Jesse B. Hannah › Comments

WIN. - Jesse B. Hannah

Last sentence is my nomination for quote of the year. - Jesse B. Hannah

Leave it to Fixed Noise. - Jesse B. Hannah

I love the Truman-esque sand-brown suit the VP is wearing in these photos. - Jesse B. Hannah

All I have to say is: I TOTALLY CALLED IT. - Jesse B. Hannah

"Debt and finance management should be a required topic in high school, either as a quarter or semester class or as part of the math curriculum. One of my math teachers in high school, when we were covering the compound interest formulas, took a whole day's lecture to talk to us about debt management, credit cards, and savings; admittedly, I haven't been perfect in following his advice, but I give him a lot of credit for me having the sense not to take half a dozen credit cards and just spend wantonly. The credit card companies rightly are taking a lot of heat, for taking advantage of consumers/cardholders being almost criminally uninformed; but my generation definitely has a huge head start in avoiding the mistakes of the last generation in knowing how credit works and how to handle debt and live within our means. If the credit card companies are pulled back into line and can no longer take advantage of no longer uninformed consumers, there is no reason why this whole mess can't be..." - Jesse B. Hannah

Best blog post headline ever. - Jesse B. Hannah

This sort of bill I don't have a problem with. Where I have problems with same-sex marriage and where I agree with groups like the National Organization for Marriage is where a state threatens to impinge on the right of freedom of religion by essentially forcing churches to agree to perform and recognize same-sex marriages. Bloggage about this at some point in the future. - Jesse B. Hannah

"Pics or it didn't happen" is almost unfairly relevant here. - Jesse B. Hannah

Win. Pure and simple win. - Jesse B. Hannah

He should take it--prove he can still play, move up to the AFL and give them a big boost after their year off for financial issues, and if it works his chances of getting signed by another NFL team. - Jesse B. Hannah

"Really the only way to do a proper installation of Windows anymore is to pirate a disc and use the license key on the sticker on the case, or buy a whole fresh copy. Almost no prebuilt manufacturer will actually give you a real Windows disc anymore; you most likely get "recovery discs" or in the case of HP a "recovery partition" that will erase itself when you try to use it, or that you can burn to CDs or DVDs—but either way it still sticks you with the crapware that was on it to begin with. Buy from a proper custom-builder or a company that you can verify will give you an original Windows disc, or just build your own PC." - Jesse B. Hannah

"You can make a living as a pirate in EVE. How does that not put it on the list?" - Jesse B. Hannah

Me right now. - Jesse B. Hannah

If you live in a state, stop bitching. You're represented more than well enough, and you didn't complain when Bush decided to spend $x trillion on OTHER countries whose well-being has a minimal if any impact on OUR well-being. - Jesse B. Hannah

"There is constructive reporting and journalism—ThinkProgress reporting on Bill O'Reilly's contradictory actions and statements regarding the "It Happened To Alexa" Foundation—presenting the facts objectively, citing clear sources, and letting the people make reasonable decisions for themselves about the verdict. Then there is destructive reporting and journalism—stalking critics or opponents, name-calling, unapologetic insults to character, and trying to vilify your enemies for your audience instead of letting them decide for themselves. One of these leads to an improvement of society and to real solutions to its problems. The other leads to the rest of the world laughing at you, and turning away and ignoring you. Your attitude speaks volumes to your character, and if you feel the need to openly and viciously attack someone such as a police officer on a personal level over the internet, then most people would not bet on you being as innocent as you make yourself out to be...." - Jesse B. Hannah

"You're getting the idea. Now imagine that you're standing about as far back from the wall as the distance from the Sun to the next nearest star, the height of the wall is equal to the diameter of a million stars, and the dart is the size of an atom. You're still orders of magnitude of orders of magnitude (repeat intentional) off from what I mean by "infinitesimally small" odds." - Jesse B. Hannah

"But the more complex we as chemical entities are, and the more time and possible additions to the system, the more possible outcomes there are. We're talking about changes on the atomic or subatomic scale, over periods of billions of years—we don't have names for the numbers needed to describe how many possible outcomes there could have been if all of those changes that were part of the origin of life and of human beings truly occurred at random. And there are the limitations of the laws of physics—but where did those come from? Did they develop at random, to suit the needs of the universe? I don't intend to dissuade anyone from their belief, if they truly do believe in all of these things as simply being how they are by chance; this is simply an expression of my thought process in deciding that the odds are simply too small, and the possible permutations too many, for life to be pure chance." - Jesse B. Hannah

