Supreme Court ruled today on the D.C. gun ban

[trish]

Here are some brief remarks on your link, El Nino:

It’s not news that our beliefs are shaped by our environment which includes the society in which we live. It can easily happen that society is wrong about certain of its beliefs and that we are led by our society to believe those falsehoods. They might even be false beliefs that function to guarantee the relative comfort of a certain segment of society; e.g. we might believe that “all poverty is born of laziness.” Those who benefit by such a belief might in fact propagate it. None of this requires a conspiracy. There needn’t be a secret cabal in the recesses of government that set it all in motion. (Indeed, why is the government always the bad guy in these conspiracy scenarios, why not the pseudo-intellectual political think-tanks?) Of course our thoughts are not entirely our own. In fact it’s damn hard to come up with an original idea that’s viable in the market place of ideas. That’s simply part of the natural memetic evolution of ideas. The narrator in your linked clip is rather like the 19th century thinker who cannot imagine that evolution could’ve proceeded without gods to initiate and guide it.

[muhmuh]

The pessimist sees the glass half empty.
The optimist sees the glass half full.
The engineer sees a glass that’s larger than it need be to serve it current function.

and the communications engineer says
http://bangengineering.com/blog/wp-c...t-engineer.gif

[loki]

The pessimist sees the glass half empty.
The optimist sees the glass half full.
The engineer sees a glass that’s larger than it need be to serve it current function.

and the communications engineer says
http://bangengineering.com/blog/wp-c...t-engineer.gif

Spoken like someone who has never had to defend himself/herself against a"gansta" or a fucking mugger like i have.

[trish]

loki, i think many transgender women have witnessed their share of violence ( http://www.hungangels.com/board/view...hlight=#415695 ).
Some of us just bravely handle it without waving our own guns and knives.

But just how the pessimist/optimist amusement prompted your ejaculation, I can only imagine. Maybe you could explain how the Dilbert cartoon linked by muhmuh is linked by logic to your insult. You know, you might try posting while sober sometime. I think you'll find a notable improvement in the result. (Well maybe not, but it's worth a try).

[El Nino]

House Keeping

[muhmuh]

Spoken like someone who has never had to defend himself/herself against a"gansta" or a fucking mugger like i have.

not everyone lives in a country where half the population is stuck in the wild west
and what in the name of all that is unholy does being mugged have to do with redundant glasses?

[trish]

Trish you are a little miss knowitall, aren't you. Well, we have news for you...

Yeah, like you know there's a cabal because you're a member.

All joking aside. Did you think I'd be wowed by that silly piece of fluff? I offered the obvious critique and now I'm little miss knowitall? I was hoping for a more reasoned response.

[chefmike]

Yeah, like you know there's a cabal because you're a member.

You probably have to know the secret handshake, trish. But they can be easily recognized due to their jaunty tinfoil hats.

[El Nino]

House Keeping

[trish]

With questionable levity El Nino writes

This is pretty funny too!

…and then he posts a link to tyrannyalert’s speculative pdf on the collapse of the twin towers.

The link claims to refute the conclusions of a dozen independent engineering firms and societies. Yet it contains not a single reference to any independent engineering analysis, not a single table or chart displaying the stress analysis data or dynamics. Not a single mathematical equation. In short, it fails to rigorously and quantitatively criticize the existing models of the twin tower’s collapse and offers no rigorous model or analysis of its own.

It’s just another piece of fluff posing as engineering science.

Here are a few slightly more serious links. The first is the final NIST report. It’s close to 300 pages long, so it may take a little while to download. The second’s only 8 pages long and demonstrates what a mathematic model of collapse should look like. The latter two are slide show presentations given at two different engineering conferences.

http://wtc.nist.gov/NISTNCSTAR1CollapseofTowers.pdf

http://ocw.mit.edu/NR/rdonlyres/Nucl...C6/0/ps2p2.pdf

http://web.mit.edu/istgroup/ist/docu...Istanbul04.pdf

http://eagar.mit.edu/EagarPresentati...C_TMS_2002.pdf