America - The Official Thread

[Northstar]

Well with the differences in platforms and policy between these two candidates I am sure you would be able to find one of them more aligned with your views than the other.

In both cases their negative points far outweigh their positives to the point I'm not comfortable voting for either.

Again casting your vote in a way that will realistically not affect the outcome of the election whether you want to admit it or not your vote made for a 3rd party in this day and age you would have made just as much difference in the election if you had of stayed home in the bed and not cast a vote at all.

And again on my part, the only reason my vote seemingly has no impact is because so many people just stick to the default choices.

do not think it is likely that a third party will legitimately be in contention for a presidential win within my lifetime

Why? You've been asked several times now and every time you just blow it off.

The internet has removed most of the major roadblocks that have prevented such a thing in the past, so why is it still something that can't change?

 

[VFOURMAX1]

Why? You've been asked several times now and every time you just blow it off.

The internet has removed most of the major roadblocks that have prevented such a thing in the past, so why is it still something that can't change?

Money! Good old boy, back room deals and big big money filling pockets and greasing palms.

Did you not see where I commented on the D.C. types that have always worked government service and held political offices that most are now Multi Millionaires while earning less than 180,000 per year in their government position?

Yes it comes from BS "consulting" positions or "speaking" engagements so it is legit on paper.

Obama never ran a lemonade stand, only public service and the Presidential salary is not enough to be buying multiple million dollar + homes and pay to send his daughter to Harvard.

With the Electoral College system in this country the first thing that needs to happen is those that cast the electoral votes need to be independent or not bound to a party.

Focus on taking control of the House and Senate on the state level with true independents then the two party system will start losing power and control within D.C.

Unfortunately is trying to find independents that after they get to D.C. can resist the lure of power and money.

That is the main thing Trump has in his favor, he has enough wealth that he cannot be bought off, he has more money now than he will ever spend in lifetime.

That was what got Trump elected as much or more so than anything else.

 

[Dotini]

The problem of democracy is that it places responsibility on the population. If the people suffer corrupted and incompetent government, then it is our fault for not addressing it. We have the tools.

But perhaps the people are not suffering enough? Perhaps we are too well-employed, too wealthy, and too busy enjoying our freedom, prosperity and guilty pleasures to bother overmuch with fixing the government that makes this corrupted system work like none other in the world? Perhaps it is we who are, in the end, corrupt and incompetent?

 

[Northstar]

Money!

See, the thing with the internet, is that it doesn't take money to get your message out! And for the things that do take money, there's all kinds of ways to raise it on the internet, hell a cooler managed to raise 13 million in cash! Of course that's if we continue to let money influence our decisions when it comes to government.

So once again, give me 1 single reason why a third party candidate cannot be a legitimate threat. There isn't one apart from societies willful declining of the power we have.

With the Electoral College system in this country the first thing that needs to happen is those that cast the electoral votes need to be independent or not bound to a party.

Focus on taking control of the House and Senate on the state level with true independents then the two party system will start losing power and control within D.C.

This all ties into what we've been trying to hammer into your head. I'm happy to see some of it is making its way through.

Unfortunately is trying to find independents that after they get to D.C. can resist the lure of power and money.

Which is why we as a society have to hold them accountable. Far too many people think once they walk out of their polling station their role in things is done when it's really just the beginning of the next chapter.

 

[Danoff]

See this is where you are not correct in that lets say you despise our current president and hate his policies and direction.

You did not like Hillary either but she was more in touch with your values than Trump.

This statement is part of the thought in the previous sentence, you should connect them. It's very difficult to read your posts when you line break for every sentence. Periods are for ending sentences, line breaks are for ending paragraphs.

Well maybe you wasted your vote on some irrelevant 3rd party candidate thinking I will show them, you and a bunch of other voters in your state did the same thing.
Well maybe Trump won your state and that was the deciding factor that helped push him over the top and take the win.

I don't try to vote for the winner, I try to vote for the person that best represents me. Whether or not that person wins or has a shot at winning is not nearly as relevant. Just ask democrats in Alabama. Alabama has gone red for every presidential candidate in the last 40 years. You'll still find people voting democrat. They don't start voting republican just because they think that person is going to win. They vote for the candidate that represents them.