"Exactly. Part of my point is, we don't know—and we can't prove it either way—whether it was by pure chance, or whether there was any design or intent behind life coming into existence. What I believe as far as religion doesn't have to conflict what I know as far as science—with common sense, one can see that the two are not incompatible. Saying that evolution disproves God, or that cosmology disproves God, is as ignorant as saying that the Bible disproves evolution and cosmology. The fact that it can't be disproved also means it can't be proved, so it's up to the individual what to believe for themselves." - Jesse B. Hannah

"To clarify a bit, this is staying within the "life as we know and understand it" frame—there could be life anywhere in the universe if life formed to suit its conditions. The diversity of life on earth is a result of the diversity of conditions in which it lives; but it's just like taking a different set of a million coins and flipping it until they all come up heads, or taking a million sets of a million coins and flipping them until one of them comes up heads. We only know of one set of coins—one set of conditions for life—so that's what I'm going by to not complicate things too much. I could write volumes about it if you wanted me to get that much in-depth." - Jesse B. Hannah

""Improbable" means that the odds, given the number of conditions that must be PRECISELY in place for life to form, let alone progress to the point of us being here having this discussion, are extremely small. "Likely" means that despite those odds, the universe is big enough that there are plenty of chances for it to happen somewhere. It's like flipping a million coins and needing them all to come up heads. It's going to take you a very long time to do it by flipping all of the coins repeatedly as a set and waiting for them to come up heads—essentially what the argument that we are here completely by chance is saying happened. What I'm saying is pretty much the same thing, but the person who was flipping the coins went through and changed a few from tails to heads afterwards." - Jesse B. Hannah

"I'm a Christian, so I believe that the universe was created by a divine being; and I'm also a scientist, and I believe that things such as the Big Bang and evolution are the mechanisms by which God created. If you think about how freaking big the universe is, the spontaneous origin and development of life—that we're here by pure chance—is likely, but such a thing happening in any given place in the universe is extremely, nigh infinitesimally improbable. And to the extent of our knowledge, the Big Bang must have been triggered somehow, but there are no plausible, widely accepted, well supported theories as to exactly how (I'm a physicist, so I'm pretty up on this and have my own opinions of various such theories). I don't think we're here by accident, but I think our Creator was a lot more subtle than the people who first recorded what is now the book of Genesis could have understood." - Jesse B. Hannah

"Ah, the good ol' days of the Stage 1 install." - Jesse B. Hannah

"Buried for Murdoch Street Journal. (Arrrrr.)" - Jesse B. Hannah

"@piznut: Nope, true Goldwater conservatism is dead and replaced by neoconservatism. Interesting note: Goldwater himself was opposed to "don't ask, don't tell," which really pissed off the up-and-coming social conservatives that were beginning to break into the part at the time." - Jesse B. Hannah

""Let's hope Olbermann has a Cornell mug and sweatshirt." A million internets if we can convince him to wear the sweatshirt and pimp the mug on the air." - Jesse B. Hannah

"I prefer "it."" - Jesse B. Hannah

"To be a true satirist like Bill Maher you have to be really freaking good. To be as much of a blowhard as Ann Coulter you have to be really freaking stupid. This is going to be a fly versus the Space Shuttle." - Jesse B. Hannah

"Sorry to burst your bubble, but learn to pay attention to reality. You can pull your head out of your misguided self-righteousness and cynicism any time now. The Democrats overwhelmingly wanted the government to spend money to get the economy flowing. The Republicans were overwhelmingly against it, even after all the money Bush-43 spent on the Iraq war with all of their blind and unwavering support, and did everything they could to stop it—and it still didn't do any good. They've fallen into a state of total disarray, the RNC has a chairman that fired and has not replaced any of the RNC staff, and the party has moved so that Rush Limbaugh is no longer the fringe minority, but the center of the party. The Democrats, meanwhile, are finding a rare cause of unity in Congress, and are basically walking all over the Republicans, who can't decide what if anything to do but say "no" to everything." - Jesse B. Hannah

"Buried for Ann F**king Coulter." - Jesse B. Hannah