JCviggen

Well that's a bummer, Dude. That's a bummer. Understand the point to move on. I've regretted parting out my green 854 off and on over the years, but it's easy to be nostalgic about the good times and forget how much shit goes wrong when you're pushing the limits. I'm with Eric here that putting this much power through the given displacement just isn't going to be ultimately reliable. Yeah yeah I know there's a lot of strong stuff out there but whenever I see those EVOs or GTRs with a bunch of extra power shit breaks all the time just the same. Best of luck with the new car!

Sorry buddy But you'll be back. Eventually ;-)

Shot a Russian pop singer for his latest CD. Longest day of my life and it rained for most of it. Last shooting with my trusty 5D2 as well...just got the 5D3 with BG and 24-105 IS L kit lens so finally something with an autofocus worthy of the name. Kinda sad to do away with the Mark 2 though after more than 3 years of trusty service. I'm close to the rated amount of clicks but it's still doing well if a little dusty inside.

Maybe something like a Tamron EF 70-300mm would be good. It's 1/3rd the price of the Canon 70-300L but not too far off IQ wise. That'll give you 480mm effective. You'll probably need to start using a tripod though, otherwise the required shutter speed is going to cause your ISO to get uncomfortably high in less than bright daylight.

I think both sides are pointing at each other equally hard, as you would expect. When you have an effective 2-party system and they both run in different directions to please their hardcore base you end up in an impasse, simple as that. I don't see how the president would be able to single handedly solve any of this...the problem is that both sides promised opposing things to their voters. I always thought coalition building was futile and counterproductive but seeing how the 2 main parties over there are making a mess of things it might not be quite as bad as I thought.

Evidently a US president can't single handedly push things like these through, checks and balances I suppose. Or gridlock in this case. If Obama had the legal power to sort out that mess by himself I imagine he would have done so. If the opposing party refuses to come to a compromise the only things left for "The leader" to do is either capitulate or make speeches that accomplish nothing.

That doesn't sound like Romney

The Australian laws aren't exactly recent. But they are reported to have little to no effect in general. But the problem there is that Australia already WAS pretty safe by any standard, and gun related deaths are currently around 1 per 100.000 inhabitants a year. The laws appear to have been a knee-jerk reaction to a few high profile shootings. I'm not here to argue that specific gun laws (in the US or elsewhere) worked. I am arguing against the concept that the best thing possible is "no gun laws whatsoever". Is this relevant to the number of people dying as a result of guns? How many people would prefer to die instead of being burgled? If you could vastly reduce the number of guns in circulation, putting a serious dent in the number of gun deaths, who cares about home invasion? I'd rather get burgled than shot any day of the week. Anyone with a similar opinion who adheres to statistics should come to the same conclusion. In any case, this Australian gun crime and "home invasion" thing appears to be copied straight from a well known biased and unreliable source http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/stories/s112652.htm The total number of such crimes is so low that large percentage swings mean very little. Apparently Australia is a pretty civilized country. All of which offer a pathetic killing efficiency compared to guns. In order to kill someone with a knife, you will need a considerable amount of physical strength and you also need to get very close indeed to your victim. You'll have to be an absolute Rambo of a man to go on any kind of mini-killing spree with a knife and most of your potential victims will have time to flee while the ones you go get have a decent chance of pulling through. The amount of DEATHS by knives will never be able to match the numbers that guns manage. Silly argument. Good grief do you copy-paste any old nonsense from the good ol' boys website? http://www.snopes.com/politics/guns/baseballbats.asp http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-8 ---> 10K out of 15K total homicides are by gun. Even those arithmetically challenged should be able to work out pretty quickly that you're making a pants on fire ridiculous claim there. It makes sense that there is relatively more crime in big cities (not just in the US) but if I understand you correctly it's not actually meaning anything. The big cities hold a large amount of the total population so a much larger percentage of *anything* per capita will be happening there. edit: stupid quote tags

