Here’s my take.

I am a conservative, this does not default to republican in my book, as the republican party has veered very, very far from it’s days of Reagan conservatives. Now, the republican party is happy to grow the government just as much as the democrats, and with just the same amount of bureaucratic inefficiency as their counterparts “across the aisle”.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not for a two-party uber alles system, where the parties spend all their time fighting one another from some ideological bulwarks without ever wanting to work together. But, when you represent a party that has a base that believes in fundamentally small, efficient, and effective governments, who focus solely on what the Constitution requires of them, then they need to represent that view in their daily work. This won’t always be the case, just as sometimes a parent has to overstep their own ideal bounds with their children to steer them away from potentially fatal situations, when they might often let them learn on their own. Sticking your finger in hot water teaches you about hot things and the danger/pain of abuse, sticking your finger in a light socket may prove fatal, thus destroying the entire point of teaching at all.

There will be times (great depression) when the government is forced to act in extreme ways to fend off complete national collapse, but it must relinquish those powers once the emergency is over, lest we see a oligarchical nation come into power before our very eyes.

Looking at heavy-handed communist or socialist countries gives me pause, because most of those nations were founded with the best of intentions. Making the working-class, middle-class people more powerful by putting the government on “their side” looks great on paper, but the more you trust those without accountability outside of themselves, the more personal responsibility you (perhaps inadvertently) hand over to them. You no longer need to worry about working for yourself, you work for the country. You earn what the country earns and live how the country lives. Communities are “installed” as needed by the motherland and all you have to do is what you are told to do.

This system can work, but you don’t need the government to drive it. You can loan money to people without interest, believe it or not. Thanks to our overly-bloated tax and banking laws, it is much harder to do that, but you could do it easily once upon a time. There are lots of things that we now need the government to do for us, that once upon a time, we could do without the help of the government.

There are some things that a government should always be doing. Protecting the nation from threats for foreign and domestic is a good one. Guaranteeing citizens protection from crime and fraud is another one. Also, currency control in order to govern inflation and economic growth to prevent huge swings that are potentially national threats.

Neither of the candidates seem to want to focus on these issues. They both seem content to throw money at problems that call for much deeper reform. The fear I have with Sen. Obama is a complete democratically controlled government. The GOP had that a while back and they hosed it up badly. Checks and balances are our friends, after all.

But, I tend to think that the only thing that will wake up the republican party is to see how many conservatives cannot bring themselves to vote for Sen. McCain. Give me a conservative candidate next time, and he/she will have my vote.

I cannot discount Sen. Obama’s ability to bring a nation together under a notion of change, but we need to change for the better. Believe it or not, this country has “changed” greatly from what the Constitution has laid out for the federal government and I think we need to “change” back into the original vision of the founding fathers.

In debates with folks at work, and following an email list that I run for family members, it seems that many of the Obama supporters would rather the government take over stuff that is working inefficiently. They are fine with giving the government the go-ahead, having them tax the rich more, and then wait for the government to handle it. The problem with that mentality is what do you do when the government lets you down? What happens when a promise about pre-existing conditions turn into a wait in long lines for a “specialist”. What happened in other countries are people paying out-of-pocket to see doctors when they want to.

If malpractice was reformed, health care would see a dramatic shift in pricing and availability. Instead, the candidates want to funnel *more* money into a flawed system. You can’t federalize health care insurance without federalizing health care. The government will soon dictate, like a giant HMO, which doctors can charge what prices under their care. Once that division takes place, it won’t be long until the other doctors are forced into their system to still have patients.

Why not take those monies that you want the government to have and funnel them into non-profits and charities designed to help offset health-care costs specifically for people with a pre-existing condition? There isn’t one? WHY NOT BE PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE AND START ONE!?

I know plenty of people that could afford health care, but choose to buy flat-screen TVs and new cars. They take trips and vacations and have the latest technology, then turn around and say that health care is too expensive. Issues like that are about priorities. People with multiple kids have to adjust their spending as well as people that lose lawsuits. Life isn’t “fair” for everyone, but there are ways to make it work, if people are personally responsible enough to actually make it happen.

