fatdogs12

How about one $40,000 JDAM and be done with it?

I pretend that I am in a train laying down inside a little sleeping compartment, something like I have seen in some of the movies from the 50's. Just a peaceful trip relaxing, knowing I am going off to some destination though I don't know where. It's always dark and snowing outside... That always does the trick, 5 minutes and I'm out

I disagree, I don't even have a ANY high school and have never had a problem getting programming jobs (good paying ones). IT is one of the few industries where a college degree doesn't matter very much though it can be helpful. You just need to think in terms of what a potential employer might want and go from there. In general they want smart people who work hard (a lot of programmers do not) and who can communicate well. Definetly get some code samples together though, with no experiance in the US, no degree and a short history of living in the US employers may be skeptical. (Removed quote of prev post - sN)

Yeah I agree with this totally. Sounds a lot like you are locked away and can't get out of this mental problem. No fun I'm sure. One thing I might also ask from past experiance is how well you are eating and how much exercise you get. In my experiance when I ate real poorly and didn't exercise I didn't have the energy to put out the effort for a whole lot. I was also self employed but to be honest I was very scared of trying to sell people on my company and my ability. However once I started eating better and exercising everyday I felt much better, able to take on more stuff and do it much faster. If you are skeptical do what I did when I was told about that it might be my health. I went and got a couple of hampsters but you could use mice/rats or gingea pigs too. I fed one a similar diet to mine (no meat though) with a typical amount of sugar, bad starches and the like. The other one I fed just vegtables and that was it. After a week the difference between the two hampsters was huge, the one with all that sugar was the laziest most sluggish thing I ever saw. He just sat around while the other one did normal hampter stuff with plenty of energy. Okay okay so this isn't the most scientific study ever but it showed me that "hey maybe it's worth a shot". Once I got with it I saw the difference in my health, now things have completely turned around for me. Either way whether it's mental or physical I hope you are able to feel more motivated. :-)

I saw that google video (video.google.com) is selling this game and since I didn't see it I can hardly wait to watch what I am sure if a fantastic performance. On a personal note I want to say that I really don't like Kobe simply because he always seems cocky and while I have to admit even before the 81 points he was one of the best playing I don't think he is good enough to be that cocky. As far as the comment goes I can only see that he would feel embarrassed because he felt he "shouldn't" have been that "selfish" with the ball. I mean you can't score 81 every game but when your teammates are mediocre you have to be willing to take the ball. I guess I will have to watch to game to see if it was him being a ball hog or him just playing terrific. Really scoring 81 as a "give me the ball every time down the court" isn't super impressive but if he played super well, well that is.

I'm not sure what country you are from but indeed the United States has nearly 300 million people not 40 million. 10 percent would be 30 million people. Now as far as the Mulsim population in the United States goes there are belived to be less than 1 % with about 2.9 million muslims in the US. Most of these arn't super radical to begin with (relatively). These Muslims contain a lot of the American versions of Islam like The Nation Of Islam and the 5 Percenters. As far as the rest of your post I will address it later when I have more time.

What are you basing this on? Since the US has invaded it's been a constant struggle with Islamic terrorists (soldiers). Before that they were under a complete dictatorship in which Saddam called all the shots and could easily crush the resistance. The punishment for rebellion under Saddam might get your whole family killed. Based on the evidence I have seen THIS religion does by it's very nature impose unbreachable barriers to individual rights and therefore democracy as well. What are you basing that statement on? Would you care to be specific about how this could happen because I can't see how. What is the context here? If democracy does flourish what will happen? Eventually you are just empowering more people to be more educated and more exposed to the West. When the Muslim world watches Iraqis getting the Internet and Satillite TV with all it's "Evil" American influences do you think those people will be happy about that? If anything I see more people being more upset and now we will just have given the Muslim world more capital and more education with which attack the US.

So essentially wouldn't it be quite possible that a reacktor could leak low level radiation for many years without anyone knowing? How would anyone know? Buy personal Geiger (sic) counters? I don't know, I recognize that it's immoral to put restrict a person's (and therefore a company's) rights but to be honest I would probably not want to live anywhere near a nuclear reactor if it could be operated in a good or poor condition if I would have no way of knowing.

