Sisyphus

Why is it always magnets with these guys?

If your issue is ending the war, then your chances are much better with Clinton than with McCain, who is and has always been an unapologetic hawk. Clinton says voting for the war was a mistake. Why would you be voting for McCain?

Well, for example, with a cube, every face is an identical square, any edge or vertex you look at has the same angles as every other one. There are only five because, by definition, it has to be made of regular polygons, and there is a limited number of ways they can be tiled. This is because, in order to make a 3D shape, you need the sum of the angles at each vertex to be less than 360 degrees. For example, taking squares, if you arrange them so that three of their vertexes meet at a point, you get the corner of a cube, which is 3D because they have to "bend back" in order to meet each other without any space in between. If you use four squares, however, you just end up with a flat surface, not a 3D shape, because the sum of the four angles is 360. And you simply can't have more than four without overlapping. So why are there only five? Well, each vertex needs at least 3 faces in order to be 3D (think about 2 - you just end up with a flat surface with zero volume), and their total angles can't be 360 or greater. So, you can have 3, 4, or 5 triangles (corner are 60 degrees, so totals are 180, 240, and 300), or 3 squares (90x3=270), or 3 pentagons (108x3=324). Any greater numbers will result in total angles greater than or equal to 360, and the same for any shapes with more sides. And the angles only get larger as you add sides, so you never have the possibility of a 3d vertex again. The angles of a regular hexagon, for example, are each 120 degrees, so three of them together is already 360.

I seem to remember in the thread we had about that that Obama was saying he would delay one program a few years in favor of several others, particularly completing the ISS, expanding unmanned exploration, and developing the replacement for the space shuttles. Has that changed?

I'm delighted at the rift, but not because I'm gloating. If McCain Republicans come out on top, that would be a great step forward for everyone, including and especially the Republican Party. It's not that he's a moderate, per se. I think he's pretty unambiguously "conservative." But he is, for lack of a better word, an adult. He is not beholden to the silliness of the Christian right. He is disdainful of pandering and cheap shots (McCain, stating simple fact: "Some of the jobs that were lost in Michigan are not coming back." Romney, ridiculous on at least four levels: "Well I will fight for every one of those jobs!") He does not automatically dismiss something because it is "liberal." (torture, campaign finance, global warming, certain scientific facts, etc.) And he has consistently shown that he can find common ground and work together with people he disagrees with, which means a McCain presidency would not mean living under a hostile regime for half the country. The fact that those attributes make the likes of Anne Coulter call him "not conservative" just highlight what "conservative" really means to that wing of the party. The fall of that breed of "conservatism" would be the best possible outcome for America.

This time around, it was overly widespread granting of overly risky credit. Just like in 1929, though obviously not on the same scale. Why, does Dr. Paul have a different explanation?

I contest that claim. If you give it any thought whatsoever, you have to agree that medical science has the capacity to dramatically reduce suffering and increase quality of life over one's whole life, not just at the end. But what about the end? I agree that the last years of one's life tend to be relatively "low quality," but I also think that has always been the case. The only difference is that now, those last years happen later. What would have once been decrepit old age is now merely middle age. And as for what is now decrepit old age, well, I guess you're free to reject medical science when the time comes, but I think you'll find that your life would be not just shorter but also quite a bit more unpleasant without it.

Oh, come on. Do you really think that's an apt analogy? In 2000 people were trying to vote for president, and the results were well within the normal margin of error. In 2008, "votes" were a symbolic gesture, that some people want to count retroactively. It's like saying, "Hey, remember that opinion poll a few months ago? Well, we've decided to make your responses legally binding as votes for President." I really don't see the alleged hypocrisy here.

That really depends on what you're looking for. Your experience at MIT would be enormously different than your experience at Oxford, but you really can't say one is objectively better than the other. That particular list is pretty random. Those aren't "the best" for any particular goal or education philosophy, so it seems like you don't know what you want. (For example, if you're looking at hard sciences, where is Cal Tech? Etc.) They are, however, probably the biggest name-recognition schools. Is that what you're looking for? Also, those are really all large, graduate-centric universities. There are a dozen or so small liberal arts colleges that are just as prestigious (in academic circles, if not for man-on-the-street wow factor) and in my opinion offer a superior undergraduate experience.

What, preventing World War 3 wasn't good enough for you? In answer to OP, I should think overall monetary value would be impossible to predict. And since driving a species to extinction is irreversible, it is always something to be strenuously avoided. More importantly though, thinking about it monetary terms is probably too small-minded (understatement). We're talking about securing the continuation of life on Earth. It's bigger even than humanity itself. What is the monetary value of avoiding human extinction?