I don't vote thinking "I'll show them". I vote to represent myself. And I don't hold myself accountable for how other people vote. I'm not responsible for the votes I don't cast, only the ones I do. If other people elect Trump, or Hillary, that's on them. They're the ones that have to live with that choice. And honestly, every person who cast a vote for Trump or Hillary in the last election should bear some level of shame. Because honestly those two candidates were terrible.

But if all those people in your state had of voted for Hillary instead of some useless 3rd party candidate and she pulled off the win then that may have been the deciding factor in what put her into the oval office instead of Trump who you hate everything about him and his policies and the direction he is taking the country.

This is a silly game. What makes you think it was easier to get 3rd party candidate votes for Hillary in this case than it was to get Republican votes for Hillary? You can play this game all day. If only those million people vote for Hillary instead of a 3rd party candidate. Of course what if a different million people voted for Trump instead of Hillary. Of course what if a different million people voted for Hillary instead of Trump? And then what if a million people who didn't vote had voted for Hillary. Then Hillary would have won!?!? It's nonsense.

I think in many cases it's actually easier to convince people to go from Trump to Hillary (or the other way around) than to go from 3rd party to one of the two main ones. Because usually by the time someone goes to 3rd party its because they can't stand the nonsense coming out of the mouths of the main two parties.

So selling out in reality is casting your vote for a candidate that does not stand a snowballs chance in hell of winning.

Tell that to the people who vote Republican in the presidential election in California. The last time CA went red in a presidential election was 30 years ago. Yet you'll find people casting that vote anyway, knowing full well that the Republican will lose. They do it not because they hope to be voting for the winner, but because they're representing themselves. The only way to truly throw away your vote is to not represent yourself.

At least voting for a viable candidate you could have used your vote to possibly actually influence the elections outcome win or lose.

The problem with trying to influence the election between Hilter and Stalin is that you buy blood with either vote. I know you're not literally faced with that vote, but you do take some ownership (not total ownership, but some) of the candidate that goes into office when yours gets elected. The lesser of the two evils is your own moral choice. If you knew Hilter was going to commit genocide when he took office, but you voted for him because Stalin would have done more, then you buy that genocide with your vote. The only right decision when truly faced with two evils to choose from is to abstain. Sophie's choice is hard, but you take some responsibility for pointing the gun. Again, you can't be held accountable for the infinite number of actions you don't take.

If you dislike Trump more than Hillary you did yourself a disservice by throwing away your vote and although you can strut around and stick out your chest and claim you did not sell out you do not have a damn right one to actually complain about the elections results and who won.

You've got that backward. The people who can't complain are the people who cast a vote for someone they know is going to do a bad job.

 

[TenEightyOne]

Some Democrats are taking legal action to force Trump to release the interpreter's notes that he confiscated (illegally, they say) from his interpreter after his meeting with Putin. What's interesting is that if wrongdoing is found it will be under the Records Act, the same legislation that he believes should see Hillary locked up.

He's shredded the documents, obviously, and the CIA will never release their wiretap

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

Saw this article today and it made me question, again, WTF is America still doing with imperial units?

I get that it would be an expensive transition....but the potential upside rewards are enormous. I'm willing to bet industries across the board would see productivity increase and mistakes decrease after a few years of getting used to the metric system. Not to mention vastly more streamlined international collaboration. I work in the construction industry, so I've become pretty deft at the absurd sub-inch arithmetic. But it takes time, even on the best of days. Occasionally, I will work on a project in another country that has metric and it is, immediately, so much faster and intuitive to work with.

Thoughts?

 

[Danoff]

Saw this article today and it made me question, again, WTF is America still doing with imperial units?

I get that it would be an expensive transition....but the potential upside rewards are enormous. I'm willing to bet industries across the board would see productivity increase and mistakes decrease after a few years of getting used to the metric system. Not to mention vastly more streamlined international collaboration. I work in the construction industry, so I've become pretty deft at the absurd sub-inch arithmetic. But it takes time, even on the best of days. Occasionally, I will work on a project in another country that has metric and it is, immediately, so much faster and intuitive to work with.

Thoughts?

