John Cuthber

Possible, yes: anything like economical, No.

You have have reinvented the lightning conductor, but missed the point. Your idea is a bit like saying that you can stop a runaway train by damaging the motor that runs the windscreen wipers.

It does certainly indicate that he has a dogmatic belief that things are done better by the private sector. And, I can't see it as saying anything other than that disaster relief should be privatized which is essentially absurd. What does "hurricane relief R us" do in between major storms? Is it plausible to have a bunch of people and kit waiting? I think the only plausible mechanism is to take a group of well trained , well equipped people who are good at working together as a team and use them. Obviously, that's a problem if the armed forces are busy fighting a war, but the rest of the time they are already being paid for(The US military budget isn't exactly small) and they are just the sort of people you want. How could a private company have that sort of manpower on standby? So, if it's a bad idea (or an impossible one) to have a privatized disaster relief system and Romney is all in favour of it, then he's in favour of doing things badly. Please vote for someone else.

"Surely taking off the top 10% to 20% of a hurricane power is achievable?" Why are you sure of this? Have you done the studies, have you got the maths to back it up? "I am not being disrespectful but sitting behind the computer and pulling something apart is the easy bit, often fun (because I have done it) and completely unproductive." For a start, you are being disrespectful. For a finish, it's not "completely unproductive" to shoot down a silly suggestion before anyone wastes money on it. It would, for example, be a lot more productive to put that money into something which will actually work, like flood defences. It's not a matter of pulling out a small weed before it grows into a big one. You would need to disrupt the system that s supplying energy to the whole area of the sea involved- otherwise the only effect you will have is to move the storm slightly. The number of drones is a problem- because you don't need to trigger 1000 strikes, you need to trigger 1,000,000,000 of them. All in a carefully arranged widespread grid. Super storms are not like bullies- you can't face them down or get them to chicken out. The analogy just doesn't hold up.

You can't pursue it further because you have not made a start. The first thing you said "If the number "1" explains itself and every other number," does not make sense. In what way does 1 explain itself? How can you say that 1 explains 42? You are just making word salad.

"Can energy be transferred from wind to lightning? " Not very well. Also you need to find out how much energy is in a thunderbolt and how much in a storm. From that you can work out how much lightning it would take to damp the storm down.

The government will do some of the restoration work wherever it strikes. So will the insurance companies. But if the government steers a hurricane so that it kills my brother then I will prosecute them for murder and sue for punitive damages. The best way to stop people being killed by storms is to move the people out of the way. The second best way is to read the story of the 3 little pigs.

Yes you do. It is very obvious that you do. In particular, here is a viewpoint that you have ignored consistently for ages. You have not answered my earlier question. Unless you are accusing someone of handing it out, there's no way I could smell the crap is there? That's my point. You are contradicting yourself. So, lets get this straight Exactly what crap are you saying is being handed out? Who is doing it? What evidence is there to back up your accusation (even if you insist that it's not an accusation)? I predict a non-answer- go on- be a devil- prove me wrong and actually answer the questions. Did you think we would believe you when you said you hadn't ignored it? You still have not answered it. Why did you think we would believe you?

It doesn't Yes.

According to the Wiki page "After Attila left Italy and returned to his palace across the Danube, he planned to strike at Constantinople" so, at best, the Pope persuaded him to move the war somewhere else. Together with the fact that there are other equally plausible reasons for Attila's change of plan (based on practical reality) and the fact that, even the Christian version concedes that "Priscus reports that superstitious fear of the fate of Alaric—who died shortly after sacking Rome in 410—gave him pause.". So it wasn't Christianity, but a different superstition that got him to change his plans. Sorry, I don't buy it. Is there actually any evidence of a war being prevented by religion? As for the fact that religion and science are different yes: clearly. It would be much better if religion stuck to it's strengths and left science to do the things which it does well, like establishing the age and nature of the universe. Providing an understanding of love (in terms of evolutionary biology and brain chemistry). Explaining the origin of life. explaining the origin of mankind. Pointing out that world wide floods are impossible. And so on. Clearly religion should play to it's strengths. For example, maintaining old superstitions for nor reason other than self interest; wearing silly clothes and sitting on gold thrones while preaching about the importance of giving to the poor.

We should check many sources, but most of us can't be bothered. If you are going to just use one news source, don't pick the one which research has shown leaves you knowing less than you would if you didn't follow the news at all.

That site starts with "I see the phrase “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” tossed around often-especially in terms of religious debates. " So do I I ask how they sleep at night with that tiger in their bedroom. Even without all the maths that the web page gives they usually accept that, if there were a tiger they would know about it, so the absence of evidence is actually evidence of absence. I'd still like MigL to let us know what wars were stopped by religion. Now, I realise that, if the war didn't happen, nobody will have given it a name, but I'd like to see what major international conflict was resolved peacefully, rather than belligerently, because of the intervention of religion.

