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27th June 2014, 09:55 AM | #41 |
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27th June 2014, 10:02 AM | #42 |
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I hate it when headlines don't describe their own articles.
The headline states: "AMERICA'S FAVORITE NATIONAL PASTIME: HATING SOCCER" But, she's writing about how popular soccer is, instead. And, why this annoys her, personally. I suspect this Ann Coulter person isn't a very reliable journalist, in general. |
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27th June 2014, 10:18 AM | #43 |
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27th June 2014, 10:45 AM | #44 |
Insert something funny here
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American football, on the other hand, with its scantily clad young girls titillating the audience and encouraging the players to perform, is High Culture.
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27th June 2014, 10:53 AM | #45 |
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27th June 2014, 11:19 AM | #46 |
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27th June 2014, 11:25 AM | #47 |
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It's all a question of what you're used to. If you're used to fractions, they're easier; if you're used to decimals, they are.
The history of the metric system is kind of interesting. There are aspects--such as metric callenders and time--that were abandoned, because essentially no one followed them anyway. And recently I heard that the meter isn't based on the distance from the equator to the North Pole; the meter (mening the platinum bar) is slightly off. Meaning the metric system is just as arbitrary as the Imperial system.
Originally Posted by Ryokan
If you ask me, AC was taking the easy way out. If you want to discuss moral decay, how about examining why we focus so much on sports in general? How many person-hours are being lots to productive enterprises to watch grown adults play games? Not that there's no reason for games, or that I agree with such a view (games have a purpose, and if someone can make a living playing a game more power to 'em, I say), but if you're going to criticize A sport, why not go whole-hog and criticize ALL sports? I mean, how many riots are caused by sports fans? How much property destruction? How much lost productivity? March Madness costs the USA's economy a few billion anually. Add to that the drunk fans, the drug use on the part of the players, the spousal, child, and animal abuse on the part of players, and the rest, and one can easily make an argument that our obsession with sports is evidence of moral decay. AC's problem isn't that she's a troll. It's that she thinks too small. |
27th June 2014, 11:30 AM | #48 |
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27th June 2014, 12:20 PM | #49 |
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I've found that I like watching soccer and get more into the game than football, baseball or basketball. Why? Because those other sports revolve around commercials, which totally kill any enjoyment I have in the game and serve to make watching the game boring as hell and overly long. Especially football with all its time-outs and downs, commercials make it damn near unwatchable. A soccer game without all the timeouts and commercials actually goes by pretty quickly where football, baseball and basketball games can take all night.
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27th June 2014, 12:28 PM | #50 |
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I can accept such people as long as they're entertaining. And it'd be fun to watch the fury if someone actually had the intestinal fortitude to question what is, in terms of time, money, and energy spent on it, one of the few activities more important to most Americans than religion.
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27th June 2014, 12:56 PM | #51 |
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The metre (note correct spelling, you yankee heathen) bar hasn't been the standard for how the metre is defined for over 50 years. In any case there were quite a few of them over the 170 odd years of their use, and manufacturing not being completely perfect it's doubtful they were all of exactly the same length anyway.
This is the current definition of a metre: The metre is the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second. http://www.bipm.org/en/CGPM/db/17/1/ |
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i loves the little birdies they goes tweet tweet tweet hee hee i loves them they sings to each other tweet twet tweet hee hee i loves them they is so cute i love yje little birdies little birdies in the room when birfies sings ther is no gloom i lobes the little birdies they goess tweet tweet tweet hee hee hee i loves them they sings me to sleep sing me to slrrp now little birdies - The wisdom of Shemp. |
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27th June 2014, 01:02 PM | #52 |
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True story: I used to love college basketball, and always especially enjoyed the NCAA finals. Some years ago, I was watching a championship game, and it was one of those close finishes where teams were calling a lot of timeouts in the final minutes. Every single timeout they went to a commercial. There was never an instance where they just stayed in the arena so that you could see the teams in their huddles, and sort of experience the tension and excitement of the final moments of a close game. It totally killed the experience for me, and I haven't watched an NCAA final four game since. Also, I lost a lot of my interest in college basketball when it became standard procedure for the best players to leave after 1 or 2 years. I loved the game back in the days when players like Ralph Sampson and Patrick Ewing spent 4 years becoming a big part of the identity of their teams. |
27th June 2014, 01:04 PM | #53 |
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27th June 2014, 01:07 PM | #54 |
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That's nothing compared to how long cricket games can last.
Fox News pundit thinks World Cup is Obama plot to "distract people"
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27th June 2014, 01:13 PM | #55 |
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27th June 2014, 01:20 PM | #56 |
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27th June 2014, 01:23 PM | #57 |
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That's my point--if one defines the meter that way, it's an arbitrary measurement. Which more or less disproves one of the more common arguments in favor of the metric system I've heard. Man still, in a way, is the measure of all things in metric, just a bit less directly.
