Phi for All

I think it's a bit harsh, but if the world was full of vegans and they're the only meat source, I suppose I could make do. I'm willing to do my part for a cleaner environment. I've heard they taste like chicken, but that doesn't really motivate me. Can you make vegans that taste like bacon?

The US earned the title of the "melting pot", and for a time, we were proud of our heritage of assimilating immigrants into our society and benefiting from the strength it gave us. We understood that a blend, a mixture of peoples, ideologies, and cultures gave us a power few nations at the time had. For-profit media practices simplify issues down to a single point. They need to get their messages across quickly in a way that locks in viewers. It seems to manipulate many people to identify themselves in those single aspects; conservative OR liberal, capitalist OR socialist, but never both, the way it really is. Did the media upend the melting pot? Single ideologies don't work and we should know that. In a 100% capitalist society, you'd pay to walk on sidewalks or drive on streets, and pay for police or fire protection from private companies. 100% communism or socialism don't work either. But blend these ideologies together the right way and you can make a society where all have basic needs fulfilled, and all have access to accumulated human knowledge to use for the betterment of their society and themselves. Mostly middle class, with some wealthy and some poor, and very few extremely wealthy and extremely poor. That seems to be America's sweet spot, historically. The vast majority of Americans want stronger gun control in specific instances (like banning those on terror watchlists), but too many in leadership on both sides aren't willing to represent that. Why? Most Americans want a single-payer healthcare system, including a lot of Republicans, but again the leadership doesn't want to do their jobs of representing that want. Why? More corporate influence seems to be at work here. How did the concept of mixing the best ingredients to make something fantastic get lost? How can we intellectually grasp that the melting pot makes for a stronger society, yet emotionally so many are trying to yank us towards isolationism? Are there other influences affecting our judgement? Do you agree? How can we generate not just tolerance, but reclaim the melting pot concept? Are our worst problems because our recipe ratios are out of balance? Do we have too much capitalism, and not enough effective socialism? Should we encourage immigration as a way to invigorate our economy and enrich our society as a whole? Do you disagree? Is modern conservatism, driven by an increasingly higher ratio of capitalist policies, going to lead to economic stability and safety if we stay this course? Should the US increase its proportion of capitalist policies, and reduce regulation and taxation on corporations even further? Should we severely reduce our immigration commitments, sort of pull in the Welcome mat, in order to stabilize and take stock of our situation?

If you're talking about "touch" as in the sense, of course you can touch things. For the sense, you don't need the physics description. Touch the sense is about relaying information to the brain like any other sense. As to the question of why we can never really touch anything, StringJunky's reply is the answer "according to physics" you're looking for.

With only ourselves as an example of a species intelligent enough to leave its own planet of origin, we must assume others will face certain technological hurdles the way we have. The discovery of what uranium can do may well be a watershed moment for every intelligent species. How it handles the sudden exponential increase in destructive power would be critical in whether or not it survives to explore near systems.

I find it interesting that the concept of an initial mated pair seems intuitive to us, until we discover evolutionary knowledge, which tells us that species have no such defined markers. The mother and father of the first creature we'd call a modern human were not quite modern humans themselves, but if you insist on drawing a line somewhere, they're the ones who "begat" the first modern human. So the writers of the Bible either made up the creation story (or adjusted a previous one), or God inspired them to tell a version we could intuitively understand but was wrong, for some reason. If I believed in god(s), I'd have to say my god has a reason for dumbing things down for an Iron Age audience, but somehow his writings must apply across the ages. There must be a hidden meaning to explain all the parts that are obviously ignorant of modern physics and cosmology. And therein lies the rub. Hidden meanings abound, but none has the weight of evidence in support. It seems more reasonable that people ignorant of many modern explanations made it all up, and poured lots of omnipotence into the gaps to fill in where they had no idea. So I go back to the default stance, probably no god(s), no way to know either way. There shouldn't be a conflict.

Hard to be reasonable when conservatism is being used to justify so much evil in the world today. For those who identify as conservatives, it must be sort of shocking to witness and realize these are your people. These folks who want to mix church and state need to be stopped pretty quickly, imo.

! Moderator Note Even though this is in the Lounge, I'm going to request that first-time posters stay away. If you are joining just to advertise your YouTube Channel, your links will be removed. We are not here to advertise for you.

I'm applying this to the US GOP-controlled Congress in my mind, and I see them all wielding shovels, not brooms. This may seem admirable, but isn't it also possible it could make things far, far worse?

[ ! Moderator Note Moved to Engineering.

Milk is only as good as it makes the coffee taste.

A nebulous honor.

Or, the site owners have determined they don't want people advertising anything on their science discussion site. And an older male who has experience with non-profit, non-promotional endeavors was asked by the owners to help moderate and enforce the rules, hoping the young will eventually understand why this is necessary for all, and not a personal attack.

