domestic counterterrorism programs". And the people running it can't tell whether it's actually working at making the country more secure!