padren

Maybe they did learn to connect the dots off cereal boxes: This image for instance, proves that the "its a rabbit" theory is entirely incomplete and flawed, end of story.

I checked wikipedia and then looked at it again 20 seconds later...in that time someone had vandalized it by adding a large photo of some guy's naked crotch to the top. I always wondered how well he knew his trade and if he just made everything look stupidly dangerous while being in control, or if he was risking his life recklessly. Then there's the one in a million accident. I always thought he was a little crazy but he seemed like a good guy and certianly had infectious enthusiasm. No doubt he'll be missed.

Since all the planets move around the sun on an elipitcal plane with the exceptions of mercury (7degrees) and pluto (17) is the general solar plane even with the milkyway's galatic plane? If so, are most planetary or binary star orbits also close the same plane, or is it pretty random? Also, I read somewhere that the solar system actually dips down and comes up on a sine wave like pattern relative to the galactic plane - do we know what the mechanism and freqency of this occurance is, and if it is observed in any other orbital systems we've discovered?

I scored: Your PERSONAL issues Score is 100%. Your ECONOMIC issues Score is 30%. I can give some examples of where tarifs are needed economically: I have family up in Canada, where there are no more onion growers in their area. Basically, California dumped onions in BC at a great cost to themselves, selling them far cheaper than they can make a profit on. Naturally, no one in BC could compete with that, and the farmers stopped growing onions after a few years of this. They went bust. Now, California onions come at a jacked up price, since there are no more farmers left locally that can undercut them. Personally I find this a gravely unfair practice, and feel strongly that communities should be able to at least subsist in times of emergency off of foods produced as closely to their locals as possible. Granted no one is going to die in a Great Onion Famine but it is just one example (a real one) of how the free market can cause real problems when left unchecked. Also, given that we as a nation will do everything in our power to ensure at least x percent of people are unemployed, there will always be people who just keep up with the curve. If we had 100% employment, growth would stagnate completely. It would become exceptionally hard to hire anyone, and if you did it would either be someone just entering the workforce for the first time or by forcing another business to reduce it's employment base by stealing an employee away. I have no problem with welfare programs, and trust them far better than charities. I am also very strongly in favor of nationalized healthcare, since its one of the few industries where the free market pressures cause more profits for the more you find excuses to kick off your consumers that need it. Since profit and performance are inversely related, it seems like the last thing that should be determined by the free market. I think the free market is the best way to protect our economy, much like a crazy guard dog protects a warehouse. And likewise, I believe in good sturdy fences to keep that dog from running amok.

I like Jack and Steven. Orange County and School of Rock were good in my mind, Nacho Libre was...not so good. Also tops are Jon Stewart, Dennis Leary, and Sarah Silverman. I am not sure why comedy and emotion are supposed to go together - often it works better when its dry.

When you are a kid you don't tend to know the world in much detail, so you have all kinds of simple theories as to how the world works - and when you are young as long as a theory is self consistent and basically meshes with your own sheltered evidence gathering. Plus, you can always find some older jaded people who have very simple theories to explain how the world doesn't work to explain away their own failings...which when you are young can really leave you with the impression that you are very smart. I think its more or less a "you don't know how much you don't know" thing, but it is also helpful. Each generation comes up with new ideas, and then has them tested and challenged by the next. Out of every 10 foot-in-mouth moments, maybe there is one thought that challenges something like segregation.

Its the pains in life that make you aware you are still in the game - if you didn't care so much it wouldn't hurt so much, so take it as a good sign that many times life is painful. I've gone through some very long phases of "not such good times" and can relate, life was horridly painful for much of 8 years and then I lost it all and for 2 years had even less. The one plus I've always had (I guess) is that I've always felt that life just has many puzzles to solve, and the more you live the more you learn and the sooner you find out what works for you and gives your life joy. Life is pretty damn good right now, but I can tell you the first 28 were largely pretty harsh, its only been over the last two years that things have come together. All I can say is I'd gladly suffer twice as bad as I did for almost 3 decades to get to where I am today...and chances are you aren't as slow as I have been. Just remember its a question that has a solution and as long as you don't give up trying to solve it, you'll get definately get there. PS: make temporary friends - life's about the moments you live, and even someone you may only know as a good friend for a short time is still going to improve your future life and theirs. And who knows - maybe you'll make some friends for life as a completely unexpected bonus.