In my time in Church, I’ve seen that there are people that have a passion for just about anything you can think of. If you want to adopt, they can get you grants, huge sums of money donated by people who have a heart for the suffering of orphans. If you want to go on a mission trip to help build buildings in 3rd world countries, you can get donations to help you accomplish that.

Many children’s hospitals are funded by benefactors so that families can get the care they need without having to bear the entire burden. To think that there is no hope for adults that have a certain condition(s) is to discount the true nature of Americans. You can bet that there are people who have money to send and would happily fund an organization designed to help certain afflicted people get the care they need.

Many issues are just like this! We moved to California a couple years back and now we’re tired of it. The lifestyle is okay, but it’s not Indiana, and we don’t have any family here. In addition, this state is hemorrhaging money into a broken school system and countless junk programs. There are *plenty* of people out here who complain 24/7 about it. They talk about lobbying this and that and trying to change it in such and such a way. Good for them!! Get in there and make a change, but for us, we are going to move to a place that’s more affordable and closer to family. We will bear the responsilibily of moving ourselves and make it happen. I think Californians in general like the idea of a socialist agenda with a huge state government, so I am compelled to leave if I disagree. So be it. I don’t have a right to live in California with a government of my choosing.

The issue I face is that if America takes a turn toward a big-government behemoth, we will have to leave the country to escape that kind of government intervention. That’s a bit tougher for me to do because there have been many people who have fought and died for this country and I want it to flourish like it has the first 225 years of it’s life. We don’t need a bigger government, we need bigger citizens that will take to hear the infamous question: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country!”

So, who am I voting for? Honestly, I’m not sure. I guess I pray that there will be something that can convict me what is best for America in the long term, and not just for me in the short term. Here’s to hoping!! /clink

As a last thing, here is JFK’s tremendous “Ask Not” speech. If you’ve never read it, you really should. I pretty much agree with every assertion he makes in that speech…

www.famousquote…

-Chris

See www.freedom-to-… for the info, but basically, that number was used to encrypt a copyrighted work (A haiku) and I was given explicit rights to decrypt the work my the encryptor.

You better watch out!! :-D

-Chris

I align with Kevin Rose, founder of Digg, in this plight. The DMCA is getting a bit to big for its own britches and something as trivial as this might be a tipping point.

I welcome debate on why I’m wrong…

blog.digg.com/?…

-Chris

WHITESNAKE ROCKS. See you on the tour!

-Chris

After a nice chuckle, it dawned on me that I haven’t asked my USAF buddy about his role, or more accuratley, the USAF’s role in the current Iraq conflict. I was also curious about how the war was being perceived by the folks that aren’t necessarily doing the house-to-house combat. He gave me permission to blog him, so here’s his reply, sanitized to protect the innocent:

The AF is completely involved in Iraq, although not as much when it comes to full-up urban warfare in a place like Baghdad, where the Marines and Army have to go house to house and bombs are a little inappropriate.

We do have some pretty cool newer, smaller bombs — do a search for the “Small Diameter Bomb.” It uses the most precise GPS-aided package ever made, and unfortunately I can’t give you the exact precision numbers, but it’s pretty darn good. If you wanted to take out just your neighbor’s car across the street, while limiting damage to the house, this bomb can do it. If you want to kill somebody in the northwest corner of a building, and make sure you don’t kill the POW in the southwest corner, this bomb could do it. If there was a tank hiding under a bridge, this bomb could be setup to penetrate the bridge first, and then blow up the tank under it, without doing too much damage to the bridge itself (besides the hole where it penetrated).

There’s other places where we can provide “close air support” to Marines and Army guys with bigger bombs and what not, like in some of the further-out areas where insurgents lurk. These also use GPS to hit whatever target the soldiers don’t want shooting at them anymore. The soldier pretty much just hits the target with a laser rangefinder to get the coordinates, relays them to the pilot (kinda like when they called in an air strike in old Vietnam movies), and then a plane (sometimes the big B-52s or B-1s even) just drops a single bomb right where the soldier wants it. After that, they go in and clean up the mess.

