Sip

Shahan, you have GOT to stop watching TV. I'd suggest you take a round trip drive from SF Bay to New York City. Allocate maybe 4 weeks ... spend a couple of days in different cities ranging from small to medium. Try to avoid Vegas and other "tourist" resorts. You are already quite familiar with the west coast culture so don't waste any time on that side on this trip. A nice 16 hour (straight) drive through the corn belt should at least convince you that this country produces an amazing amount of stuff -- and I mean AMAZING -- and the true sense will only come by seeing things in person to really appreciate what the "production numbers" really mean. There are actually places with corn farms for as long as your eyes can see in any direction just flat for hundreds and hundreds of miles in ANY direction. But you don't even have to get to the corn belt to appreciate this as you can also simply take a drive around CA outside of the major metropolitan regions (but what's the fun in that? ) ... try maybe Grand Junction in CO and Dubuque in Iowa ... spend some time in Chicago (go have some Argo Tea -- the Armenian guys who own it are super guys) ... heck come spend a few days in Madison (if you haven't been, this place WILL amaze you, especially if you spend any time interacting with the people and try to get a sense of the culture) ... make your way through the Midwest towards the east coast. Get to New York but don't spend too much time in the city itself (that should be a separate trip by itself) .. explore the east coast ... spend some time at some local motels (avoid staying in big chains so you get exposed to some real people). On the way back, stick to a more southern route ... you don't have to go straight into the bible belt but that wouldn't hurt either. Take a break in Cincinnati and check out the river. Make your way down to Nashville by maybe going through North Carolina and spending some time there. Spend a day or so in Nashville. Talk to people. Go to local bars and restaurants (not to any restaurant name you recognize from home). Heck go check out New Orleans (not if there is a threat of Huricane). Try Bourbon street (I said avoid the touristic resorts but this is an exception ) ... and make your way from Louisiana into Texas. As much as I think the people in Louisiana (the true locals) will amaze you, Texas is where I think you will be most shocked with the kind of people you will meet. Not at all what you would expect I imagine. Then try Santa Fe and make your way back through Arizona. While you are driving, just make an effort to go through Sedona but that's not a must. By the way, as much as I love the people and their humanity in the Midwest, some of the most "culture" and real humanity in the US you will probably find in those southern states that often get a bad rap as being "red neck". Of course I'm not saying go LIVE in back-water Alabama as obviously someone who enjoys the "finer" things in the SF Bay Area would have some trouble adjusting. But at least go spend SOME time in some of these places before making any claims about them -- especially if your only exposure to those places has been US "Media". After all this, I REALLY doubt you will claim the media you are exposed to is at all representative of what US Society is all about. ----- PS to the mouse ... GOOD post!

You keep bouncing back and forth between LA and the Bay Area. You do realize that neither is really "representative" of the US as a whole, right? The feminized bay area culture and the Hollywood "fascade" are parts of the US but represent the extremes rather than the means.

Andy has some good songs but much like Tata, most of his songs start sounding the same to me after a while. I just like him because he is a SUPER nice guy and I am very happy to see him do so well.

Oorenk ... you just have to do what you have to do ... people often "irents esh e ke kshen" no matter what you say

Oorenk, welcome to the forum ... I really liked the "anti-copyright"

Hey I want to jump on the bandwagon and add one more "Shahan is" post!!!! As Shahan has said over and over, the US is made of "the ruling class" (very small percentage) and the "brainwashed victims". Since he is not part of the ruling class, we can only conclude he considers himself one of the victims. Although he claims he has "woken up", that doesn't change what he is (has to be based on his own dichotomy that he keeps repeating over and over and over and over).

Absolutely! If it wasn't for the generocity, kindness, and humanity of the average Joe in the US, faaaar more people would have suffered and perhaps died in that disaster as the government proved to be completely inept in this case. How many did the city of Houston take in? Heck I seem to recal several hundred of those poor bastards ended up here in Wisconsin and were taken in with wide open arms. Trucks and truck loads of goods left Madison with food and supplies (donated by private citizens out of the goodness of their hearts) to help Katrina victims. I dontated too ... did you? So how is remembering Katrina any sort of support for what you are claiming? Sadam. The rest of your post deals with the 1% "decision makers", CIA, power elite, government funding of Israel, and your typical b!tching about those who have to work to earn money (oh my what a dreadful concept). None of this has much to do with the "humanity" of its society. Once again I will remind you that you yourself are making this distinction between 1% vs 99%. The "society" is the 99%. If you are going to discuss this, stick to that part Stop RIGHT there. You can't have it both ways. Either it's "led by the people" or not. So far in every post you are claiming it is NOT led by the people. Now all of a sudden you want to turn the table around and try to make a case that the society is leading the way and through the actions of its government, it is inhumane? Sounds like a very convenient 180 on your part rather than trying to back up your rediculous claim on your own terms (which is not really possible).

