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Nor would I, but YMMV. That said mormons tried to ban a bunch of books from my high school library (including the perpetual whipping boy "Catcher in the Rye", which contains the f-curse!) Of course, books like The Difference Engine which contains an incredibly detailed account of the main character's encounter with a prostitute are totally fine, because nobody's ever heard of them. That's quite the slippery slope there...

Heh, sorry, forgot to respond. I think it's funny she thinks she has insight into Russia because "you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska." And uhh, it's clear she has no clue what the Bush Doctrine is, and didn't seem to do a very good job of tiptoeing around that fact. I wish I could find a full length video... the transcripts are all partial. Here's a fact check of it... she claimed that many VP candidates had never met a foreign head of state, which is untrue for at least the past 30 years: http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/09/fact-check-pali.html

For some reason I don't get the talking points echo chamber feeling with Democrats in the same way I do with Republicans. It might be because Republican talking points are parroted by a "news agency" like Fox as well as by the members of the party. But more I think it's just the Republicans are more organized and methodical about making sure everybody's on the same page, literally. What was the last bit of jargon the Democrats managed to inject into the political dialogue?

So Democrats sunk to the level that Republicans were at eight years ago? Well since then, Karl Rove happened and drove Republicans further down into the political mire...

Sarah Palin broke her press silence, and was interviewed by ABC News: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/story?id=5778018 I'm reading through the transcript now...

As this seems to be the forum for idiots to spout off half-baked ideas, I figured I'd chime in with my own two cents. So I recently (in the past 6 months or so) read Lee Smolin's now outdated book Three Roads to Quantum Gravity. The central theme of his book is that spacetime is discrete and is probably best modeled by forms like spin networks or spin foam. But Smolin's book is, at this point, some 7 years old and not exactly representative of the state of the art in modern physics. The "traditional" approach involves a continuous spacetime. There are no discrete structures, there's nothing special going on at the scale of the Planck length, and spacetime contains increasingly smaller structures at any given scale. What if there were a compromise between these two possibilities? What if spacetime demonstrates self-similarity at the Planck scale? What if we found structures at the Planck scale which are similar to other scales? This is a configuration typically referred to as a fractal. So perhaps a better question is: what if spacetime is made of fractals?

And Obama responds brilliantly: Context: http://in.news.yahoo.com/139/20080910/888/twl-republicans-term-obama-s-lipstick-on.html The latest party line against Obama: an anecdote has become PLAYING THE GENDER CARD. Pangloss has his definition of partisan. I have mine. Perhaps it can be described as making a mountain out of a molehill. The Republican party runs a desperately underqualified candidate as the Vice President of the United States. Obama relates a common anecdote: putting lipstick on a pig. How does the Republican party respond? As a whole mind you, they're coordinated, through Karl Rove's talking points. WHINE WHINE BITCH BITCH OBAMA OWES US AN APOLOGY. I can't believe this is what politics in the United States has come to. The Republicans obviously f*cked up in selecting Palin as their VP candidate, and yet they're demanding the Democrats apologize to them, because they found a remark which makes not only perfect sense in context, but is poignant and witty. The Republican party deliberately mistranslates it: Palin is the pig, and lipstick means THE GENDER CARD. Never mind the context, or the common anecdote. Clearly what Obama's saying is attacking Palin directly and playing THE GENDER CARD, right? Wrong... I would like the forum's opinion as to how the Democrats can respond. As I see it there's two ways: 1) The Democrats can sink to the Republicans level. They can find their own Karl Rove and start distributing talking points of their own. 2) The Democrats can continue to think independently and give responses which aren't crafted by the upper echelons of the party Personally, I would prefer the latter, although it isn't serving them well. Obama could've made a joke about polishing a turd and probably been better off. Should Democrats succumb to the Republicans' level and collectively tow the party line, a party line distributed in the form of a talking points memo? Or should they continue to be independent thinkers and say what they truly believe?

I'll definitely agree that now is not the time for the government to be assuming more liabilities which will only serve to further devalue the dollar, but unfortunately Bush picked an awful time to start an expensive war while simultaneously cutting taxes. The nice thing about band-aids is that sometimes the wounds under them heal, even without leaving scars.

Actually, if recent experiences are any indicator, we can get past these sort of economic crises. What recent experiences are you thinking of? I'm thinking of things like post-9/11, the S&L crisis, the and the '79 Iranian/oil crisis. The last "let the system run its course" approach to going through one of these crises I can even think of was the Great Depression, and I don't think that should serve as a positive example for how to handle an economic crisis.