Granted, but you soon develop symptoms of radiation poisoning and severe back strain from your 180 Lbs portable nuclear reactor backpack that's attached by a cord to your cellphone. I wish my computer wouldn't freeze up with strange hardware probs from all my mucking around in its guts.

Everyone does, but in a manner consistent with this thread, giving you a constant headage. I wish I was the God of The Badgers, worshiped by these devot and fanatical mammals.

I always love that creepy one: As you are, I once was. As I am, you shall be ...or something like that. For some reason I can't help but to laugh at simply "Have you seen my stapler?" I don't think I'd want to be in the ground anyway though, cremation takes up a lot less space.

Perhaps there is a military contractor out there who wants conventional ICBMs so that the ICBM can go back into production. I really do wonder what the logicists would boil down to, when you compare cheaper cruise missiles with the expense of moving delivery systems into position vs the cost of a one shot ICBM.

Then being pro-life and pro-death penalty isn't hypocritical, but someone claiming to believe in an absolute sanctity of human life and the death penalty would be. I am pro-choice and anti-death penalty, but I don't think people who are opposite on both are hypocritical for it. They may be incidently hypocritical in many other ways, but not that one.

Maybe it would be good to determine what a "successful" moral structure would look like (its traits and effects) and then determine if including the "conscious experience" as one of the morally relevant aspects makes it more successful. While it is not drawn on indepth analysis of the above...I do go on the hunch that it does.

I still wouldn't call it "intelligent design" since it would really be more a matter of getting the initial "ingredients" right to produce a universe that naturally unfolded in a bio-friendly manner, but would likely be limited to macroscopic parameters, not design of individual aspects of the world we live in, and certianly would require darwinistic natural selection to produce intelligent life from earlier lifeforms. It also wouldn't involve any "will" on the part of "gaia" or the universe, as all the will would have gone into creating the conditions prior to the big bang, and the rest is the result of the "natural condensation" that has followed. The interesting idea is that an original biocosm would have to have occured naturally, and created the first artificial designed universe, and who knows how close to "perfection" they got it...it could be that they made a moderately improved one, which in turn had longer to develop intelligent life and spawned an even more improved one...it is entirely possible that each biocosm takes the improvements of the mix of the last (not by knowing their mix but by simply having more hospitable conditions for intelligent life to thrive and thus more time to perfect the methods) and builds a better universe. Unless they had the means to build in a giant field of stable stars that write out "Please direct all complaints to the Mansento Corporation" into our universe...we likely will never actually know.

Would a rubber ball work? It would take the force of gravity, and upon impact with a hard surface - bingo - takes the energy that gravity applied to it and reverses it.

Its like inventing a mechanical pump system that moves water from one tank to another and somehow, due to "innovative pump design" ends up with more water afterwords in the second tank than was in the first. I hope it works, but I am understandably cautious.

Of course if it happened, it would not have been possible if the terrorist groups hadn't made it so uncomfortable to live in Israel. All those palestinians who decried the violence of their peers would certainly have egg on their face, and the terrorist parties would probably get their own chapters should Islam ever branch and go "Book of Mormon" - considering such a feat has not ever been accomplished before. Its hard to just say its a "no fault" move, when there is a direct link between terrorism -> reward. Plus, its a lot more than land, its an entire nation's infrastructure; from highways to powerplants to military bases to hospitals and everything else.

What about all these deep sea vents? It seems to me, you have areas that are very hot and very cold quite close to each other on the sea floor, which is perfect for extracting energy. Plus, a sea floor geothermal rig could easily be relocated with ballast tanks if an area becomes unstable, whereas an onland site needs both deep drilling and can't be "floated" to a new location. In fact, the whole rig could produce hydrogen right there, and float large tanks up on tethers for transfer to transport tankers. Whether its a massive station with steam turbines and generators or a very small scale effecient sterling engine based rig I would expect it to be pretty practical, and could be heavily automated.

Its the wealthy liberals that live in ivory towers in an elite aristocracy and attend romanesque banquets and orgies... whereas conservatives are in-touch-red-state-salt-of-the-earth types that just happen to have billions of dollars sitting around due to their honest work'n elbow grease attitude and faith in the capitalist system. I had to paraphrase, I've heard it many times before, but its hard to memorize something word for word as you hear it when your eyes are rolled back deep in your head. Long ago I classified Bill O'Rielly, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter not so much as media figures, but simply as bad odors. It was an involentary reaction that just sort of creeped up over time.