Phi for All

We see that here in many of our more conservative members. They suddenly don't understand what you're talking about when you use too much reason and critical thinking that negatively impacts their ideology. Out come the strawmen, the misleading vividness, the moving goalposts, the red herrings, anything but talk positively about something that may cause more taxes or regulation (even if it could eventually reduce both in the long run).

It's frustrating to see humans thinking it's smart to shun intelligence.

I think it's been turned into that. I think it's highly questionable ethically to deny a science budget because it negatively impacts the regulations on business. Why else would this administration try to cover up research?

Your barrel seems quite empty now, and all you're doing is scraping the bottom of it.

Scientific research maintained by the government and untouched by politics should be as important to us as untainted news sources, or honesty from our leaders, or equity in the workforce.

! Moderator Note Religion has no place in mainstream science discussions. I need to move this to Religion, where you can continue to discuss the subject comprehensively.

! Moderator Note Off-topic, anti-mainstream rant hidden. If you have your own ideas on the subject, start your own thread. This one is Bogie's.

I'll definitely bow to the superior expertise of swansont and CharonY. I admire them a lot, but not enough to simply parrot what they're saying and how they're saying it. I'm going to amend the "not a stupid person" comment. What I know about you is that you've got some very good science, and we don't agree about politics. Personally, I think one should approach a person who misunderstands something from a bunch of different directions, hoping to find the one that resonates (whoa, too liberal?). Sometimes it's useful to use critical reasoning, but often when the responses are emotional (such as yours, for instance), reason isn't as effective a tool. As far as him preaching is concerned, I think it's important to point out when someone has either stopped listening or never intended to in the first place. There's few things more frustrating than watching good science presented, only to have it roundfiled by someone who disdains cleverness, intellect, and evidence.

These are the clear tactics of a preacher. He objects, you explain, then he rejects you for being clever. No effort to learn, so why are we discussing anything with someone on a soapbox?

And once again, you're just plain wrong. What you attribute to Obama is clearly referenced in the article you cited but didn't bother to read. Any POTUS would have received the same attention from Greece's ultra-left. At least you're consistently wrong. Eisenhower's speech wasn't about people with college degrees (do I detect sour grapes? I thought you had all kinds of credentials?), it was a warning about letting industry use the military to further its agendas. You're so wrong about so much that I'm starting to think you're getting paid to obfuscate. Nobody is this many kinds of ignorant, or finds so much to troll about.

Whoa, almost as torturous as the real thing! What I'd like to see is how he'd handle the incident where Bush II had a shoe thrown at him. Bush dodged, but would Donald duck?

I'd also like more context. Where did this take place, on a public street or in a building? How did it come about? Why was the OP carrying around cardamom seeds sealed from the shop, and an empty jar with a lid? Where did the person get the white paper? Did he pull it from a pocket, borrow it from a desk, and was it folded or flat? Where did the water come from, a public fountain, or a bottle the OP had? But honestly, knowing whether this is a combustion event or an explosion event should tell us what we need to know. If there really was fire involved, that changes everything.

I picture the water and seeds being shaken in the jar, a bit of time for the seeds to chemically react and cause gas to build up, and then BLAM! The glass jar explodes, throwing shards everywhere! Why didn't you do this in a proper lab? Oh, the humanity! But cardamom seeds are used as a digestive, to relieve gas buildup in the stomach. Is that how those products work, relieving gas buildup by adding more, so you have to belch and feel better? I always thought they disturbed the gas buildup somehow, relieving the pressure from the inside. I don't have a lot of experience with these products.

Aiming below the target sounds like a compensation for the kick of the rifle. A rifle will be sighted to the distance the shooter wants. If I've sighted my rifle to 200 meters, that means a target 200 meters away shows up perfectly in the sights or scope. If I know for sure the range is closer or farther, I could adjust my sights if I have the time, or I can compensate visually on the fly by aiming a little higher for farther away, or a little below for closer. Moving targets don't always move into the range you've sighted for. Since a revolver is so short, lining up the front sight with the back has a huge margin of error. Hand guns are typically sighted straight on level to about 10m, and the old western revolvers, if they had a rear sight at all, couldn't adjust it for elevated shots. It was only adjustable side to side. If you wanted to shoot something farther away, you aimed high based on experience. If you were shooting at a moving target, "leading" the shot, or aiming ahead of the moving target, ensures the bullet hits the place the target will be in a second. Snipers typically have time to sight their scopes in and take as much into consideration as possible. For the rest, I'm not interested in telling you how to be an efficient sniper.

