Phi for All

This has always been such a non-issue with me. I grew up taking family excursions down into Mexico, driving trailers and motor homes down to spend summers on the beach. Mexicans and Canadians hardly seem "foreign" to me. Has anyone seen statistics about illegal immigrants in other countries with borders on ally states? Does the US have a statistically higher rate of illegal immigrants? Is it significant enough to warrant such a hideous and questionably effective expense?

! Moderator Note Oh, this is unacceptable. Jordan, you go somewhere else and start a blog, this is a science discussion forum. Sorry to everyone this went on for two pages. Thread closed.

It seems clear that we need to change the way we deal with electricity in our economy. If successfully mass-produced, this breakthrough coupled with a new solar/wind pricing/economic strategy could lead to inexpensive energy and related products worldwide. Fossil fuels will always have far greater extraction costs than wind and solar. I hope this battery technology will encourage investment in product innovation, and possibly lead the way for public ownership of the utilities again. If they don't have a paywall barrier, The Economist had a good article recently on solar/wind pricing, and how it's getting so low that investors are starting to lose interest unless the government subsidizes them to be interested.

He brings out the ugly in people. But I find nothing about him merely annoying. Gnats are annoying. Too much wind is annoying. The man in the WH is going to ruin our credibility and integrity as a nation, he's going to destroy our right not to be discriminated against, and he's going to stomp on the most vulnerable Americans with both feet if it makes him a buck.

This is at the top of all the ridiculousness you've exposed. It shows just how far down the rabbit hole you've managed to cram yourself. I don't believe in your god(s) and I know right from wrong. The way I see it, you do the right thing because you fear your god, you're afraid of the consequences of doing wrong. What happens to your morals when your faith is weak, or you question your god(s), or even change what you believe? I do the right thing for purely moral reasons, so you'll never have to worry that I'm questioning my faith, or that I've switched religions. I think right and wrong are only truly understandable without fear. Impossible, with your god.

I recently re-read The Martian Way. Asimov describes a great bit where astronauts are on their way from Mars to Saturn, and to pass the time they go outside the ship, release their magnetic boots, slowly drift away from the ship while barely gripping the tether until they are stationary with respect to the ship. They can then hang there watching the stars (which don't seem to be moving either since they're so far away) while there is slack in their tether line, and nothing seems to be moving in the whole universe, when in reality they're moving at tens of thousands of miles an hour.

! Moderator Note Moved from Religion to Speculations, since even religion gets a redefinition in the OP. You need to show some supportive evidence for your idea in Speculations, PGJ, otherwise we'll have to shut this thread down. We're not very big on guesswork discussions, and prefer to have reality on our sides when examining an explanation.

! Moderator Note Moved from Computer Science to Religion.

I tried the exercise ball as a chair and it didn't work for me, for most of the reasons zapatos listed. Maybe it would work if you got up and stretched and looked into the distance every half hour like you're supposed to, but I don't. The standing desk might be the same way. If you could get into the habit of walking away from it all every so often, it might work well. I get too absorbed in what I'm doing and tend to work for a couple hours before moving around. I need the back and arm support.

! Moderator Note No opinions about you were offered. Critique was given about the science you presented. Please learn to distinguish between an argument aimed at you personally and one aimed at your knowledge or lack thereof. Also, you're dragging this topic away from its intent. If you have specific questions about physics, ask them in a thread of your own making, rather than forcing everyone else to explain tangentially.

! Moderator Note Albert Einstine, this isn't the place to discuss your own pet ideas. This is a thread for discussing this Science News event. If you have non-mainstream ideas to discuss, please do it in the appropriate sub-forum. If you're posing or asserting as above, please post in Speculations and support your claims with evidence. If you can present your ideas as questions, you can post in the relevant mainstream section and get some valuable feedback and review. No need to respond to this note in thread, since that would also be off-topic. You can use the Report feature if you object.

I do appreciate you showing us all the crazy things religion can make one believe, as a helpful guideline for how NOT to live one's life. You are like the Archie Bunker of religious belief.

I get it. That's a great answer for why many don't believe. Attribute all the wonderful things about us to god(s), and claim the evil that's left is pure human. What a horrible, spirit-deflating, anti-human outlook!

