Stephen Joseph

That's why when this was found out we deal with those doing it...you don't see the military ignoring this do you?

I worked on our Alumni Association's donations call center for a year. There at least when you call, people are for the most part very nice and actually do give money. Old people wanted to talk about the old days of Ga Tech And we had Pizza. And Drinks. And then we were told if we exceeded our goal by 15% we could get a kegerator down there in the center. It was good.

Very difficult to believe in the Warsaw Pact's actual effectiveness when the country that started it up kinda dissolved into anarchy only to reemerage as a shadow of its former self

I'll be in the building ... putting hype duty on the ppv and announcing a match And two old friends will have a meeting.

Sinclair took it off the air because they felt it was politically motiviated and not a tribute to the soldiers. So what they contribute to the Republicans...Big deal. They made a very good and sound case for doing so. -I read this today in the Washington Post Express, if anyone wants the source~!

Dood. The cold war was officially over when the USSR ceased to exist!

Bingo. I would love to know where the media gets those "polls" that show us the People of Iraq are happy we are there and whatnot. Do they have reporters over there going door to door asking Iraqi people their opinions? All the while there is shooting and shelling in these cities? Right. What the? Why do I bother? Unger...for all I know Saddam was killing and imprisoning pretty much everyone. You're telling me Uday only raped Kurdish women? That the jails im Baghdad only housed abused Kurds. Seriously. This goes to both sides. If you want to make a point, stop the damn over-generalization and CITE something. And by the way, two eyewitnesses in a BBC report hardly constitutes a "respresentative sample" People in Fajita probably just want the damn fighting to stop and are sick of it. That's hardly anything to be worked up about.

What? ... WHAT?!? OH JESUS CHRIST. *Slumps in seat.* Yup. That's next week's theme. Odd that it would be...AFTER Jon was eliminated. Indeed. Hell he had a good run, and the hate is undeserved. It's a freaking popularity contest and he played the game well. I think everyone's just a bunch of whiny wannabes complaining about RACISM~! A Native American, 4 African Americans, and 2 Cauc-Americans Yeah...that's racism allright. Jon did very well for a 16 year old, and he'll get a damn good launch on his career from this.

The would be dishonorably discharged, and probably sent to prison for a time, which isn't cruel and unusual punishment. Look, one guy tried for C.O and he failed. They're soldiers...they took on the risk that there could be a war. Whatever happened to people standing up, making their case, being punished, and taking the punishment like a man. That kind of protest wins, in the end.

And Yet Bush's approval rating on his total job is at a high, and Nader IS running, so that counterfactual means shizzie. If you're going to quote something Astro, quote something with real world applicability. Counterfactual models that can't exist do nothing but say "Gee, that's nice" And here's why Bush wins people. I've said this enough times. No Incumbent President in the history of the USA has lost when the economy has been on the uptick. Never. So Unless current trends change direction (Today 1st quarter growth GDP came out strong) Bush wins. I never said I liked everything about Bush though...Delude yourselves all that you want. What's in your *potential, expected* wallet...or pocketbook matters more than anything else.

Mike, I'm sorry man, but I'm hardly an extremist as I align with your fairly closely. Yet I hold dear to the right to personal freedom, and am pro-choice for society. Pro-Choice is not an extreme viewpoint. On the political scale its slightly left but hardly extreme. I have to disagree with you on that. *cough* Remember this for the rest of your lives. I agree with Tyler...this one time...

That too, is valid. Well, if he doesn't do lumberjacking anymore, then he can be thankful he survived...or something. Of course, if this is taken like "raising a Molson" then well I've screwed up twice. *sigh*

