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D Trump wants to bring 'manufacturing' back to the US, and his idiotic supporters believe that will make America richer. Tell me what company is going to set up shop in the US, when Americans will refuse to work for less than $40/hr, and they have to charge customers $30 for a pair of socks which you can get, imported from India, at Walmart for $3 ? No-one will; the importer will pay the duty/tariff, and pass it on to the consumer at the higher price of $10. ( or, they'll just be manufactured robotically, and you still won't have American jobs ) Or did you get educated about tariffs at the same school as C Levitt, the WH Press Secretary ???? DEI is not dividing America; stupidity is. Some are much, much stupider than others. The much more stupid ones believe everything they are told by D Trump, and think that all the shit this president is doing will only affect others and not themselves. The other half, who have some intelligence, think that things will fix themselves, someone else will do it and they don't need to vote for responsible politicians. I'm not sure which group the people that think DEI is the cause of all this, fall into.

I continue to struggle to see how this would work. You would have candidates forbidden to organise themselves into political parties. How then would a coherent programme for government be developed, given, as I pointed out, that this involves trade-offs, prioritisation and funding decisions on the various single issues involved? You say that voters, on the other hand, would be allowed (actually you could not prevent them, in a free society) to form parties, but only on the basis of single issues. How would you stop them combining issues, on the basis of the priorities and trade-offs they would like to see enacted? Surely the relative importance voters attach to various issues is a big part of political opinion. Forcing politics into a set of single issues would just be a further infantilisation of politics. It is the often hard choices between the various single issues, where ideals meet practical reality, where you need mature judgement. The electorate should in my opinion be encouraged to confront this, not to live in a silly bubble of things they would like without regard to the consequences. It seems to me that how the voters organise themselves must be left to them, if we want to live in a free society. What you can control, without impinging on the freedom of citizens, is the effect of disproportionately powerful actors in society, such as wealthy individuals, corporations and unions, who currently buy influence over political parties. You can do that by strictly limiting financial donations and mandating that they must all be published with donors identified. This is done in most democracies, but not, apparently in the USA, perhaps with predictable results. The amount of money spent in US politics is absolutely insane, to any outsider. Regarding the elected representatives, if you want them to enter government with a plan for governing, you must allow them to meet and agree beforehand proposals for the trade-offs, prioritisation and funding that I have mentioned. Without that you would have months of paralysed, impotent government while a programme was thrashed out among hundreds of individual representatives, all with different opinions! If you look at the coalitions that are often formed between 2 or more parties in European countries, the negotiations involved take long enough. Between individual representatives, forbidden to form parties with a pre-agreed programme, it would be ten times harder. If you permit them to pre-agree a plan, you already have a political party, it seems to me.

studiot, Thank you very much for this detailed response - this is extremely helpful. I'm an honors earth science student, so while I find the subject fascinating, I'm just beginning my studies and I'm beginning to question my teachers methods, as the material on that sheet was not covered during our classroom sessions. I will update the thread when my lab is returned. I really appreciate everyone taking time to respond - it's very much appreciated !

Hello Ed, You are clearly near the beginning of your studies here, but it would be useful if you were to indicate your interest in physical geography / physical geology / geomorphology is. Especially if you are going to post more questions for clarification. It really is a fascinating subject. The three diagrams you posted were from an older era and the subject has moved on since. In those days the view was rather narrow and static. Today we try to look at such questions in a wider sense, both in how the particular landforms developed and fit in both with their surrounding areas on the ground and our best theoretical work on the subject. I note that the three diagrams (which could easily have been drawn by Arthur Holmes a very famous pioneer) have been carefully edited to avoid showing any explanation, for the purpose of making them into a question. I take it you are aware that all the rocks on Earth can be classified into sedimentary or igneous (volcanic). All three diagrams could be formed from either types of rock by 'denudation processes'. Denudation is the overall term for the general process by which earth and rock is detached from the main body of material and transported away from the site to somewhere else. Swansont has suggested that the waterfall might be formed like the ones on the Colorado river in the Grand Canyon. These layers here are mostly volcanic and look like the ones in the Rio Grande picture. Here, as with the Grand Canyon there is a large scale upper plateaux or mesa, heavily dissected by a major river in an arid area. More can be seen here https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/nature/grca-geology.htm The whole area has been uplifted and is a bit like the simplified diagram below. Note the timeline goes from right to left. The final stages of this process, which have not yet happened, look like this butte in Utah. Note here the pile of debris at the bottom, which has not yet been transported away. This could also be as the first diagram of your question. The waterfall diagram shows nor canyon sidewalls , more like Niagara, which is forming on sedimentary rock. In your middle diagram the resisant layers could be part of an anticline, with the top worn away, as with this section of the Welsh Borders.

I'm a Westerner so I've only been mostly exposed to Western Religions such as Christianity and Judaism.