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This is something I kind of call "Sherlock Syndrome" when trying to find answers: When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. The problem is that often, the simplest, most brilliant methods are the ones that are the easiest to miss. Very few people have been urged to solve the problem of moving such heavy blocks with primitive tools since the advent of cranes, but as has been mentioned here, there are some very clever ways of doing so. It is just too easy to dismiss something as impossible by available means when it really is, possible. It doesn't rule out that aliens visited our ancestors, but it does seem more probable that we've overlooked a simpler explanation than aliens traveling across light years to help us move some rocks.

Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't space/time expanding as the universe expands, and accelerating for unknown reasons? It's a HUGE stretch to say it is even likely to be tied to 'external energy' but could it fit speculatively? I honestly don't know how much we know about the acceleration of the expansion of the universe, why it's happening, or the mechanics involved, so I don't know if that is already a failed premise. This question about "before the big bang" always throws my head for a loop: I can't get around the paradox that either "causality started" from some sort of "acausal event" or, causality is infinite which makes even less sense to me as there would be no "initial prior form" that through causality created the form of the universe we see today. Then I remind myself my brain evolved in this universe to deal with this universe, and there is no real reason for it to be geared to deal with the factors that could have lead to this universe.

Science is a process by which we come to a consensus on models that can describe aspects of how the universe behaves. It intentionally doesn't touch topics that lack evidence that can be compared for the purpose of coming to such a consensus. Faith is deeply personal, and is outside the realm of what the scientific method is for. This is one of the key reasons topics end up in pseudoscience and their proponents feel dejected - it's not that science says "Bigfoot" doesn't exist, it's that science is unconcerned with questions that lack credible evidence to investigate. Therefore, you can have an unscientific conversation about Bigfoot, and some scientists may even suggest such a creature exists, but they do not suggest their view is based on hard science. In the same way, science isn't at odds with religion, it just doesn't apply to the investigation of exceptionally personal experiences. The closest this comes to conflict, is when a religion has an explanation for something observed, such as "the earth exists and thus was created" and science has a theoretical explanation for the same thing that conflicts with the other explanation. Even then science isn't "refuting" the religious explanation, just proposing another one that can be backed up with scientific data that meets the criteria of a scientific theory, for the benefit of people who prefer that approach to understanding those aspects of the world.

Basically it boils down to probable cause. If there is probable cause, a warrant can be acquired and a wiretap permitted. Without that, it's a fishing expedition and really no different than random searches of homes to see if anything is caught in the dragnet. The legality can be a little more blurry when you have one or two foreign nationals in a telephone conversation, but the rights of two US citizens is still pretty clear - no warrant then no invasion of privacy is permitted. ...at least that's how I remember how it stands, I'm not an expert for sure.

This The daily show vid gives a good look at the "love em then turn on em" media behavior. at 1:13 in vid: J Oliver: "Jon, it's been over 12 hours, we are on to phase two" J Stewart: "What's phase two?" J Oliver: "Blithly destroying the man's life, through excessive, unwarranted scrutiny" It's pretty sad, can't really say much more than that. For some reason though, it seems good ratings fodder, so real news will have to take a back seat...again.

