COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Saturday, March 15, 2008

Can quantum antiferromagnets reveal secrets of bosonic supersolids?


Many at the EB have wondered about this and there has been no other topic that has been more controversial. Some here have done extensive work with helium-4 or whatever, Doug for sure. DR has been on the trail, so he may not be quite up to speed. I am convinced that Bobal will have some insightful comments.

__________________


“One of the issues has been whether or not a boson system can simultaneously form a superfluid and a crystal at the same place,” Mila says. “Most of the work has been done with helium-4, but at this point it is still debated whether a supersolid phase can be realized. But,” he continues, “for bosons already on a lattice, it may be easier to make a superlattice and realize a supersolid which may be seen in nature.”...

...Mila admits that right now this work is still speculative: “So far compelling evidences have not been detected in the best copper oxide candidate [SrCu2(BO3)2].” Mila points out that, “a supersolid is expected to undergo two phase transitions upon lowering the temperature where the two types of order develop, and only one has been reported in that compound. One cannot exclude that experiments were not performed at low enough temperature, but this could be due as well to anisotropy effects.” (more)

124 comments:

  1. Possibly, but I'm certain it's going to take a hell of a lot of heat to warm the bottoms of the oceans, cause the specific gravity of water is highest at about 34 degrees F. and it's under a lot of pressure from above. Dr. Bill told me so, tonite.

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  2. experiments were not performed at low enough temperature,

    Elementary. You need to go below absolute zero to superlatticize bosons in a supersolid by defeeting anistrophy affects, but not yourself of course.

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  3. In the early days of this science, circa 1950, B. Bryson, The Thuderbolt Kid, experimenting in his garage in Des Moines, Iowa, applied too much electrical energy to a boson, cracking it into a bison, which can be singular or plural, and if plural, can become a virtual herd, which is a real problem, the solution to which is to cut off the juice, whereupon the bison become a bosom, which can be singular or plural, the vision of which led young B. Bryson out his garage, to safety.

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  4. Gulfstream is planing a new, near Supersonic private jet.
    Does that help?
    ---
    Jindal Sets the Standard
    Times-Picayune :

    BATON ROUGE — The state Legislature on Friday wrapped up its second special session during the 2-month-old administration of Gov. Bobby Jindal by completing a full sweep of the governor's proposed package of business tax cuts and $1.1 billion in surplus spending priorities.

    Jindal and his legislative allies won all the initiatives they set out to accomplish during the six-day session, including a controversial bill to grant a partial tax deduction for private school tuition.

    Flanked by many members of his supporting team of lawmakers at an evening news conference, the governor framed the results as a positive statement on Louisiana's national image.

    "This group should be proud of batting a thousand," Jindal said. "The country's watching us ... we know they'll like what they see."

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  5. Doug, if you can stand it, go to c-span and listen to the Michelle Obama speech at Villanova University. The Obama's are socialists pure and simple.

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  6. Wright in "Dreams of My Father" [Rich Lowry]

    Before he ever thought he would have to deploy Clintonesque spin to try to get himself out of a campaign controversy, Barack Obama wrote (an achingly good) memoir. In the book, Obama makes it clear that Wright when he first got to know him was pretty much the same Wright we're getting to know now (the one that Obama is at pains to say is on the verge of retirement). Wright was striking some of the same notes, saying racially venomous things and attacking the bombing of Hiroshima. Note this passage about the first sermon Obama heard from Wright, the source ultimately of the title of Obama's second book and one of the central themes of his presidential campaign:

    The title of Reverend Wright’s sermon that morning was “The Audacity of Hope.” He began with a passage from the Book of Samuel—the story of Hannah, who, barren and taunted by her rivals, had wept and shaken in prayer before her God. The story reminded him, he said, of a sermon a fellow pastor had preached at a conference some years before, in which the pastor described going to a museum and being confronted by a painting title Hope.

    “The painting depicts a harpist,” Reverend Wright explained, “a woman who at first glance appears to be sitting atop a great mountain. Until you take a closer look and see that the woman is bruised and bloodied, dressed in tattered rags, the harp reduced to a single frayed string. Your eye is then drawn down to the scene below, down to the valley below, where everywhere are the ravages of famine, the drumbeat of war, a world groaning under strife and deprivation.

    “It is this world, a world where cruise ships throw away more food in a day than most residents of Port-au-Prince see in a year, where white folks’ greed runs a world in need, apartheid in one hemisphere, apathy in another hemisphere…That’s the world! On which hope sits!”

