Displaying 31 To 60 Of 132 Comments And you haven’t felt pain until you’ve lost your balance and taken that flipless next step! Ahhhhh!!! » Posted By ParadisePlacebo74 On February 19, 2011 @ 9:26 pm I always assumed that was just leftover parts and boredom. I guess it is kinda geeky, though — like an ethereal version of Junk Yard Wars… » Posted By ParadisePlacebo74 On February 19, 2011 @ 9:02 pm Employment at Will…what does it mean? “Federal funds for high-speed rail? Why would anyone want that!?!” That Scott guy is a bad joke! As much as I loved it while I was there, I’m kind of glad I left Flori”duh” when I did. » Posted By ParadisePlacebo74 On February 19, 2011 @ 4:35 am Great post Abby! Articles like this are why I love this site! » Posted By ParadisePlacebo74 On February 19, 2011 @ 4:27 am I’ve never understood the logic of promoting unregulated capitalism, and being unconcerned about the destruction of the middle class at the same time. It’s a false dichotomy. They expect the majority of consumers to purchase their overpriced products and services with money they no longer have, and can’t even borrow anymore. » Posted By ParadisePlacebo74 On February 19, 2011 @ 4:10 am Writing Responsibly for Other Universes I have yet to find a genre that allows a writer to explore the nature of humanity better than science fiction, and it’s by far my favorite. I don’t read as often as I should, and I don’t read as fast as many do (I subvocalize with full context — it allows for excellent comprehension, but it takes a long time), but I really get into the books that I do read. Anyone who thinks that sci-fi is “easier” to write than other genres simply isn’t making an effort to conceptualize the process. The writer may not have to stick to “reality” to start things off, but that just means they must create a new one, from scratch — brick by brick. I don’t envy peforming such a daunting task. Then they must introduce characters into that “homemade” reality that the reader can identify with (and often some they can’t), and create a series of events that makes those characters come to life — all of it being juggled within that individual writer’s mind. I think that anyone who refers to science fiction as “simple” is really just labeling themselves. » Posted By ParadisePlacebo74 On February 19, 2011 @ 4:23 pm Tillamook is da bomb!! Best sharp cheddar I’ve ever had (not that I’m a connoissuer). » Posted By ParadisePlacebo74 On February 19, 2011 @ 3:28 am Ha! » Posted By ParadisePlacebo74 On February 19, 2011 @ 3:24 am Proud To Be Liberal By Brian Elroy McKinley Ten thumbs up! ‘Cause that how many it feels like I have when I try to explain the concept myself. 😉 » Posted By ParadisePlacebo74 On February 19, 2011 @ 1:02 am I think this article does a good job of explaining why communism is incompatible with modern human societies– and it’s differences with socialism and capitalism: http://www.progressiveliving.org/economics/capitalism_socialism_communism.htm » Posted By ParadisePlacebo74 On February 19, 2011 @ 12:58 am I’m almost certain that i’d enjoy it, and get a lot out of it, but the timing sucks. It’s a much bigger decision in this economic/political climate than it should be. There are thousands of college grads out there with absolutely no prospects for finding a position anywhere. The time investment I’m not worried about (one of the odd perks of getting older), and the money is just money — it comes and goes. I think it’s the long term hope that could come to nothing that’s the truly scary part. I’ve already been forced out of one line of work because it was outsorced into oblivion. I don’t think I could handle putting a huge amount of time, money, and effort into a chosen career field that just goes *poof*. I guess I’m having hard time with optimism in the age of ignorance. 😕 » Posted By ParadisePlacebo74 On February 19, 2011 @ 12:19 am This is a great article, and it’s inspired me to tell my own story (as you’ll see below). I believe that the most important thing that can be done, out of a long list that needs to be done, is to create a nationally standardized cirriculum in in the areas that don’t pertain to individual state histories — math, science, reading and writing, and a consensus on the factual history of America. No more would Texas control the cirriculum and standards just by being the biggest customer. They can teach Texas history as backwardly as they want, but not the history of the entire country. California, and the rest of the “left” coast, doesn’t use Texas school books, and I believe that it’s a major factor in why progressivism is still alive and well there. » Posted By ParadisePlacebo74 On February 18, 