I am doing this 3D app that has some annoying trig in it, that is kind of messing with my head, as I am not the best trig guy on the planet...so please help! I start with 4 equilateral triangles, to make a tetrahedron, and all I want is to really have each point in the triangle touch a radius of a sphere. I map everything in horiz/vert degrees, to get the base down... I start with the "top down" and draw out on graph paper, an equilateral triangle and put a dot in the center, and draw a circle around it. I make isosceles triangles by drawing lines from the dots to the points, so you have three of those inside it, and it looks like the center point out of each triangle is 120 degrees, and the corners are 30 degrees each. Since I want "triangle one" to face zero degrees, I map the first two points as -60 and 60, or 300 and 60 to avoid negatives in a 360 degree space. The second triangle's horizontal values are 60 to 180, and the last 180 to 300. I think I have the base values all correct. Now, for the vertical aspect, I have I want the tip of the tetrahedron to point straight up, which is 90 degrees vertical from the plane, so I figure, based on the same info, I should have it go down to -30, so that would be 120 degrees total using those inner isosceles triangles as reference points. Therefore, I think I should be able to use degree coordinates of points at 300,330 60,330 and 0,90 to plot "triangle one" and just step the "x" by 120 degrees and leave the "y" values the same to make the other two "up pointing" sides, and then plot the bottom 4th triangle as 300,330 60,330 and 180,330 to what I want. What I need to know - are those presumptions correct for the base values? I have a formula that seems to work perfectly where all I have to do is supply a radius and it should use the degree values to make my tetrahedron, but it looks "stretched" and not quite right. I am not sure if my starting values are messed up, or the formula has some weird bug in it. I am posting in math and not compsci because this really seems to be a math issue, I can code alright, but the math makes my brain melt in 3D. If it would help, I can post my formula to take degree coords and return a x,y,z coord based on a fixed radius, but I really want to know if my base radial coordinates are correct or not. TIA!

Okay, but that doesn't address my other concern: I could work 20 hours a week, and spend the other 20 trying to: increase my skills, write a book, start a business... If I make as much money in 20 hours than someone who works 40, I probably had to work hard for that privilege, and I may have other endeavors than "slacking off" to take up the other 20. If I want to write a book, do I have to officially start a company for it, and log the hours I put into it at $0 pay, to offset how your plan would punish me? * I know you say it's not "punishing me" but "stops punishing mr 40/hr/week" but you are really shifting the tax burden, and either that shifts to me, or we have less money for our federal infrastructure than I would get for my taxes otherwise, so it does end up "hurting me" personally. If I can meet the demands of a high end professional job, allowing me to work 20 or even 10 hours a week and get by modestly so I can get 10-30 hours to dedicate to writing a book, why should I be taxed as if I am living with the means of someone with 2-4 times my income has? If I make the choice to live lean, that hurts enough, and I don't spend the spare time "slacking off" either. I put it into personal projects that are a gamble, but I feel are worth it. I just think your idea fails to account for that sort of situation.

Lets say I take a job that pays a good amount, that may be really stressful but I can get by modestly on say, 20hrs/week because I have my own projects I want to work on the rest of the time - maybe I am writing my own software or a book. Maybe I am taking college courses or just studying from technical manuals to improve my skills. Should I be taxed as if I am earning twice the money I am actually making? Personally, 95% of my work is per project based on a bid, I don't even keep track of my hours most of the time. I can understand the underlying logic that the lower paid/more hours fellow is paying as much as someone that makes his income in a single hour, but I still don't really see that as unfair or even likely to occur. Anyone who is making $1000/hr but only works one hour a week is not only a severe anomaly, but probably is only such due to other factors not being tracked that add up to unpaid time, or intermittent availability of that type of work. Plus, you may want to factor in the sheer amount of time that (unless they are a reality tv celebrity) goes into training and such that puts a person in the position of making $1000/hr. A lot of people who end up unemployed may take part time hours just to get them, and be rather destitute despite getting a decent rate of pay. While they may be trying to "move up" to full time it can be hard sometimes. Those sorts of people sound like exactly the type of people who should not have an extra helping of taxes dumped on them.

It seemed to me that McCain felt he had to pull something "big" off and this was his chance, (not sure what he could have done) but he didn't know how to do it. It wasn't until the end of the debate that it really became obvious to me how much stress he was under, when they all got up and he seemed entirely flustered with nervous energy - anyone catch his "Jazz hands" he kept throwing out there? He was like a coiled spring that just couldn't hold it anymore. The most amusing thing was getting coffee today, since I live in a small Wyoming town of 10k, you almost never hear about politics unless its really just someone parroting a diatribe at a bar, and a couple of women were talking about the debate. All I really heard was they seemed concerned about Barack, especially about gun rights, but mentioning McCain one said rather loudly in exasperation "Every time he snickered, it sounded like I was watching Beavis and Butthead, but no one was laughing." I have to say Bob Schieffer really impressed me as the moderator, he asked some good questions and did a pretty good job of keeping them on track. Even if he didn't get fully straight answers (ie, "how much of the oil we import do you plan to reduce in your first term") there were a lot of pleasantly straight questions.