    And so it went, a meditation on a fallen world. While the boys next to me doodled on their church bulletin, Reverend Wright spoke of Sharpsville and Hiroshima, the callousness of policy makers in the White House and in the State House. As the sermon unfolded, though, the stories of strife became more prosaic, the pain more immediate. The reverend spoke of the hardship that the congregation would face tomorrow, the pain of those far from the mountaintop, worrying about paying the light bill…
    LINK

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  7. Deuce,
    My DSL is on the rag.
    Periods of great throughput, followed by modem like crawling.
    It'll have to wait.

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  8. Infants for Obama!
    Big Brother Loves Us.

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  9. Negativism and anger just drips from her every word.

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  10. They're still three years from paying off their educational debt.
    (living in a 3 Million Dollar House)

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  11. No teleprompter:
    She's only about 5 times better at speaking than the silver-tongued Saint.

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  12. Eight minutes into the 1:06:06 speech she is recounting how they have succeeded thus far in the campaign despite the conventional wisdom of the naysayers.

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  13. It didn't take GWB to instill a bit of fear for me after 9-11!

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  14. I would think that the Obama's campaign success would show them that Pastor Wright has been full of scat all these years.

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  15. No, she says that the authorities keep moving the bar. The man reinvents the rules. The game is stacked against "most regular folks."

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  16. They said his name is funny:
    There is no way people will vote for a man named Barack Obama.
    (the obedient wife leaves out the forbidden middle name!)

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  17. Wright is a non-starter, Whit:
    Barry says he would have quit the Church had he ever heard that aberrant sermon captured on video.

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  18. paraphrasing from Michele's speech: The moving bar, the double standards lead people to become cynics, then fearful and easily manipulated.

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  19. Barry's Mom

    Barry's most brilliant decision!

    "And when Obama asked to stay in Hawaii for high school rather than return to Asia, she accepted living apart - a decision her daughter says was one of the hardest in her mother's life."

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  20. benj praises Davey Gurkin:
    ---
    slurpin-the-gurkin. slurping cox · slurping the turkey · slurping the worm · slurpity and durpity · slurpkin ... that hoebag can slurp the gurkin like pro ...

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  21. ""She felt that somehow, wandering through uncharted territory, we might stumble upon something that will, in an instant, seem to represent who we are at the core," said Maya Soetoro-Ng, Obama's half sister. "That was very much her philosophy of life - to not be limited by fear or narrow definitions, to not build walls around ourselves and to do our best to find kinship and beauty in unexpected places."

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  22. Yeah, whatever, now please pass the joint.

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  23. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  24. j random said...

    "If you view them from a different perspective, looking at the audience instead of the orator, then perhaps Sen. Obama and Rev. Wright are saying the same thing after all. They are both saying what the crowd needs to hear.

    Sen. Obama is saying what will get him votes in the Democratic Primary.

    Rev. Wright is saying what will put butts in the pews and dollars in the collection plate.

    If you assume that the most important thing about what someone says is its meaning then the disparity between what Obama and Wright say is mysterious.

    But if you think that the most important thing about what someone says is how it motivates the listener to do what the speaker wants them to, then the similarity in their ability as orators is obvious.

    If you assume that the most important things to learn from a spiritual advisor is theology and ideology, then it would seem that Sen. Obama has learned nothing from Rev. Wright.

    But if you think that the most important things to learn from a 'spiritual advisor' are how to read a crowd, then craft and deliver a message that will bend them to your will... then it appears Sen. Obama has learned a great deal from Rev. Wright.
    "

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  25. Doug: It didn't take GWB to instill a bit of fear for me after 9-11!

    I never was afraid one bit, even after 9-11. This is the land of the free and the home of the brave. And I don't fear the coming economic depression because my treasure is in heaven anyway. My 401k is just beer money.

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  26. OK
    I, for one, could not help but take notice of Jetliners overhead at low altitude.
    Not that they were going to dive on my head on Maui, but just the memory of what transpired in New York, NY.

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  27. Do you have any children, Aenea?

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  28. 2164th: The Obama's are socialists pure and simple.

    Under Bush the Entitlement State has grown larger than ever before in history, now 815 times larger than it was in 1930, mostly to be paid by the next generation, but he's a born-again Christian so we aren't allowed to hang the demonic label of "socialist" on him.

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  29. Also a lying fucking traitor.

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  30. Fred said...
    benj,

    I think most Americans who are rational, who learned a lesson from the Carter years (I didn't; I remained a Leftist until 1986-87), and have a need to go beyond socialist solutions WOULD vote for a black American who was truly more centrist or right-of-center. I have NOTHING personal against Obama and I certainly am no racist. I just object to dissimulation in any candidate. Barack Obama is not forthright about who he really is and what he stands for, because to reveal that would pretty much end his viability as a candidate. We are exploring what information is out there about the formation of his mind because, well, he has been trying to hide that. And, as a former Leftist, hiding what you truly believe becomes second nature.