And, of course, there’s all the non-direct, supporting missions that the AF controls — GPS (yeah!), satellite communications, weather over the war zone (aka “theater”), basically all the space stuff outside of reconnaissance. I also have a buddy over there doing something a bit different — he’s in charge of setting up the Iraq Air Forces version of Officer Training School. It’s where all their pilots and other officers will go to “boot camp” prior to getting their commission as officers and moving on to pilot training or whatever else.

I’m sure there’s plenty of other miscellaneous tasks we’re doing over there, but I’m just not in the know.

As far as your second question of “how do we perceive the whole thing,” well, that’s a bit more of a quagmire (giggity). Some people believe very strongly on one side or the other, but most people are pretty moderate; many of the younger guys just know that “a war is going on” and that we’re providing support through accurate GPS. Although I should, I don’t think I have a strong opinion on the matter. I know what we did was great for the Iraqi people, and I hear stories about their thankfulness when guys come back. I know what we’re doing now is necessary for Iraq’s success as a democracy, otherwise they’ll end up potentially worse off than before. I know we can’t make a public “we’re going to pull troops out by xx date” statement, b/c that’s pretty much a ridiculous mistake that only tells the enemy how long they need to wait before they can attack and meet their objectives without opposition. But that’s about all I know or have thought about.

Did that answer your questions? There’s actually good info/stories on the www.af.mil page from overseas about what some guys are doing, and (I don’t know the link) there’s more in-depth stories in “Airman Magazine” somewhere within the af.mil domain.

I told him that we feel about the same way. The Iraq war is a nightmare on many levels, but we have to complete the mission or we will have made an even bigger mess than we already have. Timetabling the way to a specific date will definitely end the insurgency, because why waste anymore munitions? We’re leaving, so just wait. That can only be perceived by the enemy as a victory on their part. They finally beat us into submission, and we’re pulling out disgracefully.

The other thing I did was go research a bit on the stuff that was mentioned. These “Small Diameter Bombs” are very cool. Their accuracy over the distance they can be fired is amazing, and the description of hitting a car while minimizing damage to the house seems to be awfully accurate. The GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb is some serious technology that is very versatile in what it can accomplish. If you don’t believe the claim about blowing up a tank under a bridge without heavy bridge damage, check this out. Here’s the aftermath. Sure enough, minimal damage, even through steel reinforced concrete, 3 feet of which is within operational specs of this particular munition.

Now, as to my title question. How does any of this justify the expense required to build/maintain/deploy it? For me, this is easy…

This is a graph of a concept known as Circular Error Probable (CEP). This graph is very important for many reasons, but let’s start with some basics. A simple definition of CEP is “The distance from a target in which 50% of munitions will hit.” Now, if you’re any kind of statistician, you already balk at the “50%” statistic. Obviously, if 50% hit within a certain distance, then 50% hit outside that distance, so it’s a bogus stat and might be easily written off. But, the graph clarifies this further, because CEP is the first distance “n” given all distances using a normal distribution of ordnance distances from targets. That means there is a “bell curve” that peaks at the target position and trails off very rapidly by 3 times the CEP.

Moreover, the CEP for precision guided ordnance doesn’t follow a normal distribution due to the very precise nature of the weaponry. That means that the CEP will more than likely contain a higher than 50% ratio of hits and nearly 100% of all munitions land within 2xCEP of target.

In the case of the SDB, the CEP is 5-8m. That’s 15-25 feet. Since the bomb is precision guided, that means that almost all ordnance will hit within 50ft of the target, even on the worst possible targeting effort. This also means that a majority of the ordnance will land within 20 feet of the target. If the weapon is fired from a closer range the accuracy increases still, and the more telemetry that can be leveraged, the more accurate still.

Basically, everything my USAF buddy claimed is correct. This bomb gives you the ability to hit very isolated targets and save lives. Now, I don’t know about you, but I can’t put a price on human life, not even an Iraqi citizen halfway around the world that I’ve never met. If spending more money on defense provides one piece of technology that can accomplish the mission with less collateral damage, then spend the money.