Originally Posted by Damien Evans
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27th June 2014, 01:29 PM | #58 |
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27th June 2014, 01:48 PM | #59 |
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As human right is always something given, it always in reality reduces to the right which men give, "concede," to each other. If the right to existence is conceded to new-born children, then they have the right; if it is not conceded to them, as was the case among the Spartans and ancient Romans, then they do not have it. For only society can give or concede it to them; they themselves cannot take it, or give it to themselves. |
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27th June 2014, 02:11 PM | #60 |
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27th June 2014, 02:21 PM | #61 |
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27th June 2014, 03:41 PM | #62 |
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That's easily fixed, just don't watch sports in real time. Either record it or pause at the beginning and go do something else for an hour so you can fast forward through the commercials. I can't remember the last time I watched a commercial during a sports event. I do record World Cup soccer games as well, but just so I can watch them at a more convenient time.
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27th June 2014, 07:15 PM | #63 |
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A sign of America's moral decay
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27th June 2014, 07:51 PM | #64 |
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My thoughts as well. Commercials should not be a reason to give up watching a sport you love. Modern technology offers an easy work around. As for soccer, it's fine (although still not all that popular in the United States). In fact, I never used to think poorly of it until about the 10,000th time some non-American here in Japan used the slightest reference to sports to try to lecture me that we Americans should use the term "football" instead of "soccer". The irony, of course, being that in Japan it is also known as "soccer." But really, why should anyone care? It's sort of reverse ignorance to think that we Americans don't know the rest of the world calls it "football." We know. We just don't care. Enjoy the game for what it is. I also recently learned that the term "soccer" apparently dates back to the origin of the game. Funny. http://www.todayifoundout.com/index....e-word-soccer/ I also find it amusing that Ann Coulter can get so many people riled up so easily. |
27th June 2014, 07:52 PM | #65 |
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27th June 2014, 07:54 PM | #66 |
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27th June 2014, 08:07 PM | #67 |
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America's interest in soccer is a sign that it's world cup time.
In a month, no one will care. Except for people who are trying to bang Mexican chicks. They will still pretend to be interested in soccer. |
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27th June 2014, 08:32 PM | #68 |
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Saw this on Right Wing Watch this morning.... That Coulter, she is one funny woman...
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27th June 2014, 08:38 PM | #69 |
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What about the "Planck length"?
Quote:
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27th June 2014, 09:14 PM | #70 |
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27th June 2014, 09:50 PM | #71 |
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The vast majority of Americans that I have met could not find half of 5' 9 5/16" without a calculator. And I know quite a few who could not do it with a calculator.
In metric, that distance is 1.760 meters. Not only can I easily find one half of that distance , I can also easily find 1/3, 1/4, 1/5, and 1/6. I won't claim that metric is anywhere near a perfect system of measurements, but for distance, metric units beat imperial units by a mile. Maybe even more - perhaps even one mile, two chains, three rods, one yard, two feet, and 7 15/32 inches. |
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27th June 2014, 10:03 PM | #72 |
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27th June 2014, 10:14 PM | #73 |
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27th June 2014, 10:49 PM | #74 |
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This is why women shouldn't talk about soccer.
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See, it isn’t Hitler you’ve gotta hate; that’s not who you’ve gotta watch out for. The Hitlers of the world are very rare. We have to watch out for the people who did it for him, without any questions asked. Normal people who didn’t want to lose their jobs. Those are the people you have to watch out for, and the world’s always been full of them. - Lemmy |
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28th June 2014, 03:09 AM | #75 |
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You utterly misunderstand the metric system or USI.
It has never been about having a *specific* definition of the meter (ETA : although it is about using a standardized length I meant by that we are not stuck at one definition we need one which is constantly reproducible thus the new one with light, not one definition which is utterly arbitrary - in fact using a division of length from the equator is already FAR less arbitrary than 16 random yoquel at a church if only for reproducibility). It has been to have standard defintion of value which not only are decimalized (not the 1 big unit= 12* time a smaller unit=*7 time something else), but also there are easy to define relationship between different measurement. To give you an example : a cube of 10 cm* 10 cm * 10 cm of water contain 1 Kg of water which is 1 liter. All of those are arbitrary (you could have the cm shorter or longer depending on what you used - you could use a different weight reference) but the relationship imposed beween unit is not and allows for a lot of simplifications. All of that form a coherent system. As for fraction being easier, it is disputable that losing all that coherence just for the sake of having fraction is really a gain. Especially since while using the metric system you very quickly learn the value of all those fractions good enough for everyday furniture building and plumbing. |
28th June 2014, 04:35 AM | #76 |
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28th June 2014, 04:45 AM | #77 |
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28th June 2014, 05:44 AM | #78 |
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28th June 2014, 08:09 AM | #80 |
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i loves the little birdies they goes tweet tweet tweet hee hee i loves them they sings to each other tweet twet tweet hee hee i loves them they is so cute i love yje little birdies little birdies in the room when birfies sings ther is no gloom i lobes the little birdies they goess tweet tweet tweet hee hee hee i loves them they sings me to sleep sing me to slrrp now little birdies - The wisdom of Shemp. |
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