    I have voraciously digested everything I can find about his influences in life. From his Marxist mother to Frank Davis to his associations with a professor at Columbia who was a member of the PLO. From thence to his soul mate, the angry, class-warfare mouth of Michelle Robinson, and there on to Rev. Jeremiah Wright. In a more rational era, people like Rev. Wright would be called heretics, which I consider him to be.

    I used to read a LOT of liberation theology. And when I was a Jesuit seminarian I set before myself, when I eventually became a priest, the task of trying to find a way to rationally reconcile socialism with both Christianity and the way the world really is. It came down to human nature and what I discovered about how our neurons and synapses can be so fatally flawed that there will always be some sociopathic predators roaming around - and no "optimal structures" could paint utopian color schemes over THAT.

    On one level, I can relate to where Barry Obama has been on his intellectual journey. I've been through dozens of books and hundreds of articles in philosophy and theology exploring these things. Perhaps far more than he could ever have done.

    But the inbox pile of cognizant dissonance had to be dealt with, and I evolved in another direction.

    If there was one high profile person in this world that I could spend two hours with in discussion, it would be Sen. Obama. Also, like him I too spent time in the Third World. And living in the favelas of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro is a lot more jarring than the middle class neighborhoods of Jakarta.

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  31. "It came down to human nature and what I discovered about how our neurons and synapses can be so fatally flawed that there will always be some sociopathic predators roaming around - and no "optimal structures" could paint utopian color schemes over THAT."

    If there were no sociopathic predators among us, socialism would be a proper political system. Whereas because there are, a sub-optimal structure is appropriate?

    Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is suitable to the socially predatory, but not the socially cooperative? Men deserve freedom because they are bad; were they good, statism would be appropriate.

    You could tell Fred that deregulation began under Carter and was continued by Reagan. Just for fun.

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  32. Or, as Mat suggested, you could tell him yourself.

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  33. Since I could never properly convey such gibberish:

    "If there were no sociopathic predators among us, socialism would be a proper political system. Whereas because there are, a sub-optimal structure is appropriate?

    Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is suitable to the socially predatory, but not the socially cooperative? Men deserve freedom because they are bad; were they good, statism would be appropriate. "

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  34. (and all his kkk acolytes, for the racially sensitive supporters)

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  35. Does Jimmah = Reagan?

    Sat Mar 15, 12:31:00 PM EDT

    Did I say one equals the other? I find the ultra-liberal (rather than neo-liberal) cartoon figure Carter that both contemporary conservatives and liberals believe in, to be...rather humorous.

    Go back to commenting at Belmont? Mmmmmno thanks.

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  36. 'Interestingly, the United States moved its tests to Nevada, where, as we have seen, people were a good deal more appreciative, though it wasn't just the Marshall Islands and Nevada where we tested. We also set off nuclear bombs on Christmas Island and the Johnston Atoll in the Pacific, above and below water in the South Atlantic Ocean, and in New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado, Alaska, and Hattiesburg, Mississippi(of all places) Altogether between 1946and 1962, the United States detonated just over a thousand nuclear warheads, including some three hundred in the open air, hurling numberlss tons of radioactive dust into the atmosphere. the USSR, China, Britain and France detonated score more.'

    from The Life and Time of the Thunderbolt Kid

    Colorado?
    Mississippi?

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  37. Good to know Jimmah is just a Cartoon, whereas L Ron is REAL!

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  38. Want me to tell him? Nah, it would be deleted.

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  39. Albob,
    I will always wonder, if my best friend here, who died of a very rare form of cancer, and spent time in the Marshalls going native in the peace corps, was a victim of Nuke tests.
    (don't tell Dr. Bill!)

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  40. I don't recall any bomb being tested in Mississippi, but then I sucked up alot of radioactive dust, and am a downwinder from Hanford.

    He might have been, Doug. Around here we have had this big deal about Hanford, and thyroid disease. The Air Force was flying in a guy every day for awhile, taking samples from the airports at Lesiston, Moscow, Spokane, CdAlene, etc., all unknown to us. Sampling the secret releases from Hanford, to see where it went with the winds, how far, how much. Finally, they admitted that much. But last I heard the judge had either dismissed the case, or modified it.