If we stopped all this high technology and went back to churning out high-explosive and incendiary bombs and revert to the carpet bombing days of WWII. Heck, we could even try to top the Soviet Tsar Bomba with a >50 Megaton nuclear bomb and just level Baghdad altogether. I’m sure that our defense costs would drop dramatically in the R&D areas and we would have a nice budgetary surplus thanks not only to the decrease in defense spending, but the lack of foreign aid as most all of the middle east would soon perish in the nuclear winter and fallout.

I realize that we need to spend money here for things like roads, schools, and life-enrichment, but I think Mother Teresa was onto something when she said, “It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish.” If my daughter having a better education comes at the cost of lost lives in other parts of the world, then I’m home schooling her. The Bible (as usual) sums it up even better, “Anyone who sets himself up as ‘religious’ by talking a good game is self-deceived. This kind of religion is hot air and only hot air. Real religion, the kind that passes muster before God the Father, is this: Reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, and guard against corruption from the godless world. (Jam 1:27 MSG)”

We have a responsibility to protect all the people in the world from corruption, and a strong defense insures the old adage “Peace Through Strength”. Sun Tzu recognized that adage as an important part of maintaining peace in a world of war, and Ronald Reagan saw it as the same. If the USA can keep the peace by showing unwavering strength, we will be respected. If we can do that while simultaneously demonstrating a desire to preserve and enrich all human life, then we will be admired.

-Chris

If you want something answered, let me know and I’ll list it up there…

Also, check THIS out!! It’s like those fridge magnets from the olden days! It updated your movements in realtime to the server, so you can share in the fun with others…

Comment with the funniest poems you can make.

OH! If you’re wondering about all those fancy icons underneath every post, those are links to the many, many, many link aggregator sites around the internet. Now the whole world can be made aware of my musings! yay!

-Chris

www.automotopor…

-Chris

WOW.

-Chris

—————————————–

For the purposes of this guide, I’ll assume the warlock is Soul-link specced, since it is the most imbalanced build as people say.

Preparation
You can find an SL warlock outside IF or Orgrimmar, this is the place were most SL warlocks hang out.

To initiate combat, you should approach the warlock and talk to him. He will say something about how nerfed warlock were, and how they could not kill anyone in previous patches, and how they became godlike while mages are now water dispensers. After you talk to him, click DUEL to start the fight.

—– PHASE ONE —–

You should position yourself as shown in this image:

The warlock will begin the fight without a pet, because he will feel too overpowered to use a pet against you. MT#1 and MT#2 should position the warlock so that his back will face the tank farther away from the IF door. It is advisable for them to have at least 350 shadow resistance, and one of them should also have 250 fire resist minimum (This is explained later). Greater Shadow Protection pots are also a good commodity, as are Whipper Root Tubers and +50 stamina potions from the quest in Blasted Lands.

The melee DPS group (shown as YELLOW in the pic) should stay behind the warlock, near the tank farther away from the Gate. This is done because they will need to retreat behind the tank and bandage from time to time. (Bandage spot is shown on the pic)

The rest of the raid should be positioned as shown in the picture. It is important for the raid to have about 120-200 shadow resistance, which will help sustain the damage. Keep in mind you will need at least 2 dispellers for each debuff type, otherwise you will wipe pretty quickly.

During Phase 1, the warlock will perform a series of attacks:

Shadow Bolt: A bolt of shadow is launched every 4 seconds to the tank that has aggro, causing 1200 to 2500 shadow damage, depending on resistance. A shadow bolt will crit between 3500 and 6500 damage, again depending on the target resistance. This is were MT#2 should come into play: If a Shadowbolt crits MT#1, he will have a debuff that will increase Shadow damage by a Zillion times. This is when MT#2 should taunt the warlock to prevent MT#1 from dying. MT#1 will then do the same thing once another Shadowbolts crits MT#2.

Curse of Doom: Every 1 minute, the warlock will cast CoD on a random raid member. This member should move outside the raid and unload full DPS, since he will die within the minute.

