Balta1701

Go US Speed skating! Screw you NBC!

QUOTE (knightni @ Feb 10, 2010 -> 06:03 PM) Google's the only major website that kowtows to oppressive regimes. They brutally filter their search engines to censor material for China. Um, isn't that 100% untrue? Don't all of the major internet companies have to accept filters to get into China? Microsoft, Yahoo? The only reason you've heard about it for Google is that they're so big and they have that motto "Don't be evil", whereas Microsoft's motto is a recording of an evil laugh by Bill Gates that plays on speaker in their facilities every 10 minutes. (Side note, yes, I googled those sources)

So, today, Obama pissed off me and many on the left by softening some of his recent stances on Wall Street and tried to say that what they were doing was, yeah, ok. (ignoring the fact that these guys are terrible businessmen who would be flat broke without the huge intervention of the government)...so now, Obama has made a pro-bank, pro-business-as-usual statement. The logic of this thread tells me that stocks should have skyrocketed today. Link. Flat to down. (You hear a weird sound as balta's confused brain breaks, unable to process this contradiction.)

QUOTE (lostfan @ Feb 10, 2010 -> 04:14 PM) I think the sun also loses mass/gravity from the nuclear fusion process but the accuracy of that is still fuzzy to me. The answer to that is from Einstein. You've heard the equation, E=MC^2. If you add up the mass of the protons that combine to produce a helium atom during nuclear fusion, there is a slight mass deficit. This is the case for virtually any stable combination of atoms from Hydrogen up to 56Fe. When fusion takes place, that slight amount of mass is converted to energy via that equation. That energy is what powers every star in the universe.

QUOTE (Cknolls @ Feb 10, 2010 -> 03:49 PM) Expanding unemployment benefits, medicaid relief for states= JOBS BILL. LMAO1 I'm sure paygo will apply....Oh wait that doesn't start until the next Congress....bUT MAN WILL WE SAVE THE JOBS....wHAT A f***TARD HE AND cONGRESS ARE FOR SUGGESTING THIS NONSENSE AND PASSING IT... Worked great for Herbert Hoover.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Feb 10, 2010 -> 03:24 PM) btw, Balta isn't the earth's orbit gradually moving away from the sun, and not towards? I'm pretty sure all celestial bodies do that, the other planets are gradually escaping their orbit because they lose their angular velocity or whatever. He claimed the earth was getting closer to the sun Over longest time scales, there are 2 effects that are going to slow the duration of a year. First, the sun is slowly losing mass due to the solar wind. Decrease the mass of the sun, slow the earth's orbit, and slow the orbit of a planet and it moves out a bit. Secondly, there is some Earth/sun tidal dissipation, although the Earth/Sun system shows an order of magnitude smaller tides than the earth/moon system. This also would move the earth away from the sun slowly. Worth noting, there are even smaller effects that move the other way; the Poynting/Robinson effect works to move objects towards the sun, although it is much smaller than the other effects. Probably worth saying also is that the size of these effects pales in comparison to the orbital variations due to the effects of the other bodies in the solar system (the milankovitch cycling) which is what your friend may be trying to say without realizing it. Currently the Earth's orbit is quite close to circular. It will get more elliptical and then cycle back on roughly a 120,000 year timescale.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Feb 10, 2010 -> 03:06 PM) But hey, Balta, you actually went to school to learn this stuff so you can see it in a lot more depth than I can, I'm just your average smart guy who can see recognize bulls*** without much difficulty. Just wait until he sees what happens when you pour vinegar into baking soda! "Now bart, you know what happens when you mix acids and bases, right?"

QUOTE (lostfan @ Feb 10, 2010 -> 02:58 PM) Still, a billion years. Unless we get to Mars and discover Prothean ruins to leap technology forward by several generations and then discover a mass relay in Pluto's moon to enable instantaneous transportation throughout the galaxy to let us colonize space (hi Mass Effect) we'd probably screw ourselves through overpopulation and running out of resources long before then. Humanity screwing itself out of existence ≠ the end of life on earth.

Actually, it's possible that life on earth has about a 1 billion year clock left on it , unless life gets its arse in gear and starts figuring out ways to fix a lot of nitrogen out of the atmosphere to reduce atmospheric pressure and the greenhouse effect by then. He's also incorrect. The moon itself never crashed into earth. A significantly larger body, of about 0.1 earth masses (roughly 10x the mass of the moon) crashed into the earth, and a portion of the debris from this event is what eventually coalesced to form the moon.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Feb 10, 2010 -> 02:16 PM) how about an increase in nuclear power? off shore drilling? other attempted energy policies/changes they didn't care for? The U.S. has guaranteed over $20 billion in nuclear power loans currently. It's not federal law that is preventing those from being built, its the fact that private investors won't put up the funds. Congress has passed several bills attempting to expand offshore drilling in the past few years as well.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Feb 10, 2010 -> 02:11 PM) it's not bashing! just an observation i find humorous. and it doesn't have to be a full filibuster, it could just be a huge segment of the dem party that decides on principal not to go along with something for political gain So, in other words, you don't have a single example.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Feb 10, 2010 -> 02:07 PM) I love that when the Repubs do this it's evil, but when liberals do it it's standing up for what they believe in... Aside from about 4 judges, name one single Bush initiative that was filibustered successfully.