For our resident lumberjack (I think he's still doing that right?) They just finished a survey, and while its for American industry, Canadian industry is pretty similar I'm guessing. So take some pride that we have a guy who's job is way more dangerous than the rest of us slackers. http://money.cnn.com/2003/10/13/pf/dangerousjobs/?cnn=yes New York (CNN/Money) - On December 3, 2002, a section of a felled tree struck and killed an 18-year-old logger. He was one of the last of 104 lumbermen to die in 2002, when timber cutters led the nation with the highest on-the-job mortality rate of any vocation. The mortality rate among lumbermen, 118 timber cutters per 100,000 workers, heads the list of the top 10 most dangerous jobs in America for 2002 put out by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and was more than 26 times that of the average U.S. worker. The fishing industry ran second with 71 fatalities per 100,000 workers, with drowning the most common cause of death. The crab fishery in Alaska is particularly perilous, according to University of Alaska economist Gunnar Knapp. "The environment in which the crabbing is done, in the Bering Sea, in winter, has to be some of the worst conditions on Earth. You're hundreds of miles from port, in stormy seas, with ice forming all over, sometimes so thick it capsizes the boat." Fishermen also sustain injuries from working with heavy gear and mighty machinery. Alaskan crabbers use huge cages as traps. "Imagine," say Knapp, "steel lobster pots, only ten times the size, hundreds of pounds apiece." No wonder the Alaskan shellfish industry averaged 400 fatalities per 100,000 workers during the 1990s. Furthermore, the crab crews are in a mad dash to fill their holds. "The season lasts only three or four weeks," says Knapp, "they fish as hard as they can before the season ends, often working 40 out of every 50 hours. It's an intense, fundamentally dangerous environment with a lot of money at stake." When the crabbing is good a crewman can earn upwards of $1,000 a day. Many timber fellers earn upwards of $60,000 working a nine- or 10-month year. Flight risk Another often owner-operated job -- commercial pilot -- comes in third on the list of the country's most dangerous jobs, with 70 fatalities per 100,000 workers. Most pilot fatalities come from general aviation; bush pilots, air-taxi pilots, and crop-dusters die at a far higher rate than airline pilots. Again, Alaskan workers skew the profession's data; recent National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety (NIOSH) stats indicate that they have a fatality rate four times higher than those in the lower 48. "Alaskan pilots have a one in eight chance of dying during a 30-year career," says George Conway of NIOSH. "That's huge." Conway reports that the most common scenario in fatal plane crashes in Alaska is, "controlled flight into terrain." A pilot starts out in good weather then runs into clouds, loses visibility, and flies into a mountainside. Even though pilots flying small planes have a much higher fatality rate than pilots flying big airline jets, they're not financially compensated for the added danger; non-jet pilots average about $52,000 a year in pay while jetliner pilots make about $92,000. Other highly dangerous jobs, including construction trades, pay high wages. Fourth on the fatality list, structural metal workers, the steel workers who build our skyscrapers and bridges, died at the rate of 58 per 100,000 in 2002, and earned an average of about $20 per hour. Sixth were roofers (37 per 100,000 and $16 per hour), and seventh were electrical power installers (32 per 100,000 and $21 per hour). Construction laborers suffered 28 fatal injuries per 100,000 last year (ninth), and were paid about $13.36 per hour. Driving death rates One top-10 surprise was the fifth place finisher -- driver-sales workers, which, according to a BLS spokesperson, includes pizza delivers, vending machine fillers, and the like. Again, these workers are often self employed. Traffic accidents contributed heavily to their high fatality rate of 38 per 100,000, but they also suffered from crime; nearly a quarter of their deaths came from robberies and assaults. Farm workers come in eighth on the BLS list with 28 fatalities per 100,000. According to the Department of Agriculture farmhands earned roughly $8.50 an hour in 2002. In terms of sheer numbers, more truck drivers --- 808 –--died on the job than any other vocation in the top ten. But because there are so many truckers, their fatality rate is only 25 per 100,000, giving them tenth place on the list. Truckers die, mostly in traffic accidents, at six times the average rate but less than a quarter the rate of timber cutters. Like the crabbers, truckers are often under intense time pressure; the faster they move their goods around the country the more money they make. The often self-employed truckers face cut-throat competition and battle big overheads paying off expensive rigs. Exhausted truckers sometimes push themselves past their breaking point to squeeze extra dollars out of their work-week, becoming a danger to others, and, as the numbers suggest, to themselves.

I just think its funny that next week is big band / swing week, and you know John wouldn't pwned Sinatra.

The Oil prices won't be lowered. The American companies which have the contracts (and in some cases have ties to actual members of the US government, such as Haliburton/Cheney) will be/are keeping the same prices in order to reap maximum profit. That's completely erroneous. The DOJ Anti-trust Department is not politically influenced...probably in fact its leanings are quite different from the current admins. Why? ...Because I work there. That is my job. Our job. If an American company attempts to keep a price high...ugh. Cartels DON'T work. They always break down, except for Major League Baseball. High prices induce others to raise their production, which then lowers price. Christ I swear, pick up an economics textbook and read it. And last I heard, we take people to court when they try to collude. Now of course, you can tell me that doesn't happen. But as I said...THAT is my job.

The Clinton impeachment was the greatest policy move of the 90s For many months, Congress did nothing...and all was right with the world.

Sorry, Canada's cold...and overtaxed. And crime? Crime's overreported so it seems like alot, but numbers have been falling across the US for the last 5 years drastically.

