Orton's Arm

Both the Ottoman and Austrian Empires collapsed like a house of cards in WWI. But internally unified nations such as France, Germany, England, and the U.S. fought well in WWI.

Dude, you ridiculed the Wikipedia article's description of regression toward the mean. Your excuse for that was it was Wikipedia. Then you ridiculed a Hyperstats article which said the same thing, except in greater detail. Your excuse there was that it was Hyperstats. Then I found articles from Stanford, Duke, the University of Chicago, and other universities which said the same thing that Wikipedia and Hyperstats had been saying, and which you'd been ridiculing all along. You've been owned. You've been humiliated. You've been shown to be a dimwit. Deal with those facts.

Like it or not, human nature is such that people are more likely to sacrifice for people like themselves than for people who are different. If you're trying to say that this fundamental truth about human nature is a Nazi-only belief, you're even dumber or more brainwashed than I thought.

Equivalence issues? At least there's an element of novelty in your otherwise dim-witted accusations. The articles I quoted said exactly what I'd been trying to pound into your skull for the previous 50 pages. The fact that you claim to see a difference between the two raises three possibilities: 1) you didn't understand the articles, 2) you didn't understand my posts, 3) you're lying.

Maybe I felt no need to see the movie "Animal House" having already lived in the animal house known as the PPP boards.

Lawyers sometimes say that when the facts are against you, argue the law. When the law is against you, argue the facts. And when both the law and the facts are against you, scream and call the other side a bunch of names. Your use of name-calling to the exclusion of intelligent debate is quite telling.

I'll agree there are examples of nations which are racially similar, yet don't have strong internal unity. The African nations you mentioned are a good example of that; just as other examples could be found in Europe, Asia, or the Middle East. But are there examples of nations which have had a high degree of mixing, yet retained their internal strength and unity? I don't know that there are. The corruption of Latin American officials is because people were more interested in helping themselves or their families than in helping their nations. I don't know of any examples of Latin American nations fielding effective militaries, which is a natural result of an unwillingness to die for one's nation. When a nation is internally unified, the actions of individuals serve to build up the whole. When a nation isn't unified, individual actions serve to prey upon the whole. America is a mix of these two types of behaviors, with the latter becoming more common as our unity wanes. Latin America is also a mix of these two behaviors, but the balance is closer to disunity than ours is.

IIRC, Tom owns a cat, so there's some truth to your statement. But not as much as you might think. Unlike most dogs, cats have self-respect. Also, cats rely on more subtle social signals than dogs do. Women are better at picking up on subtle signals than men; and a lot of times a woman doesn't want someone to slobber all over her. Men often prefer the hit-you-over-the-head obvious kind of affection you can get from a dog, whereas women often like the more subtle and refined affection you can get from a cat.

There's a certain level of mixture a nation can get away with and still have a unified people. The English, for example, are a mix of Jutes, Angles, Saxons, and Danes. Those four groups are all Germanic or Scandinavian--there aren't huge differences between them. Over time, they've mixed together to give England the kind of unity which must always exist before there can be strength. Compare that to most of Latin America, where whites, Native Americans, and blacks have intermarried to form a mixed race. Latin American governments are typically very corrupt. Armies are ineffective, and the rich oppress the poor. The largest effective unit is the extended family, or else a few Native American tribes which have been untouched by outside influences. The differences between people were too different to overcome. Strong, internally unified nations have not been built.

Had you understood the phenomena we were discussing, you never would have ridiculed the Hyperstats article. Its description of the test-retest phenomenon was dead-on right, and was echoed by places like Stanford, Duke, the University of Chicago, etc. Spend less time congratulating yourself on your credentials, and more time trying to understand what's being said before ridiculing it. You were overconfident in that debate, which led you to be intellectually lazy. Also, you had absolutely no clue whatsoever about what I was talking about. None. You'd think there'd be at least a passing relation between what I was saying and your description thereof, but there wasn't.

Did you and your wife Ramius have a fight? Are you trying to get back on his good side by a little "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery"? Because your accusation was so stupid, Ramius himself could have authored it.

It sounds like the car obtains its energy from an electric current. Rather than using the electricity to power an electric motor directly--which you'd think would be logical--the electric current's energy is used to break water apart into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen is then combined with oxygen again to give you water. By this means the electric energy of the current is converted into a series of hydrogen explosions; and those explosions power the car. Most electric cars use electricity to power the vehicle directly. The article didn't specify what benefit--if any--this vehicle receives from using hydrogen as a sort of middleman.

Um, I hope you're just joking around. The Japanese--not the Nazis--attacked Pearl. Germany declared war a few days later. Their goal was to sink the weapons-laden ships we were sending to the Soviets and the British.

Yes, you have an interest in abject futility. You participated in a statistics argument without a) first learning to understand the relevant phenomena, and b) failing to understand what I was saying about these phenomena. Your intellectual laziness was the only source of disagreement between the two of us.

It matters a lot to me whether someone has served. There's such a thing as paying your dues, earning the right to be respected, and showing by your actions that you care.

If they haven't worked in the past, why would they work in the future?