While I did find it somewhat funny, it is also pretty brillant. If a conservative friend send me a link saying "This 13 minute video proves Obama is a Muslim and a Black Panther" I'd probably not look at it, but 30 seconds... I might invest that time to find enough points to ridicule him with later. The 30 second clip might hook people to watch the full 13 minutes who wouldn't bother otherwise - after all, you could almost expect some sloppy BS trying to tie McCain to bail out scandals following the current state of Wall Street... it's a pretty lucky coincidence that his shady S&L history resonates at this exact moment in history. Regarding the fact checking: If anyone runs across a youtube of Bill O'Rielly's comments on it, I'd love to see how he "no spins" this one. I can't stand to watch the guy but it may just be tight enough to make it entertaining in this case.

Personally, I think its better when a sentence starts with "I believe" than the absence thereof when it is an opinion. Something like "I believe food is healthier when..." is much better than "Food is healthier when..." but I do think you are correct in that it is not always topical to simply post one's beliefs on a matter, and it doesn't give much to work with. My bad health habits: Smoke about a pack a day. Drink to excess in moderation, no more than 3 times a week (well, there are exceptions) Not really into drinking in moderation though, bit of a time sink. I hate fast food but do it when cash is low. Not that big on rec drugs, find the hangover too long. Should exercise, but don't and I can usually make it up a mountain better than my gym going friends, so it doesn't worry me too much. Dropped sugar somehow, I used to fiend but just stopped. Caffeine is probably out of control, got a $400 coffee tab to take care of... 1-2x 16oz coffees with at least 2 shots of espresso per day, shower shock soap, used to hit the mints a lot.

I like how they have a 30 second trailer for a 13 minute video - that shows some very deep insight into the current condition of the average attention span. The video seems pretty well done too, quite a brilliant move in my opinion.

A sticky copy in P&S would be fine by me - I considered posting there, but I didn't want it to come across as an attack on any of the threads, as there are a few there that had a 'bit of an influence' on a number of points. Regarding the comments, I quoted two of the sections and made modifications in blue, in case you want those to make it into the sticky (too much time passed to edit original I think, or I have Button Blindness again) I am glad people like it, as far as a guide goes though, I doubt it can provide anything useful to "Revolutionary Theorists" as they already seem to follow the formula to perfection.

