lemur

The term, "capitalism," is sometimes used in a general way to describe systems of economic control that are regulated with the use of money and finance, but in reality economic activities are governed not just by money/finance but also by other methods of exercising power/control. War and civil strife may be extreme example of moments when economic control gets out of hand as people give up on seeking new avenues of productivity and instead choose to fight with the hope of securing compliance with forms of economic mastery that restore economic privileges. Certainly I think this describes the logic of the Nazi movement following the great depression. But it could also be viewed as occurring in numerous other, less remarkable ways when people modify their activities in ways that repress, harm, or even destroy themselves and each other. In more concrete terms, when people struggle and fight over money, they are doing so to restore and gain strength in capitalism but when are those struggles economically constructive, and when are their effects more destructive than they are productive of value?

What about liquids and metals? How do you know that the molecules' shape isn't just fixed within the lattice of the crystal/solid because of interactive force? the geometry of minimum repulsion interaction sounds logical. That implies that they would have the potential to swarm around due to their attraction and freedom of motion but they don't because they get locked into relative positions due to force geometry. In a planetary model, you would expect a trapped satellite to fall into the gravity-well, but with atoms/molecules, something prevents that right? It sounds almost as if the electrons get sandwiched between blockades and they oscillate between those. Sorry that I have to try to comprehend this on what must seem like a vague "pseudo-classical" level to you. It's just hard to imagine why free particles bound by attractive force would not be in dynamic motion relative to each other. Another way to describe it would be that I would think any and all force interactions, even at the molecular level, would result in the formation of geodesic paths where particles move freely due to their inertia. If they stop doing this at some level of miniscule-ness, it would be good to know why. Does inertia exist within molecules, among their atoms, or only among molecules themselves, with other forces governing the behavior of the atoms within the molecules?

Why not? Wouldn't it depend on the shape-maleability of the molecule at a given energy-level? E.g. if a water molecule is compressed against others to its minimum volume, it would be a liquid, but if the repelling-energy among the molecules decreased to a level where the shape-maleability and overall average vibrational energy wasn't sufficient for them to slide around each other, they would crystalize into a solid. Idk, what basis is there for saying the atoms are in fixed positions relative to each other? What determines the position of their bond-connections?

The spring explanation makes it sound like the atoms are more or less fixed relative to each other at certain angles, i.e. that they don't circulate/swarm around each other. On the other hand, is it possible that they are moving and that the motion still averages out to the same bond angles, the way a race car could take different paths around a track and still average out to the same force changes on the turns? It doesn't make sense to me that bonds would be fixed at certain positions on the atoms since they are constituted from particles moving around in attractive/repellant fields.

Are the atoms in molecules locked in a fixed position so that the molecule has a constant shape? Or do the nuclei and electrons swarm around each other in patterned (or random) ways? edit: "atomic" in the thread title should be "atoms" - sorry.

Something happens to consciousness when the clock strikes 4:30am . . . Does this conversation imply that everything in the universe is conscious? Is my keyboard conscious that I'm pushing its keys because there is quantum uncertainty in its atoms?

I was actually serious about that. At first it seemed irrelevant to me and then I thought about the garden of Eden as a place where Adam and Eve learned to be fruitful and multiply. I thought the point of the video might have been to acknowledge that reproductive joy emerges from the garden of Eden in the bible story. Why shouldn't reproductive joy inspire people to faith in divinity? Isn't that part of being "created in His image?" Why else does it say He became angry when A&E became ashamed of and covered up their bodies?

I would find it far more interesting if you would provide some insight into the meaning of the story and put that up for discussion than posting maps with form-interpretations. How is it supposed to benefit anyone spiritually to know where the garden of Eden is/was on Earth and that there are lakes nearby that resemble male genitalia? I guess you expect that to inspire people into faith.

That's the first time I've seen a religious-oriented video depicting "male parts" in a seemingly excited state. Does that break any forum rules?

Why would you assume that modern international law isn't just biased in favor of dominant regimes? Isn't it arbitrary to assume that someone who remains on the same parcel of land for generations is legitimate and someone who moves from place to place is an illegal invader? It's been a while since I read Hitler, but as I recall he thought that Jews would not keep to a homeland if they had one. He thought that they would use it as a home base from which to travel the world and swindle people. I think this is why he was in favor of total extermination. Either way, the point is that anti-Semitism is anti-Semitism, whether the 'solution' is eviction or extermination - the problem is treating people as if they're a problem by nature. That's what xenophobia does on the basis of people being 'foreign.' Why should any government use violence to maintain ethnic exclusivity?

God is personification of strength, goodness, creative power, etc. When people say things like this, it has the effect of alienating people from embracing these aspects of human potential. A truly strong, good, creatively powerful person wants to see these positive attributes in others as well. They are not out to dominate and belittle others because they don't need to be happy. People who regard others as insignificant amoebas are usually those who feel weak, dominated, cynical regarding goodness and creativity, and/or that power is inherently dangerous and corrupting. Those are the people that want to regard themselves and others as insignificant and small because they fear power and the responsibility that comes with it.

Do various metals separate and stratify within a star? If so, I would be surprised if a supernova would completely homogenize the mixture. It seems more likely that there would be marbling in remnants like astroids.