I didn't mention them because I was writting a treatise on what is wrong with Islam but rather the problems they create with other cultures and religons. The essential element is that they do not respect others rights. Honor killings are horrible crimes but in and of themselves they are no threat to me so why would I care? Is every person who is a Muslim a terrorist? No of course not. But just because they do not engage in it currently does NOT mean they do not sanction it, of course it also does not mean that they do either. But what is the evidence either way? Well lets see, in general Muslims world wide DO NOT speak out against terror. Yes a few US Muslim organizations in the West have a foot in the door and piddle out useless comments about how they are unhappy with the terrorists but I don't see any mass protests against the use of terror do you? How many actually stand opposed to terror? Those are the only ones worth saving and I doubt there are very many. Besides the Muslims in the West are very few % wise, in fact there is not a single country in the west with greater than 10% of thier population being Muslim Chart Under "Contemporary Islam". If you get rid of them all you won't have to worry about suicide bombings. You can be nice and content now if you would like but I am not. If you don't remember we were attacked on Sept. 11th which caused a huge set back to our economy and a signifigant loss of life of people who happened to be highly skilled and valuable to the economy itself. As bin Laden likes to remind us it's just a matter of time before he strikes again. Now if some Muslims want to announce they are against terror and for human rights then fine they can live no problem. But as long as the Muslims continue to incite terror against us and the rest of the world the only question in my mind is: Who will nuke first?

This entire statement ignores the majority of what has been discussed in this thread. Why are we there in Iraq to begin with? To establish democracy? Pfff, it's not worth it and it's not even close. Why should we spend 250 billion on a country that (A) Doesn't want us in thier country AT ALL ( and which we are not getting anything out of it. If we are there to establish democracy that is altruistic. We sacrifice our money, our effort, our years and our lives so a country that doesn't want us there can have something that they really don't want. Makes sense.....

Yes I do know that there are a billion muslims in the world, it's the worlds second largest religon. When I said "Arabic" I meant to say "Islamic" I unintentitonally used the wrong word. Arabs actually make up a small portion of Muslims as the biggest countries for muslims are Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh and India. If you hadn't noticed Muslims are already radical. Look at how many conflicts occur between Muslims and other cultures and religons. Every place that Muslims go there are problems specifically related to them and thier Religon. Islam IS the problem. What country with Islam doesn't have major problems? In India look at the conflict between the Muslims and Hindus. Check out the situation in Darfur which is being perpetrated by muslims. In the Philippines the muslims kill the Christians. These are just some of the conflicts in which Muslims are currently involved in and that doesn't even count the current Al-Qaida (Islam) vs the US. They have no respect for the rights of others and are HAPPY to take it away from others whenver possible. America cannot radicalize Islam by bombing it, Islam is already radical. I suggest you check out what the ARI has to say about all this: ARI link or how about this one: ARI link

What benefits? Do you really think that the benefits are worth the costs? Simplest solution really is to just nuke one Arabic country after another on the basis that if the Muslims dont' completely stop terrorism after the first bomb then we drop a second. Eventaully I think they will get the point.

Actually I think today we would still invade it. I think a much better solution to the Iraq situation was just to blow up all the places Saddam stayed at until eventually we killed him or the Iraqi's decided they had enough of Saddam and were willing to take over. I don't get why we would invade, how is this a help to us? Recently there was a report by a left leaning group/person which said that the total cost of the Iraq war could be close to 2 trillion dollars once you factor in the higher Gas premiums we are paying, the cost of supporting the injured soldiers in iraq and a bunch of other factors. While he may be incorrect on the specific amount I think the cost is probably gonna be a lot higher than people think in general. That is why bombing is great. It's cheap, effective and nobody from the US has to die :-)

I would be shocked if the Democrats won congress back. I think that the country has really drawn sides more so than any time in recent memory. What do you put the chances of the Democrats winning the house at?

I was wondering: as a work around could Wal-Mart or the Board of Wal-Mart set up a subsidiary company or a new company not under the Wal-Mart umbrella and use that company to hire, pay and fire employee's? Basically let Wal-Mart outsource some of the jobs to themselves, just enough to keep thier state payrolls under 10,000 people. Either way it sucks but this could possibly give them a way out.

