DrTodd13

Waste of time? I wrote my own bridge system that I tinker with occasionally and I implemented this feature. It took less than a day to implement. I'm even willing to give the core of the ratings code to Fred. So, I don't think this is a huge time sink. Doesn't deal with people being asses? In my system, you ranked people on two characteristics, bridge ability and "niceness." Assuming one would care about how nice other people view them, this gives them an incentive to actually be nice. People won't care enough? First, they care enough to do it on Ebay because people know reputations are important. Second, you evidently care enough to set people as enemies so why don't you think people will care enough to rate people? If your system is just to use the enemy button, how many hundreds of people have you had to mark as enemy due to false self-ratings? Would you have preferred to have a reasonably accurate reputation you could have looked at and avoided wasting all your time playing with people who you ultimately decide were too bad to play with?

It is pretty trivial to code. It is already written and I even shared the code with Uday. It is just a matter of getting sufficient demand for Fred to decide to do something.

A bid showing some cards in the bid suit and some cards in another suit is natural but it is also conventional. Anything conventional should be alertable. You might say that all doubles are alertable if they aren't a takeout double of the immediately previous bid natural suit or a penalty double in all other circumstances. So, a X showing a known or unknown suit would be alertable over any NT opening. Personally, I'd rather have easy to remember rules and have to alert more often than have to guess what my opponents are likely to find an unusual enough bid to require an alert.

Can I turn my belief system into a religion and then demand that anything I find wrong and therefore offensive be banned?

Every website I've seen where there was a poll that includes all the candidates shows Ron Paul competing effectively with Romney, Guiliani, McCain. Mainstream media won't even mention him. Stories about polls rarely include any mentions other than those 3 and Fred Thompson who hasn't even said he is running. This is ridiculous. John McLaughlin did mention him on his show but how many people watch that? Is there any doubt that this is a fascist state? Do not corporations and mainstream media collaborate to maintain the status quo by constant promotion and coverage of candidates who hardly differ and offer no real change?

What would 4S be? If you were interested in slam what bid would you make over 4♦? I have to admit that I would bid 5♦. My pd did in fact bid 5♦ but was curious as to whether anybody was interested in slam. Here is the dummy you get. x AQxxxx AKTxx A. As I recall, we got a ♣ lead and 13 tricks rolled in.

I think I said that we play 4♦ as game forcing. If I have AKQJx AKQJxx then I'm just going to bid slam once partner picks a suit so partner doesn't have to worry about this hand. He has to worry about hands where game is likely and slam possible if his hand is good enough.

[hv=d=w&v=n&s=sxxhxdxxxxxckqjxx]133|100|Scoring: IMP - 2♠ by west. - 4♦ by pd showing GF hand with ♥+♦, passed to you.[/hv] What's your call?

My understanding is that Europe had recently switched to the inheritance mechanism where the oldest son got pretty much everything and everyone else got next to nothing. Some younger sons joined the priesthood but others now had rank but no land and thus there was a great demand for land. The only way to get new land was to conquer it. So, the Crusades may have been sparked by the authentic desire to rend control of the holy land from from Islam but the fires were flamed by nobles looking for land and using any excuse to justify war to accomplish that goal. In essence, nothing has changed. The real reason for war is almost always the desire to extend one's power but one can't exactly admit that so they invent whatever reason they think will motivate the populace to support the war.

A somewhat opposite but confiming approach was proposed by Thomas Jefferson: With no standing army, the government holds no threat against an armed governed. However, Helene is right about today's America - there is simply no way the governed could defeat the standing army's military superiority. Today in America, the only thing that stands between the governed and a dictator is the side taken by the standing army if the President attempted to declare himself king. A rather chilling group is Blackwater, a private paramilitary organization that has over 20,000 "contractors" - many call them mercenaries. These contractors are used extensively in Iraq and were used on patrol in New Orlean after hurrican Katrina. Being a private army, this group is not subject to any oversight to which this country's standard military is subject. Founded in 1996 by an rich ex-navy seal, a conservative christian, is it any wonder this group's government contracts have expanded exponentially with the increased presence of like-minded conservatives in high-level political jobs. There is a story from The Nation about Blackwater here: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070402/scahill_vid Really? The Iraqis seem to be doing a pretty good job of fighting the US military to a standstill with small arms. All the big budget weaponry the military has is quite useless against a guerilla force embedded with the population. Guerillas can't win outright but they can wear you down until you give up. There may be some power hungry monsters at the top but if the resistance is widespread enough you'll get defections higher and higher up the military which can promote a coup to remove the tyrant. My view is that people need whatever weapons are necessary to make the military cease to have the will to suppress them. You don't need much more than rifles for this but you do need a lot of them and they need to be spread out. People are very naive. If politicians don't fear the populace they will do anything. Look at Russia...Putin is essentially a dictator now.