2011 @ 10:55 pm I apologize for this being such a long comment, but it’s on topic, and it’s a long story: I was born in northern Alabama in the mid 1970’s, and went to grade school there until the sixth grade. I was tested for and deemed “gifted”, but my mom was persuaded by her sister, “the educator” [spit], that I would become “socially stunted” by being seperated from the “regular” kids (my mom — who isn’t very good at any form of logical thinking — never understood that my aunt was subconsciously competing with her, making sure that only her children had a chance at being “the smartest”), so I stayed in the normal classes, bored and restless. I had good teachers, but it wasn’t a good situation — not that I understood any of that at the time. Then, when I was twelve, my family and I moved to central Florida. It was absolutely depressing. There I was, the only one with a thick southern accent (the further south you go from the state line, the less “southern” the culture is), and it immediately made my new classmates assume that I was a moron — but it became clear rather quickly that it was the other way around. I was at least two years ahead in almost every class based on their state curriculum, but since I hadn’t been in any advanced classes before, they didn’t see any reason to change things. So, with the “dumb kids” (my own label for them at the time) I stayed. My math teachers used a grading curve to determine test scores (which I had never experienced), and I would easily ace every test — causing my peers to become hostile because they couldn’t keep up. I was so bored by the lack of a challenge, and intimidated by the lack of acceptance, that I just stopped caring. I floated along, paying attention in class and continuing to score all A’s on the tests, but I just stopped bothering with homework. Since I “got” what was being presented the first time around, I didn’t see the point of all the repetition. Eventually, at the end of my last semester in the eighth grade, my English teacher called me in to say that he had “lost” all of my paperwork — it turned out that he based the majority of a final grade on homework, and since I had made straight A’s on all the tests without doing any of his “ridiculous” homework, he had decided to pass me so that I wouldn’t be held back from moving on to high school. He had done me a huge favor, but I didn’t realize it at the time. It was a near miss — but unfortunately, I still just didn’t care. I kept floating along through high school — making mostly average grades with less than average effort. That first year, my school district decided to institute a new hardcore anti-truancy policy, stating that a student could only miss nine days in any class during a semester, and anything over three had to be backed up with paperwork from an “official” source — otherwise the student would automatically fail the entire semester of that class. I wasn’t bad about missing school, so it didn’t effect me as much as it did so many others (the failure rate became insane, but the school board didn’t seem to care). They also didn’t care that there were upwards of forty students in almost every class (rendering individual attention impossible), and a student body of over five thousand in a school originally built in the 1950’s, but I digress. Then, in my junior year, the powers that be decided to introduce new math textbooks for the class I was taking — but these weren’t just any books, these were “a new way of learning” based on “the new math” (remeber that? I certainly do). I, like so many of my peers, was completely lost. I had no idea what the hell the book (or the suddenly confused teacher) was talking about, so I failed test after test, and finally just stopped going to that class altogether — gauranteeing a failed semester. The next semester I had to take “general mathematics”, the class for the kids that couldn’t even keep up with the regular curriculum. It was horrifying, but I had no alternative. I started to care even less, and ended up auto-failing some more classes. I forgot to mention that around the same time the school board decided to change the truancy rules, the state had decided to raise the graduation standard to TWENTY-SIX credits (you could only earn twenty-eight in four years on a regular schedule). Most of the rest of the country had an eighteen to twenty-four credit requirement, but that didn’t seem to matter to The Great State of Flori”duh”. By the time I finished the first semester of my senoir year, I knew that I would be one credit short at the end, and I’d have to return the next school year to meet the requirement — so I quit. I was eighteen years old, and my