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  41. 'It turned out that children, with their trim little bodies and love of milk, were particularly adept at absorbing and holding on to strontium 90--the chief radioactive product of fallout. Such was out affinity for strontium that in 1958 the average child-- which is to say me and thirty million other small people--was carrying ten times more strontium than he had only the year before. We were positively aglow with the stuff.(and you were in faraway Iowa, kiddo)

    So the tests were moved underground, but that didn't always work terribly well either. In the summer of 1962, defense officials detonated a hydrogen bomb buried deep beneath the desert of Frenchman Flat, Nevada, The blast was so robust that the land around it rose by some three hundred feet and burst open like a very bad boil, leaving a crater eight hundred feet across. Blast debris went everywhere. "By four in the afternoon," the historian Peter Goodchild has writen, "the radioactive dust cloud was so thick in Ely, Nevada, two hundred miles from Ground Zero, that the street lights had to be turned on." Visible fallout drifted on to six western states and two Candadian Provinces-though no one officially acknowledged the fiasco and no public warnings were issued advising people not to touch fresh ash or let their children roll around in it. Indeed, all details of the incident remained secret for two decades until a curious journalist filed suit under the Freedom of Information Act to find out what had happened that day.'

    Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid

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  42. Who knew, Doug, that in politics, bigotry - whether of black toward white; Hispanic toward black; or white toward black - have we begun a discussion of black toward Hispanic yet? Asian toward black? - was your overwhelming concern?

    I shall endeavor to keep this in mind.

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  43. Currently, Trish, the Hispanics are engaged in a policy of ethnic cleansing of blacks and whites, when I think about it, backed by the govts of Mexico and the USA.
    ...not that you would care.

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  44. Lewiston.

    In this Hanford downwinder case, the g-damned government has pulled the National Security crap time and again, can't release stuff in our files from the late forties and fifties because of "National Security".

    Like 60 years later it's a big deal. Total crap.

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  45. And if you wish to engage a barfly on the subject of Ron Paul, my earnest suggestion would be Rat, he of the recently unleashed inner Libertarian, who did, after all, go to the trouble of voting for him.

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  46. Thanks for reminding me that whites flee, also, even tho blacks are the primary targets.
    ...nothing like an ex-gang member to be Mayor of one of our largest cities.

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  47. You want me to comment for you at BC, and 'Rat to be your L Ron surrogate here!

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  48. There's a difference between saying 'the g-damned government' out of frustration on a particular issue, and damning all of America once and for all. Want to be clear about that:)

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  49. "Currently, Trish, the Hispanics are engaged in a policy of ethnic cleansing of blacks and whites..."

    OMG, you're not affiliated with the same PR firm hired by the KLA, are you? I'm trying to remember who it was...Hill and Knowlton.

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  50. You want me to comment for you at BC, and 'Rat to be your L Ron surrogate here!

    Sat Mar 15, 01:12:00 PM EDT

    That's just how much faith I have in you, Doug. I'm willing to delegate.

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  51. If I were the judge, I'd order the Government to release unedited the files requested, and if they refused, I'd give summary judgement for the plaintiffs, and see what the Supreme Court would do with it.

    National Security, 60 years ago, about air sampling, my ass.

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  52. Reality is conspiracy, Trish.
    ...gets Ron lots of kkk supporters and their contributions.

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  53. Do you contend Hispanics have not run blacks out of businesses and neighborhoods?

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  54. ...w/weapons and the weapon of illegals and the underground black market economy.

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  55. Are you calling Rat a racist?

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  56. Whatever,
    I give up.
    Where the fuck did that come from?

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  57. Are you denying that Hispanics are the more savvily entrepreneurial and upwardly mobile ethnic group compared to African Americans? And that African Americans might be interested in protecting their status as Most Favored Minority?

    Where did that come from? You're the one who mentioned Ron Paul and conspiracies and the KKK donations.

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  58. Look here, it's not even 1 PM and already I feel like putting rat poison in your Sierra Nevada.

    You and my mother oughta go bowling; on the Hispanic issue, you're peas in a pod.

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  59. Not more savy simply illegal, not paying taxes, and using their reconquista gangs to PHYSICALLY ELIMINATE Blacks.

    Look at Charles most wanted.
    He's got something better which I will post later.
    Three cheers for the illegal Ethnic Cleansers!

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  60. Sierra Nevada is so pure and Hoppy, it will neutralize Rat Poison.
    (I bought the original Sierra Tanks fwiw)

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  61. Watts was filled w/cottage industry, black businesses.
    Then came the EPA, illegals, and they were toast, the illegals not needing EPA approval.
    ...then came the Watts riots, with NO reporting on the underlying causes.

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  62. Whatever the history, the fact remains that Hispanics are systematically driving others out, with GWB's and Tony Villar's and Bratton's blessing.
    Ex Gang member Tony Villar being Hillary's Hispanic outreach specialist.
    (instead of being mayor of LA)

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  63. I'm not unwilling to compromise, however.

    I'm wholly in favor of eliminating the anchor-baby law.