The right to resist tyrants when they confiscate over half of your income.

Shubi. First off, it is "ecosystem," not "ECHO system." Second, people believe "carbon dioxide" is the important greenhouse gas, not "carbon monoxide." Third, there are already general purpose carbon dioxide neutralizers. They are called trees. There are very expensive systems to capture carbon from spot sources like power plants. Fourth, people are never going to give up driving and their homes in the burbs until it becomes too expensive to drive. I doubt they will elect people that promise to do that either.

[hv=n=sa8xhajxxxdajxcak&s=skjt9xhkxdxcjt9xx]133|200|[/hv] Play 6♠ from South with a small diamond lead.

All these arguments revolve around societal axioms. People argue forever when there is no hope of there ever being agreement because their axioms differ. For me, the ultimate good is freedom and so any distribution of wealth produced by everyone having total freedom is optimal. For others, maximizing societal stability in lieu of people's covetousness is the ultimate good and for those people the optimal distribution of wealth is such that you minimize the amount of rioting that people do. Redistribute too little and the poor riot out of greed. Redistribute too much and the rich either fight back, leave the country, or refuse to produce. In any case, when you remove society's productive people the system will collapse because there is no one left to prop it up.

I remember another case from Germany where the parents wanted to name the kid "Superman" and the government wouldn't allow it. It might have even been a middle name and not the first name.

Did you look at the statistics? What is your reason for the discrepancies? What you are saying can trap you. I can ask you...what do you think of German culture? If you say you like it then I can accuse you of being a Nazi because at one time Nazism was the dominant culture of Germany. If you say no, then I call you a racist for disliking an entire country. Personally, I believe it can be consistent to say you like the German culture today but dislike the culture 65 years ago. Cultures change and the values change, sometimes for good and sometimes for bad. Do I hate Germans because I think Nazism was bad? Call it what you will but look at the statistics. I don't believe it is something external forcing them into this situation so it must be an internal cultural thing and something in their culture is causing this. I mentioned several things in my initial post as causes. I mentioned black culture after I talked about the culture of dependence because they are related and the culture of dependence most heavily affected blacks because of their circumstances when the Great Society began.

Amen Josh! People here seem to think they are entitled to a cushy lifestyle far above the average standard of living around the world just because they live in the US or some other already industrialized country. Why should that be? This is total nationalistic indoctrination. Winston asked why goods aren't cheaper in the US thanks to outsourcing. Hello?!?!? Have you heard of Walmart? What good would it be if your income was twice as high but everything cost twice as much? As for me, I am suggesting pure capitalism because I believe in total freedom. I do have pity on those who are seriously incapable of working, widows, orphans, etc. I don't have any sympathy for people who could work but don't. Charities can and will take care of those who seriously need help.

Here are a couple of articles by Walter Williams about trade and globalization. Trade deficits Globalization I don't see a problem with people willingly trading with one another. Borders should be irrelevant. Why should we restrict others' right to buy goods from whomever they choose? To limit purchases from other countries only panders to nationalism which is a form of racism (the "American race").

How many years of affirmative action have we had? If blacks are not attaining equal outcomes with whites now then what is the reason? Continued racism? To some small degree that is probably true but I don't think that accounts for the current situation. I don't believe that culture is something inherent to a race or reflects on that race's qualities. I think most of the black population had a positive attitude prior to Johnson's Great Society. I lament the condition of much of black culture today and also much of white culture but the secondary effects of the Great Society had more of an effect on the black culture because percentage wise they were still poorer than whites at that time. The Great Society punished marriage and rewarded single motherhood so surprise surprise we got more single-motherhood and this was focused on the poorer segments of the population. Study after study has shown poverty being associated with single parenthood. Like it or not, a lot of people on these programs just languished there. What effect would it have on kids to see their parents not work and yet sit back and collect others' money? That can't install the work ethic that is necessary to succeed. Look at the statistics on the link I provided. I won't claim to know all the answers for why these results are as they are but they are facts. Again, I lament that this is the condition they are in but we've all seen stories of people who raised their families from poverty to the upper class in one or two generations. I believe that _everyone_ is capable of working their ass off and improving their situation. In my opinion, if they choose not to do this then they are happy with where they are at or they are too lazy to do what is necessary to change their situation. If someone is going to refute this and claim that the reason for the blacks' current lower socioeconomic position is a racial trait then that person is the racist, not me. Census statistics on race

