7e11 dollars. When the most convenient notation for a figure is the scientific, you’re talking about either a whole lot or a tiny amount. The exponent here is positive, so we know that it’s a ton, but trying to imagine that sum in terms of money just boggles the mind. It is too much money [...]
Kadath points out: What is this picture that McCain spoke in front of, before the entire nation, at the RNC? Astute observers figured it out relatively quickly; it is Walter Reed… middle school.
Every once in a while I see yet another story about American authorities doing something clearly contrary to the ideals of the nation. At this point, all I can summon is a kind of tired rage that these things happen and nobody seems to care. Bush wants the US to remain on a war footing [...]
There are hundreds of political quizzes out there. Most of them are crap. Glassbooth raises the bar. It does this by asking first which issues you care about, then finding out where you stand on those issues, and finally matching the views of current politicians against yours. It’s a specialized domain application–they only consider people [...]
“Russia has invaded a sovereign neighboring state and threatens a democratic government elected by its people. Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st century,” Bush said. “Honestly, Russia, it’s not that hard,” he continued. “Just pick a non-neighboring state, with a non-democratic government if at all possible, and you can wage war for years [...]
I can’t help but like it when the news tends to support my positions, politically and otherwise. Iraq’s politicians want a specific US withdrawal date before they’ll agree to any Status of Forces Agreement. I applaud this! We need such an agreement for the presence of US forces in Iraq to remain legal past the [...]
One of the worst things about living in a representative democracy is that when you become fed up with your representatives, it can take ages to actually change them out. The citizens of the US have wanted for years to get out of Iraq. The citizens of Iraq want to know when we’ll leave. The [...]
Explodicle‘s been pondering implementations of a computer-assisted delegated democracy. As of his last post, he’s hit a stumbling block: login-based implementations are a pain. They start you thinking along the lines of centralized servers polling remote servers, and things just start to get cumbersome. What if, during normal voter registration, you are free to register [...]
The idea of a summer free from gas tax seems horrible. That’s just my opinion, based on the fact that dropping taxes on an item is a strategy to drive demand up, and we really should be trying to reduce gas demand right now. However, there are other people with stronger reasoning on the issue [...]
Guantanimo prisoner, whose case had already been dismissed in 2006, is back on trial under the Military Commissions Act. But Hamdan’s central question remained: “By what law will you try me?” The judge responded with the only answer he could: The military commissions law passed by Congress in 2006. “But the government changed the law [...]