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Saturday, July 11, 2009 12:00 AM

Our political class in a nutshell

An Obama official (about Afghans): "We believe anyone suspected of war crimes should be thoroughly investigated."

The letters thread is now closed.

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Saturday, July 11, 2009 11:45 PM

ondolette

Maybe you have not noticed but you are the person that insists in injecting mathematics to a wold full of horrific events that defy imagination.

Give me a favor, drop the subject, and I will stop insisting that your claim is totally stupid and will never refer to it again.

If you continue with your mathematical idiocies and ponpous claims I can asure you that my sarcasm will continue.

Beside your own personal belief, what is your evidence that they are relevant?

Why is your belief superior to mine, where I think that it is totally BS?

Are you having difficulties understanding the equivalence of plane and Euclidian? That is the only explanation for your comment about my lack of understanding righ angle triangles.

You may be getting tire, so please take a rest.

Saturday, July 11, 2009 11:38 PM

Lord Karth

"The naivete on this site is nothing short of astounding, sometimes."

I was just going to say how naive and clueless you are, and then to see you chastise others for their "naivete" is priceless.

There isn't a regular poster on this board "surprised" by Pres. Obama's action other than you. To broadcast your cluelessness to the world seems more like you've just awoken to a startingly revelation and you need to feel others share in your naivete.

You're in the wrong room. Being-Hit-on-the-Head lessons are down the hall.

Saturday, July 11, 2009 11:29 PM

Ondolette

Some people do not have to study too much to learn, they are simply gifted.

My limited understanding of mathematics has allowed me to develop propraetary algorithms that a number of Fortune 500 companies have licenced (and still licence) that had made me very wealthy. I am glad I am so ignorant.

What part do you not understand in the claim that the Pythagoras theorem is only true in Euclidean geometry?

With your claim you are moving into truly stupid territory.

And by the way, for those of you that may be intimidated by the claims about dynamic systems and chaos theory made by ondolette. Let me point out that one of the most common examples of such a system is "weather systems". The believe is that it does not matter what the accuracy of our measurements is, they will always contain uncertainty.

Applying that idea to historial systems is totally BS. The problem is the lack of complete knowledge, not the true uncertainty of the historical consecuences.

If we would have known that a large airliner with a particular masss and momentun, and loaded with fuel were to crash againt a WTC tower with occupants inside, it would not have taken a rocket scientist to know that there would be a signicant number of casualties. That is the truly significan event.

If the issue were to determine in what direction all the fragments of the airliner would disperse, or how the body parts were to be found, that is a complete different issue. Here chaos theory could help but how historical relevance does it have?

It would not have taken a very advance knowledge of the potential energy represented by the structure to know that what the terrifing show we witnessed defies simple physics and complex systems theory. There was not enough potential energy to pulverize concrete to the micron level simply from gravity

Saturday, July 11, 2009 10:39 PM

OT – Newsweek reports that AG Holder may appoint Torture Prosecutor.

Best news we’ve heard in a long time.

The article (link at sig.) attempts to downplay the importance of this action, however, by stating:

“Such a decision would roil the country, would likely plunge Washington into a new round of partisan warfare, and could even imperil Obama's domestic priorities, including health care and energy reform.”

“Roil the country?” Who are they referring to?? The Neocon Wingnuts???

The majority of the American population (indeed the world population) would like to see our nation come to terms with the Torture Issue through an independent prosecutor/investigation. To say that this would “roil the country” is absolutely absurd.

Saturday, July 11, 2009 10:06 PM

One Other Thing

As to so-called "war crimes"---all political leaderships, in all countries, at all times are capable of committing them.

It's one of those things that Humans do, that's all. And, remarkably enough, it's one of those few things that Human beings seem to be good at. Under the circumstances, there's only one realistic course of action: make some popcorn, grab a bottle of your favorite beverage, sit back and watch the show !

"Human politics: Reality Television/Absurdist Comedy At Its Very Best. Hours and hours of Pure Viewing Entertainment !"

Your servant,

Lord Karth

Saturday, July 11, 2009 10:01 PM

I'm Amazed

that any of you are at all surprised at Obama's actions being very similar to his predecessor's. Why WOULDN'T they be ? Because of "campaign promises" that he made ? Has it never occurred to you that ALL national-level politicians are of the "promise-her-anything-but-take-the-train-out-of-town-in-the-morning" school of practice ? The naivete on this site is nothing short of astounding, sometimes.

Time to face some realities, people---for the politician, it's all about getting into office and then staying in office. Any other consideration is STRICTLY secondary at best. This is why I'm a believer in VERY, VERY limited government (of the Articles-of-Confederation type, at most, if that); because those in power can do something FOR you in proportion to what they can have done TO you.

Remember the words of the immortal Dean Ing: "Power politics is the only kind there is." And don't trust ANY member of the political class any further than you can shoot at him.

Your servant,

Lord Karth

Saturday, July 11, 2009 09:44 PM

I'll tell you how to investigate Afghan war crimes

Just crack open the nearest book you can find on Afghan history and start reading.

The First Anglo-Afghan War is an interesting case. The whole war basically was one big war crime.

Saturday, July 11, 2009 09:37 PM

@JD

What part of "for all right triangles in plane geometry" do you not understand?

As for the mass graves, this is what I wrote today,

http://letters.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/07/11/accountability/permalink/da2ca0c4f7041e8555ab181f6b5e4e49.html

And here is what sysprog wrote about it on the thread yesterday, which you ostensibly followed,

http://letters.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/07/09/guantanamo/permalink/497029faebcc41efd29b4b78302b1c6b.html

Now why don't you drop it? You're attempts to prove that mathematics is irrelevant to all of life except making money in computer science aren't really very insightful about mathematics. Because it isn't. Perhaps you didn't study enough of it.

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