News that makes us laugh, cry, or both

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 9:45 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:Table salt is much finer than coarser kosher salt. If you put it on your tongue in its raw form it dissolves much faster and tastes much more strongly. Of salt. Salt is a pretty overpowering taste, and in its pure form is more than a little bit gross.

JE, your studies on this subject are ass retarded.

-Username17

Maybe that's why I like the kosher salt?

It's not as strong or harsh tasting?

Naw, couldn't be.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 11:07 pm

Basically what you did was analogous to checking the sweetness of granulated sugar vs. powdered sugar. If you put them both on your tongue, the finer grained version will have more surface area and taste stronger.

The problem is when you then applied the logic of it having a stronger perceived taste in raw form to its utility in cooking, which is flat wrong. The finer grained version spreads more evenly into pastry or soup, making the finer grained version the preferred version for those types of food.

-Username17

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 11:13 pm

I gotta ask, if the Republican party is actively sneering at Obama's attempts to recover the economy and is on record saying that they hope he fails, how exactly do they expect America to respond to this? Like, wouldn't that (in a just world) make them hate the GOP more?

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 1:23 am

ckafrica wrote:
angelfromanotherpin wrote:Oh, what the fuck?
You know just when I thought the moral depravity of the Catholic church (the institution rather than the followers) could get any worse, you read some story like that and realize that someone does need to form an organization actively seeking to bring it down by any means possible.

I mean you almost wonder if this is cover for the nazi bishops being recommunicated.

Where's the compassion?

I'm not particularly fond of the new pope and company. But I think the Church is going to break under its own weight. There have been quite a few things that have made the news that have been really quite callous.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 1:30 am

So. Did the rapist get excommunicated?

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 1:58 am

I'm not sure why it is that when I cook pasta in different salts I notice a difference in the pasta itself. Probably something that the salt company does when they refine their table salt. When I put in a sauce I barely notice anything aside from overall saltiness in the pasta, but the pink himalayan stuff does make pasta taste different; I'm assuming that something in the salt itself is making a difference.

The company that I buy salt from is Windsor Salt (and... looking at their website I realize that I had forgot that we've got a 1 lb bag of the really coarse salt in the bottom shelf of a cupboard), so maybe the fact that they strip all the trace chemicals out of the table salt and then add in iodine is why it tastes different from the kosher salt?

I'd have to do a blind taste test to be sure that there's no placebo effect though.

On the other hand I've got a pretty keen sense of smell when it comes to food, the best mashed potatos I've ever eaten had an ingredient that was really unusual, nutmeg. On the other hand, case studies tend to be BS, and I actually use nutmeg on a regular basis, so I'm pretty familiar with it's effect on food. So this could be dismissed based on my knowing what the ingredients taste like and my just having identified them.

[edit: whoa, tags not closed right made this look all funky]

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 2:58 am

So apparently, Nato (see: the US) feels it's a problem that Russia is building a Sphere of Influence (TM). Which I find hilarious because:

1. It's only with former Sovjet countries, where having a network and being on good terms is a good idea.

and 2. Because that's not what Nato is doing, right? I mean, it doesn't just exist for the US to push other countries around - all over the world - and have them suck its dick every now and then! No, it's not a Sphere of Influence (TM), it's an alliance!

They also criticise it for the trouble with Georgia (let us all forget that Georgia, on the advice of America, started it) and Ukraine (how dare they not let Ukraine steal their oil - they're communists, communists should share things for free!)

Seriously, things would be so much easier if, a few years ago, Russia just drove some tanks over, flattened the military/government sectors of those countries and rebuilt them, throwing lots of money (before the economic crash) at them to make everyone happy. It worked with Chechnya.

Oh, and they're not allowed to just say "Screw you" and recognise breakaway regions as sovereign nations, but Nato can.

And then we have this priceless line:

"Russia had been blaming America for everything from the economic crisis..."

Wow. Holy shit. How dare someone blame the guilty party for that. And as much as I feel that BBC is applying a pro-Nato "Russia are bad, remember the cold war!" bias, mostly they're saying "This is what Nato/America said". Fuck Nato. Fuck them with a rake.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 3:39 am

Judging__Eagle wrote:
I can taste the difference!