They got the very first one wrong. The mars climate orbiter was a screw up at JPL and it happened because JPL (in the United States) had required the data it was receiving to be in metric, and the data was supplied in standard units. My understanding, and I'm still trying to find corroborating evidence on this, is that the units were converted into standard because it was assumed that JPL would want them in standard, even though the specs said metric. But I could be wrong on that. It's only what I heard from multiple people, not something I've seen documented.

Regardless, engineers should check their units.

The article pretends that this is some kind of red-blooded American pride holdout issue, when in reality it's a money issue. Ask Boeing why they use standard instead of metric and they'll give a really simple real-world response. Part of the reason they're able to make airplanes is because they have gazillions of hours of materials testing data in their logs. Data that is proprietary and which competitors would love to get their hands on. That testing data, which is worth many millions of dollars is for thicknesses of material sheets that are in standard units. It's for fasteners that are standard sizes. They know how much that 5/16s fastener can hold. Yes that's almost an 8mm fastener. But it's not an 8mm fastener, and that's not good enough.

Crap like that exists all over the engineering world, and nobody wants to pay to change until there is a financial case for it to them specifically.

I love the metric system, it's a better system (except Celsius, which sucks).

Edit:

Nope, it looks like the underlying software did not convert to standard from metric, it reported in standard "natively" as it were. The error was lockheed martin's, for not adhering to the software spec and providing standard units instead of the required metric. JPL didn't check it carefully because it had been customary for a long time to provide that data in metric. It was something that was not just required, but had become common practice.

NASA was gracious enough to pull the "we should have caught this in time" card and accept blame. But it was lockheed's mistake ultimately and NASA let them off the hook.

You could almost more accurately say that this error was the result of people within the US moving to the metric system.

 

[Exorcet]

Saw this article today and it made me question, again, WTF is America still doing with imperial units?

I get that it would be an expensive transition....but the potential upside rewards are enormous. I'm willing to bet industries across the board would see productivity increase and mistakes decrease after a few years of getting used to the metric system. Not to mention vastly more streamlined international collaboration. I work in the construction industry, so I've become pretty deft at the absurd sub-inch arithmetic. But it takes time, even on the best of days. Occasionally, I will work on a project in another country that has metric and it is, immediately, so much faster and intuitive to work with.

Thoughts?

A couple of the incidents mentioned could be blamed on metric as much as anything else. The air Canada fuel incident probably wouldn't have happened if they just didn't adopt metric. The Korean Air crash seemed to stem from ATC using metric units instead of the standard imperial. From the article, it seems that the turtle case came about because units weren't specified, which can happen regardless of which unit set you're using. Personally I just like units that I have a feeling for, and I don't have much of a desire to switch to metric. There are some benefits but they don't feel significant.

 

[DDastardly00]

I can't believe it's basically election season again already. As rough as 2016 was, I'm just not ready for it yet. I have a friend who stopped talking to his own mother over the last election, I have cousins who no longer talk to each other because they don't align politically, and I think that is just plain sad.

One thing I will never do is be a cheerleader for a group that is mostly comprised lawyers, I don't care what letter is next to their name, and I certainly never would cease communications with a friend or family member over politics.

I've never felt the need to speak into an echo chamber in order to feel comfortable with my opinions. If anything, I enjoy speaking to others with different opinions than my own as I've always appreciated hearing other perspectives.

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

A couple of the incidents mentioned could be blamed on metric as much as anything else. The air Canada fuel incident probably wouldn't have happened if they just didn't adopt metric. The Korean Air crash seemed to stem from ATC using metric units instead of the standard imperial. From the article, it seems that the turtle case came about because units weren't specified, which can happen regardless of which unit set you're using. Personally I just like units that I have a feeling for, and I don't have much of a desire to switch to metric. There are some benefits but they don't feel significant.

I mean professionals should use a professional standard of care...and they normally do...which is why we don't have planes falling out of the sky every day. I was more trying to use the article as a jumping off point. My main thought was that imperial units, especially in the context of a global economy, probably reduce productivity by some meaningful amount for anyone that has to work between the two. In addition to that, imperial units themselves, even outside of that global context are slower to work with (maybe not in all cases) than metric. I would love to see a deep dive into how much additional ink is used every day to express imperial dimensions (ft & inches) vs metric (m/cm/mm, depending on scale usually). Edit: This is mostly in architecture & construction. Engineering, as I understand it, at least uses decimal inches.

