Phi for All

I could be off on the timeline, but I think the whole "efficiency expert" trend of the 1960s kicked off this obsession with the bottom line. It started off well-intentioned, saving companies tons of money where they were being sloppy. But you can only target so much actual waste, and eventually these companies started cutting where they shouldn't, like wages and benefits. When your experts tell you the company can spend X in lobbying to save X+1 in taxes, you start negatively affecting your country's revenue and its ability to maintain the infrastructure that your company uses so much of. Efficiency has driven record excess profits straight to the top execs and shareholders, people who keep skimming prosperity away from those below them. It's only going to get worse if it isn't regulated. I think bottom line has always been the #1 priority of most businesses, but I don't think it's ever been so far above the #2, #3, and #4 priorities before. Business has moved to models that remove the importance of the blend of employees you have, in order to make employees easily replaceable. They've replaced the melting pot in their culture with a bland bubble of processed, uniform Cheese Whiz. It fills basic requirements while ignoring any richness of depth of character.

So this vent is on the wall, just above the burners. Is there anything above the vent, like a hood or microwave? If you were in the US, I'd say that looks like a return air vent, but you wouldn't want to vent your cooking odors right back through your forced air system (if that's what you have). So I'd have to guess that your apartment building is venting all the stovetops through a single stack, vertical ductwork that pulls the smells from cooking out of the apartments above and below you, from the first floor to the roof. There may be something blocking the vent on the roof, and now cooking odors from below aren't being cycled past your vent anymore. That may be why you can smell strange things. I would report it to your landlord. The system should be either powered by a fan, or rely on the difference between internal and external pressure to cycle air efficiently. Something's wrong if you can smell your neighbors through the vent.

SimonFunnell has been suspended until staff can confer on whether or not to make it permanent. If you come to a science discussion site, bring some science, and leave any intellectual dishonesty at the door. If you claim to have the math but refuse to show it, you don't have the math.

! Moderator Note Science discussion is our purpose, and since you haven't bothered to present any in over 100 odious posts, it seems you are inconsistent with that purpose. I want to do the rest of the membership a favor and suspend your account at least for tonight. I'll check with the rest of the staff tomorrow about making your vacation permanent.

The corporations you mention exist. I don't pretend they don't. So do the ones I mentioned. Why do you pretend they don't?

It was a great speech. She's been an extremely gracious and effective first lady. I listen to her and can't believe smart isn't in fashion with conservatives. You can love a country for its people, history, and features, but I don't think you should ever feel that way about its government. You need to be emotionally detached in order to evaluate whether or not your government is still worth following, or needs to be changed. I always hated the slogan, "America: Love it or Leave it!" We really don't need unconditional love when it comes to how we're governed.

At your level, at my level, that's more or less true. Business people will always try to profit, hopefully within the bounds of decency. But at a certain level, the highest levels, gaining a constantly growing piece of the pie HAS to come at the expense of those below, often unethically. There's only so many corners you can cut, and then the biggest businesses start messing with tax incentive lobbying, and cutting benefits and salaries of people too afraid of losing their jobs to cry foul. Exploitation isn't something you can just dismiss as a conspiracy, unless you can explain away all the known misdeeds. More prosperity for all would solve a lot of our problems. But the last 60 years have shown a marked growth in the extremes of wealth in our society, and a shrinking of prosperity for all. I think when we were prouder of the melting pot concept, we had fewer extremely wealthy and extremely poor people, and more people in the middle class. It can never be perfect, but this seems to be a key for perceived prosperity at least.

This seems reasonable, since you wouldn't get the crazing effect from aligning the polymer chains along the axis of stress, because there wouldn't be as much stress.

I think it's clear that many people are showing the stress of being afraid for so long. The standard Western "old white people" business formula of inducing chaos into a system in order to exploit it's resources requires the indigenous to remain fearful of losing even more, and it seems to work at home at least as well as it works abroad. I think it's a big part of why diversity is being attacked, to break up its strength, to leave various peoples alone without support, and turn them against each other.

We saw StringJunky eating alone, with his oddball beacon lit (which I have just remembered is fork-shaped).

A challenge, forks and sterotypes at close quarters! Belgians are easy to steal bacon from! Make a feint at their waffles and they'll leave the meat wide open! OK, maybe some people should eat alone. Anyone with their fork in a scabbard, for instance.

The work from bending the plastic causes heat, right? Is this what causes the disorder in the polymer chains? I don't think it's the heat distorting light, since the plastic still looks white after it cools.

You can try. I'm a classically trained forksman. It's quite possible you could lose your own on the riposte.

Hey, Steal-The-Bacon is a legitimate breakfast game where I come from! And any novice knows you defend with your own fork, not your hand! What, is NHS being stingy with the antibiotics?

Modern conservative movements seem intent on denigrating knowledge, especially scientific knowledge. "Intellectual" is now another charged media buzzword, like "welfare" or "abortion", designed to polarize people across a fence with just two options: 1) Smarter doesn't make you better than me, and 2) What's wrong with being smart? We're seeing a real trend among conservative politicians to emphasize the importance of feelings over facts, to the point of giving them equal emphasis in discussions about the real world. Newt Gingrich recently tried to argue that if a certain group of Americans feel that crime is up, that's just as relevant as the statistical reality that shows it's actually down overall. Surely this type of thinking will lead us to spend resources simply because that group fears they're necessary, despite what reality shows? And doesn't that mean that anyone with a few television stations could affect the emotions of their viewership and cause costly reactions unsupported by reality ("If you don't feel safe, despite the fact that you are, we should spend more on law enforcement")? If diversity is strength, then we need a way to show that everyone is needed. But is the fear needed? Is the emotional reaction at a time when level heads should prevail really helping? Or is the fear being misused, being channeled in ways that only help a few?