Shadowburn: The warlock will cast Shadowburn every time he changes target. If one of the raid members gets aggro, he will suffer shadowburn and instantly die. It is important not to OverDPS, or members will die one after another.

Fear: The warlock will cast Fear on a random raid member every few seconds. You should provide everyone with Fear Ward if you have it and dispel fear ASAP, especially on MTs and Healers.

Phase 1 is relatively easy and will last until the warlock has 70% life. This can take between 3 and 5 minutes, depending on your equipment.

—– PHASE TWO —–

When the warlock reaches 70% life, he will instacast a felhunter and Soul Link it. This is when the fight becomes harder.

Note: You cannot kill the warlock while the felhunter is alive. If you try to, the warlock will say, “It’s not my time yet!” and will use a healthstone. This will probably render the fight impossible in phase three.

A few moments before Phase two, the raid should move as shown in the pic.

Note: MT#3 and MT#4, which are tanking the felhunter, should stay at least 10 yards away from the warlock.

Phase two is all about killing the felhunter.

The felhunter CANNOT BE DAMAGED by magic, as it has very high magic resistance. Also, during phase two, you should not magic debuff the pet or the warlock, otherwise the felhunter will remove the debuff and heal himself.

MT#1 & #2 should stay on the warlock with a few healers, while the melee DPS group takes down the Felhunter and the magic DPS group focuses on the warlock. During this phase, the warlock will receive next to no damage, as he is Soul Linked to the pet.

During Phase two, the warlock will have a new attack at his disposal:

Hellfire: Every 20 seconds, the warlock will cast Hellfire and hit anyone within 10 yards for an incredible amount of Fire damage.

Every DPS class standing near the warlock should retreat as shown in the picture and bandage as soon as he casts hellfire. Only the MT with Fire resistance should remain near the warlock. This is done because if the warlock finds no one within melee range during Hellfire, he will summon an Infernal and wipe the raid.

When the Felhunter is dead, PHASE THREE begins.

—– PHASE THREE —–

Phase three will begin as soon as the Felhunter is dead.

Note: The warlock should be at around 40% health now. If he’s any higher than that, you’ll prolly not be able to take him down before you wipe. Also, if you have more than 6-7 dead members by now, you will probably wipe as you can’t do enough DPS.

During phase three, the warlock will use all of his arsenal to kill you.

Curse of Shadow/Elements/Agony: Every 10 seconds, the warlock will cast a random Curse on the entire raid. These debuffs should be removed as soon as possible. If CoE or CoS are not removed after 10 seconds, the warlock will cast Immolate/Shadowbolt on the member, killing him.

Howl of Terror: The Warlock will randomly cast HoT, hitting all the melees around him. You need to be quick and dispel Fear on the MTs otherwise they will lose aggro.

Death coil: The most imbalanced spell in the warlock’s arsenal. This spell will be cast on a random raid member killing him, and will heal the warlock. CT_RaidAssist will warn you when the warlock is about to cast Deathcoil, and all Healers should hide behind the tank. If more than 3-4 healers are killed, the MTs will not be able to sustain damage and die, wiping the raid.

Note: In this pic an arrows point to the out-of-LOS spot for Healers. This is where you should hide when the warlock is about to deathcoil.

—– PHASE FOUR —–

When the warlock is at 5% life, he emotes, saying “The Warlock performs one last service for Blizzard.” He will then cast Curse of Doom on the entire raid. This means you need to kill him within one minute, or you will wipe. You should have at least 15-20 DPS classes still alive here, otherwise you won’t be able to kill him in time.

If you manage to kill him within the minute, congratulations! You have just killed the hardest boss currently in World of Warcraft!

-Chris

It is definitely a simple enough concept, but the physics are superb. He did a nice job of implementing the human body as it would react to said spheres.

Also, if she stops falling or any reason, or if you want to mess with her a bit, you can click on her and “grab” her. You can then drag her around and even pull her through some very tight spots.

As always, it will be on the right, under time wasters…

Good times, still.

-Chris