Your first sentence could have some truth in it, because crime rate is ambiguous and can be not gun related. The second part is BS and I wonder where on earth you got that from, but you might want to stop believing that source. Even logically it goes nowhere. How can gun laws NOT influence gun violence on some level? If someone doesn't have a gun he isn't going to be able to create "gun violence". If you narrow it down to the US in its present state...yes there are way too many guns in circulation to "solve" the problem with gun laws. Criminals will get their hands on guns regardless, but you can make a gun unappealing or at least more difficult to own for the average Joe who is unlikely to ever need it. That will cut down on accidents and deaths by "gun owner lost his marbles / went berzerk / 17-year old nerd steals parents gun and goes on a rampage" Again, if you need a gun to improve your own safety, something is pretty fucked up with where you live and you might want to address that instead of living in a Hollywood fantasy.

The problem is that every country has a different way of counting crimes, something like murder is a much better yardstick than "violent crime" which is ambiguous. The US is well ahead of the civilized world there by any statistic. The UK actually has quite a lot of shitholes as well although they're referred to as chavs over there lol. You mentioned FBI stats, those were used in what I linked to. Some interesting tidbits, 260 justifiable "homicides" http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-15 "Accidental gun deaths" are a multiple of that number. So it's much more likely for someone to end up accidentally dead than to kill an offender out of self defense. The Obama security pic is funny, but sort of misses the point probably on purpose. The president of the USA (whoever it is) has a target on his back 24/7. 99+% of regular gun owners have no need for such protection because there's nothing that makes them a target. And 99+% of gun owners have not had the insane background checks and training that members of the secret service have, I would imagine. The NRA is right about one thing, the problem isn't the guns its who owns them. In any case, you cannot look around the fact that in most developed countries regular people hardly ever own guns, and at the same time are considerably safer than the US. So "guns keep us safe" does not appear to be working very well.

1st world like what, Venezuela? Looks like the levels are similar to 50 years ago (up in some things) but well down from the highs that were reached 25 years ago. Anyway, gun control in itself isn't going to be a solution but it's part of it. It seems sensible to me that you don't want guns to be purchased freely by people who really can't be trusted with them for mental or practical reasons. Like a driving license is obtained only by demonstrating a minimum capability to handle a car. It's never going to be perfect, obviously. But more importantly, the average life standard as well as education standard need to be raised. As long as there are huge numbers of poor and/or uneducated you're going to have issues that cannot be resolved by making gun laws.

If the US could get anywhere near Canada's statistics for gun safety that would be a good thing no? That's not to say that I expect any political solution to actually succeed in making any meaningful progress.

No I don't expect it to have any noticeable effect, that's why I was wondering :)

Any particular reason to go that big H or just feeling bored? I've always considered 2.5" about ideal considering it'll be plenty for well over 600hp. Otherwise it's just bringing velocity down and delaying boost ever so slightly. Are you shooting for 1000 ? :D

Yes, you made a prediction whilst believing the polls that you liked, and dismissed the ones you did not like. The ones you did not like were obviously right, in the end. The point stands: you decided to believe what you preferred. Indeed I do, but I don't actually have a problem with people being delusional, in most cases they are happier for it. It's only when they want to push their delusions onto others (or compromise their offspring's education) that it starts to bother me. You missed the point slightly. Your laws might be based on religious teachings but I'm interested in the question of whether religion is the source of morality or whether they hijacked it. History teaches us it's mostly the latter. And it's a good thing that they did, too, for the most part. You look back to the point where the US was founded. I look back to a time when Christianity did not yet exist. But that's why your countries' "religious inspired" laws are pretty much the same as the laws in every other mildly civilized country in the world. With or without religion you would have ended up with the SAME rules. You can go ahead and claim that in your case religion played a large role, fine, but it's irrelevant.

My MTE map was programmed to 27 deg advance at 6200 100% load.............................................................................................................car was faster with 17 and extending the rpm points though.