And now you see the problem with exaggerating your credentials. You don't know what you don't know, which makes it obvious to those who do when you reveal ignorance on a basic level like this.

To clarify, did the jar explode since the lid was closed? What was it made of? DrP's quote is the first time fire is mentioned, though you use the word "combust" which means "burst into flames". I'm unclear exactly what happened, and I wondered if you actually meant the jar "exploded" without flame, perhaps from the pressure built up from expanding gases?

I think this is a big problem for conservatives who deny climate science based on ideology. They seem to become purposely obtuse about the rational explanations when they're given, and eventually just start claiming nobody refuted them so they must be right about it.

Whoa, we get it, you're the whole package, and a creationist to boot! We prefer you display your ignorance one subject at a time though. It's too tiring following multiple misunderstandings, and scientists can't allow tacit approval of wrongness and intellectually lazy explanations.

I was in Guadalajara last year and got the lowdown on this one. Mexico used to have a horrible problem with election abuse, unlike the US where it's just a made up scare tactic (like the rampant uptick in crime we supposedly had). They had to do something to bring back faith in democracy, and the ID cards did the trick. Also unlike what they've tried to do in the US, the Mexican voter ID is sort of the gold standard of IDs, right under a passport and definitely better than a driver's license. I know you think it's funny to watch people run into the goalposts when you move them like that. It's one thing to lose an election, but a terrible candidate doesn't win the popular. But hey, it's just critical reasoning, after all.

A terrible candidate by those criteria wouldn't have won the popular vote. A LOT is lost on you.

I can answer this one. The atomic physicist bothers to back himself up with reputable science and credible evidence, while the whatever-you-are doesn't. That part is really, really obvious. You're wrong a LOT, which is much more important than what you've done in the past. Ahhh, I was wondering when this would get mentioned. So credible. Next is Galileo.

You're trying to make an ethical point, that we allow the Republicans to dig us into economic trouble and then elect a Democrat to dig us out, but you're trying to make that point to people who probably think it's the height of political savvy to make others clean up your messes. IOW, you're arguing against people who obviously don't care how they win so long as they do, and are very proud of that. The ethics of the situation are lost on them.

Does the Report This Member button show up for you on a member's profile page, bottom right above the rules link? If so, that's probably best. If not, I'll have to ask the Admins why.

This would have been a perfect use of the Report Post feature. It would have given me a link to the post, as well as an appropriate place to discuss with staff about rules violations, and possibly hiding something a member has written, which we don't take lightly. Edit to add: It also wouldn't have misspelled his name.

Here's your sign of a lack of critical thinking, and reading comprehension (lot of THAT going around). I don't blame "someone else". I blame our blend of economic systems (it's right there in my post you quoted). We aren't keeping a tight rein on our capitalism and it's growing into areas where it has no business. I'll give you an example of what I'm really talking about, so you don't have to make shit up. Many cities in the US are outsourcing their traffic control to private companies (at the urging of councils who are heavily lobbied by these companies), instead of using publicly funded (socialism) agencies like the police. They maintain and manage traffic control signals and cameras, the kind where it takes your picture and sends you a ticket if you run a red light. All well and good, and something the city could have easily invested in themselves (if they didn't need the money for crumbling infrastructure), but the cost seems so low due to provisions for the company to profit from the ticket revenue. I'm sure everything was fine for a while, the company did a great job and all were happy, except the people getting the tickets. But because modern businesses are constantly under pressure to find new ways to grow profit, they inevitably start losing their ethics. Now we have these private companies illegally messing with the yellow light timing in order to raise profits. These are just the ones that got caught. Regulation is needed (yes, the EXACT thing capitalist-only thinkers want to avoid!). 100% of any single economic system is unworkable. So why do you think pushing a higher and higher percentage of capitalist solutions is a good idea?