(tongue in cheek humor only, but could resist after reading the psuedoscience section as of late ) So, you have a brand new theory, or had an idea that turned you on to some research that supports your idea but is not getting the revolutionary accolades it deserves. But now you are stuck: all the people you know are too thick to get it, or humor you for a moment and change the subject. Which way do you go to get to the top? Well, don't worry, follow this easy guide, and soon you'll be on your way to the notoriety you deserve: This guide covers the first, most vital step in the process: getting discredited by a science community forum. All the great revolutionary theories in history have been met with resistance, its time to ensure yours does too. So, first things first... Choose a good thread title: You want to make sure your thread gets noticed, so a title is very important. The most basic forms are "[famous physicist] was wrong - how [x] really works," or just take famous theory titles and add words like "unified" or "debunked" depending on your slant. You may want to add "YourUsername's" to the begin if you've also carefully chosen a flashy username. Get out the Basics: State how you think things work but don't be too specific, and be sure to mention when older theories are wrong, and thus contradict your theory. This is very important, because in later replies, you'll have to defend your idea by saying these other theories are incomplete and don't fully describe everything in the universe. This should not be too hard, as no accepted theory ever fully describes anything, but simply is tested to see if it works with observable measurements and can produce verifiable predictions that match future observations. As you state how things work, you want your readers to keep an open mind, so minimize the amount of observable data that does into your theory - they'll get distracted just trying to verify it before learning how it all goes together. Stick to aspects of how things were a long time ago, how they'll be in the distant future, things that are very small, or things that are very intermittent if you can. There is no need to get distracted and muddied down at this point. The First Round: At this point, you want to wait for responses, and as such when asked about how aspects of your theory manage to address certain issues, you can go into further detail. Credibility is everything, so be sure to choose a condescending tone as if you are talking to a child... specifically one you don't like, and want to feel bad. Phrases such as "Well, obviously..." "What you aren't getting is..." and "If you were paying attention you'd realize..." are all good ways to start a sentence. It doesn't hurt to remind people that their classical science educations may have crippled their creativity and ability to see beyond conventional thinking. This will establish you as a true "outside the box" thinker. Never Give Ground: Chances are your theory is special because it involves cutting edge ideas that are really hard to observe in the universe with today's technology - otherwise anyone could have thought of it. This leads to the most important factor in a constructive discussion: near-immeasurable data is your friend. Take an exotic rarely measured factor, and insist it is integral to your theory while ignored in classical experiments. If people insist the classical experiments produce "expected results" remind them the exotic factor has little impact on earth, or perhaps in most situations, and that their units of accuracy are simply not enough to validate the classic experiments. Its not like they can prove you're wrong, right? Since the burden of evidence is on them, you'll be in a good position. The British Bulldog: Keep working within the second two principles, and you can get pretty far. Stick with the measurable data issue as long as you can, before you introduce the falsification methods that The Powers That Be have been using to keep us in the dark ages of true understanding. People must see how well all the parts of your theory click together (don't let them call a 'circular reference' on you) if they are going to realize just how big the implications are. Since people have been conditioned by The Powers That Be to subconsciously shun these new ideas, save them for later as needed should the discussion derail into nitpicking your theory instead of proving it false. When to leave in a huff: If your idea is truly revolutionary, chances are it will not be accepted, and probably not even understood by the conventional science community. Many are stuffy people, who do not care if you see a UFO, they only care if you can prove it beyond all shadow of a doubt with complete disregard to the sheer number of coincidences that only make sense when viewed through your theory. If you were to warn these people "The British are coming!" they would calmly offer an treatise on the fallacies of anecdotal evidence. At this point, they probably will have become insistent that you either explain some single irrelevant inconsistency or explain some observation they can't understand occurring if your theory is valid. They have exposed themselves as the close minded people they are, and confirmed your theory is so cutting edge that the conventional community is just not ready for it. As you take the sign that its time to exit stage left, leave embittered comments, generally attacking them for not disproving your theory, or for their failure to acknowledge new pages of links you cite critical of their favored models every time they try to poke a hole in yours. At this point, you should have successfully passed the first phase of your journey, getting discredited by a science community forum. With this vetting behind you, you are now ready to be rejected by of Scientific American and even greater, more prestigious magazines and journals. Good luck in all your endeavors!

Now I know how to transport beer from the fridge to the couch AND keep it cold!

I appreciate everyone's comments, I also have been stressed for time and trying to gather more information on the topic, but a work crunch is coming first at the moment. I did find this bit of information about the 3 ID 1st Brigade: http://www.stewart.army.mil/3didweb/1st%20BCT/1stBrigadehom.htm (text only shows up in IE, not FF it seems) I haven't digested it fully, or really plan to comment on it at this time other than to note "...making it the Army’s first brigade combat team to deploy to Iraq three times." regarding their service, though I am not sure what all they did while there. It does sound like they did an outstanding job which, even though the info is from their own website I don't have any reason to doubt it, and am in no way trying to bunch them in with some black helicopter conspiracy plan (or propose any such plan of any nature, of course). Just a side note: Pangloss, I'll often preface something with "It seems to me" or include "(in my view)" when I want to be clear on something that I know is just my opinion or sentiment. I do that instead of saying something like "This is a rather cavalier hack and slash patchwork approach" which would recklessly state as fact something that is an opinion. In those cases I am not trying to argue by emotion, but trying to clarify an underlying concern that motivates my exploration of the topic, to be more clear where I am coming from and acknowledge my own personal bias on why the issue concerns me.