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  64. My husband is a longtime fan of their pale ale himself. You can buy it at the embassy here, but mostly he's stuck to Club Colombia. Great beer? No.

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  65. Truly great beers are manufactured in Belgium (we love you anyway, Munich) and almost none for export. In fact, almost none for export beyond a 50 km radius.

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  66. "Under Bush the Entitlement State has grown larger than ever before in history, now 815 times larger than it was in 1930, mostly to be paid by the next generation,.."


    Har! Aint gonna happen.

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  67. Seems like the Spitz used campaign cash to pay for the girl, adding larceny to the Mann Act.

    Spitz Dog

    My aunt had one like this, worst dog I've ever known in my life, would attack anybody with a uniform on, mailman, military, marching band member, gas station attendant when they had company clothing, often did I want to shoot that dog. Protective of my aunt, though.

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  68. "Why Fallon Had To Go"


    Bob,

    If that's the case, why was Adm. Fallon picked in the first place? Who was it that recommended him, and shouldn't they also have something to answer for?

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  69. Trish said:

    Political fallout from the MAR 6 Tom Barnett article in Esquire. That I can believe.

    Tue Mar 11, 07:54:00 PM EDT

    Whit said:

    Going back to Fallon. I suspect that the problem is/was that he was running his own foreign office; his own diplomatic corps.

    His job was to send a signal that the man in charge of the area was most suited to coordinate the land, sea and air forces that would "smash Iran like an bug." Instead, and this is why Thomas Nightime Barnett loves him, he not only "goes nativist" (an exaggeration, I know) but continuously announces that there will be "No war."


    Wed Mar 12, 06:320 PM EDT


    on March 15 Barone wrote:
    In addition, officers assigned to regional commands seem, like diplomats assigned to one area, inclined to go native. As head of Pacific Command, Fallon (at least as Barnett paints him) seemed transfixed on cooperating with China; at Central Command, he came to believe that pressuring Israel toward a settlement with Palestinians was the way to solve every problem in the region. After all, those are the things the Chinese and Arab military officers he's been interfacing with have told him.

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  70. Rumblings on the left, a falling out at Daily Kos, which I've never read once--a hopeful hint of things to come-- Alegre throws a fit-"too much"--:)

    Blogtalk: Pro-Clinton Bloggers Boycott Kos
    By Sarah Wheaton

    On Friday, it got to be too much for Alegre, a diarist on the flagship liberal blog DailyKos, who frequently writes in support of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.
    “I’ve put up with the abuse and anger because I’ve always believed in what our online community has tried to accomplish in this world,” Alegre wrote Friday evening. “No more.”
    Objecting to the tone of attacks against Mrs. Clinton and her supporters on the blog, the diarist called for a “writers strike.”
    “This is a strike - a walkout over unfair writing conditions at DailyKos. It does not mean that if conditions get better I won’t ‘work’’ at DailyKos again,” Alegre wrote, promising to come back only “if we ever get to the point where we’re engaging each other in discussion rather than facing off in shouting matches.”

    The blogosphere has never been known for its polite, gentle discourse, and while fiercely partisan, being a Democrat does not make one immune from attacks from the lefty blogs (see Lieberman, Joseph I.). But now, the major internal divisions within the Democratic Party seem to be splitting liberal bloggers. So what happens when the unity enforcement mechanism becomes disjointed?
    Alegre’s post attracted a strong reaction, both negative and positive. The comment board was shut down about 5.5 hours after it was posted, with 1258 comments.
    One user, Sentient, called for a “permanent succession”:
    “Why should this site and Kos profit from the traffic we add to DailyKos, and the sense by outsiders that it represents the netroots as a whole?” the blogger asked, adding later, “But I just don’t see how people come back together on a daily basis after a falling out like this.”
    Another poster challenged Alegre’s assertion that “DailyKos is not the site it once was thanks to the abusive nature of certain members of our community.”
    From jdodsonvls:
    The only difference is now we’re attacking a candidate whom YOU feel strongly about.
    Sorry. It happens. But if you don’t understand why we dislike her, if you don’t understand that she stood opposed to the blogroots for years, that this community grew into what it is today despite her, not because of her, then you’re right, perhaps this isn’t the blog for you.
    You see, decentralized though we are, I’ve always felt that the vast majority of bloggers share a point of view. Out with the old way of doing politics, and in with the new. To many of us, Hillary Clinton, every bit as much as Joe Lieberman, typifies a wing of the Democratic party that is anathema, a wing that is responsible for the party’s downfall, and complicit with the rise of radical conservatism.
    Markos Moulitsas, the founder of DailyKos, spoke to Jake Tapper of ABC News about the so-called strike, which he said was really more like a “boycott.”
    “But whatever they call it, I think it’s great,” Mr. Moulitsas said. “It’s a big Internet, so I hope they find what they’re looking for.”
    Many feel that one of the other major liberal blogs, MyDD, tends to attract bloggers more favorable to Mrs. Clinton. If the rift lingers after the primaries, the organizational value of the blogs could be compromised.
    Joe Gandelman at The Moderate Voice blog writes: “Where progressive and moderate bloggers and commenters used to get worked up arguing about George Bush, there now a real angry, scolding tone in many comments left by Clinton and Obama supporters.”
    He continues: “In short, the strike/boycott is a symptom — and with so many months to go until the Democratic convention, the prognosis for true Democratic Party unity going into the election seems ‘questionable.’