The Brewers are going to erect a statue of Bud Selig. Here's what we do. Anyone who ever goes to miller park, drop off a syringe on this statue.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Feb 10, 2010 -> 01:30 PM) Is that Megan Fox's thumb, lol? Stephen Colbert, writing notes on his hand to remind him of things.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Feb 10, 2010 -> 01:13 PM) I don't understand why everyone thinks the Sox only ever have like a 1-2 year window. Sure, there will be other guys leaving, but there will be others coming in at the exact same time. People thought the window was closing after 2007 and the Sox would need a massive overhaul, and they won the division in 2008. With the way the Central is currently set up, no team is set up to consistently win the division for years and years, and the Sox are young enough with enough core talent at the right age that they have a window of about 5 years to compete with this core of players, and they will be plugging new guys into holes all the time. The logic I see in thinking that way is to look at the pitching staff. If MB departs after 2011 as he's discussed, D1 and Peavy a year later, that's a key block of 3 spots we might really struggle to fill. Floyd then is a FA 1 year after that. Even if Huddy is a success story, rebuilding the starting rotation is the hardest part, and aside from Hudson, right now we don't have obvious candidates to step in. But yea, when does KW ever not see things like that coming. But really, if MB packs his bags, that's the kind of thing that could literally close our window, with the effects he has on the whole pitching staff.

I can't read the whole thing but this is on ESPN right now from Olney.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Feb 10, 2010 -> 12:50 PM) Sure, because they believe that government is the root of all evil. So, the less they actually govern, the better everything will be! Naw, they're just like the Dems, they love more governing as long as its them doing the governing. The difference is they're willing to take steps to make sure things don't happen when they're not in the majority and they don't get called on it, whereas the Dems just happily go along with things when they're not in the majority and then lose seats for being obstructionists.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Feb 10, 2010 -> 12:02 PM) The caucus truly and honestly doesn't care about actual governing, and even policies they think are good they'll just vote against. Obama called them out at the Q&A too, they really don't care though. Why should they? It's working. Unless something changes, by shutting down the government and making sure nothing changes, they're going to make serious gains this fall.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Feb 10, 2010 -> 11:51 AM) I forgot to post this a few days ago but did anyone catch Sarah Palin saying it was ok for Rush Limbaugh to call people "retards" because it was "satire" and that justifies her calling for Emanuel's resignation? lol. That's f***ing pathetic. The Colbert Report Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c Sarah Palin Uses a Hand-O-Prompter www.colbertnation.com Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Economy

QUOTE (lostfan @ Feb 10, 2010 -> 12:07 PM) What's taking At&T so long? They suck at existence and use their size to maintain a near monopoly in as many ways as possible.

QUOTE (GoSox05 @ Feb 10, 2010 -> 11:24 AM) Not to mention that 600 people went to this. Really? 600 people. This thing is getting major coverage and being called a "movement". I wish they gave that much coverage to every left wing protest that was over 600 people. 600 attendees and 300 reporters, to be more precise.

QUOTE (SHIPPS @ Feb 10, 2010 -> 10:12 AM) yeah I am afraid it might be asking for some tension that doesnt have to be there. But like you guys said it will be a good test to whether we should be getting married or not. If its there, that tension will happen eventually no matter what.

This is a pretty good 10 minutes. Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Verducci has a piece on why aging baseball players are struggling to find jobs, focusing in no small part on JD.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Feb 10, 2010 -> 08:19 AM) Balta, could you be kind enough to explain how the epicenter was in Sycamore? I had no idea a fault line ran this close to me First, updated magnitude = 3.8. So that ought to give those who felt it an idea of the power we're talking about when we start getting to magnitude 5/6; that's 100x or 1000x more powerful. The reason for noting that first is...it doesn't take a major fault to create a magnitude 3.8 event. Most of the world goes through events this scale every few hundred years because of settling/compaction; as you pile stuff on top of rocks, or you take stuff off (i.e. melt a large ice sheet) you slightly change the stress field. It only takes a small bit of re-adjustment and cracking, probably only of a few tens to hundreds of meters of rock, to give you an event of this size. If you dug down to the exact epicenter, you probably wouldn't even notice anything you'd call a fault line.