! Moderator Note SimonFunnell, it sounds like you'll need a lot of time spent elsewhere in order to achieve your goal. I would suggest that we're just holding you back with all our talk of reality. You need to find someplace else to inflict with your brand of reasonableness. Don't open up any more threads like this. We're a science discussion site, and you have no science. If it seemed even somewhat obvious you wanted to learn some, you'd be more welcome. As it is, you're wasting everybody's time, including your own.

! Moderator Note Due to the complete lack of physics, I'm moving this "discussion" from Physics to Religion. Also SimonFunnell, making blanket assertions about atheists is only going to make this another 8 page non-informative waste of everyone's time. Do you think you might actually engage in this discussion honestly, and provide more than just wavy hands to back up what you're claiming? Don't bother replying to me, reply to those who've shown interest in your topic!

! Moderator Note SimonFunnell, the topic, even after you amended it, is still basically asking where science feels Intelligent Design fails scientifically. Please stop introducing extraneous arguments and bringing up topics outside this subject. I've removed the last posts because they had zero to do with the topic. People are trying to have a discussion with you, and you're making it very difficult. Please stop. And don't feel any need to respond to this note in thread. That's what the Report Post feature is for.

For private citizens, I suppose the equivalent would be quick response times. If a criminal knows his crime will take 10 minutes but the police will probably be there in 7, it's more likely they'll choose not to commit it, or commit it somewhere the police aren't as responsive.

Let's make sure I understand. A stove normally has an oven below, with a cooktop that has burners (could be open flame, could be metal coils, could be glass). The cooktop is often required to be vented with a hood above it, and a vent that goes up (usually through cabinets above the stove). It should be vented to the roof of the apartment. If you have a vent above your stove, it should have a fan in it. If it doesn't, it's not going to work well to vent away smoke from the cooktop. I hate to see you plug up something that is supposed to provide ventilation. Can you tell if the vent goes up through your ceiling?

However, their presence and dedicated response is usually what deters most crime from happening. I used to hire off-duty policeman at Christmas to patrol a mall I managed. I didn't do it so they'd catch shoplifters, I did it so their presence would make shoplifters choose someplace else.

There's no urgency in your decision to use your table saw. You make that decision based on criteria that aren't normally life-threatening. I think choosing the gun can lead to irrational decisions simply because it locks a lot of people into a very limited set of choices. No, it's not just that guns are a more dangerous tool. That's a given. I'm saying that AS A TOOL, choosing a gun instead of doing anything else in a particular situation is NOT equivalent to choosing your table saw over your hand saw. I think many people view the gun as the ultimate power threat, and once you choose it as the right tool for the job, you've mentally removed a lot of other viable options. At that point, you're demanding compliance, you're making sure your target doesn't move any closer to negate your distance advantage, you're trying to stay aware of what's behind and to the sides of you, and you're ready to pull your own trigger if you see sudden movement signalling a charge or drawing a hidden gun. If you had a lesser tool like a knife or a bat, you'd be more prone to looking at an array of options. With the gun, if you don't get instant compliance, your choices are narrowed down to 1) run, 2) let them get close enough to club them with the gun, 3) fire a warning shot, 4) shoot to wound, or 5) shoot to kill. I think a person with a gun is not like a normal tool-wielder, that's all I'm saying. I've always thought of guns as tools, but now I think that's not exactly true.

I was convinced we were talking specifically about government support, and the difference between how much it takes in the first 25 years as opposed to how much it takes in the last 20. We're exploring ways to fix overpopulation. Perhaps "eating excess babies" can be part of Plan B?

This is a rational stance, I think, until you make the decision to select your shotgun due to the circumstances you find yourself in. Guns aren't like other hand tools, they require the focus of much more dangerous tools, like you were using a table saw or a lathe. You train to keep it pointed in a certain way, with the safety a certain way, and maintain extra vigilance while it's drawn. And what are you being vigilant for? Unless it's a wild animal attack, you're watching for other guns. I think this focus can make it harder for the person who has chosen a gun as the right tool for a particular situation to think of using anything else. Does that make sense? I don't have evidence to back this up, but I've always thought someone who was defending themselves with a knife is just as likely to lash out with feet and their off-hand as they are to use the cutting/stabbing power of the knife. But someone with a gun in their hand is much more focused on using it to the exclusion of anything else, I think, because it is one of the most powerful tools there are, and it's supposed to command instant obediance. Couple that trained mentality with a victim who 1) knows they've done nothing to deserve being shot, and 2) assume the policeman knows they're unarmed. When the officer draws his gun in this situation, he knows none of that, he stays out of the reach of fists or knives, and focuses on being the first to fire if the suspect suddenly pulls a gun. I've always stood by the guns-are-tools stance, but I think for many, guns are prone to induce tunnel vision. They're big hammers that make everything look like a nail.

! Moderator Note I think it has no evidence, and is therefore not a Quantum Physics subject. Moved to Philosophy.