greg1647545532

No, that's fine. Just don't hold me too tightly, I might panic and shoot. Sometimes it just goes off, you know?

There's something like 75 seconds of screaming on the 911 call, and by Zimmerman's account the fight lasted for at least 2 minutes, during most of which he was pinned on the ground screaming. Now, if Martin was a "trained fighter" and he had Zimmerman pinned on the ground "raining down MMA style blows" for a full 2 minutes, don't you think he'd be in worse shape than he was? Have you ever watched MMA? Listen to the 911 call, do you hear 30 seconds of silence during which Zimmerman was maybe being smothered? (Not choked, even Zimmerman said that Martin's hands were over his mouth and nose, not around his neck. Choking cuts off the blood supply to the brain, which is much more immediate than cutting off the air supply through the mouth and nose.) Do you hear even 6 seconds of silence? He was screaming constantly, he had no problem getting air into his lungs. He said Martin was covering his mouth and telling him to "shut the fuck," which makes sense because he was hollering like a girl. I'm pretty sure every little brother on the planet has been in similar fights. It was a scrap. Furthermore, immediately after firing the shot, he was able to wriggle out from under Martin and "hold his arms out to the side," which he demonstrated on the recreation video. He had the presence of mind to subdue his attacker. He communicated clearly with the first neighbor who showed up. The cops showed up about a minute after the shot and he was able to calmly comply with their commands. In other words, he somehow went from "my head was about to explode and I thought I was going to pass out from the smothering" to pretty much just fine in about the click of a trigger. Listen to the interview he did with Det. Serino a few days afterwords, the detective points all of this out to Zimmerman, who has no explanation for the discrepancy between his own memory and the evidence on the 911 calls and police statements. I've no doubt that Zimmerman was scared, and I've no doubt that he believes his own bullshit about being on the brink of death, but that's my point -- he wasn't, he overreacted.

Ah, the internet.

It's been a while since I've put my 2 cents into this and I know nobody cares about another assholes opinion, but this is the internet so I'm going for it. George Zimmerman overreacted in two major ways that night. Listening to his 911 call, you can get a pretty clear picture of his perception of the threat -- some guy, messed up or on drugs or something, walking all suspiciously, reaching for his waistband (gun? weapon?), there's been a bunch of burglaries in the area, and the assholes always get away. His picture of events is that there was a guy, very likely a criminal, very likely on drugs, very possibly armed. Reality was that there was a kid, possibly high on weed, walking home from the store to the place he was staying. If you can't admit this is an overreaction, quit reading because we have nothing to talk about. Overreaction 2 is evident when he describes his beating to the cops. It felt like his head was going to explode, he thought he was going to pass out, Martin was reaching for his gun and said "you're gonna die tonight motherfucker." It all sounds very dire, but the reality is that he was screaming like a pansy for like 90 seconds and Martin did some pretty minor damage in that time. At no point was he in danger of being suffocated (because it takes minutes to suffocate someone, and there was constant screaming), and while I certainly wouldn't want the head gashes he had, everyone who commented on them in the trial dismissed them as inconsequential injuries. Bottom line, he was getting a pretty pathetic beating, and yet somehow was still unable to scramble away. If you don't agree that he overreacted to his beating, move along, because we have nothing to talk about. Now, before anyone hits reply, I understand that we have a legal system that intentionally picks these sorts of situations apart to see if a crime was committed. Zimmerman had every right to assume the worst about Martin and call the cops. He had every right to get out of his car and follow him. Even if Zimmerman started the fight, which there's not much evidence for, in Florida that doesn't preclude claiming self-defense. Also in Florida, per some case law I saw cited on another forum, the injuries he received are sufficient for a claim of self-defense. In other words, he had every legal right to overreact. If you dissect the night in question like that, there's no legal case, and it's pretty clear that the prosecution was politically motivated. We should all humbly respect our legal system as the best of a bunch of imperfect systems. However, while we should all be glad that the system works as well as it does, I don't think we should be rejoicing that justice was somehow served. By that I mean that Zimmerman overreacted, and when people overreact when they're armed, people can die. That's a bad thing, and if you don't agree with that then I'm surprised you made it this far because we have nothing to talk about. There's no crime that we can charge people like this with, people who happen to overreact while armed with a gun, nor do I think there should be such a law. This is just one of those situations where society can't get justice, because getting justice means breaking the system that we've put so much faith in. But I do think that we can use this as a learning opportunity. I hope that the takeaway from this case isn't that we can make mistakes and shoot our way out of a bad situation, even though legally that's entirely true. Rather, the takeaway should be ways to avoid making those mistakes in the first place. That should be the focus. Certainly raising money to donate a gun to this guy shouldn't be.

Crossing fingers. Thanks.

I've been talking with him about dropping my car off this week but I didn't plan ahead very well, want to make sure I can at least get a hold of him before the weekend. Thanks.

Well, the requirement for the F-22 was conceived in 1981, and the requirement was awarded in 1991. Since then, advances in missile tracking and drone technology may have made air to air combat between manned aircraft obsolete. I say may, because we'll likely never get into a full scale war where we find out, at least in my lifetime. We've yet to actually use the F-22 in combat, after all. Whereas the F-16 has a combat role as a fighter/bomber and was used (especially initially) in Iraq and Afghanistan, that role is being replaced by drones while the F-22 remains a show pony. A show pony that occasionally suffocates its pilots. I'm not one to say that we shouldn't build new aircraft because "the old ones are just fine" or because "there's no competition out there." After all, nobody wants to be flying around in beaters when shit does hit the fan. However, the F-22 is very much a product of the cold war. It's almost an anachronism. It's like continuing to train knights at the same time you're training musketeers. You know your knights are worthless against musketeers, but the other guy might be training knights, and something something.