I think you've fallen to preaching. This doesn't seem to be a legitimate response to why someone doesn't believe. Perhaps we're done here?

We've determined that evidence is one of the best benchmarks of science, and provides the perfect way to make sure discussions are rigorous rather than simply chatting about someone's sloppy, wild-ass guesswork.

! Moderator Note So it seems this discussion is premature. When you're ready, PM a staff member and we can re-open this. If you post your video, remember that you also need to post a summary so members can be involved without having to watch the video. Thread closed.

I'm hoping for a big Archie Bunker effect to move folks in that direction. 99% of us know something has to change, so hopefully enough people will see him as the antithesis of what we want to become. I have to admit that it would be interesting to see if Congress based a no-confidence declaration on his connections to Russia, or if they'd go after his obvious shortcomings with... most everything. Could Congress make the case that he's a victim of Dunning-Kruger effect on a level never seen before?

! Moderator Note Per rule 2.10: Since this post doesn't have any science at all and doesn't meet the requirements for Speculations, I'm going to move it to the Trash. ALO, if you want to post any more threads like this, can you help the staff out and just start them in Trash, and save us the hassle? Thanks very much.

Wouldn't that seem more like a coup to his supporters, like The Swamp Strikes Back? I don't think his supporters care much for "the majority around him", and would not support a vote of no confidence. With impeachment there is a chance hard evidence will at least be appraised by supporters and detractors alike (but without an objective media, I guess it makes little difference).

What I came away with from one of the Schwartz interviews was that it was like pulling teeth trying to get time to discuss the book. Trump wouldn't do what Schwartz wanted, which was to give him some big chunks of time where he could grill him on content. Instead, Trump made him come to the office every week and wait for a few minutes of Trump's time. Schwartz said Trump had the attention span of a toddler, and could rarely give him more than a few minutes before growing bored. And when Schwartz eventually pitched the idea of listening in on D's daily business, he also learned about D's lying habits.

We already have the infrastructure for manufacturing these appliances. The demand for DC versions is low now, so the prices are high. With more demand for DC and less for AC, it should flip at some point. Right now a DC refrigerator can cost the consumer three times the price of AC.

Cost of the units will come down with demand. While some appliances like refrigerators are about equal in energy use and efficiency between AC and DC, many of the appliances that don't need power until we actually use them will save a tremendous amount of energy. Trickle usage nationwide would go way down. So now imagine that the concept of individual power is thought of more like home heating, rather than like shared plumbing for water. Everyone tapping wells on their property for water wouldn't work, but we heat our homes by both shared heating pipes in apartments and individual furnaces in private homes. Imagine if Tesla's work had spawned a desire for small generators capable of powering electrical appliances for a single home, or block of apartments, or perhaps a neighborhood unit of multiple private homes. I think if we'd suspected, in Tesla and Edison's time, how much we'd depend on electricity every day, we might have been more protective of the ability to create our own.

! Moderator Note OK, that gives us plenty of evidence that you have no evidence for any of the things you're asserting in this hijack of another thread. Since you can't support any of it, discussion of these ideas is futile, and wasteful of member resources. Please don't bring any of these arguments up again in any thread or they will be removed, and you may be suspended or banned. Science. Discussion. Forum.

It's more than just Betamax vs VCR marketing. DC current has its advantages. AC has a lot of versatility, but only when considered as a grid. It's actually pretty difficult/costly to match the phase between grids. If you don't have a grid in the first place, a lot of the advantages disappear. Transforming voltage up and down more easily is still one of ACs big advantages, but lower voltage requirements, less danger, and longer appliance life are very tempting. But my real point was more of a mindset. What if the right to control energy utilization personally had become as important to many as the right to bear arms? I would argue that perhaps, in the modern US, being in control of the power sources that run virtually everything important in your life is much more important than having guns to defend yourself. Or perhaps we need the guns because others can shut off our power?

One could argue that Tesla's alternating current placed us all at the mercy of utility companies we may or may not have control over. I've often wondered how our society would have developed if personal direct current power sources had been chosen instead. Would single home/neighborhood generators have led us more quickly to alternative energy sources like solar? Imagine thinking about your energy not in terms of a grid, but more as a system piece like your furnace, a major part of your house that needs occasional maintenance, perhaps replacement every decade or two.