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  71. One user, Sentient, called for a “permanent succession”:

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  72. suc·ces·sion (sk-sshn)
    n.
    1. The act or process of following in order or sequence.
    2. A group of people or things arranged or following in order; a sequence: "A succession of one-man stalls offered soft drinks" Alec Waugh. See Synonyms at series.
    3.
    a. The sequence in which one person after another succeeds to a title, throne, dignity, or estate.
    b. The right of a person or line of persons to so succeed.
    c. The person or line having such a right.
    4.
    a. The act or process of succeeding to the rights or duties of another.
    b. The act or process of becoming entitled as a legal beneficiary to the property of a deceased person.
    5. Ecology The gradual and orderly process of ecosystem development brought about by changes in community composition and the production of a climax characteristic of a particular geographic region.

    [Middle English, from Old French, from Latin successi, successin-, from successus, past participle of succdere, to succeed; see succeed.]

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  73. she stood opposed to the blogroots for years

    The cardinal sin. Worse than carnal sin.

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  74. The government lied about the Tuskegee experiment. They purposely infected African-American men with syphilis ..."

    Standing up for Reverend Wright, and as a downwinder, I think there is, or may be, something to this, though I don't know the details.

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  75. Let me be clear about Fallon, and about Petraeus: Orders don't execute themselves.

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  76. If Tom Barnett wants to make the case that Fallon stood, on the matter of Iran, against confrontation, the admin is soon going to have to prove it.

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  77. I swear to God, if an Army guy were put in the place of Fallon, everybody'd be looking for a land invasion.

    Because that's just how fucking dumb people are.

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  78. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  79. "I swear to God, if an Army guy were put in the place of Fallon, everybody'd be looking for a land invasion."


    It was very unusual to put an Admiral there, no? Why was he placed there if it wasn't for his particular skill set?

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  80. Golly!

    Voted for Ron Paul because McCain is not representitive of me or the conservative positions I respect.

    He'd rather have "clean government" then support the Constitution.
    He's a traitor to his oath.

    The others on the Primary ballot, most were out of the running. Men of such little honor that if they could not win, they'd take their marbles and leave.

    Paul recieved 20% of the GOP vote, in Texas. About 5% everywhere else.

    But GWBush, he's no conservative, not of any type of stripe. To consider that he and:
    Hillary Clinton, every bit as much as Joe Lieberman, typifies a wing of the Democratic party that is anathema, a wing that is responsible for the party’s downfall, and complicit with the rise of radical conservatism. in the US Government ...

    That fellow is utterly insane.
    None of those folk are "conservatives" they are all "Big Government" Statists.
    Socialist one and all, in that sense.

    The Medicare fiasco is exemplerary enough, of that. The Iraq fiasco, as well.

    You guys....

    It's just another example of the pot callin' the kettle black. News that isn't about "issues" that are nonsense.

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  81. I can't believe this Bozo's still mucking around with [SrCu2(BO3)2]. Jeez

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  82. DR: Paul recieved 20% of the GOP vote, in Texas. About 5% everywhere else.

    Which of course can be attributed to name recognition alone.

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  83. Metuselah: It was very unusual to put an Admiral there, no? Why was he placed there if it wasn't for his particular skill set?

    The last time a monomaniacal leader with a bunker mentality appointed an Admiral to such a high position (Karl Dönitz) the Admiral up and surrendered to the enemy.

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  84. Glad we were able avoid that. But the question remains, why was an admiral appointed to that position?

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  85. It's elementary ain't it, Ruf? High school stuff.
    Jr. High School stuff.

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  86. Metuselah: Glad we were able avoid that. But the question remains, why was an admiral appointed to that position?

    To make Iran think a little bit. The Army may be depleted and ragged, but the Navy is cherry, sitting out there in the Gulf and North Arabian Sea with all those land-attack Tomahawks. Now that Fallon has been sacked, expect to see an Air Force general as his more permanent replacement.