58'- 5 1/16" vs 17.807 - 10 characters vs 6 - not to mention the wasted space on a drawing. Related to that, our paper sizing is dumb and wasteful:

Also: Full agree on Celsius. They calibrated it wrong, the range over human comfort is too compressed. However, those that I know from metric-countries say Fahrenheit is dumb.

 

[Danoff]

I mean professionals should use a professional standard of care...and they normally do...which is why we don't have planes falling out of the sky every day. I was more trying to use the article as a jumping off point. My main thought was that imperial units, especially in the context of a global economy, probably reduce productivity by some meaningful amount for anyone that has to work between the two.

Yea imperial is horrible. 5 pounds... means... 5 pounds mass? 5 pounds force? 5 units of currency? That's broken, I don't even need to go on.

Also: Full agree on Celsius. They calibrated it wrong, the range over human comfort is too compressed. However, those that I know from metric-countries say Fahrenheit is dumb.

Yea they're wrong. Celsius has nothing on Fahrenheit. Oh water freezes at 0 and boils at 100... for specific atmospheric pressure and salt content... who cares?

 

[huskeR32]

I love the metric system, it's a better system (except Celsius, which sucks).

Completely agreed, Fahrenheit is a vastly more intuitive scale to use for describing human comfort.

 

[Exorcet]

I mean professionals should use a professional standard of care...and they normally do...which is why we don't have planes falling out of the sky every day. I was more trying to use the article as a jumping off point. My main thought was that imperial units, especially in the context of a global economy, probably reduce productivity by some meaningful amount for anyone that has to work between the two. In addition to that, imperial units themselves, even outside of that global context are slower to work with (maybe not in all cases) than metric.

I'm not disputing that metric has some advantages, I just don't see as much as an advantage in them as you do. Having to convert from one to other is something that I think should be avoided at all costs though. That doesn't really favor one over the other, but you might say that it's easier for the US to switch instead of the rest of the world.

Yea imperial is horrible. 5 pounds... means... 5 pounds mass? 5 pounds force? 5 units of currency? That's broken, I don't even need to go on.

I guess technically you're supposed to use slugs, not that I ever have. Differentiating lbf from lbm hasn't given me any issues so far though.

 

[Danoff]

I guess technically you're supposed to use slugs, not that I ever have. Differentiating lbf from lbm hasn't given me any issues so far though.

It's easier to do in writing than in speech. For some reason engineers seem to love saying "pounds" and just assuming you know. Sometimes I see lbs written and it's a pet peeve of mine.

 

[TenEightyOne]

Completely agreed, Fahrenheit is a vastly more intuitive scale to use for describing human comfort.

Whaaaaat!? How? Celsius makes far more sense... even for human comfort. What grinds my gears is when people incorrectly use the word "centigrade" or add "degrees" to the beginning.

Sometimes I see lbs written and it's a pet peeve of mine.

Me too, it should be lb. lbs (or correctly lb/s) is something else. Should be using kg though

 

[Famine]

lbs (or correctly lb/s)

What if I want to express something in poundseconds?

 

[TenEightyOne]

What if I want to express something in poundseconds?

Then that's the way to go, I've only ever seen it (dodgily) used in the output of manufacturing equipment. But there it is for all to enjoy

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

What if I want to express something in poundseconds?

Is that a spending rate?

 

[DDastardly00]

Syrian Refugee plans attack on Pennsylvania church for ISIS, gets caught.

https://www.wtae.com/article/pittsb...-planning-attack-on-christian-church/28108243

 

[ryzno]

What if I want to express something in poundseconds?

Pound per second, or am I missing something?

 

[Danoff]

Whaaaaat!? How? Celsius makes far more sense... even for human comfort.

No, 1 degree C is too much for human comfort - which is why you have half-degree increments in C thermostats. It's too much temp range crammed into too few digits. Degrees F is this beautiful % warm scale. How warm is it? 20%... that's not very warm. It's 100, it's 100% warm. That sounds about right. Celsius is pretty much useless.