For spark you could also use your logs of actual advance vs what you programmed in TT to give you an idea of what you should be at. Seems safer to me, the advance numbers in ME 4.x tend to look quite high compared to other EMS (although yours are not particularly high, mine were well higher)

Oh I agree, I merely object to religion claiming to be the source of morality. Religion basically took "unwritten rules" that were already in place (they're hard wired in most people) repeated them and added a few that only apply to the religion itself. I guess you'd have to describe religion as a delivery method, a popular one at that but not the only one. In any case, worldly laws change (frequently) even though religious texts are static. So there's an obvious disconnect.

You could get the exact same result without Christianity or any religion for that matter. There is no evidence that supports the conclusion that you need religion as a moral compass. There is certainly no evidence that the religious are more "moral" by current standards either. If it were true, countries filled to the brim with atheists would be running amok raping and pillaging. The opposite is true, you don't want to compare stats there really. Not to mention there are quite a few countries with entirely different (or no) religious roots that ended up with exactly the same kind of law and order you have. It's breathtakingly simple, the basis of morality is: don't do onto others what you don't want being done to yourself. No spirits in the sky required. It makes evolutionary sense, and its origins are supported by the fact that our "morality" is pretty much limited to our own group. It suffices for another person or group to be branded as an enemy for most of our morals to go out the window. We care less and less about the well-being of life forms the further they are away from ourselves. Friends and family first, ethnic group first, country first, species first...etc. It's a descending ladder of caring. You can go over the 10 commandments and those who are not useless (all those overlapping ones about God's apparent insecurity) are entirely common sense. Nobody thought stealing, murdering or raping your brother's mate was all right pre-christianity, I'm happy to report. Totally, but religion is optional here. You can teach kids to be moral perfectly well without involving any threat of punishment in an after-life. In fact kids figure out pretty quickly on their own what they are supposed to do and what not. Nonsense, you have to arbitrarily cut history short if you want to claim that morality comes from religion. Stealing and murdering was bad way before they came up with the 10 commandments story. Heck you can even observe individuals being punished for misbehaving in the group in the animal world, well beyond the apes. (solitary animals are sort the opposite, of course, makes sense) BS. Your reality is based on how you'd like it to be rather than how it actually is, precisely as outlined in that article I linked to. You actually provided good evidence in this threat to support this as well, post #485. When something isn't looking the way you'd like...you assume it's wrong. And vice versa. Your assertion that religion came first is unsupported. The consequences being imprisoned or fried on an electric chair, not the threat of divine punishment after you're dead. In fact you wouldn't need a legal system if the ethics from religion is all it takes. Your jails are full of Christians (and empty of atheists) anyway, how does that work?

It certainly isn't. You have to do a heck of a lot of picking and choosing in "holy books" to get to something approaching a moral yard stick. Not to mention everybody's interpretation tends to differ. Basic morality is something all of us (minus a few psychopaths) have, and the rules of morality are anything but static unlike religion. What could be considered ethical 100 years ago can very well be unethical or immoral today. The holy books haven't changed a letter meanwhile. But religion does like to take credit for it, that much is true. In the meantime it's fascinating to watch some of the more "enthusiastic" practitioners of the Christian religions rail against government policies that aid the poor. There's plenty of quotes to find in their good book that would suggest the Jesus character was rather fond of the idea of the rich giving to the poor, if they wanted to be truly "blessed". Selective reading I suppose.

I follow politics globally, but US politics are by far the most entertaining! lol Also, doesn't make much sense for me to start talking to you good American folks about the Communist party of the People's Republic of China. I have a subscription to the Economist so I get quite a lot of this material dropped into my lap. US politics are also somewhat related to my fascination with (and general disapproval of) organized religion.

I think this article sums it up pretty well, particularly the final paragraph. http://www.economist...ake-white-house

Aaaand we're done. Shipped a few billion to the media and spent at least a year campaigning rather than governing, but hey. Good night. 8:30 AM here now actually but don't have any work till 5PM anyway.

I predict the losing party (whoever) will manage to completely miss the reason why they lost.

You should be tuning in 3rd and 4th, traction would be allright there with decent tires ;)