Crap Throwing Monkey

A sin league? Sure, I'm all for it... Oh, wait...that was "sim". Never mind...

I see the sarcasm. Others might miss it for lack of the Darin smiley, though...

"I'm going to dump a beer on your head, but I'm entitled to beat you up if you dump one on mine."

I don't see why JSP exercising his freedom to worship in a church that agrees with his beliefs is that big a deal anyway. I mean, if you WANT to see this as some whole "gay rights" thing, go ahead...fact of the matter is, I completely disagree with him on most gay rights issues. But he's free to choose his church.

Hey, I mentioned the MOH. Mentioned it first, actually. Given that I've never served, and that I watched that debate, it's only natural that I'd be more sensitized to his debate performance than his medals...just because I have an unavoidable civilian bias, however, doesn't mean I don't recognize the guy was a hero.

You were gone? Well...when you don't post it on the internet every day, it builds up...

Medal of Honor notwithstanding, a merciful God would have killed him shortly after that debate and spared him the pain of living with it... I still cringe thinking about it.

Were you one of the people who was also complaining that we weren't doing anything to help tsunami victims when we'd sent thirty ships and an entire Army command to coordinate things into the region? Just because you hear it on TV, it doesn't make it true. Conversely, just because you don't hear it on TV, it doesn't mean it's not happening. I get the sense that a lot of your indignation stems not from things you want to happen not happening, but you simply not knowing (i.e. not having been told) what's happening. Africa's been a cesspool for a LONG time...fifty years for most of it, even longer for some of it. Much of it doesn't have basic services...it would, but the Western aid GIVEN to Africa to build such services was diverted to people's pockets. Ten years ago we tried to save Somalia from famine...that didn't work out too well, as I recall. TWENTY years ago Bob Geldof threw a couple of all-day charity concerts to help Africa...they were so 'successful' he just had to do it AGAIN. The problem with Africa isn't people like NASA slamming probes into comets...the problem is idiots like you and Geldof who don't know jack sh-- about Africa yet think NASA not slamming probes into comets and The Who re-re-re-re-uniting are the solution to Africa's problems. Frankly, the only thing you've got going for you on this topic is that you're not as big a fool as Geldof. You've only been wrong once. Geldof's been wrong TWICE now...

They've successfully sent a lot of ships on Mars, dimwit...probably near a dozen. Off the top of my head, they've lost three: Mariner 3 (before you were born...hell, before I was born, I think), the Climate Orbiter, and Mars Observer. They currently have four or five working missions there. That, actually, is a HELL of a lot of success.

Pretty much. Sad thing is, with a sensible heavy-lift booster, a sensible reusable manned vehicle, and a sensible space station, you can greatly reduce the cost-to-orbit for geosynchronous payloads...but they'll never do it, because that means sh---canning one white elephant and thus losing the justification for the other. Never mind that they've ALREADY proven that house of cards is, in fact, a house of cards...in the past two years, with the space shuttle grounded, the ISS hasn't had a mission. And I haven't seen a justification for rushing the shuttle back outside the ISS and servicing the Hubble (which itself is a VERY good reason...the HST is quite possibly the most successful space research vehicle ever launched...and yes, that includes the Mariners, Vikings, Voyagers, and Galileo)...and they want to shut down the HST to concentrate on the ISS????? Idiots. The moon makes sense for a lot of things, if you're maintaining a manned presence there. It's not hard to think of economical uses for it (mining, for one. Deep space missions, for another, IF you can solve the problem of getting the infrastructure there. If you solve that, you're launching out of a much shallower gravity well. Hell, you get those two industries set up, you can conceivably start mining asteroids economically and safely.) Might even make a Mars mission safer and easier...though given that NASA hamstrings their engineers these days to the point where they can't even make the shuttle reliable and safe after 25 years, I don't see anyone going to Mars ever coming back anyway. If NASA wants to continue manned space flight, they need to be developing new and sensible (i.e. designed to carry people; not people, cargo, and the kitchen sink) vehicles for it NOW. And send their lawyers and bureaucrats on the test flights.

I agree...in part. They're useless because the way both programs are designed each only exists to justify the other. The shuttle should certainly be canned at this point...not because manned space flight is dangerous or not worthwhile but because the shuttle itself is a badly flawed design, and has been since the Air Force told them "We want to recover and refuel LEO recon satellites." That just exemplifies the inherent illogic in NASA's manned spaceflight programs and direction: everything exists to justify everything else, and the moment you ditch the a priori assumption of worthiness for any one of those programs, the whole facade collapses like a house of cards. But really, justifying the manned space program in general and the space station in particular is not that difficult (the shuttle, however, is a lost cause. Instead of trying to sell the whole "Space Transportation System" idea, NASA should have called the shuttle what it really was: an experimental orbital vehicle). The justification, however, is left is an exercise to the reader... (Hint: think "reusable trans-stage".)

Someone's always offended about something. And I mean no offense in saying that.

Uhhh...okay, Sally Struthers. Stopping the space program isn't going to stop people from dying in Africa any more than keeping it going is. The idea that any problem can be solved if you throw enough money at it is uniquely American...and fallacious, even in America. I'd say Africa's proven repeatedly that such an idea is not just fallacious in Africa, but outright stupid. Ask people in Zaire how much financial aid has helped feed them, why don't you? And as for cutting the space program...you can easily trim 10% of their budget if you take an axe to NASA bureaucrats and put the agency in the hands of engineers again (consider this: when Kennedy committed the US to the moon landings in 1961, we were eight years away from being able to do it. Nowadays, we're 16 years away from landing on the moon. That is NOT an effective ROI). But there's easily 20 other places in the federal budget where billions more are wasted even worse than NASA's lawyers do...of the top of my head I can easily think of three major programs in the defense budget alone. Why don't you dig into it and find out where and how the government REALLY wastes money, instead of blithely throwing out "I don't like NASA, cut their budget!"

Offensive? No. Bad? Yes. I like Hendrix, but I've never cared for his interpretation of the Anthem.

And it was a good correction, too. One wonders, though, who told it to you, since Aussies sure as hell don't speak proper English themselves...

Monkey have life, can't spend ALL day responding to your nonsense, no matter what screen name you post under.

One very characteristic !@#$ing letter. Like typing "skuirrel"...

Have you checked this against the Federal Hate Crime statutes, though? It might be a federal crime to exercise freedom of religion based on your beliefs about homosexuality. I'm not even kidding...given the thoroughly !@#$ed-up nature of Illinois' laws we discovered a few days ago, I'm wondering what else is out there. Wouldn't it just be a hoot if walking away from your church because of your stance on homosexuality could effectively be considered "hate speech" and a federal crime?

You did that purposely. You must have. Not even you are that bad.

Not entirely unlike this board...

Show's what you know. The new Uranusscan Probinator 6000 is Bluetooth-enabled...

Says the guy that worships the Frenchman...

Good thing I'm bipolar...

Probably more like E^2 = (pc)^2 + (m^2)(c^4)...which is the actual equation...

No. It's a Zen koan...you don't understand it, you contemplate it until you're one with the Ten Thousand Things... Oh, no, wait...my mistake. It's just drool.