Given the slant the media's been on a tear recently with such headlines as "Retention Rates Drop to Record Lows" "155 killed! That's the same as the whole war!" "600 killed" <Insert pictures of Iraqis who hate us> Yeah okay, so I think there's a slant here. The way the deaths have been portrayed has always been that of a crisis. Polls taken before the war had the average survey response to an American operation in Iraq by the average American for the acceptable number of casualties at 23000! No one ever mentions that yes retentions dropped, but they're at a wartime high and cnn barely posted something about how its way above expectations. We hear nothing about the activities of the vast majority of Iraq that is being peaceful. Sure, they might want their own government and we should give them that, but MOST of them aren't shooting at us. And with the kidnappings, such people are running out of resources. duh. Do we ever hear about Soldiers successfully defending a position? No. The best publicity the soldiers got was by our recent hero's death in Afganistan. At least that's story has been fairly told. New media outlets today, All of them, CNN to Fox, are out for ratings and the story. Happy stories don't sell ad space, crises, catastrophes, calamitys, THEY sell. And that in turn changes perceptions...falsely changes them. That's why I don't trust Koppell's motives.

Fact: The US Economy is much less energy dependent than it was in the 50s/60s/70s Fact: Greenspan doesn't think these high oil prices will have the effect naysayers have been talking about. Fact: We didn't go to war with Iraq for oil. Fact: Military guidelines suggest that an occupying for needs 1 troop for every 10 occupied civilians Fact: 130,000 troops are right now occupying a country of 23,000,000 Fact: Most everyone in Iraq IS NOT FIGHTING THE US! Koppel disgusts me. I can't HELP but think someone's trying to get political gain out of dead people. For Christ's sake, they're dead. Respect their damn memory, have a moment of silence, an hour of silence. But don't use their deaths as a crutch to prop up campaign that's dying right in front of us. Yes I said it. Kerry's campaign is dying(The candidate who wakes up and has to justify himself from the start of the morning loses), and can't help but think of connecting these two. Ugh.

C-Dub, That wasn't a bait. Totally forgot about your past there. I'll raise a Moose, Elk, or something else Sufficiently Canadian and non-baiting then.

Now CWM, Why would you hate Outkast just because I happened to like them? That's pretty silly thinking. Perhaps Outkast is just "good music" across divergent people. Really. C'mon now. Don't Hate. I'll promise never to show up to a Canadian Outkast concert. Now C'mon, lift up your Molson.

Actually, THIS particular strategy is effective. How so? There's an effectively perfectly elastic supply of people we can train to be suicide bombers...militaries do it all the time. Targeting Terrorist cells is stupid. However, Hamas is not fully a terrorist org. 98% of it supports social/humanitarian services, but it gains legitimacy from the 2% that is terror related in the populace. Political leaders, then have an incentive to align with Hamas, even though they themselves are not involved in the more bloody parts. The solution to the problem lies not in cutting supply but cutting demand. It means breaking the link between gaining positive benefits in palestination society with the prestige of suicide bombing. Break the link, the problem is gone. How so? Make the strategy costly, but not for the guys its easy to recruit. Target the politicians who are tying themselves to the base, make it costly for the politicians and leaders to identify themselves to Hamas. Demand side strategies...Damn I hate Keynes, but the man is right sometimes. And no...putting Hamas leaders in jail wouldn't be enough of a cost to them...putting people in jail creates more causes than killing them. Look at history.

Well, you are the future.

Firstly, I grew up on Outkast...I remember being in the back of the bus with my friends listening to Atliens and such waay back in high school, plus since they weren't big we could see them at some local gigs. Damn great sounds since day one. Now, which one was better? I voted for The Love Below, but it's very difficult from that. Speakerboxx has some very interested, slightly weird, but cancerous (grows on you) songs. A very strong "I Like the Way You Move" will probably be the only song from both albums we will still be hearing at a)proms b)weddings c)clubs in 10 years. That comes not from radio overplay but from several DJ's in Atlanta who are old enough to tell what stays and what doesn't. I quote one, Alan, "Outkast are the Beegees of this generation. I can't leave the club any night without having played at least two of their songs." Having Killer Mike on Boxx didn't exactly hurt either. The Love Below is just fun. "Lady" is a great takeoff on the "Who's on First" skit, and finally "Roses" has hit the airwaves, Andre's contribution to a song that will be around in the clubs for awhile (better beat than Hey Ya to dance to). Whoever is deciding what to release is being very smart about it. Hey Ya is the catchiest, splashiest, most fun song on the album. It's just stupid, but it grabbed everyone's attention because it was different? Move then came out, and Big Boi knew he had a good hit there, but its slower and took longer to ramp up. That song has staying power. Dre then releases his song with staying power. There's about 1 more single off TLB, 2 coming from Boxx. The fact that both artists stayed together to do different things speaks volumes, and is one reason to support Outkast in this day and age of fickle passions. =)

Damn, guess Hoff and I need to hook up now. Of course, such a proclaiment does come from our GREATEST TRANSITIONAL CHAMPION EVAH~! So it must be law