Sisyphus

If it's two points on the surface of the Earth, you can measure the difference in angle of shadows at the two locations at the same time to get a fraction of a circle, then multiply by the circumference of the Earth. But I agree, we need more information.

There is some reason to expect that life elsewhere would be something like life on Earth. Carbon is the most common efficient building block of complex molecules, and carbon compounds function best in certain types of environments. There would likely be a huge variety of life, some of it nothing like Earthlife, but that variety would probably include some that would be not too different from us. And by "us" I mean DNA-based life, cells with different functions, etc. I don't mean humans specifically, since the more complexity you have, the more different possibilities you have, and the less likely to find two of a kind evolved independantly.

The most effective of all time was probably the Lyndon Johnson with the little girl and the atomic bomb. Only aired once, and probably the most infamous ad ever, strongly implying that Goldwater would start a nuclear war. Of course, to be fair, Goldwater also implied that he would start a nuclear war. Honorable mention goes to Reagan and the bear.

Hillary won in New York because she talked about the issues and ignored her opponent, while her opponent did nothing but smugly try to stir up anti-Hillary sentiment, which ultimately just made him look juvenile. I think it's possible the same thing could happen on the national scale. I also think she could definitely beat Frist, who shares the Senator disadvantage (even more so, actually), is not particularly charismatic, and has pissed off the left a great deal already with his cynical exploitation of his MD with the Terri Shiavo and abstinence education nonsense. McCain could beat her, I think, but he'd never win the Republican nomination. It is kind of a foregone conclusion that Hillary has a lot of people who hate her, but I'm not certain if people really know why they do. So, for those who dislike Hillary, why?

Depends on what you mean by "believe in aliens." Do I believe there is life elsewhere in the universe? Yes, absolutely. Do I believe there's an alien race flying around Earth, probing rednecks? Absolutely not.

It wouldn't have to be a guarantee. It would just make it significantly easier to get out of poverty. And even if it all was blown on frivolous purchases, they're no worse off, and it's money in the economy.

How about raising the minimum tax bracket? Currently in the U.S., if you make less than $6000 in a year, you are not required to file income taxes. What if we raised this figure to, say $20,000? It wouldn't have the problems associated with raising minimum wage (i.e., forcing businesses to outsource or lay off workers), it would put more money into the economy where it will actually be used, and it will help out those who need it most, without giving anyone a free ride. I dunno, just a thought...

Ah, and I was giving you the benefit of the doubt. Talk about not learning from mistakes.

So there's little difference between the two parties' plans, and yet they call each other dangerous and incompetent. Neat. Now what about these specific suggestions? Inspecting every cargo container: I don't have enough info to know whether this is feasible. I've heard critics say it would slow down the process unacceptably, which seems reasonable, considering we only inspect something like 1% now. Then again, all the complaints seem to assume we wouldn't make any changes to the infrastructure, which isn't realistic. The system is only designed to inspect a few containers, so of course its going to take forever if we do it the same way. But would assemblyline-like inspections really be impossible to implement? Expensive to set up, surely, but then, it is kind of a gaping hole in our national security. Ensuring emergency services communication: This seems like a no-brainer. Of course they should. Of course, Homeland Security is supposed to coordinate this stuff, but so far that particular enormous bureaucracy seems a little slow on the draw. I'm not sure why the commission's recommendations haven't been implemented, since nobody seems to be criticizing them. Not allowing foreigners to run ports: Eh. I don't really that as a problem, and trying to implement it would likely cause more problems than it solves. I mean, the Coast Guard is supposed to handle security, anyway, right? And where are these American companies supposed to magically come from? I think this is just an overreaction to what seemed like a sneaky deal but turned out not to be. Withdrawing troops: This isn't any different from what Bush proposes, as far as I can tell. A vague withdrawal at some vague point in the future. Certainly the Administration messed up, but I haven't seen any real difference in plans on what to do now. Unless their argument is simply that decisions shouldn't be made by those who seem to view the war as a cowboy fantasy (and who are beholden to war profiteers), in which case they may have a point. Supporting the military better: This is the "state of the art" part and the improved GI Bill of Rights part. This is, at least in that short article, very vague. However, I'm assuming they're referring to stuff like the infamous armor shortage. Better equipping the military would, like everything the military does, be extremely expensive to the taxpayers. Of course, quagmires are expensive, as well, and it's not clear to me that the Republicans have learned from their mistakes in that area.