Plausibly true. There are people who have a much higher amount of tastebuds than average, which means their sense of taste is so sensitive that they can detect small variations in supposedly the same recipe. And, well, if I can tell the difference between sodium chloride and potassium chloride, I'd expect a supertaster to be able to pick the differences in various salts.

ckafrica · Post by **ckafrica** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 3:50 am

Maj wrote: Where's the compassion?

I'm not particularly fond of the new pope and company. But I think the Church is going to break under its own weight. There have been quite a few things that have made the news that have been really quite callous.

this(god bless PBS and free online material) Frontline report seems to indicate that there has been no compassion for some time even when they have been fully aware of heinous acts being committed.

Remember what priest stands for: Pedophile Resident In Every Small Town

The church institution has existed for only one reason (to sustain itself and its control over peoples lives) for centuries. For every real saint in its midst there have been legions eagerly marching to the gates of hell (should hell actually exist).

P.S. Not meaning to be a dick but might the salt discussion be moved to it's own thread? It's passed any connection to news.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 8:38 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:So. Did the rapist get excommunicated?

No. Excommunications for the mother and the doctor. No excommunication for the girl because of her age. But if she had merely had a necessary life-saving abortion after being raped while an adult she would of course been excommunicated. To an extent I can even understand not throwing down punishment at the man since he currently has not actually been convicted of anything - he just fled the state as soon as the story came out and got picked up 500 kilometers away. So yeah, he looks guilty as hell, but you can't issue punishments based on hearsay no matter how slamdunk that hearsay sounds. However, the church does not even have an excommunication waiting for him upon conviction or anything like that. Apparently, saving the life of a nine year old girl is a much much worse crime than repeatedly raping her until she has life threatening medical conditions from it.

There is a persistent idea that perhaps the Catholic Church has become irrelevant in today's moral dialogue. That the moral zeitgeist of the time has simply left the Papacy so far in the dust that they don't even warrant discussion. This is I believe wrong headed. The Catholic Church is very much an important piece in modern moral discussion. They are the bad guys. We actually have to discuss them because we have to confront them. This shit is really awful and it's not going to just go away if we pretend it isn't happening.

Organic Salt:

-Username17

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 9:04 am

Koumei wrote:So apparently, Nato (see: the US) feels it's a problem that Russia is building a Sphere of Influence (TM).

Mostly that seems to be a minority opinion being exprssed by some bitter cold warriors in NATO. The people who actually call the shots:

Sent Hillary Clinton with an actual reset button to the Russian Foreign Ministry and announced a new
NATO unfroze diplomatic relations with Russia and announced super friends team ups on international security issues.

So yeah, while you still have NATO war pigs ranting about how we have to fight and contain Russia, the current US administration seems to be having none of it. Hell, Obama is even cutting a deal on that stupid Missile Base in Czech Republic. US/Russian relations haven't been warmer since Clinton was president.

-Username17

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 9:49 am

Frank, the comments sections on those links you showed me were so bad that I now have nutsack cancer.

You'd better take responsibility for this.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 12:06 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Frank, the comments sections on those links you showed me were so bad that I now have nutsack cancer.

You'd better take responsibility for this.

Yeah, apparently some people take exception to this quote from Hilary Clinton:

Hilary wrote:It is hard enough with two parties to come to any resolution, and I say this very respectfully, because I feel the same way about our own democracy, which has been around a lot longer than European democracy.

This apparently offended a bunch of Europeans, who like to claim democratic traditions going back thousands of years to Ancient Fucking Greece. Because apparently the intervening thousands of years never happened.

United States Constitution: 1787.
European Parliament: 1952.

Seriously man, what the hell. Why does Reuters of all people not get this right? The European Common Assembly is younger than the United States by almost two centuries.

In other news: The United Kingdom is coming to harsh words and threats with Chile and Argentina over the Falklands. I'm not even kidding.

-Username17

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 5:23 pm

Frank wrote:In other news: The United Kingdom is coming to harsh words and threats with Chile and Argentina over the Falklands. I'm not even kidding.

Don't underestimate their importance - they're for strategic sheep purposes.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 2:41 am

Don't you mean the overload button? But if it's just bitter old veterans complaining about Russia, that's good.

As for the other news, is this another case of England thinking they might send a small fleet out to deal with some tiny issue no-one cares about, just because they can? Like when they sent the SAS (or Seals?) out to take that small rock in the ocean?

Incidentally, if I read it right, those missile bases are just designed to locate and intercept missiles, shooting them down. Not, for instance, to launch powerful warheads of their own. What threat would such a thing pose to Russia? Although it seemed like they were building it where they were just to piss Commissar Putin off, I can't see it actually harming them.