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  87. 'At 7:15 in the morning local time on November 1, 1952, the United States exploded the first hydrogen bomb in the Eniwetok Atoll in the Marshall Islands of the South Pacific, though it wasn't really a bomb as it wasn't in any sense portable. Unless an enemy would considerately stand by while we built an eighty-ton refrigeration unit to cool large volumes of liquid deuterium and tritium, ran in several miles of cabling, and attached scores of electric detonators, we didn't have any way of blowing anyone up with it. Eleven thousand soldiers and civilians were needed to get the device to go off at Eniwetok, so this was hardly the sort of thing you could set up in Red Square witout arousing suspicions. Properly, it was a "thermonuclear device". Still, it was enormously potent.

    Since nothing like this had ever been tried before, nobody knew how big a bang it would make. Even the most conservative estimates, for a blast of five megatons, represented more destructive might than the total firepower used by all sides in WWII, and some nuclear physicists thought the explosion might go as high as one hundred megatons--a blast so off the scale that scientists could only quess the chain of consequences. One possibility was that it might ignite all the oxygen in the atmosphere. Still, noting ventured, nothing annihilated, as the Pentagon might have put it, and on the morning of November 1 somebody lit the fuse and, as I like to picture it, ran like hell....The blast came in at a little over ten magatons...a fireball five miles high and four miles across rose above the atoll within seconds, billowing into a mushroom cloud that hit the stratospheric ceiling thirty miles above the Earth and spread outward for more than a thousand miles in every direction, disgorging a darkening snowfall of dusty ash as it went...

    ....One soldier, based on the island of Kwajalein, described in a letter home how he thought the blast would blow his barracks away. "All of a sudden the sky lighted up a bright orange and remained that way for what seemed like a couple of minutes..We heard very loud rumblings that sounded like thunder. Then the whole barracks began shaking, as if there had been an earthquake. This was followed by a very high wind" which caused everyone present to grab on to something solid and hold tight. And this was at a place nearly two hundred miles from the blast site, so goodness knows what the experience was like for those who were even closer--and there were many, among them the unassuming native residents of the nearby island of Rongelap, who had been told to expect a bright flash and a loud bang just before 7am, but had been given no other warnings, no hint that the bang itself might knock down their houses and leave them permanently dearened, and no instructions about dealing with the aftereffects. As radioactive ash rained dwown on them, the puzzled islanders tasted it to see what it was made of--salt, apparently--and brushed it out of their hair.

    Within minutes they weren't feeling terribly well. No one exposed to the fallout had any appetite for breakfast that morning. Within hours many were sverely nauseated and blistering prolifically wherever ash had touched bare skin. Over the next few days, their hair cae out in clumps and some started hemorrhaging internally.'

    from The Life and Time of the Thunderbolt Kid

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  88. Thunderbolt serves as kind of a counterpoint to Dr Bill!

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  89. I told him, and told him, Bob, that that old [SrCu2(BO3)2] route was a dead end. Did he listen? Nooo.

    Affirmative Action - Death of Quantum Physics

    Personally, I solved that equation with the Hooter effect.

    I solved it, and they Hooted:)

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  90. Many have tried, but only a wise old owl can initiate the hooter effect.:D)

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  91. I was going to explain the Hooter effect a different way, but, since Deuce, and Whit have evidenced interest in making the EB into a more family-friendly establishment I decided to dial it back a bit. Beer Time.

    By the way, I understand a couple of our esteemed Manhattan Projectors made a bet on whether they were going to blow up the world. My question is this:

    What did the guy that bet in the "affirmative" have to gain?

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  92. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  93. So.




    Are we the People's Front of Judea?

    Or the Judean People's Front?

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  94. Well, Ruf, if you bet it won't blow up the world, and it did, how would you pay?

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  95. In Idaho, we republicans are still arguing over who is eligible to vote in our coming primary, as if it mattered.

    (Which it will, in the Senatorial campaign.)

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  96. The Israeli Front for the Liberation of Judea and Samaria has a nice ring to it.

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  97. Mob Attacks Vicar In London, At Church

    'Asian youths'

    "You f##king priest, you shouldn't be here."

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  98. Every summer, when school had been out for a while and your parents had had about as much of you as they cared to take in one season, there came a widely dreaded moment when they sent you to Riverview, a small, peeling amusement park in a dreary commercial district on the north side of town, with two dollars in your pocket and instructions to enjoy yourself for at least eight hours, more if possible.

