What's worse?

[Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi]

Well, the lunatic fringe of the anti-war movement has been far more disruptive and annoying, with disorderly, and at times, violent protests. Also, some have picked on people in the military.

The lunatic fringe of the pro-war side has boycotted just about everything and everyone that disagrees with them, made sweeping generalizations of entire groups, and strawmanned opposing viewpoints. Even the more moderate pro-war people have made generalizations of the anti-war side.

However, disorderly protests that get lots of media coverage outweigh immature boycotting left and right and hasty generalizations, I'd say the anti-war side has been worse.

[AdmiralKanos]

The left and the right BOTH use boycotts, usualy canceling each other.

Actually, leftist boycotts have always been hot air, all talk, no action. Far-right boycotts, on the other hand, are an ever-present threat looming on the horizon of any company which attempts to do business in or with the United States because they actually carry through on their rhetoric. Religious boycotts are a good example, and have proven to be highly effective punishment/coercion tactics for ideological impurity.

[Durandal]

Seems as though everything in calculus, well, from what I can tell from looking in Calc II and III books anyways, and Calc I and Pre-Calc classes, most things involve graphing or visual things, once I see something down on paper, it seems, I dunno, not simple or easy, but understandable.

Most calculus books cover all three levels of calculus. The bitch of it is taking each level at a different school and having three calculus books on the shelf that essentially say the exact same thing.

Second-level calculus doesn't really involve a whole lot of visual graphing. There's some, but the vast majority of it is learning different techniques of integration (partial integration is really a very cool derivation and method, but I've never encountered a situation where I could apply it outside of the course). You'll also learn the big secret they won't tell you in first-level calculus: how to integrate 1/x.

Multi-variable calculus is where it gets bitchy; I took it twice, but my prof the first time was kind of a jerk-ass. It involves a lot of ways for mathematically describing three-dimensional geometry, like vectors and planes. You'll find tangent planes to surfaces, integrate over a curved, three-dimensional surface to find its volume and all that stuff.

Then, after you've spent all this time learning differentiation, integration and all this stuff associated with functions ... they dump you into linear algebra, where it starts off insanely easy and then gets stupidly difficult. The whole course is basically proofs, and they're not easy. God I can't wait to get to differential equations.

[Durandal]

As for what's worse, you might as well ask whether or not I'd rather slam my dick in a sliding glass door or a car door.

[Sea Skimmer]

As for what's worse, you might as well ask whether or not I'd rather slam my dick in a sliding glass door or a car door.

Actually, I'd easily choose a sliding glass door. Possibly more force, but with a much larger contact area and no edge.

[MKSheppard]

Actually, leftist boycotts have always been hot air, all talk, no action. Far-right boycotts, on the other hand, are an ever-present threat looming on the horizon of any company which attempts to do business in or with the United States because they actually carry through on their rhetoric. Religious boycotts are a good example, and have proven to be highly effective punishment/coercion tactics for ideological impurity.

Tell that to Smith and Wesson

[Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi]

As for what's worse, you might as well ask whether or not I'd rather slam my dick in a sliding glass door or a car door.

Actually, I'd easily choose a sliding glass door. Possibly more force, but with a much larger contact area and no edge.

But which side represents the sliding glass door?

On the topic of the boycotts, the anti-war groups has done some active boycotts, but the pro-war boycotts are more common, and some have even influenced the government (Anyone want to go to the Cafeteria of Congress for some Freedom Fries?")

[Queeb Salaron]

Queeb.
You mised my point 180 degrees off. The word "too", means also.
The left and the right BOTH use boycotts, usualy canceling each other.
The civil disobedience is used by almost exclusively by the left, with the notable exception of the pro-life fundy morons. Even then, they only target the clinic, not the whole neighborhood. They block clinic access, not general trffic in the area. The antis block the whole fucking area, and provide cover, (albeit unwittingly) for the anarchist/vandal/thugs/americahaters.

Ah, I see now. Thanks for the clarification.

The right wouldn't tollerate Nazis endorsing endorsing their point of view, (even on common interest things, like the death penalty)yet the left will not disavow the anarchists/communists.

At the expense of making a rash generalization, I'd say that the reason that the left doesn't discriminate against people who support them is because in general they are not discriminatory. They believe strongly in equality, after all, and that means that everyone has an equal voice. In fact, I'd be willing to say that the left is more inclined to let Nazis speak their minds than the right is. The left isn't really worried about how people come to the conclusions that they do, but are instead more concerned with the numbers of people who reach the same conclusion. Ironically, it's very Machievellian of them. Such is the hypocricy of the left, I suppose.

Also, keep in mind that the only reason that the anti-war movement is so huge is because it is largely comprised of knee-jerk liberals who either revel in the underground, or else are too weak-stomached to condone a war. The anti-war coalition is largely comprised of neo-hippies with their general "can't we all just get along?" sentiment, asking the same question that's been answered a million times over with a resounding "NO!" The anti-war movement is also made up of people who don't necessarily oppose the WAR, but the government's reasons for starting the war. They're hung up on the fact that there is no clear-cut link between Sadaam and terrorism, however much the government claims that there is. Which is partly true, but irrelevant to the larger issues. The anti-war party is also made up of anarchists and communists who would oppose any government action at all short of a complete gutting and reformation.