parents couldn’t stop me, so I signed some papers and moved on. I officially became a high school drop-out. Later that year, things finally got better. My dad (a travelling IBEW wireman) had been working in western Washington state, north of the Seattle area, and my mom decided that since my two older sisters and I had moved out and/or away, she was going to finally start travelling with him (meaning they would live wherever he found work). I was staying with friends and between jobs at the time, and they asked me if I also wanted to make a change — so I moved to the other corner of the country with them, and it turned out to be glorious! The people there were so different from what I was used to. They were kind and friendly, and they seemed to be so much more accepting of other people and cultures. So, I decided to look into getting my diploma. It turned out that I already met their much more sane credit requirement, except for a single-semester, tenth grade class on Washington state history. I braced myself for a final semester of being the “too-old-for-high school new kid”, but they said it wouldn’t be necessary. They had an alternative school for kids with various “issues”, and I could take the class there — at my own pace! In other words, I could blow through the class as fast as I could absorb the material, complete the assignments and pass all the tests — which I did in about three weeks. I then recieved a ceritificate from the alternative school stating that I had completed all requirements, and I was officially a high school graduate! Yahoo!! The only downside was that I would have to wait until the end of the regular school year to recieve my official diploma (they only printed them once per year). So I got a job and moved on with my life. Later on that year, I got a package in the mail, and it was my official high school diploma! The wierd part is that it’s from a school that I’ve never set foot on the grounds of, and probably never will (when people I met would ask, “where did you go to high school?” all I could say was “uh — it’s a long story”). I can only image how my life would be different if I had grown up there — and getting my compulsory public education hadn’t been such a shitty experience. I’ve never been to college, so I don’t really know what it’s like — but almost twenty years have passed, and my nephew has just started a new quarter of his first year in junior college — and the more he tells me about what it’s like, the more I’m buying into the idea that “it’s never too late”. I guess only time will tell… » Posted By ParadisePlacebo74 On February 18, 2011 @ 10:19 pm Arianna’s Republican Hattrick (or Toyboy) I don’t have any use for the woman, but the level of vitriol in this piece is outside of my comfort zone. The name calling doesn’t add any benefit or clarity to the article. » Posted By ParadisePlacebo74 On February 18, 2011 @ 4:27 pm Thanks for the info! I’m not sure if deleting my account will make much difference to anyone running HP, but if it adds to the idea that they’ve made their regular posters angry, then I think it’s worth it. I gave up on posting much of anything there several months ago, anyway. As you said, continuing to feed the stupid trolls just didn’t make any sense. I’ll still check out their site (as I do with several others), but I don’t think I’m going to be logging in anymore. » Posted By ParadisePlacebo74 On February 18, 2011 @ 2:15 am What’s the process for deleting an account? I looked around for a “close your account” link but couldn’t find anything. » Posted By ParadisePlacebo74 On February 18, 2011 @ 12:08 am Mid-Atlantic Trip Part 15: D.C. by Night Great article, Khirad! I’ve always wanted to visit our nation’s capital, but I have yet to get there. These pictures make me want to go that much more, but I’m waiting ’till I can spend a good chunk of time (and I’m not broke, which could mean never). » Posted By ParadisePlacebo74 On February 18, 2011 @ 1:15 pm My biggest issue with lunar settlement, and any lifeforms living in space generally, is the cosmic ray dilemma. I think it’s great that we look far enough forward to imagine ourselves living outside of the earth’s magnetosphere, but until all life forms can be somewhat easily shielded from cosmic rays, it’s all just (moon) pie in the sky. Why cosmic rays create a double whammy on the moon: Radioactive Moon Why solar flares (like the one about to hit the earth right now) can be a double edge sword: Who’s Afraid of a Solar Flare? A promising path to the shielding problem: Magnetic shield could protect spacecraft And why you are so right about how amazing, and potentially important, amorphous metals are: Liquids