What really pisses me off is that the H2 isn't even a Hummer anymore. In order for the car to be sellable to the general public, General Motors had to take away pretty much everything that made it a HumVee. They completely revised the chasis, so that it will now shatter when taken over too bumpy a road. In order to make the car comfortable, they added hundreds of pounds of junk to the top and passenger compartment, which severely altered the vehicle's center of gravity. That means that it's about as likely to tip over on a rocky mountain path as a tour bus. The axles are no longer made of the same high-grade metal. The engine is a watered down, anemic piss-pail compared to what the actual Hummers have. The H2 has a lower clearance and wider stance than the original, making it even more difficult to drive over rough terrain.
So all these soccer moms are buying is a bunch of useless metal. Even if they WANTED to take it off-road, it would be no better than your average SUV, if not, worse.
And sports cars are only a slightly less extreme version of the same disturbing trend; they're no more use than a geo metro, or a dodge neon. Paul, do you actually race your WRX? The only practical use I can think of for a fast car is in passing on the freeway: a fast car minimizes your time spent in the oncoming traffic lane. But you're still bound by the same driving laws that everyone else has to abide by, unless you take your unnecessary machine out to the Nevada flats or something.
Buying a comfortable, practical car is the best option. You don't need 250 horsepower, or a turbocharged V6. You need 4 wheels, seats, and an engine to move them places.
In light of Apple's new online music store ($0.99/song, AAC format with minimal DRM, better encoding than MP3, etc.) a new era has begun in digital music. Finally, there's an alternative to scrounging around on Kazaa or Gnutella for a song, downloading it at .4 k/sec, and having it be half-corrupt when it finally arrives. Apple's service is fast, full of variety, and is constantly being added to every day. And it's legal.
So my question(s) is(are):
Now that there's a relatively cheap, fast way of acquiring music, which do you see yourself using? Do you screw the $1 per song and go for the free, illegal, low-quality route, or do you use the possibly expensive, legal, high-quality route? I, for one would be downloading songs like mad from Apple if I had a credit card. I think that the artists who make great music deserve compensation for their works, and as a fellow artist, I understand the desire to support one's self through creation.
Do you think the artist should be compensated for their work?
What if they're dead?
What if you can't find what you're looking for on the store? Would you go get it on one of the file-sharing networks?
I'd like to see what you all think. Apple's service is only available to mac users, but within the first 18 hours online it sold over 275,000 songs, netting Apple, the labels, and the artists a profit of about $100,000. Granted, that was in the first few hours of the service, when most people were just giving it a try. The real test of whether this will work will be in the next few months, when the initial curiosity dies away. A Windows version is in the works, I believe. I know most of you use Windows/Linux... would you use the service once it's available for your platform?
Just interested in seeing what you think.
We leave. Seriously. Just get the hell out of there. As soon as all the military threats are mopped up, and it's quite obvious that Sadaam and the Fedayeen are dead or in prison, we just walk out. We let the Iraqi people figure it out themselves. Everybody assumes that some governing body has to make all the decisions here... can't we just let the Iraqi people do it?
"But that will just leave the country open for another dictator!" you say.
No. A dictator needs some means of support for establishing power, such as a militia or political route. Once we get out of Iraq, it will be completely decimated. We can make sure there are absolutely no weapons of any kind, and we can make sure that every last trace of the previous government is eliminated. It will then be every man for himself. Give anarchy a brief chance. I'm sure someone will rise to power eventually, or maybe very quickly. It would be interesting to see what results from a more or less blank slate.
And Paul... I'll bet you watch Fox News, don't you?
heh heh
Go back and read your last post. Yeah. I'm weeping with embarrassment too. First you assert that free speech has conditions. Show me where it specifies conditions in the constitution, or any other definition, for that matter! Until you do, I'll brand you as a babbling fool. Hell, even if you do manage to back yourself up, I'll still call you a babbling fool. Then you go on to talk about "returning things to the way they never were." WHAT THE FUCK!? Are you saying that just because something hasn't happened yet it should never happen? If that ideology held true throughout history, we'd still be breaking mammoth skulls open with big pointy rocks. This is what I HATE about you political conservatives. You think that new things are bad. I'll admit that technology and recent advances may be somewhat detrimental to our way of life, but progress on the whole is a good thing. Especially political progress. So "returning things to the way they never were" is bogus.
Please prove to me that you're not as much of a dork as I think you are.
Call me "little bitch"
Slap my ass with hairy hands
But don't take my cake...
...dammit!
Did anyone besides me find it really freaky that Bush's head didn't move AT ALL during that speech? His neck must be really stiff. OR he could have trained his neck by keeping it in odd positions for hours on end... giving blowjobs, perhaps?
You know what they say about those Texans...
But seriously. I agree with Andrew. I got sort of this blah, blah attitude from Bush for most of the speech, kind of like "I've been saying the same stuff for the past 3 months... blah blah" but when he came to the topic of oil, his eyes lit up... I could see oil-lust. It did seem a bit blatant.