I definitely agree. However I see the training of the Army as a rather separate issue though, from the issue of whether we should have a Brigade on standby for deployment in civilian situations at home where we are not likely to be fighting a foreign military anytime soon, or storming terrorist strongholds. It reminds me of the "Synergy" buzzword, of seeing the strengths of one element and applying it to another area previously unrelated to increase efficiency. That's fine in the business world, but we have strong separations when it comes to government operations for a reason, where efficiency is intentionally sacrificed for checks and balances. I want the CIA to work with the FBI, and share information, but I don't want the CIA to do the FBI's job on US soil (regardless of efficiency) because we have that separation for a reason. I think our checks and balances and distribution of powers are well thought out, and while we can improve how they work together I don't think we need to break them down like this to adapt to our changing world.

I think the issue there is that those issues have been discussed heavily, and can only derail a topic like this. In a science forum like this, even in the politics section, we are trying to discuss the observable facts, and the conjectures on the "911 inside job" front have already been discussed and not found to have enough observable facts, therefore belong with other such conjectures in pseudoscience. Those arguments here can only derail these threads, leading to yet more rehashing of what has already been debated, and can only be debated in terms of pseudoscience. I can't say if that's Pangloss's perspective, but if it is, I am with him on that one.

The point is that the National Guard is already who we use for this exact function, and that we have them overseas providing another function, to back up a strained Army. Now, we bring back - not the guard, but an Army brigade to do what the Guard has always done. I really am not trying to turn this into the drawings of a tinfoil hat scenario, but just examining the facts (as per that Army Times article, not the Salon one) and discussing that. It's fair to analyze and reassess how our military is deployed. The army would always be on American soil should there ever be a foreign military invasion, and now we do live in a world where those sorts of attacks are very unlikely and terrorist attacks are far more likely. That said, I still don't see the usefulness regarding the Army's specialization being of great benefit in that case, which really leaves issues of civil crisis and emergencies, which we have long established the National Guard is for. If we can bring back an entire brigade - why can't we bring back Guardsmen? As for training, the small gain we could get out of that training, in my mind, does not offset the precedent this sets. We can also increase the training of the National Guard, and at this point they certainly do have some extensive combat experience if that really is helpful. It just feels like a rather cavalier hack and slash patchwork approach to suddenly throw an Army brigade on US Soil for a long term mission of this nature, at a time I'd be much happier to see more consistency and application of the structure we already have. Also, should they have to respond to a crisis, how will they inter operate with the State level National Guard in that area? Won't this be just more confusion of jurisdiction? This issue is far more political and ideological than most, so I can understand many points will be disagreed upon for reasons that are hard to resolve. I'll admit, that I've stopped reading a thread before due to Bombus's posts, but in this thread, I'd like to say is the only comment I saw that was borderline (to me) was the "CIA" one earlier (I thought it was a joke, but I could be wrong), otherwise, he's basically responded in agreement with other posters' views.

I think there's an emotional factor too - the people don't want the bail out to be an issue, and are angry it is. They are scared of signing off on it and getting screwed, or even having to sign off on it at all, and feel its not their fault - they work hard, why is this even happening? At the same time, a simple "bailout defeated" doesn't solve or alleviate any fears or problems, so simply defeating it doesn't make people feel better either. I think the underlying message is that the public want answers, and plans that can demonstrate some sort of confidence in where we'll be going from here, and none of the representatives are doing anything to provide that.

The National Guard is being drained to serve in Iraq, and now we are putting an Army Brigade to operate actively in the nation? Is down suddenly the new up?? The mind boggles, And yet the goggles, They do nothing.

Include in the bailout that the financial solvency of any company is assessed as of being frozen per the date the bailout was first called for (the "Crisis Date"). Any company that pushes several million dollars to a CEO after Crisis Date will be left with the tab for that CEO, since their share of the bailout would only take into account the funds they had as of that date. I don't know if this can completely work as these companies are probably swinging around a lot even now, but if the compensation expenses can be assessed as of that date it may be able to work. Since the public has already called for the blood of any company allowing CEOs to make out on their money, those companies should be pretty wary of handing out golden parachutes right now, and expect any compensation tricks they may employ could hurt them severally when the money starts to come in.

