Cap'n Refsmmat

Pure democracy is pretty essential when you take the social contract view of government; if everyone voluntarily gives up rights to the government so it can act in their best interests, they naturally should have a role in making government decisions.

What sort of leverage would you get against Russia? They'd just give the agents new identities (old hat for them, anyway -- retired spies don't go around saying they'd been spies for the KGB) and deny everything. Without captured Russian agents, Russian diplomats could easily say "So? We don't care about your accusations!" to any American trying to get leverage. The US and Russia spy on each other all the time. They don't get embarrassed about it, just annoyed that their money was wasted.

I'm glad you acknowledge that, so you can avoid doing it in the future. On the other hand, I find this explanation unlikely, given your previous encounters with the subject of your ridicule. And your frequent ridicule of that person. Now, can we please get back on topic?

Nope. We're going to attack him for using a thread about quack claims (not the people who make them!) to make a veiled personal attack on a forum member because of a long-held grudge. Quackery refers to promoting scam or unproven medical practices, but the OP extended this to pseudoscience as well. Attacking economics falls under neither umbrella. Regardless, given your past record on SFN, it is clear that anti-economics-ism isn't your favorite quack claim. You just wanted to make a cheap shot. This does not follow. It is possible for people to fail at debunking a false claim. It is also quite possible, due to various confirmation biases, for someone convinced that a view is correct to reject various attempts at disproving it as unfounded or unreasonable.

Could we stay on-topic, please? We can discuss the main topic without discussing the credibility of individual posters.

Just after you label other forum members quacks and then call them stupid? Not using their name doesn't help either -- passive-aggressive attacks are even more annoying than blatant ones. I hope you realize that we consider certain behaviors unacceptable, even if you think they're great debating tactics. Now, let's get back on topic. boing[/hr] My old favorite quack claim was chiropractic treatment for diseases like asthma and allergies; I'm not entirely sure how you convince someone that the better flow of nervous signals to their legs will decongest their sinuses.

Well, my favorite quack claims involve people blatantly ignoring established rules because they believe they are somehow above them. Also, people believing that their theory must be right, and anyone who argues otherwise must be a moron. Very common on SFN, unfortunately.

No, not necessarily. Free will demands that I be capable of making decisions unpredictable through prior cause, not that I do so all the time. So then, you're saying that free will, as defined by many people, doesn't exist. If free will requires that outcomes be unpredictable, but they are not, then free will doesn't exist. Do note the loophole I provided above, though. So... the lay man's concept cannot be true, yes? That's what you're arguing?

Why didn't they? One of the 11 was already out of the country, and it was suggested that the others may have left soon if the FBI hadn't arrested them. That's what the Justice Department said, at least.

Well, my favorite quack claims all involve disguised appeals to ridicule. boing[/hr] I must also point out Crackpot Bingo: http://www.scienceforums.net/crackpotBingo.php

Are they? What you seem to be arguing is that free will really is determinism, which leads you to the conclusion that free will is deterministic. That's not the view of free will most people hold: a person with free will can consciously make decisions that cannot be predicted despite an infinite amount of knowledge of all prior experiences and values. Certainly there is some regularity to each individual's actions, but in a world of free will, past experiences and beliefs would not be sufficient to predict outcomes. What you're really arguing is that free will doesn't exist, not that it's compatible with determinism.

The problem's whether not it should be illegal -- whatever they did is illegal. But for some reason the case was dropped after the government had won. You don't do that when you just think it's not worth prosecuting.

Seeing that the federal government won the case, it appears there was enough done to warrant conviction, no matter what it was.

"Swanson, Tom Swanson. Swoon before my oscillating crystals." Right?

I think Pangloss was asking about the Tea Party's Mormon aversion, not Glenn Beck's beliefs.

It'd also be more difficult to get a strong signal from geosynchronous orbit. That's quite a distance.

Has anyone in the government announced this as their intention? I haven't heard anything about austerity from the administration, only intentions to enforce PAYGO. Hardly "austerity." Well, we are talking about economics.

Fortunately, manmade craft don't travel fast enough to get significant relativistic effects -- there's no huge time dilation on the way to Mars, for example. GPS satellites have to manage time dilation, but they simply use a formula to correct their clocks, and they don't have to do fancy maneuvers or guidance in orbit.

I think nec209 is pointing out that the monetary incentives often don't lead to medications that save the most lives; a company might spend millions on a drug to treat "female sexual arousal disorder" because they believe it will sell well, but not fund research into a tropical disease because those afflicted are often too poor to afford treatment. Removing economic incentives would be a huge mistake, though, because companies would no longer be able to afford their research (good or bad), and because there would still be no incentive to research other diseases. You may succeed in stopping research into pills for minor conditions, but how will you succeed in starting research into pills for major ones? Perhaps the best way would be to add an artificial economic incentive, much like the X-Prize did for space travel. The scale would have to be vastly larger, but pick some target -- a vaccine for AIDS, better malaria treatments, whatever -- and throw a huge sum of money out as a prize and you'll get companies fighting each other to win it.

Looking up the products, they don't look particularly dangerous, although I'd still use care to avoid getting them on your clothing or your skin. Perhaps put them in their own sealed bag. I'm not sure of specific disposal regulations though. There may be rules.

I have a Kindle, and I'm quite fond of it. I get The Times every morning, have a collection of a few dozen books, and I use the built-in Wikipedia access often. Reading the news from a detailed news source has been refreshing; The Times has good global coverage and investigative journalism that I enjoy. However, journalism is at a bit of a sticky point. The Times has recently made their website registration-only, and will soon be demanding a fee for access. Print subscriptions are down, and they maintain that without charging a fee, they won't be able to pay their wages. On the other hand, the New York Times tried a paywall a few years ago, and found that being free made more money through advertising, because visitor rates dropped dramatically when the site was pay-only. How can high-quality journalism survive through dropping print subscriptions and the proliferation of free online news? Will free blogs take over, or will journalists mount a last stand?

Pro tip: the ce tags let you type chemical equations, typeset in LaTeX using mhchem: [ce]KMnO4[/ce]

It's not the stuff here that was the problem -- it's what we cut off and moved over here: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=53555 It wasn't related to this conversation, so we split it off. It also became decidedly uncivil at points, particularly when Klaplunk started calling people psycho and told them to check in at a psychiatric clinic.

Why can't the first line be a circle, because God encompasses (surrounds) all?