When he asked to be released, maybe he was hoping to sign with a team that would at least have an open QB competition. If you think that's unrealistic, remember that just last year Holcomb participated in such a competition with the Bills. He may not be thrilled with being a Philadelphia backup, but playing behind the oft-injured McNabb, at least he might see the field now and then.

I'd say the vague accusation is your version of breathing, except that I'd be understating my case.

Thanks.

And what point, precisely, do you think you were you trying to make? That all Germans are Nazis? Please, spare us from that particular piece of anti-ethnic propaganda. Or were you trying--in your own muddleheaded way--to imply that concern about Muslim ownership of U.S. ports is misguided? Because in your mind, there are two types of concerns: those that appear on the Official Pinko List of Approved Concerns, and those which should be dismissed without thought. Concerns about port ownership may or may not be misguided. If you want to show that they are, you'd have to support one of the following statements: - The Muslim organizations in question have a strong ability to resist radical Islamic influence or penetration. - Radical Islamic penetration of said organizations couldn't compromise the safety of our ports due to security measures implemented elsewhere. - Port security is a non-issue anyway, thanks to unthinking liberals such as yourself. Any would-be terrorist can easily enter this country via the border people like you have worked so very hard to keep open. Precisely how many people on these boards do you imagine are as stupid as yourself? Ramius to be sure, but he's not as easily led as you might imagine. But how would you expect a person of normal intelligence to respond to your datum about Deutsche Bank's new involvement with American ports? "Oh my gosh," posters would pant, "if Deutsche Bank is gaining control of a New Jersey terminal, no harm could possibly have come from Muslim ownership of American ports." Even you must have felt a little sheepish about asking people to swallow something so singularly stupid.

Interesting you should say this. Suppose America was invaded and conquered by a hostile foreign power. Assuming this power wanted to make its conquest permanent, they'd begin sending in their people to colonize us. They'd ask us to start learning their language. Quietly but effectively, America would be absorbed into whichever nation had been victorious on the battlefield. Our political system has caused this nation to suffer many of the consequences of a military defeat; despite the fact this nation has never been successfully invaded. Both parties are to blame.

Welcome to liberalism, GG style.

It's good to get some confirmation that the EV-1 was as good a vehicle as the movie made it out to be. As for the battery problems, I understand there was a much better battery in the works. I'd be curious if GM offered that guy you know the chance to upgrade to one of the new, significantly improved batteries. As for this bit about a car that runs on water, I don't see how it could work. There are several ways you can store energy for a car Chemical Nuclear (at least in theory) Kinetic (experimental vehicles have been built using flywheel power) Compressed air External energy source (e.g., an overhanging power line) Of the above, the only one with proven, car-relevant practical potential is chemical energy storage. Even a steam engine gets its energy from the chemical bonds in coal. You get chemical energy by taking something unstable--such as Tom--and allowing it to become more stable. The more unstable your starting material, and the more stable your end product, the more energy will be released in the process. That's why hydrogen has so much theoretical potential. Hydrogen gas is very unstable; and water is very stable. By combining oxygen with hydrogen to get water, you can obtain a high level of energy from a small amount of fuel. But therein lies the problem with the engine you've described: water is very stable. There just isn't much chemical energy to be released.

I'll try to undo the damage of the last two pages, and move this thread back toward the topic of immigration. A crucial factor in national success is for the population of a country to have something in common with each other. Shared values, a shared sense of purpose, and a shared cultural identity, are all sources of national strength. Witness, for example, the Austrian and Ottoman Empires. Both empires had pathetic war efforts in WWI; because both consisted of disparate groups of people who weren't linked by anything stronger or deeper than a scrap of paper. The nations which produced respectable war efforts--Britain, Germany, France, the U.S.--each had a stronger degree of internal unity and cohesion. That same unity and cohesion was present during the rise of the Roman Republic. The loss of that unity was instrumental in the fall of the Roman Empire. What, precisely, do you imagine will be holding this country together in the future? Our Constitution? Without a unified people to stand behind it, any constitution is only paper. What do you imagine will unify the people? There will be no shared sense of religious values, no shared sense of cultural identity, no ethnic or racial identity, no sense of common history, no sense of shared national purpose. Without these things patriotism will wither and die. People will lose the sense of belonging to something larger than themselves; and with that their ability to sacrifice their own selfish interests for the greater whole. We will be as internally weak as were the Austrian, Ottoman, and Roman Empires during their respective declines. America will become a house of cards, and will be blown away by the next strong wind.

The above statement is simply untrue. The Japanese have experienced their share of economic success without anything even remotely resembling an open border. Instead of importing a flood of low wage labor to Japan (with the host of associated problems), the lowest skill jobs are exported to neighboring countries. The profits associated with those jobs flow back to Japan. The consequences of American immigration policy are these: It is no longer possible for an unskilled American worker to make a decent living. Governments are allowed to put off solving the Third World hyper-fertility problem until another day. The shared American cultural unity that once existed is being permanently destroyed. The distinction between America and the Third World will become increasingly blurred. The environment is being adversely affected. The most ambitious and adventuresome Mexicans etc. are unavailable to help dig their own countries out of poverty.