We're going about this wrong. Erik may have convinced me that we need to march in and hold an election, but I heard none of that in Bush's speech. There was only a casual reference to such an election, but I want to hear him explicitly say "We will hold a democratic election in Iraq and allow every citizen over 18 to vote." Instead, I only heard talk of disarmament. If this is the attitude that drives the war, I fear what will happen in post-war Iraq. I envision an economy and government run by the rich, because they're the ones who are least affected by a US invasion.
Yes, paul, you're right about the school not being legally allowed to shift funds around. But why let laws get in the way of our future? Are you just gonna sit there and take this? And honestly... do you know ANYbody of actual importance/power who would object to blurring the line between the two funds? I sure don't. It may be illegal... but that doesn't make it wrong.
Paul, you just regurgitated Rexroth's spiel from a few weeks ago, almost to the letter. I got your psychovomit all over my keyboard. Ick. Sure, it has a lot of good points, but you/Rex are missing some things:
While Hopkins does have limitations to the amount of money we can use, it's more or less up to us to decide where to put said money. Like Erik said, a lot of it right now is being sent to the football program. Fiscally, that's understandable, because football (theoretically) makes money for the school district. But as far as I know, the little profit football actually makes is being funneled directly back into the program. Our operations money is being spent on football, the profits from which are shuttled into the "Bricks and Mortar" pot used to build new fields and such. It's almost like laundering money within the institution. I don't think the administration necessarily wants it this way, but it's how things are working now.
The result: an imbalanced spending routine. While AP tests lose subsidization, teachers have to scrounge for materials, the orchestra program's termination looms on the horizon, and art teachers have to charge students to take their classes, the school finds themselves with a lump of cash to spend only on renovations and technology. What do they do? They go out and buy two-score flat-panel iMacs. Now, as much as I love Macs, this from-the-hip purchase was completely unnecessary. The tech rooms get all these pretty computers, so that kids who take slacker classes in this wing of the building can check their email. Maybe 10% of the time (at most) they are being used to run Photoshop or iMovie - gasp! How processor-intensive! The school does not need these computers, especially when all they did was replace a bunch of still fairly adequate systems (but they weren't flat screened! flat screened!!!).
It's a similar story with the football field, auditorium, and cafeteria. While I'll be paying $450 to take my AP tests this year (and I know others who will be spending even more), I'm happy to know that the football team (that I never watch) will be able to play on their pro field (which I'll never use). Because of some glitch in the budget somewhere, the administration's priorities are being skirted.
So I propose a solution. Let's reverse the process. Instead of pumping funds into athletic and other non-educational budgets, lets take "Bricks and Mortar" dough and feed it into operations. Examples:
-All those computers combined are a complete waste of processing cycles. I would estimate that about 5% of their processing power is used by the half-retarded shop/tech kids. The school could run all of these computers as parallel processing nodes (there's even an OSX utility that allows this on Mac) and sell the processor cycles in this giant beowulf supercomputer to the highest bidder. Private companies, research institutions, even the US Government are always looking for cheap ways to crunch a lot of numbers. This technique has been tested in the marketplace and found successful.
-The auditorium and cafeteria about to be built can be rented out. People are always looking for large spaces in which to host trade shows, concerts, meetings, parties, lectures, seminars, etc. Why not capitalize on space that we don't use 100% of the time?
-Let's start trying to make profit with our "operations" resources. The bands, orchestra, and choirs charge for their concerts, but that money isn't given back to the programs, it's sent to a large lump fund. Each program should benefit from its own profits. This is only one small example; there must be other ways to make money on the "education" part of our educational institution. Ideas, anyone?
So it's not just a matter of adjusting priorities. The priorities are there: no teacher wants his/her program cut, the school's administrators (the majority of them, at least) must care about education first and foremost. The real problem is that there hasn't been enough motivation to change. As Paul said, we're still one of the most funded schools in the state; the administration hasn't yet seen what diminished operations will result in. There haven't been any significant movements/voicings by students, either, and barely any by members of the community. I don't think anybody is responsible for the fiscal errors that abound at Hopkins, but somebody needs to speak out loud enough in order to draw attention to their effects.
So I said I was waiting for a convincing enough argument from either side. I think I just found it. Thanks, Erik. Why can't more conservatives be this intelligent?
XL1
The little orange box just sits there
Bristling with knobs, dials, and buttons
A porcupine
Fanning its spikes
"POWER" creates light
Streaming from the window at its center
Bathing the rack below it
In a soft synthesized glow
"But it's so small!" he remarks,
Giving one of the knobs a twirl,
"I thought synths were huge."
Not this one.
I reach under his curious arm,
Still yanking at the knob,
And tap in a preset
As effortlessly as breathing.
"What did you do?"
He asks.
What did I do.
Hah.
I've just created a universe
Spanning years and miles
All within a pair
Of magnetized cones.
He presses a white key
Moving up to a black
And proceeds, rolling his eyes back into his head
To ascend a scale.
Only the faintest traces of sound
Can be heard
Seeping through the seal
Around the headphones clamped to his head
He removes his hands
He removes the headphones
He turns to me
He says
Absolutely nothing.
The expanding grin
Below his wide eyes
Is enough for me
"I want one!"
"I know."
"Can I have it?"
"No."