Part of the cause is government welfare programs that for a long time did not demand forward progress and so created a culture of dependence. Somehow the black culture has lost its way. 50 years ago there was a desire to integrate and succeed but this has been replaced with a disdain for intellectualism and laud for the dream of an athletic career. Part of the problem is just plain stupidity. If the only skills you have are ones shared by every one else in the population then there is a huge supply for that kind of labor. Supply and demand indicates a low resulting cost of that labor. Those with rare and desirable skills are highly compensated. You've got one class of people that are acquiring very marketable skills and they are getting rich. The other class are battling each other for a buck. All you can do is encourage people to make the most of themselves.

Just go to www.youtube.com and search for "The Avengers". You'll have to do some more filtering by hand but there are a few episodes there including some of the black and white ones. For the other youtubers here, who are your favorite people? Personally, I like HappySlip and LazyDork. Dare I admit it, I also watch the lonelygirl15 stuff.

Yeah. I've seen all of these. It takes time to get used to because everything on TV is so homogenous. I ran across an episode of The Avengers that looked promising...some discussion of Emma writing a bridge article and being invited to discuss it with an aging bridge expert. There was zero bridge content in the show however. So, the show was interesting but not for bridge reasons. That show has a similar feel to the Chad Vader stuff. It is so different from modern day stuff that it takes getting used to. It is still entertaining though.

Once you VPN, your machine is typically behind your company's firewall just as if it were hard-wired in the office. So, if you can't connect to BBO from work then you know what the problem is. Firewalls are usually circumventable though but it requires some skill.

1. As a Christian, you will spend eternity on earth. AFAIK, nowhere does the Bible say you'll spend eternity in Heaven. Revelations seems to indicate that we will live on a rejuvenated earth in New Jerusalem. I am easily bored and so I've often wondered how I'll manage to amuse myself for an eternity. I must admit the Buddhist (I think it is Buddhism but maybe Hinduism...can't remember offhand) goal of non-existence is sometimes an enticing one but given I believe in the immortality of the soul then eternity with God is better than the alternative. 4. It is an all too common mistake for Christians to believe the atheists cannot have an ethical standard that they live by. Any ethical system has to overcome a few hurdles (like the is/ought problem) but once that is done you can base ethics on religious grounds or humanist grounds.

I have a problem with their terminology because in order to effectively communicate, we all have to generally agree on what words mean. People usually don't actively think about what words mean and so word usage can become pretty sloppy. It sounds like these people are substituting "I believe God exists" for the more correct (for them) "I believe there is a high likelihood He exists." The former statement to me precludes any doubt. When people bring up the purple flying dinosaur it is always to try to somehow equate the likelihood of God's existence with that of a purple flying dinosaur. There are a number of well-known scientists and philosophers who were previously avowed atheists or agnostics who have subsequently come to accept deism as a more probable candidate. They have looked at the scientific evidence from a number of fields and have inferred the possible existence of a creator. If these smart guys at the height of their field see enough evidence to believe something transcendental may exist then I think it the atheists go too far in estimating an infinitesimally small probability of the existence of God. If you want to say the number is 5% or 10% and then choose to believe He doesn't exist that is fine with me because a lot of people get to 80 or 90% and then choose to let faith take them the rest of the way. I just have a problem with people exaggerating for the purpose of trying to improve their case. Which reminds me, I watched the Al Gore presentation to the Senate today and in her openings remarks the chairwoman said something to the effect that scientists had unequivocally determined that anthropogenic gases were the cause of the warming and one or two sentences later quoted the IPCC report where they said they have only 90% confidence that this was the case. That sounds like an equivocation to me. All in all, the meeting was a complete waste of time. Inhofe came off as an idiot and Al Gore's a liar.