Unless there's nothing stopping them from saying "Surprise!" and loading actual nuclear warheads into it.

Count Arioch the 28th · Mon Mar 09, 2009 3:14 am

I assumed that it was because nuclear missiles was the only thing keeping America from going completely nuts, and us becoming immune to them all of a sudden would be bad in the eyes of the rest of the world.

Heath Robinson · Post by **Heath Robinson** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 4:50 am

Koumei wrote:Unless there's nothing stopping them from saying "Surprise!" and loading actual nuclear warheads into it.

Given that the only thing that really matters when building missile platforms are the size and mass of the missile they're designed to launch, there's really nothing to stop them mounting appropriate sized nuclear warheads on the missiles they'd be using.

There's also the fact that the bases would necessitate additional US infrastructure and influence in the area, giving the US excuse to put even more eyes and ears near Russia, amongst other things.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 6:05 am

Yes, the launch platforms could launch titan-style missiles. Which they are.

...Which aren't actually very useful in getting to a target quickly, which are the nuclear weapons we already have staged in Germany and around the globe in subs, like the UK and France and to note, not Russia. And the missile interceptors wouldn't stop that style of missile, either.

It can potentially only stop old-style sub and orbital single-warhead re-entry vehicles, like the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is building.

And it doesn't do that well, either.

-Crissa

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 7:31 am

Two things:

The goal was to put a "missile tracking system" in the Czech Republic, that would coincidentally track everything in the air (not just missiles), and coincidentally have a coverage area that extended over much the Western Russian Federation.
The system was and is seen as a threat to MAD - that is if it actually worked it would make one side in the cold war able to survive a nuclear exchange while the other side did not. Which in the cold war thinking that created it would suggest that there be a window in the arms race when it was time to strike before the other side figured out a way to bypass the missile shield or built one of their own.

It is that second point that made the US and Russia agree to a treaty to limit missile defense systems. A treaty that Bush unilaterally pulled out of in order to start the plans for an Eastern European missile shield. And then he acted all offended when Putin started sending nuclear bombers to go buzz London and New York - actions that had been forbidden by the treaty that Bush pulled out of unilaterally.

-Username17

Draco_Argentum · Post by **Draco_Argentum** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 7:56 am

I'm not sure what, if anything, Bush was thinking on that one. Its not like the ballistic missile defense can actually stop the missiles launched by anyone who counts. It might stop shitty countries from using missiles but container ships work nearly as well and are unstoppable.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 7:59 am

The missile defense things didn't make sense because they can't currently be used against half the nuclear weapons available, anyhow.

And the most useful nuclear carrier is the Airbus or Boeing double-decker airliner which flies across the world and lands in every major city in the industrialized world carrying passengers and cargo.

-Crissa

angelfromanotherpin · Mon Mar 09, 2009 12:18 pm

Draco_Argentum wrote:I'm not sure what, if anything, Bush was thinking on that one.

He was thinking that the President is empowered to nullify chunks of the Constitution at whim. It's not at all out of line with the rest of his actions while in office.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 8:29 pm

Vaccine hysteria? Seriously?

I heard that Robert Kennedy was thinking about being the HHS guy until it came out that he was part of the anti-vaccine advocates. So now I gotta ask:

What on earth is this all about?

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 9:00 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:There is a persistent idea that perhaps the Catholic Church has become irrelevant in today's moral dialogue. That the moral zeitgeist of the time has simply left the Papacy so far in the dust that they don't even warrant discussion. This is I believe wrong headed. The Catholic Church is very much an important piece in modern moral discussion. They are the bad guys. We actually have to discuss them because we have to confront them. This shit is really awful and it's not going to just go away if we pretend it isn't happening.
-Username17

But Frank, the problem is that stunts like this are just so cartoonishly evil that most people won't be able to take it seriously.

Imagine if you were watching, say, Empire Strikes back and Captain Needa ordered a box of kittens to be brought up to the meeting room so he could strangle them in impotent rage before getting his punishment from Vader. You wouldn't be able to take his villany seriously.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 9:48 pm

They just supported a Bishop excommunicating a nine year old girl, her mother, and doctors because they performed an abortion resulting from a pregnancy because she was repeatedly raped by her father.

The father, of course, is okay by the church, because that's not as bad as abortion.

-Crissa