And so the anti-warsies exist, spouting off their innane and unproven irrelevancies about neo-Colonialism, neo-Imperialism, and global greed. But they refuse to answer the simple questions that are at the heart of The Cause, such as "How does the world benefit by leaving Sadaam in power?" and "If not now, when?" and "If we don't have the authority as the world's greatest superpower, then who does?" And until I hear an anti-war protestor answer those questions, I will continue to assume that there is no hope for the anti-war protest in general to stand on solid ground and come up with a decent argument against this war. Which is sad, really, considering that for the most part these protestors (or at least the leaders of these protests) are intelligent people who, I am sure, are sad to see the protests get so out of hand.

[rant] And for the record, the blocking traffic thing is just plain stupid. Even I would run over a protestor who stepped in front of my car. There is a line to be drawn between a peaceful protestor and a public nuisance. That crosses the line. [/rant]

[RedImperator]

The delicious irony of the antiwar movement is that they can't make the best antiwar arguments I've heard because they're all essentially right-wing arguments--either arguments from realpolitik that claim Saddam Hussein isn't a big enough menace to justify the cost (human, economic, and political) of war, or neo-isolationist libertarian arguments that claim the war is a gross abuse of Constitutional power. They can't use realpolitik because realpolitik is used to justify all sorts of ugly things they violently oppose (like supporting the contras against the Sandanistas or the first Gulf War), and socialists can't very well oppose something on the basis that the government doesn't have the constitutional power to do it.

[Joe]

The neo-isolationist libertarians, when they aren't going off on tangents about how the wrong side won in the Pacific War of WWII (I'm not kidding), are busy playing suckface with the left and denouncing corporations. I say the hell with them.

[Ignorant twit]

I have to vote against the anti-war.

The quick rundown:

Anti-war protestors block traffic, their protests cost a FORTUNE in police overtime, can provide shelter for anarchists and other dumbasses who go for the rioting venue.

Pro-war boycotters take their dollars and spend somewhere else. Okay so some poor corporation, and employees/stockholders, gets screwed for the actions of their government/fellow countrymen/ceo ... whatever.

Economically I'm not sure that it isn't a bigger cost to police these protests that might turn into riots, take care of damage sometimes cuased, productivity lost as they snarl traffic, clean-up costs, lost sales, and the insurance increases because of the crap they pull than some idiots boycotting.

I think the big difference is boycotts can be VERY targetted and are EFFECTIVE at policy change. Protests just suck money in a less targetted manner and aren't effective at policy change.

Add to this that spending your money as you choose is a right, while obstructing traffic is a crime ... I have to say the anti-war protestors are worse.

[The_Nice_Guy]

Most calculus books cover all three levels of calculus. The bitch of it is taking each level at a different school and having three calculus books on the shelf that essentially say the exact same thing.

Second-level calculus doesn't really involve a whole lot of visual graphing. There's some, but the vast majority of it is learning different techniques of integration (partial integration is really a very cool derivation and method, but I've never encountered a situation where I could apply it outside of the course). You'll also learn the big secret they won't tell you in first-level calculus: how to integrate 1/x.

Multi-variable calculus is where it gets bitchy; I took it twice, but my prof the first time was kind of a jerk-ass. It involves a lot of ways for mathematically describing three-dimensional geometry, like vectors and planes. You'll find tangent planes to surfaces, integrate over a curved, three-dimensional surface to find its volume and all that stuff.

Then, after you've spent all this time learning differentiation, integration and all this stuff associated with functions ... they dump you into linear algebra, where it starts off insanely easy and then gets stupidly difficult. The whole course is basically proofs, and they're not easy. God I can't wait to get to differential equations.

Wait a minute, integrating 1/x is 2nd level calculus?!? Damn, but it's not fair I had to learn it for my very first calculus module in my university!
http://www.math.nus.edu.sg/~matngtb/Calculus/

The second one I took was even worse. Less dry, but tough as hell.
http://courses.math.nus.edu.sg/ma1104/

Grrr...

I do agree that multivariable integration is a real chore, especially for the really complex functions with trig and log parts. But you get used to it.

Unfortunately, I seemed to have forgotten a great deal of the finer points of calculus, since I'm a chemistry major and the two calculus modules I took were two years ago(got an A for the 'advanced' one). Ah well, it's useful when it's needed in quantum chemistry...

And oh, differential equations are fun! If you can do all the questions(tutorials, tests, exams) in the two links I gave you, you'll be in good shape.

The Nice Guy

[Rubberanvil]

Tell that to Smith and Wesson

S&W is American-owned again. The current owners are busy undoing the shit the previous owners did to the company.