on Pause » Posted By ParadisePlacebo74 On February 15, 2011 @ 11:17 pm Horrifying!! Not exactly surprising, but still horrifying. » Posted By ParadisePlacebo74 On February 14, 2011 @ 11:06 pm We all know about the craters that can be easily seen, and, now that we have high resolution global mapping, we are starting to find many more that we couldn’t see — but what about events like the Tunguska explosion? If an object like that exploded over a modern population center, it could kill millions, and leave behind no visible traces of why that place was destroyed. How many of those types of events have happened over the eons, and, if we could somehow know the answer, how much more worried might we be? » Posted By ParadisePlacebo74 On February 13, 2011 @ 10:50 pm I agree, “beyond” doesn’t seem to make much sense. The way I like to look at it is to think of “the truth” as being however many facts it happens to take to add up to the shortest distance between two points — not enough = falling short, and too many = getting lost along the way. Going “beyond” is just another way of confusing things. » Posted By ParadisePlacebo74 On February 13, 2011 @ 11:41 pm Transcript Theatre: Outtakes From Bill O’Reilly’s Interview With President Obama LOL! » Posted By ParadisePlacebo74 On February 13, 2011 @ 9:33 pm Depending on what part of the country you live in (and assuming that it’s the right time of year), there are services that can come to your house and hook up a portable shaker device to your trees so you can collect them all at once (that’s how they harvest them on farms because it’s fast and doesn’t harm the trees). My grandfather had two huge pecan trees in his front yard in northern Alabama, and he’d have them shaken out every year, producing lawn bags full of the best tasting pecans I’ve had to this day. We’d shell and freeze the halves for use year round (and eat several pounds of them in the process!). Check into it — you’ll be surprised at how popular a few pounds of fresh pecans can make you to friends and family. » Posted By ParadisePlacebo74 On February 12, 2011 @ 8:33 pm WATCH LIVE: Mubarak Resigns! Egyptians Celebrate! I just heard a reporter on Hardball refer to the rest of the geriatric leadership in the middle east as “Jurassic Park” — what a great image. » Posted By ParadisePlacebo74 On February 11, 2011 @ 2:44 pm Well written. I can’t find anything in your assessment to disagree with. » Posted By ParadisePlacebo74 On February 12, 2011 @ 7:07 pm I agree that our two party system can’t possibly represent the plurality of American ideologies, especially in the internet age, but I think that part of the reason we only have two recognized parties is the media’s need for a “fringe” label. Coalition governments have been successful in Europe and other areas of the world, and they do so because not just because their populace takes them seriously, but, unlike here, their media takes them seriously. It’s difficult to label an idea as “fringe” if it’s part of a recognized party’s platform. Simplicity is incompatible with reality, but it’s the bread and butter of the American punditry, and they’ve always made an effort (even unintentionally) to maintain this unrealistic persective. They love the term “political spectrum”, and yet they somehow fail to realize that black and white alone will never add up to a “spectrum”. » Posted By ParadisePlacebo74 On February 9, 2011 @ 7:30 pm The State of Education in America I’m surprised that the Texas Board of Edumacation hasn’t attempted to rename our number system “Freedom Numerals”. » Posted By ParadisePlacebo74 On February 9, 2011 @ 11:38 pm I was watching that segment too, and I kept thinking that Roy’s jaw was going to seize-up from talking so fast. If he tried to transcript his answer to the Christina Aguilera “click count” question onto an HP comment box, he’d run out of room! » Posted By ParadisePlacebo74 On February 7, 2011 @ 10:53 pm I see it as an updated version of controlling populations through illiteracy — only the high priests are allowed to know the meaning of the symbols on the page — except in this version they constantly recreate a new language by changing the definition of words from the common meaning to whatever meaning they assign at the time. Evil, but highly effective. » Posted By ParadisePlacebo74 On February 7, 2011 @ 9:05 pm I found this comment posted on a Business Insider article: http://www.businessinsider.com/c/4d50829a4bd7c82c590a0000 I think it states most of the realities of the situation very well. » Posted By ParadisePlacebo74 On February 7, 2011 @ 8:24 pmComments Posted By ParadisePlacebo74
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