I understand the first and second part. But how the hell do you know that last part?

Well no lady has ever asked for a microscope to see anything on my body and I don't plan to take things towards that direction

Shahan, how do you justify the FACT that anytime there is any disaster in the world, the US is usually the first to send aid and usually the one that sends by faaaaaaar the most? You went back to talking about the power elite and their lack of humanity. I don't see how that has anything to do with your claim of how the US "society lacks" humanity. Yes yes yes we know CNN brain washed everyone blah blah ruling elite bad. But that does NOT change the fact, yes THE FACT, that the people in the US are some of the most HUMANE and giving people in the world. Just by the fact that you are saying they had to be brainwashed into thinking the war in Iraq was somehow humanely justified (to fight terrorists) is testament to this!!! The people in the US don't support a war for territorial expansion, conquering, or oppression ... they initially (and currently) support the war because they thought (think) it is for the better good. Now in reality the reasons given to them may not be accurate for the war but this doesn't change the FACT that the society was in support of the war for HUMANE reasons. Your claim that the US society is inhumane is completely baseless according to anything you have said so far.

The war in Iraq is a political war. You are going to justify lack of humanity in "society" by a political war (a VERY unpopular one at that)?

Yah those Odysseys are dry cell and completely sealed. You can mount them in any way and even subject to a lot of vibration and very extreme weather (this one has metal jacket around it). The yellow optima is gel cell so that one can also be mounted any direction. I don't like the optimas as much as the odysseys but the odyssey is more expensive and for some reason I had got the yellow top for the jeep before (it's great for winching). The PC1200 one you see in there is a bit weak. It was having trouble starting my blazer in sub zero winter mornings. So I swapped it for a PC1500 and kept this one to use as backup in the jeep. Man that PC1500 is THE best battery I have ever had. It puts out more than 800 CCA (825A at 0F) and will do about 1500A in 80F!!!! If you are going to replace your battery at any time, I definitely recommend checking this thing out. I've had a small PC925 as backup in the blazer for about 6 years now and it is running strong. I actually use it a lot too.

I can just imagine the come-ons with this ... hey you wanna check out the sculpture I had done on my hair? No not the one on my head or on my chest

I wouldn't say impressed but sometimes the smaller things in life do make me very happy. Some people are almost never happy ... me on the other hand, sometimes for example even when I eye-ball and drill a hole in a piece of metal and it lines up exactly to where I wanted it to end up on the jeep, I get very happy. This is the example from today ... I had been planning to add a second battery to the jeep for some time now and I finally got around to doing it: Started with cutting a long threaded bolt into 4 pieces, drilling some holes in the corners of the stock location, and bolting them in: http://www.seapahn.us/images/jeep/bat_tray1.jpg Then strapped in the backup battery and added a few more nuts and washers to support the new tray that I got: http://www.seapahn.us/images/jeep/bat_tray3.jpg and then a few more quick holes in the new tray and it went on: http://www.seapahn.us/images/jeep/bat_tray4.jpg and of course finally the main battery went in place: http://www.seapahn.us/images/jeep/bat_tray6.jpg Now after all this is said and done, maybe I didn't accomplish anything amazing but the feeling of satisfaction and "happyness" is well worth the effort. That's what I mean by the "smaller things"

If it's the "Eastern" dialect, definitley take the class because you will learn real Armenian. Don't know how the classes will be organized but beginner ones start with the alphabet. Since you obviously can already read and write in Armenian pretty well, I would say try the intermediate as the beginner will probably be a waste of time for you.

Did you try asking for coffee? (nicely I might add). You ask once, twice, three times, and by the 4th time she'll get annoyed enough that she won't forget. But I have to say it is a very strange concept for me to be served coffee at work. In the US there are usually coffee stations that you just go and grab as much as you want. Some places you drop some money in the community jar that is used to pay for the coffee. Some places the employer pays for it. But I guess American coffee is much easier to access than the mud-in-a-cup kind.

