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[Jan. 25th, 2005|10:55 pm] |
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Yeah, those Dresden Dolls tickets that were being raffled off yesterday? I apparently won them, about 5 minutes before I got out of class.. I knew this would happen, of course, because that's just the way my life works. Oh well. I had class tonight anyway. He basically spent the first 2 hours giving a history of the Catholic Church and how big a group of fucktards it's always been, complete with Paul being nuttier than a fruitcake, Gnostics, and Crusaders raping and pillaging everything in the name of God and Vikings doing likewise, just because it's fun. This, of course, was a lead-in to the Puritans, who we'll be talking about for the next few weeks.
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There's also a huge "crisis" around here today with "contaminated drinking water". All the news stations are telling us every 10 minutes to boil our drinking water and everyone's stockpiling bottled water and stuff. This is all completely ignoring the fact that the "contamination" is just a miniscule increase in microscopic dirt particles in the water because of all the rain we've been having and that only Phoenix and Paradise Valley are affected, since Tempe, Mesa, etc, get most of their water from other places. Of course, this really wouldn't affect me much anyway, since I drink about 2 glasses of water -per week- on average, but oh well.
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Finally, what the everloving fuck is this? The government wants to put anti-missile weapons on every commercial airplane? Wow. Talk about paranoid.
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On another note, I now have a gazebo glaring at me beside my monitor. It's quite nifty. |
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| Comments: |
Finally, what the everloving fuck is this? The government wants to put anti-missile weapons on every commercial airplane? Wow. Talk about paranoid.
Not so much paranoid as just stupid. Shoulder-fired missiles are out there, and they can take down an airliner...and there's not a hell of a lot you can do about it. Flare or chaff dispensers might be useful, but they require that the pilots see the launch. Spending a great deal of money to slightly reduce a single risk strikes me as...inefficient.
I'd be curious to know how the folks at RAND developed the $1 billion figure for "direct losses" from a single airliner takedown. A new 737 appears to run about $50-60 million, figure another $40 million in life insurance payouts on the ~200 people on board...unless you're hitting a heavily populated building (which, given that the plane will most likely be somewhat controllable after taking a missile hit, is less than likely), I can't see how you can get that number. (They mention the economic cost of grounding the airlines for a week, but I can't see any rational reason to do that. You cannot make the takeoff and approach lanes safe, no matter what you do....)
Anyway, if it's as expensive as they say, then it's silly.
Dav2.718
Being somewhat paranoid myself, I think that's a bit too far. Seriously, the changes of that happening in the U.S are not likely. In "hostile" area, yes. but that does not by itself justify the huge price tag.
Paul being nuttier than a fruitcake
Well, you don't say. I mean, really, some random guy just waltzes in and hijacks the Christian movement and gets away with it because he's "inspired by God".
Hmm.
Amazing how much the Christian movement changes once Paul shows up.
I really don't know that you can compare vikings to crusaders. For one, vikings were (mostly) pegan, minus the occasional Varangan in Constantinople....
Oh, I know. We mostly talked about how they started raiding the western coast, etc, all the way down to Sardinia. I just liked his "and the Vikings did it just because it was fun" line.
Eng 241 - American Lit to 1860
*chuckles* sounds like my professor about the crusades:
"After the first one, the crusaders went to the middle east for fun, and money."
and my favorite:
"The fourth crusade was an example of, 'what if we threw a crusade and nobody came?'" | |
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