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tvashtarkatena

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Everything posted by tvashtarkatena

  1. tvashtarkatena

    Drones

    GoPros are so 2010...
  2. Mostly, I just watch Ivan get soaked while listening to Pandora.
  3. An excellent result if one believes in one person/one vote. SCOTUS decides against racially biased redistricting in AL
  4. tvashtarkatena

    Drones

    Current or proposed near term government and commercial uses of drones: Aerial surveys: Disaster areas, agricultural land, forests, wetlands and water courses, wildlife, traffic, geothermal.... Accident response: Structural damage to burned buildings, SAR, delivery of relief supplies... Logistics: Package delivery (this is the only viable way Amazon's going to beat that intractable 48 hour delivery limit imposed by a dysfunctional traffic system) NOAA: Weather/nautical monitoring etc etc etc
  5. tvashtarkatena

    Drones

    The surest way to become anti-wind is to piss into it. Technology will become what it will become. Drones are incredibly useful - they are here to stay. Prohibition? Not a policy that has worked as advertised so far. Damn humans. If a drone flies and there's no one there to hear it, is it still annoying? What if it doesn't make any noise at all? Such thinking has so far failed to ban planes and satellites. I wouldn't hold your breath. The best you can hope for is to regulate the personal information drones can collect by requiring warrants, periodic use reporting and appropriate levels of approval for deployment. When faced with a budgetary choice of paying $1000 for a drone or buying less than an hour of chopper time - yeah. You got it. The FAA restrictions listed in the previous post are already in effect. The FAA cares about safety - it does not care about public nuisances or civil liberties. Dealing with the latter are the responsibility of state or local lawmakers. The feds, of course, can do wha-evuh.
  6. We need to add 'Woodstock' to Godwin's law - to avoid bookin' a ride on the sloooooow boat to joke town. We mere citizens have no evidence that Iran is even building nuclear weapons, save what our federal government has implied, but then, they have a history of creative story telling in the WMD arena. If not, nuke power is entirely their prerogative and we are not entitled, emphasis on that word, to say jack about it. If so - we'd do exactly the same thing - and we did - and we used them on civilians, so this undercuts our moral legitimacy at the negotiating table somewhat. Personally? I couldn't care less, really. With N Korea, Israel, Russia, China and Pakistan already armed with the Big M 80 - Iran's small potatoes in comparison as far as threats are concerned. Really small potatoes. But hey, it makes for yet another empty election issue for the GOP's Congressional clown brigade to bang their tassle loafers over. The end game for engaging Iran in negotiation is to bring them back into the international community - a concept that seems to be miles over heads of our less cool headed lawmakers. Fortunately - they populate neither White House nor State Department. Those jobs are for big people.
  7. america is a stone soup of thomas paine, jesus, mother teresa, gordon gecko, and ted nugent. we were born from an argument, and we'll die in one
  8. tvashtarkatena

    Drones

    got one. love it. my pal can fly his over a landscape and create a 3d rotating model of it. awesome. i want to get one that can place pro a rob a minimart for me.
  9. as always, jayz drain waste vent test offers an innovative solution for who smong the brown unwashed masses gets into the nuclear country club. to his shit handling criterion id add a shithead criterion - the recent propensity for starting 'wars of choice'. not that bald faced, unjustified military aggression in the form if full scale invasion, occupation, and the torture if indigenous populations would have anything to do with nucular responsibility. when it comes to shitty thinking, ask a republican. deep doo doo experience there in stumble fucking into a future they have no hope of understanding, but hey, praise the lord.
  10. possession of nukes by religious fanatics - you mean any of the GOP s shitbasket of candidates + the clown parade that is Congress? tots agree.
  11. Once our wee ones make robots with empathy we're done for.
  12. Back to the topic at hand. Oh wait, there was none.
  13. ...like the circular area probables of my mind....
  14. You gotta love the Reagan Won The Cold War BS. It's over? Last time I checked, the Russkies and us still had plenty nukes aimed at each other. Our boomers (still patrolling!) are going to decommission 4 silos each - each boat will only be able to wipe out 200 instead of 240 cities at that point
  15. Does anyone remember the passive aggressive hyper defensive lawyer from SNL? It's so funny that you would... WARNING: PROBABLY FICTIONAL, HIGHLY NARCISSISTIC POST TO FOLLOW. DO NOT READ IF HYPER SENSITIVE OR EASILY EXCITABLE. That deterrence has worked until now is pure fluke, considering how many times it almost didn't work. FWIW, in our naval computer wargames with the 'red team' (both teams Merkin, of course) in the summer of 1979, either one side or the other started tossing tactical nukes within 30 minutes of the start of hostilities - a scenario which generally leads to a strategic exchange according to the analysts of the day. Back then, the Russkies had sub launched nuclear cruise missiles, something had no viable countermeasures for (nor did we have them ourselves yet), plus a more significant first strike conventional capability - so the Blue Team had a lot of incentives to go big early. Since the Russkies knew that - so did they. If their first nonconventional strike failed to take out the entire nuke armed task force (which would be pretty much every single US warship) - they had even more incentive to toss some tactical nukes. But our closest call had nothing to do with those damned Russkies - we almost nuked ourselves when a B52 exploded with two nukes on board over Goldsboro NC - 2 of the 3 fail safes on one warhead failed - only one lowly solenoid prevented detonation. Both bombs free fell to the ground.
  16. With its 50/50 chance of matching perception with reality, a chimp beats stupid every time.
  17. You know things are grim when a Bush is starting to look good. Never trust a political party that continues to enjoy having God's johnson firmly up its ass.
  18. 16 million newly insured peeps = DIE, LOSERS! 20 million gay Americans - OFF YOURSELVES, SINNERS! Compassionate Conservatives - QUIT BEING SUCH PUSSIES!
  19. Throw 'er hard in reverse! Tranny be damned! (or trannies, as it were). No new taxes? NO TAXES AT ALL, BITCHES! FREE STUFF ALL THE TIME!
  20. Kindergarten definitions of voter suppression aside, Wiki does a decent job of explaining how it really works in our great nation: Voter Suppression in the United States
  21. A certain person I know has been in the St. Helens crater twice during the summer months. At the time there was a hot creek you could soak in and watch the car sized boulders come down the crater walls. Climbing the lava dome is not recommended due to pockets of sulfur dioxide gas - the body's response is to clamp your windpipe shut right quick because sulfuric acid is formed when the gas comes in contact with water (your saliva does just fine) and the body would prefer that not get to your lungs - but the 'summit' view is incredible. Skiing into the crater during its more active periods could be interesting - melt water occasionally seeps into the magma chamber and the resultant littoral explosions have been known to launch large projectiles several miles downrange.
  22. Some will still deny global warming is happening after the West Antarctica's drifting north. Denial of a problem is rhetorical stupid pet trick numbah one for a certain crowd. An healthy does of confirmation bias ensures that as the data pours in, the denials get louder - even as the audience dwindles to zero.
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