I haven't heard about this, but the problem isn't that people don't want to be pilots, it's that people don't want to be in the military. They just want to fly planes and shit, and at about the 11 year mark, the Air Force says, "OK, thanks for blowing all those people up for us, but now it's time to go train new pilots. And manage other pilots. And make policy decisions. Do you like paperwork? I hope you like paperwork." An experienced pilot can go make bank at Delta and not have to put up with all of the bullshit that comes along with being in the military, but the military can't hire Lt Colonels from Delta. It's an interesting problem. No pilot wants to be managed by a non-pilot, but very few pilots ever want to move up into management. In short, this is less an issue of empty cockpits and "Oh noes who will blow up the enemy now!" but rather a retention issue and the loss of experience and potential leaders.

http://steronz.com/gallery/albums/cars/itr%20expo%208/IMG_0742.jpg Me and the Oak Tree at my first track day ever.

It's a real shame. If they cut it up and sell off chunks, I'm buying one.

That area in the top right with the sunlight? That's all washed out because the sensor was overwhelmed with light. You need a short exposure to capture the detail in that area. Your bumper is grainy because there wasn't enough light. You need a long exposure to let enough light in to capture the detail there. The problem is that a short exposure for the top right would make the rest of the picture extremely dark, and the long exposure for the bumper would make the rest of the picture all washed out. So you need to get a tripod and take 2 pictures, one with a short exposure and one with a long exposure. Preferably a third that's somewhere in between. Use the timer or a remote trigger so that your hand doesn't wiggle the camera between shots. Then combine the data in some program. Your single picture is your camera's best attempt to compromise for the available light level, and this HDR image is the software's attempt to fill in data that isn't there.

How many exposures did you take?

Huh? According to this, the max weight for someone who's 5'10" is 192 lbs. Your own max weight would be 186 lbs. Farkas, if a Marine is overweight according to that chart, which is based on height, they must have a body fat of less than a certain percentage, based on age. The method they use is the neck/waist ratio, which has been proven scientifically to be horribly inaccurate. It works well for tubby people, it doesn't work well for muscular people. So yes, the military does kick out people who pass the objective physical requirements (run time, push ups, sit ups, pull ups), but who are overweight due to heavy musculature and fail the body fat test due to it being a shitty test. It should probably be changed. The skin fold test also isn't very accurate, because men tend to carry fat below the muscle. And water displacement tests require a tank, so it fails on account of it's not simple. There's really no good solution from a policy perspective. I've always advocated the "fatty fatty boballaty" test, in which someone who is technically overweight goes before an anonymous panel who vote on whether or not the person is a fatty. Because trying to reduce this to a science hasn't worked, and everyone knows, just from looking, who the real fatties are.

Yes, it takes all that into account. I don't know how optimistic or pessimistic the numbers are. The CBO generally explains their methodology and provides ample caveats. Read here and here. They have no actual control over the budget or what congress will do in the future, so there's only so much their predictive powers can do. Remember that this bill has 85% support in the senate. That said, If someone is working for a cartel and we don't know about it, then I guess we're fucked, but there's only so much we can do. And it's not like they're not already living here anyway.... Above quote from here.

I think you're making a false equivalency here between all sources of "media." They're not all the same, and the amount of bullshit coming out of Breitbart or Beck or HuffPo or DailyKos isn't nearly the same as the amount of bullshit coming from CNN or NPR or (shudder) very limited parts of Fox. There are real journalists and there are assholes, and it's not wise to lump them all together as "the media" and dismiss them all out of hand.

And here: I don't know about you, but I'm all about reducing deficits. I don't know why some jackhole at Breitbart would be trying to stir up opposition to this.

It's worse than you thought! Child care! Which means they're probably going to hire au pairs from Austria. And what's a "youth?" They're probably going to be giving these cushy summer employment opportunities to anyone younger than Obama! And what are these employment opportunities? Probably blow job testers. Seriously, only at Breitbart will you see someone take the undefined use of the word "transportation" and spin it into "Obama is going to be buying free cars for immigrants." Please, please stop getting news from assholes.

Ugh, I did not know that. F that then.

If you want a 'vert and a turbo, Mazdaspeed Miata is a better value. If you don't want a 'vert but still want a turbo, 335i has more potential and is therefore a better bang for the buck down the road. If you want something you don't see every day that will get the attention of true car guys, Z3 M Coupe. Terrible value, but great car. My dad wants a Crossfire, so I've been looking at those periodically. Probably the best deal you can get on an MB. SRT-6?

Huh, apparently F1 ran a street course in Phoenix in 89-91. It was much hated by all. COTA was so touch-and-go, I wonder if F1 would want to deal with a new track again.

Separate but equal?

You don't get any joy out of your fuck house? Maybe you haven't stocked it with the right prostitutes.

I really mean it when I say I have nothing against drifting. I just don't think it's racing. Like whoever else said, it's definitely a motorsport, and it makes a far better spectator sport than a lot of actual racing for many reasons. I just can't resist a good nergument

Fixed. And now you're describing a fictional sport that is definitely not a race.

I've used the Integra to compete in timed events. You could almost call them races. In fact, you can say it's a car used for racing. (OK, it's not a dedicated racecar, but all of the above is true.)