Well, very true - there isn't a human that has ever lived that can honestly say they have figured out the perfect economic model. It's all about educating people to look at any given current structure, note the benefits and weaknesses of that, then say "We have options to add regulation here, which could help X but could cost Y, or we can remove regulation here, which could help Y but could cost X" and instead of teaching some BS "silver bullet" ideal we would just teach people how to understand implications of economic policy changes. I've always kind of felt the "unfettered free market" idea to be pretty much an abstraction - if you wanted a totally "free market" then the only thing that would prevent pillaging/slavery would be whatever mercenaries you pay to guard your stuff/yourself as police enforcement is a form of "government interference" if you get right down to it. At the same time, in a truly capitalistic culture, people can convince enough other people to buy into the same "co-op" group of mercenaries where it gets large enough to bully even those who don't agree with it - and label it as the "FBI" or something, and agree to have smaller groups of mercenaries deal with more local enforcement. They can mediate these co-ops by creating branches to administer what people in the region can and can't do, and set up some sort of voting system with an electoral college and such, and bully the minority into adhering to a set of regulations (economic and otherwise) under penalties of law enforced by the mercenaries. That is technically a result of "total capitalism" and yet it can create the societies we call "modified free markets" or straight up communism dictatorships. Since we seem to want the government to prevent the purchasing and selling of human beings, we pretty much want some sort of government regulation - but I do appreciate the ideal that too much interference creates more problems than it solves when you interfere with natural market corrections. Just pointing out that a true "free market ideal" is still just an ideal, not something that can exist unless you use a definition that says all markets already are "free markets" since they are the result of people using their resources (capital) to effect the world and people around them.

I do understand - its somewhat like two people in a lifeboat "lets head for the island NE," "No, we should go for the one SE," "Okay, we'll compromise and head for the open waters straight East!" Still, the economy is like a machine, and should be able to be studied as one to some extent (even if its too complex to completely model of course) and you can draw lessons from it. Is it really so hard to say "Okay, a policy like this, given the current structure of economic legislation, should help stimulate this, but may cost us in that, and may become more problematic than helpful should [x] gets too big" I am not saying everyone should be college professors in economics, but it seems with every act of legislation, all people "understand" about it is whatever summary the politicians they prefer say about it, for or against. The other thing is situations like this: A lot of people are watching this crisis on the news, on TVs bought with "no interest for 12 months" on their Best Buy card, in a house they hope to refinance on if things get hard, with a car they don't own, while juggling debts that make their financial solvency right on the edge - who really don't have much of a cushion for things to get worse. I don't know enough about economics to know if: * Are more credit cards going to default, leading to lobbying for yet more "teeth" in collections? * Are people going to have less leeway when they are late on a car payment, and find it repossessed before they know what happened? * Will refinancing a mortgage be possible when people hit hard enough times to do it? * Will people having to "live within one's means" damage the latte economy* enough to produce notable negative growth? (* by latte economy: buying expensive coffee, that newer car, the big grill, the new plasma, etc etc) I do think people need to ask serious questions about the bailout and force out hard answers, but also consider the effects of not endorsing the bailout. Without an educated populous, leaving it in the hands of politicians barely a month before an election is very scary!

How important is the timing of this bill's execution? If the House voted to pass a bipartisan bill committing to "some comprehensive level of relief within [x] time" would that allay wall street fears enough for it to stop diving at record levels? I am somewhat concerned that we are rushing so quickly to attempt to fix such a large problem - I understand the need for triage but, considering how unprecedented this crisis is in size I am not even sure what kind of effort is required to spend that amount of money in precise enough of a way to fix this problem. A friend of mine volunteered after Katrina and at least according to him, the amount of money that was going out inappropriately (to literally fraudulent) was almost physically sickening. Can it really be hammered out already to the point that checks, balances and safeguards are in place, or is getting liquid funds out there as fast as possible actually more critical?