Isn't that like saying that if a building is a fire hazard, we should let it burn to the ground and build a new fire-safe building, rather than trying to put the fire out and fix the fire hazards? Otherwise, no one will want to live in the building because they think it's a fire hazard. I don't think the economy needs to hit rock bottom before people can regain confidence, and I think the regulatory commissions put in place since the Great Depression have more or less weathered us through many similar economic crises in the past. I'm extremely wary of "let the market take its course" dogma. Letting the market take its course will generally involve lots of collateral damage to sectors which are tangentially connected to failed ones. The entire value chain can break down, in which case way more damage is wrought to the economy than if the government assumes some liabilities and temporarily props up an ailing sector.

yourdad be playa hatin'

I think of the British as using phrases like "mate", "blimey", and "piss off" a lot... not sure how accurate that is. Not sure what the canonical Americanisms are, but "cool", "y'all", and "sweet" get used to an excessive degree, depending on the person.

Please note that mass is a physical property and consciousness is metaphysical. If you wish to attribute physical properties to consciousness you must first describe what consciousness is in physical terms.

From 2030 - 2040?

Yeah not sure why this thread got moved to Politics... I started it in General Discussion

There's a live webcast of the activation available here: http://tf1.lci.fr/infos/endirect/0,,4078645,00-le-lancement-de-l-accelerateur-de-particules-.html

I want a Lens, some Soma, a Terminal, some Microsofts, and a Feersum Endjinn. Oh, and of course, a Libby Drive.

There's now not one, but two web sites where you can check if the LHC has destroyed the earth yet: http://www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com/ and http://www.hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/ Both have RSS feeds, so you can get daily updates delivered to Google Reader or what not automatically!

Those same Milton Friedmanisms are what got us into this mess in the first place. I don't see how they're the solution now.

Yep, another substance-free, invective-laced response with cries of "partisan!" I suppose that's your new M.O. Can you actually respond with facts rather than cries of "partisan"?

I'm sorry, it just feels like "partisan" bluster from you when you have to make everything about Bush even when I haven't mentioned anything of the sort. That we're not anywhere close to the bottom yet. Major lending institutions are continuing to fail. I think iNow did a fairly good job of covering that: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?p=433447#post433447 I'm sure you'll come up with a definition of "unraveling" that sets the bar unreachably high. Is this just a semantic argument over one word? Seems like it. Oh, but I'm sure that one word makes the argument "partisan"... I think I've given equal coverage to both. Pangloss, on the other hand, seems to be ignoring all the other problems like inflation, devaluation of the dollar in the international marketplace, the looming national debt soon to break $10 trillion, being driven higher by record deficits. Yes, spin away Pangloss. Yep, definitely a semantic argument. Pangloss, are you using the "partisan" (i.e. Republican) tactic of framing the debate in your language? I really hate when people do that. I stand by my original statement. Do you have any substance to add to the discussion, or just bluster?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080908140102.htm ..and sadly all the news stories I'm seeing are "oh noes, it's going to destroy tha earf!"

The fact they need bailed out at all is indicative that the weight of bad mortgages is continuing to drag the economy down. Are you trying to say that the government assuming $5,000,000,000,000 in liabilities is a sign that all is well? Nobody here's arguing that it isn't a good move, but it's a good move to deal with a lousy situation. I think the government assuming FIVE TRILLION DOLLARS in liabilities is a sign that all is not well. What "spin"? That the government bailing out mortgage lenders to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars and assuming five trillion dollars of private debt is a sign that all is not well with our economy? I'm sorry, I thought it was pretty obvious that that was a bad sign.

http://www.autoblog.com/2008/09/08/breaking-2011-chevy-volt-revealed/ This is a very interesting car. I don't think I'd purchase a hybrid from Chevy but the concept is quite interesting. The Chevy Volt in a plug-in hybrid, so when you get home you can just plug it into the wall. If you use the car for a short daily commute, this means you don't have to pay for gas and can run it off electricity. I really like this concept and hope to see better manufacturers releasing plug-in hybrids soon.

Did I say I was unhappy with the decision? Better the government assume more liabilities and throw money at the problem than having the entire market collapse. That said, this is indicative that deep seated problems remain. I'm a mortgagor and as such I have a vested interest in the housing market, regardless of who's president. Perhaps you should be more honest with your intentions and admit you want to spin everything I say as being anti-Bush.