StringJunky

I'm sure the coming days will reveal his intentions. My point though is, in principle, it need not be a bad idea.

Memorial Day would be ok because it's about sacrifice but Independence Day would be a celebration of victory and war over someone else. I was thinking more along the line of an Armed Services Day to allow the country to say 'thank you'.

So, a bunch of people just marching is dick waving? The dick waving is putting all your best hardware on display and parading it through the streets ala Russia and N.Korea. Beat me to it... absolutely.

You could let him initiate it and with future presidents it can be adjusted to send out the right message internally and externally. There'll be a learning curve anyway on hitting the right note, whoever starts it. Look at the French example, nobody kicks off and says they are posturing,in an aggressive way, do they? I'm not aware of any.

I think it depends on how it's done, presented and perceived. I don't think it's wrong, in principle, to honour people who are prepared to die for what they believe to be right and their country. It could be a parade of service people and not loads of military hardware, just symbolic pieces representing a service. Don't forget, the military do plenty of non-military things, like aiding disaster efforts and rescues.

The problem with designing, say bananas, and then everybody adopts that strain because it has good yield, storage properties and tastes the best, leaving all the other strains to die off, then that leaves bananas in danger of extinction when a disease comes along that it has no protection against. This is a true story. The moral of the story is: don't put all your eggs in one basket. The point i'm trying to make is that it can be very useful but pursuing some overarching eugenic dream for a species is short-sighted.

I can arrange that...

@iNow You might be interested in a plunging track saw for cutting boards. Here's a video about them: You can knock a support frame up to saw on, like the table top in the video, and lay it down on the floor and then stack it up against a wall when you aren't using it. I don't have space for a work bench so portability is important to me. You can cut sections out in the middle of boards because it's plunging as well... just hand saw the corners I've just bought a fairly simple one with 1m track. It doesn't do angles but can set depth. It was £65($75) delivered... bargain! This one has 30mm cut depth and light enough to be used one handed. Ideally, you want a track length equal to the standard width of boards; 4ft or 1400mm here. I have a couple of little projects involving cutting up boards and this seems a good cost-friendly, portable solution for a hobbyist. This is my saw: http://www.rutlands.co.uk/sp+woodworking-power-tools-machinery-plunge-saws-plunge-cut-saw-with-1m-track-rutlands+xt3510

An ounce of "commonsense" is worth a pound of intelligence in a scientific discussion, eh?

No, I didn't but that is the Moon in the Earth's shadow.

Then all you'll see is a silhouette, the outline from which one might determine is a dog.

A black dog is not an absence of light; it is not a perfect absorber

We see a configuration of the light that represents the object the photons interacted with.

The distance our activities and signals, travelling at light speed, have reached out into this galaxy, let alone the universe, is pitiful.

You have to be careful when you go on a vitamin and mineral binge because you may harm yourself. For instance, having too much vitamin D can cause hypercalecaemia where one starts developing calcium deposits in the wrong places. It's best to check your levels and then deal with any deficiency. I have to say that your tone on this subject is like that of an evangelist.

What island/volcano is that?

Substrate is the medium that holds the plants roots instead of soil, like rockwool, pebbles etc. What's the difference between composted excrement and the composted bodies of countless critters (including their excrement) in soil? Just use material that has undergone complete decomposition.

i don't think so. As Moon said, you'll be killing the microscopic life, which are the whole point of using organics. If you are going to mess about boiling it you'll just have a bunch of chemicals in solution; you might as well use packaged chemicals that are tailored to your desired crop. it's the same thing with less mess and more predictable results.

The main function of nukes to date has been one of mutual fear where the endgame has always been seen as an Armeggedon scenario with no winners. Would this shift that idea to a winnable one, hence, possibly increasing the likelihood?

What do you think?

(Scrutinises iNow's post for Skitt's Law confirmation)

Well, the US judicial system can sentence people to centuries of detention. The middle line is life without possibility of parole.

Yes, the smallest 'object' we can see is one excited rod, which equates with a pixel.

It's interesting how certain actions are embedded that are peculiar to species. Mine was a light-hearted one but many new-born animals will stand up and walk within minutes and dogs will make a circle before lying down...

Yes, there is. Put a kid that can just walk and never seen a pond or lake by the waterside and I'll guarantee the first thing they do is pick a stone up and chuck it in. On that gene is written 'stone->water'.