    Riverview was an unnerving institution. The roller coaster, a Himalayan massif of aging wood, was the most rickey, confidence sapping construction ever. The wagons were flocked inside and out with thirty-five years of spilled popcorn and hysterical vomit. It had been built in 1920, and you could fell its age in every groaning joint and cracked cross brace. It was enormous--about four miles long, I believe, and some twelve tousand feet high. It was easily the scariest ride ever built. People didn't even scream on it; they were much too petrified to emit any kind of noise. As it passed, the ground would tremble with increasing intensity and it would shake loose a shower--actually a kind of avalanche--of dust and ancient bird shit from its filthy rafters. A mnoment later, there would be a passing rain shower of vomit.

    The guys in charge of the rides were all closely modeled on Richard Speck, the Chicago murderer. They spent their working lives massaging zits and talking to groups of bouncy young women in bobby socks who unfathomably flocked to them.

    The rides weren't on timers of any kind, so if the attendants went off into their little booths to have sex,.....
    :)
    from The Life and Times of the Thundrbolt Kid

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  99. Even the Tunnel of Love was an ordeal. There was always a joker in the leading boat who would dredge up a viscous ball of phlegm and with a mighty phwop shoot it onto the low ceiling--an action that was known as hanging a louie.
    :)
    from, you quessed it, The Life and...


    Keeps me in stitches.

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  100. Jihad In A Whie
    SATURDAY, 15TH MARCH 2008

    Blink and you could have missed it. Today’s Daily Telegraph carried this tiny item (so insignificant is it considered to be that it doesn’t even seem to be on the Telegraph’s website):

    A vicar was left seriously injured after he was attacked in his own churchyard by three Asian youths who taunted him about his Christianity. Canon Michael Ainsworth, 57, needed hospital treatment after he was repeatedly hit in the face and body by the gang at St George-in-the-East church in Whitechapel, east London, on March 5. Police are treating the incident as a ‘faith-hate’ crime.
    We know the faith that was the target of the hate. But which was the faith whose adherents were doing the hating? We all know, even though no-one is saying. Just as under Stalinism, we are now taking it for granted that we must read between the lines.
    Doubtless this is yet further proof that the 'no-go areas’ about which the Bishop of Rochester recently warned, but which everyone else from Westminster to Lambeth Palace assured us were a figment of the Bishop’s imagination, don’t exist.

    It so happens that Canon Ainsworth has in the past spoken up in public in defence of maintaining the integrity of Christian churches as places unique to Christian worship. In March 2006, giving evidence to the Commons Select Committee on Media, Culture and Sport, he replied to the suggestion that other religions might use churches as places for their own religious worship:
    There are some issues about using Christian churches of all denominations for worship by other faiths but there is very extensive community use by other faith groups in many areas. That is something to be encouraged. If there is very clear evidence that other faith groups are actively looking to use church buildings for worship, and on the whole my experience is that they would prefer to have their own buildings, then that is something that will always be carefully and sympathetically considered but at the end of the day there must be an issue about other faith worship in a Christian church.
    Was Canon Ainsworth actually targeted for attack?

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  101. In fact, we all came closer to dying than we realized. According to the memoirs of Robert McNamara, the then secretary of defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff at that time suggested--indeed, eagerly urged--that we drop a couple of nuclear bombs on Cuba to show our earnest and to let the Soviets know that they had better not even think about putting nuclear weapons in our backyard. President Kennedy, accoring to McNamara, came very close to authorizing such a strike.

    Twenty nine years later, after the breakup of the Soviet Union, we learned that the CIA's evidence about Cuba was completely wrong(now there's a surprise) and that the Soviets in fact already had about 170 nuclear missiles positioned on Cuban soil, all trained on us of course, and all of which would have been launched in immediate retaliation for an American attack. Imagine an America with 170 of it largest cities--which, just for the record, would include Des Moines--wiped out. And of course it wouldn't have stopped there. That's how close we all came to dying.

    I haven't trusted grown-ups for a single moment since.

    Life and Tiimes

    Is this correct, about the 170 missiles already in Cuba?

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  102. Instead of forming 'Peace Groups' the churches in Europe, and here too, would do better to form some militias to protect themselves, as the police aren't doing it.

    But then, in England, you can't own a gun.

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  103. "The Israeli Front for the Liberation of Judea and Samaria has a nice ring to it."


    Me likes the ring of "Templar Commandos".
    For Michael Ainsworth.

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  104. Bobal: Is this correct, about the 170 missiles already in Cuba?

    Forty-five warheads, plus 42 missiles and some bombers. The Soviet missiles had a range of 2,400 miles. And they were deployed because we put 15 intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Turkey, 1,500 miles from Moscow. This was about two years before I was conceived at a drive-in movie showing of Goldfinger.

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  105. Cuba is 1,500 miles from the US?

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  106. Hmmm, that makes you around 44, still a kid.

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