Phi for All

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?

I didn't say you supported him as POTUS. It's always the same with you, MigL. You're so smart in so many ways, but you seem to purposely miscomprehend opposing stances to yours. I didn't say Trump voters were vacuous and stupid. I said you chose to defend (and agree with) a statement Trump made about the women's marchers not voting, which portrays these women as vacuous and stupid. IS THIS CLEARER NOW? You've always misrepresented my stance on conservatism. I don't think it's bad, I think it's part of every decision making process. What I've always railed against is identifying your whole self as being that way. It's not true, and I think it's ultimately detrimental. Like only having a hammer in your toolbox. IS THIS CLEARER NOW? Well this intellectual snob doesn't think they'll find a voice with a billionaire sociopath populist who freezes out media who question him.

Absolutely, now that it has almost total control. Everything we hear praises capitalism and reviles any other economic approach to any situation. All it had to do was make us believe even a little bit of socialism or communism was bad. Plus, Americans in general tend to identify with situational stances. They claim they're liberals, or conservatives, when the truth is that our decisions are pretty varied and across the board (how many "conservatives" out there NEVER do anything new or innovative? Thought so.). So I think a lot of Americans identify as being capitalists, and this makes it particularly easy for capitalism to worm its way into areas it shouldn't be. My opinion? We should test some truly socialist programs that haven't been invaded by opportunistic capitalist lobbyists. Can we come up with a kind of welfare or healthcare or community system not motivated in the least by profit?

! Moderator Note pittsburghjoe, I'll explain the predicament before we decide whether to let you go as a member or not. You keep opening doomed threads, claiming things you have no evidence for, such as the above. But we have experts and professionals who try to show you that you're wrong, or that you've misunderstood a concept. But you seem to think you can rewrite science without studying it deeply, by just applying what makes sense to you. You think the professionals (like Dr Swanson of the US Naval Observatory) who work with and apply these concepts have been misled by their hidebound thinking. But again, you support yourself only with your waving hands and your incredulity. We aren't going to change our rules about evidence to support assertions. And make no mistake, you aren't challenging mainstream science, not without support of any kind. You're just spitting into the wind. You need to decide if you'd like to change your behavior and stay and learn, or find someplace else to test out your guesswork. The ball's in your court now. We'll decide after your next post.

Oh, boooooo! This isn't Facebook, it's a science discussion site.

A hate magnet doesn't create the hate, so that's not an excuse if he draws yours out of you. I don't think he lets anyone off the hook. Worse, it seems like once his hooks are in you, he pulls you down to his depth in the muck. I think McCain and Ryan could have stopped all this with a firm stance, even after the nomination. I seriously can't look at either of them now. I used to respect McCain quite a bit. Are they all now figuring out how to cozy up to Putin? How to make their bases think Russia has secretly been our friend all along? I guess they figure these people voted for Trump, so maybe they'll believe just about anything.

! Moderator Note Off-topic posts split to Trash. Please stick to the topic.

tar has daughters, iirc. How does an American man look himself in the mirror when his answer to "What should your daughter do if her boss grabs her by the pussy?" is "She should look for another job" or "Her boss is a job creator, so he's more important than a mere worker". This idea that the boss can do what he likes is the bane of modern America, and many workers have ended up doing morally questionable things (*cough* Wells Fargo *cough*) just to keep a job. And of course we have MigL, who doesn't care either way because he's Canadian, but certainly enjoys it when women are being demonized. There's a well-ground axe in his closet. And now we see him identifying with a Trumpian ideal of vacuous, stupid women who don't have time to vote but find time to march. Trump is a toxic magnet, bringing out the worst in people who don't see the dangers of his tarnished populism.

I went the opposite. I learned enough about guns to know I enjoyed being accurate with one, which made me realize I never wanted to use one to kill anything. I thought this topic was going to be about firing a rifle parallel to the ground, while simultaneously dropping a bullet straight down from the same height, asking whether they hit at the same time or not.

I remember picking my jaw up the first time I heard a Trump supporter calling Hillary a liar. When I mentioned the three things Trump had already lied about that particular morning, it was dismissed as "he was given the wrong information". Which was another lie (and some real head-in-the-sand thinking), because Trump doubled down on all three later that day. I don't think Trump supporters care about their face-to-egg ratios. They consider fraud and lies to be the mark of a savvy businessman, grabbing pussy to be the mark of a real man, and white people to be deserving of anything they can get their hands on.

It doesn't sound like he has a scope. I'm betting "the tiny bit on the top of the gun" is the front sight, the fixed fin on the tip of the barrel. You calibrate that with the rear sight, typically somewhere between your trigger and your forward hand. The rear sight can go up and down, or side to side for windage.

And it's not "the wealthy", or even wealth that's the root problem here. I know people with extreme wealth who understand about pulling their own weight, who know that the job worker is just as important as the job creator, who know that happy employees who make a fair wage stay longer, and cost the same as unhappy employees making crap but turning over constantly. It's the people who think cheating on taxes is smart. It's the ones who want everyone to pay for airports, but don't think they should have to pay for public pools/schools because they never use them. It's the ones who want two sets of everything so they don't have to mingle with their lessers that cause good social programs to fail. Going back to public power would also put a halt to the practice of profiting from lobbying. Right now, energy companies can spend a few million on lobbying efforts that give them billions in incentives. Another area where we're subsidizing successful companies at taxpayer expense.

Capitalism is like planting kudzu. If you need to cover a large area with growth, and provide an anchor to protect against erosion, you couldn't pick a better plant. But if you don't carefully tend it (regulate it, tax it), it takes over everything. This is a no strawman zone. Nobody said profits were evil. The idea is that profit has its place, mainly in areas where it's OK for profit to be the priority. But in many areas, we're better served as individuals and as a country by focusing on what we're funding, and doing so with public monies. I completely agree with cutting off subsidies for successful businesses (or businesses that would fail if we stopped propping them up). It shows how messed up we've let matters get when, for instance, the US subsidizes the sugar industry which purposely charges us the highest prices in the world. And in energy, profit has been growing while the consumer gets charged more heavily. That's not market economics, because they aren't fairly competing with each other.

Raising the price of corn to make ethanol gets rid of some of the world's poorest people. Another quarter million a year through climate change further reduces the number of people wanting a handout. You don't have to help people when they're dead. It's all about getting the less wealthy to pay the necessary taxes so the wealthy don't have to. This is called "being smart". This is called "good business".

So when all but a few of the snake handlers tell you about a snake so dangerous it scares even them, why do you believe the snake oil salesmen who are saying it's just a normal snake and perfectly safe?