 

[ryzno]

Just like our clock and calendar?
There is technically more than 24 hours in a day and more than 365 days in a year.
Might as well throw everything out the window.

 

[Chrunch Houston]

The President of the United States speaks to Sean Hannity. Maybe some of you may have the stomach to listen to more than the first few minutes.

To you brave few who will listen on, Trump goes in pretty deep to the Russian Hoax right off the bat ("...bigger than Watergate, this was a coup..."), and then gets into what a great President he has been near the end.

 

[TenEightyOne]

No, 1 degree C is too much for human comfort - which is why you have half-degree increments in C thermostats. It's too much temp range crammed into too few digits. Degrees F is this beautiful % warm scale. How warm is it? 20%... that's not very warm. It's 100, it's 100% warm. That sounds about right. Celsius is pretty much useless.

Half-a-degree!? That's a fancy thermostat, ours is a wobbly dial that gives very vague results. And it's still a gendered science - Mrs. Ten likes 19C and I like 16C (Factories Act minimum temperature), she says it's because I'm a terrible cheapskate but it's just right for me

 

[huskeR32]

Whaaaaat!? How?

Most populated areas stay in a 0-100 range, where 0 is really cold,100 is really hot, and somewhere in the middle is comfortable. This neatly aligns with people's intuition in a base-10 world. Values outside that range are both uncommon and feel extreme. Further, every ten degree step in the scale works pretty well as shorthand for quickly telling someone what it feels like outside, how they should dress, etc. "It's in the 60s today" is distinctly different from "it's in the 50s" or "it's in the 70s."

None of these things are true with Celsius. To wit:

Mrs. Ten likes 19C and I like 16C

When describing human comfort, Celsius becomes a scale of... what? -10 to 35? With the ideal being 16-19? How is that at all intuitive? The difference between 16 and 19 is notable? What?? In what other situation is that true?

No sir, Celsius is an inscrutable mess of a system, and only has a chance of making sense to someone indoctrinated in it from birth, who has never experienced the far superior Fahrenheit scale.

 

[Danoff]

No sir, Celsius is an inscrutable mess of a system, and only has a chance of making sense to someone indoctrinated in it from birth, who has never experienced the far superior Fahrenheit scale.

Yup, it's an embarrassment to metric and should be swapped for Fahrenheit (which really fits into the metric base-10 system better anyway). And then we should change the spelling of Fahrenheit.

 

[UKMikey]

I would rather just stick with one scale or the other provided we don't have to constantly convert between the two.

 

[PocketZeven]

We already have one appointed branch of government. I don't see that we need two.

Good lord no, you want to talk about a political puppet...

It still is better then the electoral college. In my opinion more democratic.

 

[Biggles]

Quelle surprise! The Trump administration's constantly provoking the Iranians has led to an "incident". Who woulda thunk it?

Most populated areas stay in a 0-100 range, where 0 is really cold,100 is really hot, and somewhere in the middle is comfortable. This neatly aligns with people's intuition in a base-10 world. Values outside that range are both uncommon and feel extreme. Further, every ten degree step in the scale works pretty well as shorthand for quickly telling someone what it feels like outside, how they should dress, etc. "It's in the 60s today" is distinctly different from "it's in the 50s" or "it's in the 70s."

None of these things are true with Celsius. To wit:



When describing human comfort, Celsius becomes a scale of... what? -10 to 35? With the ideal being 16-19? How is that at all intuitive? The difference between 16 and 19 is notable? What?? In what other situation is that true?

No sir, Celsius is an inscrutable mess of a system, and only has a chance of making sense to someone indoctrinated in it from birth, who has never experienced the far superior Fahrenheit scale.

LOL. It's all entirely relative. Anyone who grows up with the celsius scale will understand it intuitively. Similarly, anyone who grew up with Fahrenheit will understand it intuitively. Canada, as with so many things, is caught betwixt & between: officially metric, but still clinging to imperial in practice. My kids have grown up entirely with metric & imperial units mean nothing to them at all. They understand exactly what the difference is between 16 C & 19C. I will say that 0 celsius as freezing point makes eminently more sense than 32 Fahrenheit & "below" temperatures in Fahrenheit are weird.