Might also be useful to crack open a nut or something.

1) There's no such thing as "deevolution." 2) We didn't evolve from great apes. We and the great apes had a relatively recent common ancestor. To take human DNA and alter it to the point of being like one of the great apes, that would be moving sideways, not backwards. 3) Inbreeding can result in recessive traits manifesting themselves, which might explain your Turkish family. But they'd still be just as human as you or me, just with some unfortunate defects. Apes are not defective humans. 4) Klingons aren't real.

http://www.wordspy.com/words/wraprage.asp You're not alone...

But popular "science" is still thoroughly corrupted by pseudoscience, as is every institution that relies on popular consumption. Look at the garbage that's been on the discovery channel recently. They put on stuff about aliens building the pyramids of Egypt, more people watch, and they get more money in ad revenue. The more public anything becomes, the more it will pander to the lowest common denominator. With regards to government, it translates into the biggest drawback of democracy.

Agreed with Tycho on everything. Those are all pretty much "magic" machines, in that they do things that shouldn't be possible with no explanation. Additionally: A laser that's visible is just an inefficient laser that's reflecting off something in its path. A "laser" that moves slowly enough to be seen (like in "bolts" or whatever) is not a laser at all. Plasma is just ionized gas (which makes up 99% of the matter in the universe), but is nonetheless one of the most absurdly misused words in science fiction. A "plasma weapon" is silly. So is using it to transfer energy, which would basically just be steam pipes, as you describe them. "Encased in energy" doesn't mean anything. "Energy" is not some glowy substance. There's only kinetic energy, potential energy, etc.

What do you have in mind as a solution?

How does that address the question?

Do you believe the United States of America will dominate the human race until the end of the universe?

Actually, the Earth was widely known to be round for thousands of years before Columbus (which is what I assume Dieter is referring to). It's nearly exact size was also known, but for some reason Columbus thought it was much smaller than any mathematician could have told him, and so thought he was in India when he showed up in the Bahamas. It's off-topic, I realize, but this whole topic is pretty silly, so I don't feel too bad about it.

That has some truth to it, but ultimately I think you're being too flippant. Nazism and Fascism were basically huge overreactions to perceived social threats. But they were also, in essence, social movements, and turned out to be quite dangerous indeed. The Nazis brutally subjugated their own people, it's true, but were only able to do so because the culture embraced them with open arms. So what happened? How did an entire nation (or enough of a nation to effectively be an entire nation) go insane in a few years? What the **** happened? Nothing more than a proud, aggressive culture reduced to humiliation and economic depression, and looking for hope, pride, and someone to blame. Hardly a unique circumstance, I think, and far from the only runaway social trend that could be hugely destructive. The most dangerous social shifts, I think, are after some other catastrophe has occured. When the Western Roman Empire was overrun, Europe was in anarchy. The culture was fragmented and confused, its intellectual community effectively silenced. And how do the people react? By fully embracing a particular form of Christianity that is utterly destructive. They have nothing, and so the shunning of material things is appealing, although it completely stifles progress and sets back the knowledge the ancients had by millenia. Further, they want guidance from anywhere they can get it, the only two places left being thuggish warlords, to whom they happily submit, and the church, which becomes stupefyingly oppressive. What follows are the aptly named Dark Ages. If a setback that huge were to happen again, there might well be no recovery. Why? Because we live in a global culture, and while the Dark Ages were limited to Europe, and there were still flourishing civilizations in the Muslim world, China, etc., there wouldn't be any this time. The rennaissance in Europe was caused largely by influeence from the Middle East. Further, we've used up most of the easily available natural resources. Not much of a problem for us, since as we use more resources, we also find more ways to harvest them, and develop high-tech renewables. But it would be a huge problem for, say, a pre-industrial society. The Industrial Revolution might only be able to happen once. Or, at the very least, it would be much harder. An imminent threat? I doubt it. But a few hundred years down the line? Certainly. I consider it the most likely end to our civilization. Now why do I think this sort of thing is an issue today? Well, look at the United States. We too are a proud, aggressive culture, and have become used to winning. Further, statistics reveal a startling ignorance among the populace, and a growing trend of anti-intellectual rhetoric both anecdotally in my personal life, and what I see in politicians. Reactionary ideas like "intelligent design" seek to undermine science on its own terms, we're constantly menaced by a vague and (or so we're told) utterly unsympathetic enemy in what has been dubbed the "Long War" in a particularly Orwellian flair, the President affects a silly drawl and can't (or pretends he can't, which is worse) string together a coherent sentence, and the so-called "megachurches" draw huge congregations by essentially offering to run people's lives for them. Now, all of these things will in all probability fizzle out on their own, as temporary trends. And, of course, this is mostly just America, not the whole world. But how big of a spark would there have to be to ignite something horrible? We live in dangerous times, I think.