As much as I hate Cramer (mostly because he happens to be both stupid and annoying) I have been a stock trader for 8 years now and I never know squat about the financials of a company (other than by coincidence). While you can go the Warren Buffet / Gram (sic) and Dodd method, you cannot achieve the same returns (usually) that a trader could. Only problem is that it takes and ENOURMOUS amount of self-control and ability to not let the gain or loss of money affect you.

This is excruciating to me, you could speculate forever as to why she isn't into you but you probably won't know unless she tells you. So why not ask her? I mean you have your foot in the door already so why not save yourself a ton of headache and just find out. Maybe she had a bad experiance with a guy, maybe she is independant, maybe she thinks your full of yourself, maybe she is just uncomfortable with the attention.... There are a million maybes but if you ask you can get right to the issue and either fix what she doesn't like or at least understand why she isn't in to you. IM experiance though a lot of girls who don't get a lot of guys to ask them out seem to really be distrustful of guys who like them because they "generally" don't value themselves. They tend to think that guys have ulterior motives because "who could like me" (not that this is nessasarily a concious thought). So I reiterate, just ask.

But he wasn't really killed was he? I don't see any news stories on it...

I agree with this 100%. If I find someone I think I might like I try to get them alone. This gives you much more of an ability to at least find out what they value conciously and sometimes unconciously (ie what are thier goals in life, whom do they respect and why, what do they like etc). I generally will do this early in the beginning because I really hate to waste my time with someone for weeks and weeks only to find out that thier a socialist at heart even if they don't know it.

I have a hard time believing that a established company actually wrote this article. It sounds nothing like the typical marketing spin companies put on things. I have to wonder why a lot of it is worded the way it is. It almost sounds like they are trying to put the customer down. Good points in it but I think it's really stupid from a business perspective. I have lost a lot of respect for Toyota for that. I have owned a Lexus for 6 years now but this makes me reconsider what I will buy next time.

What I read of it comes from the brand new book "Ayn Rand Answers". However the orginal quote comes from "The Wreckage of the Consensus" which (though I don't have it) come from The Capitalist Manifesto as I understand. This is without a doubt the truth. Regardless of who was teaching it I would have had to go over it a few times. However I think Ayn Rand had more of an ability to explain complicated issues without much confusion.

Mostly I was comparing the writting style of OPAR with ITOE. I do acknowledge thier difference in scope however Rand once stated that (something to this effect, though I don't have a proper quote) a person would need an IQ of 150 to understand ITEO. By that standard I think you would probably need to be Einstein to understand OPAR. It took me more than 9 months of reading and rereading the middle chapters of OPAR before I had a good understanding of what Peikoff was talking about. I honestly believe that a lot of that fact just comes down to Peikoffs writting style, which I personally find to be confusing. I do respect if others do not see it that way, I am just curious if as to the actual style of concept explination anyone found much of a difference.

I was wondering what others people thought about the difference in thier non-fiction writting. I personally have found Ayn Rand's explinations of her philosophy MUCH MUCH simpler to comprehend than Dr. Peikoff's were in OPAR compared to ITOC. Now I know that the scope of OPAR is much larger but as far as explinations go I find Ayn Rand's much easier to comprehend. Has this been the case for anyone else?

Definitely losing weight is 90% diet IMO.

This is why I was advocating eating something in the range of 800 calories a day (which is what I did) just to make sure you get the stuff that you need for your body to function. Your body defintely needs other things in order to function. I also agree I would not fast to lose weight (well not more than 10 or 15 days max) because it's much much eaiser to eat 800 calories a day and survive and still be able to work. When I was on mine I still kept up my normal routine of 90-100 hours a week towards productive purposes. After about the third of fourth day I was pretty much adjusted to the diet. The only case I can really see it not being in someone's best interests to lose weight is if they knew they would die soon. (NOTE: I'm not saying there are not other situations) Otherwise you can extend your life expectancy, feel much better, look much better, get better paying jobs and promotions much easier (that has been my observation over and over again) while also saving a lot of money on food and knowing that you do not have a hedonistic addiction.