It wasn't everything, as you point out. There was a lot more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which made things warmer and helped fuel massive plant growth as well, but not everything became larger because of it. Some species don't benefit from getting bigger. Humans are a good example (in modern times). There's only so much weight you can put on our spines, since they were designed to be horizontal before we stood up to run faster and free our hands. As for the "engineering" aspects of giantism, four dense vertical columns supporting a flexible, lighter bridge-like structure of horizontal vertebrae, balanced by long neck and tail is a very successful design. It could be that the largest spent most of their time in water, venturing out for necessary trips like a hippo, but I'm not sure it was required.

I used to think space-based solar was a viable answer, but there are far too many concerns about transmission of power from space to Earth (even if we could do it at that scale). It would violate about a billion treaties, and give the entire population the heebie-jeebies. It might have worked prior to Star Wars, but forget it now. It's a non-starter, even if it had no atmospheric effects.

Often we start out questioning things like how dinosaurs could walk if they were so big, and that's a good thing, but we don't take our curiosity far enough. Being skeptical is good, as long as you follow up on it with learning, which you're doing here. I wasn't trying to be rude with my comment. I was pointing out that incredulity ("I can't believe something so big could stand up!") alone isn't enough. I'm very sorry you focused on the last part of my post and ignored the first part, which at least tried to answer your question here in the thread.

The gun business feeds the police business, which feeds the legislative business, which feeds the prison business, which feeds the crime business that needs more guns. I'm beginning to think economists are behind it all, thinking that if they take guns out of the Jenga Tower of Death, the whole US economy will come crashing down. So nobody does anything about guns, because they're afraid. Huh.

Apatosaurus seems to be denser in bone structure in the legs, becoming lighter in the mid-skeleton, and eventually ending with vertebrae from tail to neck that have air sacs in them to make them lighter. So it looks more like a combination of denser and lighter bones is closer to an answer. We use techniques like this to make materials and objects stronger, more flexible, and able to withstand more pressure. This seems like an attempt at skepticism that got stopped at incredulity.

Or... OR... they art easily manipulated by those who doth love profit above life itself. I'm betting gun sales in the US are at an all-time high, based on the number of background checks performed by the FBI and ATF.

Maybe people who don't take advantage of physics, and feel like cleaning extra silverware. I add the milk/cream first, then let the thermal and kinetic energies of pouring do the mixing for me.

! Moderator Note Yeah, the thing is, we like rational discussions here, preferably scientific ones, even in Religion. You make no sense with this talk of an unknown "entity". And you're clearly suggesting situations where you'd be breaking the law, which is against our rules. Please try harder to write an opening post that allows the membership to follow along with what you want to discuss. If you're trying to blog at us, this isn't the place for that. We discuss things here. Intelligently, rationally, and most important, civilly. This thread just won't do.

I just wanted to point out this conflict, per the OP. Do you know zip about evolution, or do you have the gist of it? Since it can't be both, I would suggest that you only think you know what evolution is basically about, what you refer to as the gist, and from that you're trying to reconcile your beliefs. I would further suggest your "gist" is wrong in many aspects, and this lack of knowledge of the subject has warped your interest in learning more. Ignorance is an easily curable disease, but it's often paired with a stubborn willfulness that makes people reject the medicine that could help.

Out of all the other most-dangerous professions you mentioned, I think only taxi driver can really be compared with being a police officer. In both professions, in addition to being more at risk because of driving, civilians with guns are a big factor. And that has to be the real issue here. If there weren't so damn many guns out there, the police wouldn't have to train in ways that tend towards overcompensation, applying more force than necessary to ensure the police officer goes home safe at night, and the bad guys never get the upper hand. Personally, I think we've reached a point where allowing so many guns in our society has forced a situation where the police can't do their jobs of protecting the public AND maintain their top priority of going home safe at the end of the day. Their training includes reinforcement of quick-thinking, fast-acting, ever-vigilant techniques designed to prevent the officer from being tricked by scumbags. They watch dashcam footage culled from thousands of encounters that shows graphically what happens to police officers who let their guard down. Throw in the crazy and the money from drugs and it's almost a wonder more people aren't shot. I think the top of the crazy pile is staked out by the citizens who openly carry long guns around in public. In a world where the police are supposed to read minds when it comes to armed intent, how the hell is anybody supposed to know you're the good guy when we see you with an AR-15 in the frozen food aisle at the Piggly Wiggly?

I googled copy/pasting your words, and got a hit from two years ago. But then "accidental shootings" seem to be in the eye of the beholder.

Police in the US train with officer safety foremost in mind. They're shown dashcam footage of every officer who wasn't in control of the situation, or hesitated and got shot, or had their gun stolen by some "low-life scumbag criminal" (also drilled into their heads). I think they learn to assume just about everybody has a gun, and since their number one duty is to go home at the end of the day in one piece, I think this training makes them obsessive about being fooled into complacency and put at risk for not being hardass enough. Another angle that would seem to be covered by the fewer-guns-in-questionable-hands solutions being proposed.

! Moderator Note This thread is every dentist's nightmare. And it's probably going to get stickied as an explanation on why we don't allow members to give medical advice. Please, if you're reading this, do NOT listen to any of this advice. If you have a dental problem, please consult a dentist.