Name one.

Just remember that if you don't quench the hurricane, but only move it you will be held liable for the damage where it does strike.

Depending on the composition of the gasoline, methanol might not mix with it. One of the big problems with adding ethanol to gasoline is that it's difficult to get the last of the water out of the alcohol and if you get a layer of water in the bottom of the tank it messes up the engine.

Seriously, people who don't watch the news turn out to be better informed than people who only watch Fox. http://publicmind.fdu.edu/2012/confirmed/final.pdf

So, you rely on a news channel which is well documented as being biassed. Why do you do that? Never mind that, why not answer my earlier question? Unless you are accusing someone of handing it out, there's no way I could smell the crap is there? That's my point. You are contradicting yourself. So, lets get this straight Exactly what crap are you saying is being handed out? Who is doing it? What evidence is there to back up your accusation (even if you insist that it's not an accusation)?

The thread is indeed all over the place, but I keep trying to bring it back on track. Here I go again. I have no idea why the embassy was closed. There's no sensible reason to think I might , so it was a red herring. Unless you are accusing someone of handing it out, there's no way I could smell the crap is there? That's my point. You are contradicting yourself. So, lets get this straight Exactly what crap are you saying is being handed out? Who is doing it? What evidence is there to back up your accusation (even if you insist that it's not an accusation)?

I really am looking for answers, in particular I'd like an answer to the question I have kept on asking Here it is again so you can answer it or admit that you can't. Unless you are accusing someone of handing it out, there's no way I could smell the crap is there? That's my point. You are contradicting yourself. So, lets get this straight Exactly what crap are you saying is being handed out? Who is doing it? What evidence is there to back up your accusation (even if you insist that it's not an accusation)?

Rather than adding to the red herrings about Obamacare, perhaps you should answer the question that you have been ignoring. Unless you are accusing someone of handing it out, there's no way I could smell the crap is there? That's my point. You are contradicting yourself. So, lets get this straight Exactly what crap are you saying is being handed out? Who is doing it? What evidence is there to back up your accusation (even if you insist that it's not an accusation)? I predict a non-answer- go on- be a devil- prove me wrong and actually answer the questions.

What Rigney actually said was this "At present Romney leads in all categories except women voters, and once they realize a decent paying job will buy them oodles of goodies, Obama hasn't a chance". There's a clear implication both that Romney will provide more jobs, and that women are slow to notice this. It might also be taken to imply that women are particularly keen to acquire "oodles of goodies" which seems odd. The fact is that, under Obama more people (men and women) are getting jobs to buy goods. Under Bush the number of unemployed was rocketing. Like I said, it's not men or women that stand against Romney, it's the economic facts. BTW, Essay, employers can only provide decent jobs if the infrastructure is there- an educated workforce, a reasonable transport network, and so on. Tax cuts don't go to pay for those so they rather reduce the opportunities for growth in jobs and the economy. All they lead to is a greater gap between rich and poor. So, it's no shock that the guy who says he doesn't care about those without much cash wants to make them relatively poorer. http://capitalogix.typepad.com/.a/6a00e5502e47b28833013489833759970c-pi Someone just summed it up rather better than I can. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=U9G8XREyG0Q#!

It doesn't count if you generate jobs in China (unless, of course, you are in China.)

This looks a lot like homework help to me. If I'm wrong, please let me know to what you will apply this information.

Presumably that would have the same problem as burying it.

OMG! Another Clinton! You mean another president who, like Clinton and Carter (and unlike all the others since Nixon) actually lowered the US national debt? If the new guy does no better than Obama then he will presumably continue to reduce unemployment (Obama had to reverse the steep rise generated by Bush- it took Obama some months to get it going down rather than up but he has and it's now falling). Incidentally, the last time unemployment was as bad as it was when Obama took office was under Reagan, who raised it to the highest levels seen since WWII. http://www.google.co.uk/publicdata/explore?ds=z1ebjpgk2654c1_&met_y=unemployment_rate&idim=country:US&fdim_y=seasonality:S&dl=en&hl=en&q=us+unemployment#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=unemployment_rate&fdim_y=seasonality:S&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=country&idim=country:US&ifdim=country&tstart=-691977600000&tend=1348786800000&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false If Romney is going to win, the women are just one group who have to swallow the lie that his policies are good for the economy. The interesting thing is that so many men have already done so. That's the "fantasy", the idea that Romney, who has said he doesn't worry about half the population, is going to make things "better" for them by letting his rich friends take more of the majority's money. It may well be that, in the US, Romany is leading the polls, but in the rest of the world (where Fox isn't viewed as a news organisation), Obama is a clear first choice.