I think we should take a step back a moment and really think about the fact that we are arguing whether Wikipedia is too elitist.

I have a force field, of sorts. My mass distorts the spacetime around me, resulting in a de facto attractive force that seems to work on all matter. I haven't decided what to call it yet.

Looks like a piece of mica to me, or some similar mineral, or one of the synthetic materials derived from it. I'm guessing a geologist would recognize it immediately.

This is a minor and vague rant, apropos of nothing in particular. Is anyone else tired of talk of political "spectrums" and/or the use of that ubiquitous 2-axis political chart with "economic" and "social" variables ranging from "libertarian" to "authoritarian?" Does anyone else really not fit anywhere? Problems: Positions on different issues are not always "consistent" on a right-left scale, nor need they be in order to be logically consistent. If regarding one social issue I have radical ideas identified (by who?) as "liberal," and on another I have radical ideas identified as "conservative," I'd end up squarely in the middle of the graph, despite having no even remotely "moderate" views. And since when can any thoughtful opinion on a real issue be reduced to a point on a scale? Is it not absurd to say that every issue has two and only two possible perspectives, of which a person is defined by the ratio of sympathy between them? I am putting forth that this type of simplification is primarily just a product of tribalism. Humans have deeply ingrained instinctive attitudes towards in-groups and out-groups, and we like ways of quickly labeling people as one or the other so that we know how to feel about them. We all do it. I do it. Even though my views on a lot of issues are not especially "liberal," I still find myself thinking of myself as one, and getting prickly when "liberals" are attacked. I know fully well this is ridiculous, and I know that associating myself with half the entire population means that "we" will be attacked constantly, and I know that there's no reason I should feel in any way responsible for all the stupid shit that members of such an enormous group inevitably will do. But knowing it's irrational is only a partial comfort. Stupid instincts. To fight this, in conversation I try to avoid using any label to refer to myself for as long as possible, to avoid being put in categories. But I can usually see the gears working in the other person, listening intently for those all-important flags for identifying my tribe. The other day I was having a conversation about economics, and I must have said something to give the impression that I was a "liberal." The other guy, a "conservative," went from looking confused to being an avenging zealot of conservatism. He wasn't arguing with what I had actually been saying, mind you, but rather what he assumed I was really thinking - including things that had nothing to do with the discussion we had previously been having - based solely on his stereotype of the tribe. He ended up passionately defending ideas that I, in fact, mostly already agreed with, and as a result ended up acting like he had "won the argument." It was really annoying, and fairly typical. I've also had liberals, libertarians, etc. do the same thing. Everyone seems to end up assuming I'm the embodiment of everything they disagree with. Anyone else have similar experiences?

All in favor of making a rule against linking to Billy Joel music videos for no apparent reason, say aye.

Forum spam is getting weirder.

I have no idea what you're talking about, but based on keywords alone this looks like a familiar road to thread-closing. Stop.

How so? The examples Conservapedia uses to support that view are all ridiculous (They allow British spelling! They treat evolution as established fact! They claim the Democratic Party has historical influences of some kind!), so I'm curious to hear why you think it's the case.

Ha. I've known about this almost since they first started. Originally it was supposed to be a homeschooling resource for those who only wanted to expose their children to a very specific version of reality, and to correct supposed biases in Wikipedia against Creationism and America. (The various hypocrisies at work in their mission statement are too many to mention individually.) Not too surprisingly, it seems primarily to now be a centralized resource for self-hating gays. Neat!

I'll call individual people whatever they want, but I'm sticking with "he" as the androgynous pronoun. Maybe every ten years or so I'll see how common usage is coming along and reconsider.

I just read The Mind of the Market: Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans, and Other Tales from Evolutionary Economics, by Michael Shermer. It's an easy, entertaining read, and quite fascinating, but not really what you're looking for. It's not a course, it just convincingly makes the argument that evolutionary psychologists and economists should be talking to each other a lot more. [/unhelpful]

But... but... the internet is full of pedophiles and identity thieves!

I also thought that might happen, especially considering this:

That is basically true, but it should be noted that the coldest you can actually get it to melt (that is, the eutectic point of water) is about -6 F. So in answer to the OP questions: yes, it does work, and yes, there is a point at which it stops working, but you are only going to see that very rarely unless you live in some godforsaken northland.

My feeling is a three-legged animal might exist, but it would probably still be bilaterally symmetrical along the direction of movement. Like, one of the legs would be the "back leg." (Like a Pierson's Puppeteer.) Trilateral symmetry might also be possible in some very specific environments, or in organisms that don't move very much. The environment I have in mind specifically is from another Larry Niven novel, the Integral Trees, where essentially there is an atmosphere without a planet, and everything is in freefall all the time...