It would be redshifted to infinity. Of course, that's impossible, but so is a light source travelling at the speed of light, so paradox avoided.

You could say the same thing about whatever fanciful nonsense you could come up with. Have we investigated whether leprachauns played a role in the fall of the Roman Empire? No, because there's no evidence of anything of the kind. What's so unusual about that? Throughout history, things that people don't understand have been explained by gods or spirits. Now, where do they live? Well, there's a fantastic and totally inaccessible realm constantly in view. It would be very strange if they didn't have some concept of "men from the sky." And yes, I'm quite familiar with the knowledge of ancient societies. You're talking to someone who has literally spent years obsessing over ancient Egyptian and Greek mathematics and natural philosophy. Fascinating and extremely impressive (although not "rivaling our own"), but utterly irrelevant to the common religious understanding of the times. Ok, fine. There's exactly one species, out of the millions currently alive, that is capable of intelligent communication. Further, we have not discovered any evidence of any others in the past. It's quite possible that there were others, given that there are a handful of different species (chimps, dolphins, ravens, octopi) which are not too far off, but if there were, it appears they left little trace, and didn't have anything we would call "civilization." And all modern scientific evidence has all but proven. The DNA evidence alone demonstrates the geneology of humanity, and there's no alien DNA in there. The fact that some premodern societies claim divine origins for humanity is just another demonstration of how common religious themes need not be based on any reality. Why can we talk and build cities when the other animals can't? Maybe we have gods in our ancestry. Yes, actually, quite a bit more unlikely. And human communication itself was pretty unlikely in itself. Don't get me wrong: I think SETI is a great project. I've got their programs running on this very computer. I just don't expect to find anything, and certainly not any beings remotely like ourselves. Because such a hypothesis would not explain anything that isn't already explained, and there is no evidence for it. Everything in your first post has a far simpler explanation. I still don't see what cloning has to do with anything. But anyway, if you want to know why that's such a common belief, you should look for answers in how people think, not where they came from.

I think if anyone found any legitimate, worthwhile evidence, then it would be seriously investigated. But that just hasn't been the case. There just isn't anything to investigate. You offer the fairly common theme of "men from the sky" in various mythologies, but when you think about it, that's pretty much what you'd expect anyway. The sky is a vast, inaccessible place of brilliant lights and colors. To an ignorant society, it would make perfect sense for strange and powerful beings to live there. Further, though there is certainly life elsewhere in the universe, the chances that there is life enough like us, close by enough, and within the cosmically narrow time frame of human existence for what you describe is extremely small, based on everything we know (which admittedly is not much, but is nonetheless all we have to go on). For example, in the entire billions of years during which there was life on Earth, there has been exactly one species capable of intelligent communication (human beings), and us for only a few millennia - an instant in cosmic time. Now when you consider that all life on Earth had the same origin and have evolved under more or less the same conditions, the prospect of a completely alien being from a completely different origin in a completely different environment being enough like us to communicate with seems extremely unlikely.

But there were still newspapers and such. I think a few trustworthy news sources is better than a few trustworthy news sources + hundreds of untrustworthy ones.

So the invisible space hippo is just as likely to exist as not exist?