Some very simple things are in place. But self-driving cars are still very far from reality. However, I do think they can happen in 40 years (unlike the human-like robot) IF an adequate infrastructure is built to support them. I don't think an autonomous self-driving car is that practical or realistic. But cars driving themselves on the freeways during rush hour or finding parking in a parking lot that have been instrumented with special infrastructures to support such systems are not that far fetched. GPS is great but the accuracy is not good enough for car navigation. However, GPS augmented with land-based locationing systems as well as other collision detection schemes (like microwave radar or sonar) can work. One of the problems with GPS is that is that it is unreliable when there are obstacles between the receiver and the satellites (like clouds, trees, hills, large buildings, tunnels, etc). Self parking -- well nuff said. It's already here Dynamic or adaptive cruise control -- also here in a limited sense but all they do is blindly adjust the speed to the car in front ... if that car crashes into something at very high speed, you'll be going after it with no time to react It is based on the assumption that the car in front is driving intelligently and safely. I actually worked on some user interface pieces on one of the very first systems back in 1998/99 time frame (at Delphi) ... it is amazing how many problems had to be solved to make it work. Just the slightest hill and you would get radar feedback from the road or the reflectors ... then big rig trucks would register as two different cars sometimes with the front and the back acting separately. Also, it was unclear which one was better -- radar or laser so the solution was to use a combination at the time. ... of course the prototype car had about 10 huge PC systems loaded in the back but I think they managed to reduce that down to a small module http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/images/Team_Pics/TeamCaltech_3.jpg But let's wait and see what happens to the outcome of the Darpa grand challenge this year which is now the "urban" challenge (the vehicle must navigate completely on its own in a city environment). Last few years the race was in the desert where initially, most teams wouldn't even make it out of the parking lot .. but finally some teams got some very good results and finished the long desert course (I think the Stanford team won it last year). However, this Urban one is going to be far more complicated, no doubt.

He wants that to be "free".

Let's assume for now there will be some amazing discovery that is yet to be done that will take care of the "free" energy thing ... What makes you think communication networks will ever be free? Sure cost of bandwidth is dropping but at the same time our level of bandwidth use is going up. I am paying a lot more for communication now than I was 10 years ago ... but I am doing a lot more of it. What makes you think people will be working their asses off and installing and maintaining the communication infrastructures for "free"? Do you really think we are going to embrace the star trek model of society in 40-50 years where no one will care about money and everyone will just work for the good of society? That kind of thinking is inherently flawed since it ignores some very basic human traits: Laziness, selfishness, and stupidity.

No jeep is still in WI ... must have been some other really cool dude's jeep

By the way, as an example of how things are evolving "technologically", just take a look at your grocery store check out lines ... now, of course it would be trivial to build robots that automate the check out process. But instead, what do we have? "Self checkout" What is that saying? That is saying we as humans are much cheaper and much more economical than even these simplest of robots that from the technical perspective are TRIVIAL to build. Edit: But that will be much more steamlined in the very near future with RF ID. Just pick your stuff and walk out the store. You will be charged the proper amount automatically as you walk out.

I was going to say his name is Jose Why would anyone buy a $15,000 robot when a mexican will do all that for mere chump change? Also, Shahan, again I HIGHLY doubt your molecular manufacturing or universally intelligent robots will be available in 40 years. In order for things to be readily available in 40 years, the research should be showing some glimpse of such things becoming reality and at least for the universally intelligent robot, there is NO such developments or any hints that such a robot will be in existence any time soon. MAYBE we will have intelligent robots that can drive cars or pick fruit ... but again, I really think the "cheapness" and availability of manual labor will make those markets not very economically viable (i.e. no one will produce those robots as long as we have the Mexicans and the Chinese who are willing to work for far less).

That is simply NOT true. It is faaaaaaaaaaaar easier to get things shipped within the US than it is to other countries, including Canada. Of course not everything as for example some of my boat parts come FROM canada As far as Lebanon, I don't know ... I somehow doubt you can get many companies to ship stuff to Lebanon for what it costs to ship within the US

I think a person from 30-50 years ago would have said why the hell I "need" to carry a cel phone, GPS, portable video/music player, satellite radio, and digital camera all the time with me ... A person 30-50 years from now, will probably say why the hell were all these things separate devices As far as Shahan's molecular manufacturing machine, I think that's probably at least a 100 or so years away ... but by that time, China will be the only supplier in the world anyway so it wouldn't matter if we have those machines or not.

I just can't believe how easy things are sometimes. I have been doing a few odds and ends projects and I am just amazed at how easy everything has been. ANYTHING I think of, I can usually very easily find it either at local stores, or through the internet which ends up at my door in only a couple of days. Whether it's a kind of nut and bolt that I dreamt of for some project, or some sort of mount to attach something to something else ... you think it, it's available! Just last night I was thinking it would be nice to have a universal mounting system where I can easily attach my GPS, portable video/mp3 player, satellite radio, and cel phone to the roll bar on my jeep and still have it be flexible enough so that later on, if I get some other gadget, I don't have to get a completely new mount. Sure enough ... went online, did a bit of searching ... and found exactly what I wanted in a matter of minutes. Sometimes I keep thinking that somethings should perhaps be a bit harder to do as there is almost no joy in the "challenge" anymore. But then again, I keep thinking how much it must have sucked to have lived just maybe 30 - 50 years ago (or more).