What if "God's will" is not a single imperative but just a direction for free-choice? To make it as simple as possible, what if God's will meant nothing more than reasoning about what is good and evil, and the will to choose good because it makes you happy to see good things happen? In that case, if you freely chose to use your free will to reason about what was good and pursue it, how would that contradict God's will? What's more, isn't it in the biblical logic of Satan as meaning "opposer" that the very logic that individual free will and God's will are necessarily in opposition would be satanic? If you would convince people that they should submit their free will to some external authority that doesn't encourage them to exercise free will, wouldn't you just be usurping people's free-will in favor of submission to worldly authority?

I suppose it could be debated, but it depends how you define "invasion," I think. If you set up criteria for invasion that basically deems all foreignness a threat, that seems xenophobic to me. If you mean that people who define you as ethnically different are committing acts of violence and force to subjugate or eliminate you because of their view of you as ethnically different and therefore a threat, that would also be xenophobia. I think you could say that xenophobia is absent when people are able to assess others based on other factors than ethnic identity and/or locational status. But who has the right to decide who is foreign and invading or not? If aboriginal australians decided that descendants of European settlers were invaders, would it be oppressive to police violence because that would be suppressing the right of self-defense? Doesn't territorialism always rely on claims-making about who is rightfully belonging and who is not? So when is it legitimate to attack a "foreign invader" and when is it violent discrimination against an ethnic minority to do so? If you define the ethnic minority as "foreign invaders," it would be legitimate to make war again them, according to your logic. But if Nazism claimed to be deporting Jews because they were foreign invaders, you would recognize that as an excuse for discrimination and genocide. This all gets into what I consider the modern approach to national-socialism, which is to say that if people have their own country, they should go there. It is not as harsh as Hitler's view that Jews shouldn't even be allowed a homeland, but there is still an element of viewing "foreigners" as pollutants to be cleansed.

That's because the Hydrogen atom's electron is attracted to the O2 because its outer shell isn't full? What is the actual force mechanism that causes that attraction? Is there some slight surplus charge for some reason, like because of the distance of the electrons from the nucleus or something like that? Also, when you talk about free Hydrogen atoms, wouldn't those only be available when other H-containing molecules are breaking down within the reaction? Free hydrogen just floats away into space, right? off-topic: does that mean Earth has a limited supply of hydrogen that is gradually being converted into water? There are no natural mechanisms where hydrogen gets extracted from water, are there? There's another potential cause for rising sea-level.

That makes sense. So should I look at is as each atom lending two to the other in the O2? That's interesting. Why does the O2 only gain one electron instead of two to fill the shell? Is that because it is uncharged as a molecule and is thus drawing the extra electron purely because its outer shell has openings? Why is it called "spin pairing?" Maybe I should just google that one along with some of your other terms. You explain things well, though, thanks.

This is a neat idea. What kind of materials can you get from asteroids? How would a moon elevator work and why would it use less energy than rockets, and how much less? Also, why not just send robots to mine the asteroids where they are and just bring the really valuable stuff to Earth? Is there really that much use for a lot of iron (I assume this is the main metal astroids consist of)?

Oh, right. That's what those diagrams with the dots show. So when the O2 gets enough energy to break into atoms, each ends up with one of the two shared electrons, which is one more than it needs to balance its protons' charge? And so you get two negatively charged O ions by heating up O2? edit: so if O needs two and C needs 4, how does CO become stable?

Pork seems a more likely candidate, imo. Pigs are mammals and omnivores. Chickens are birds and have a diet less like humans, I think.

Idk, maybe sex remains an elite commodity because the risks associated with it are high. Maybe if abortion was reduced to the same status as a haircut (and STIs were totally manageable), you could have sex with anyone you wanted with no issues. If I want to ask a question to a beautiful woman, for example, I can just do so. With sex, I would have to pay a large sum of money or satisfy some other criterion. Sex continues to be valued in numerous ways that seem to be related to a corresponding value attributed to reproduction. If that value was completely eradicated, would sex remain problematic? Would it maintain an allure?

But if you would overcome the taboo of abortion, wouldn't it liberate heterosexuality completely, except for STIs? Without fear of pregnancy issues and disease, why couldn't sex be as common a leisure activity as conversation?

I can go both ways. I dislike the fact that believers and non-believers can't openly discuss the pros and cons of sexual regulation without resorting to all sorts of posturing tactics. Why can't it be as simple as arguing your case for or against sexual regulation? If you're for sexual freedom, for example, why not lobby government to promote guilt-freedom for abortion? Why not promote sex-education in schools that treats life as a completely subjective quality of biological organisms? Scientifically, does life really begin or end; or is it just a psychological obsession that people have with creating boundaries? Should psychological issues really get in the way of free sexual choices?

I'm not sure that restricting sexual freedom for adults is entirely negative in its effects. I find it strange that no one argues the merits of sexual restriction openly, yet political policies that promote it get favored.

Regarding people as "foreign invaders," "imperialists" or "neo-colonial invaders" reflects xenophobic culture, imo. Is what people go through due to xenophobia any less torture? Yet, everyday in the EU and elsewhere people are subject to oppressive levels of social-cultural alienation. How can the same people who treat others as aliens complain about enhanced interrogation techniques?

With the recent government budget-cuts targeting planned parenthood and other abortion-related institutions, the question is whether abortion is the ultimate target or is the bottom line sexual freedom? If sexual freedom is a target for government intervention, are there ethics to constraining the sexual freedom of others or must sexual control be left to individuals and their doctors privately? Are there potential benefits to individuals in restricting their sexuality against their will?