Phi for All

Perhaps the Christians are misusing "cure" to mean "fix". Twain obviously considered Christianity a disease to be expunged, where the Christians see a neglected structure in need of repairs. Needs more Bible.

A bible store owner who misunderstands is one thing, but obviously none of the customers gets it either, which really makes this noteworthy. At a real library, I've seen people report typos on the bulletin boards flyers. How many people reading Christian books are actually learning anything?

This seems to be a simple case of wanting something to be a certain way, and making up the facts to support it. If the OP thinks this is intellectually honest, it's probably why he misunderstands how science really operates. Better the caricature to make fun of than to actually try to understand reality.

So we should have spent more, used more troops, dropped more bombs, does that sum it up? I thought that had been tried many times and failed. Is there a number of dollars or bombs that you think would do it right? The point is, terrorism isn't normal warfare, and it shouldn't be fought normally. The last 16 years should have shown you that. In much the same way, the Donald isn't a normal politician, and he shouldn't be treated normally. Nobody else at the executive level gets away with schoolyard name-calling and outright lies on the scale he does, and it's impossible to discuss anything meaningful as long as he's only interested in put-downs and bigotry.

The need for excessive enforcement of the law in the US is part of our problem with wealth disparity, imo. If we adjusted the tax system to stop sparing the wealthiest people and corporations, came up with a livable minimum wage, stopped running prisons for profit (and use more pre-trial services, saving bail for the really bad guys), and shored up our social programs so there was a healthier middle class with fewer families at the extreme ends of the spectrum, how would it affect crime overall, and specifically crimes that rate the death penalty? I don't think civilized countries need the DP, but I think we need to change the circumstances that have deteriorated in the US since Nixon in order to truly make that judgement. A happier, healthier citizenry that isn't worried about making ends meet (in one of the wealthiest nations in the world) tends to commit fewer capital crimes.

It's very good indeed then that science isn't such a single line. And that it has a far better track record than intuition and improvisation. Scientific method, or "winging it"? I'll go with the rational methodology.

I think this is perhaps a problem in academia these days. There are many, like you, who seem to view the challenge as more important than actually having evidence to support it. Convention is convention for a reason, because it's usually the current best explanation. I find most objections to mainstream knowledge aren't rationally based, or are formed from misunderstanding the science involved.

Again, my comments came on the heels of those about how it was the zoo's fault for having an enclosure for a dangerous animal that a 3-4 year old could get into. The gorilla is dead, and I can only hope that it's not for nothing. Future zoos will be built differently, and I hope parents will take some extra time with the toddlers to explain why our friends at the zoo are behind those barriers and what those barriers mean. Is it ever OK for a child to cross those barriers? NO. I think we have an extra obligation to set the standards for our children about how public resources are treated. That means not letting them play with the automatic door-openers at the library that we bought for handicapped people. That means teaching them to treat public facilities at least as well as they treat their bathrooms at home. That means telling them they can't pick the flowers at the campsite, or leave trash for others to pick up. And if you don't think your child can handle those responsibilities, then maybe you need to make special arrangements.

Terrorism is what you resort to when your views are marginalized. Extremists don't usually have access to armies and military grade weapons (not on a scale to wage war), so they strike in ways that make a big splash in the media. They make a cheap video of beheadings, or improvise an explosive that kills civilians. They stir up emotions, where conservative thinking is weakest, and hope that we'll go mental and spend $10,000 for every $1 they spent. Terrorism is only effective if we respond out of proportion, which is exactly what the conservative response is. How many hundreds of billions of dollars have we spent since 9/11? What fraction of that have the terrorists spent? At the time of the 9/11 attacks, Al Qaeda numbered in the hundreds, and after all Bush did, their numbers only grew. Fundamentalist terrorism in the Middle East is based in large part on the premise that Christians and Jews are working together to destroy Islam. This is a very emotional, irrational, conservative fear that we did very little to discourage for a long time. Bush's military even named operations with Islamic concepts like Infinite Justice, which only made the fear worse. In our own country, conservative fear of losing our freedom drove us crazy enough to toss ourselves inside the prison of the Patriot Act. The more hate and division the Donald preaches, the more fear and irrational action come together to limit our overall successes. Virtually every time the US suffers in some way overall, there are billionaires profiting by it. The idea that an opportunist billionaire like Donald would ever try to help the US in a general way at the expense of his rich friends is not supported by history or common sense. And he's destroying our best hope of combating Islamic terrorists effectively, the support of the enormous majority of Muslims who aren't terrorists. All this hatred over Mexican immigrants, when Mexican immigration is net negative, and all this fear over terrorists when 94% of all terrorist attacks from 1980 to 2005 were by non-Muslims makes it sound like Donald is a hater just for the hate of it.

Let's be clear here. I consider Obama's drone program to be an example of his conservatism helping to fuel terrorism. It's one of the things conservatives in both parties like about him. I know Sanders would dismantle it. Clinton is both more hawkish and slightly more conservative than Obama, so I doubt she'd give it up. The drone program is probably why Trump only needs four hours of sleep a night, he's so excited about the new potential consequences of criticizing him.

It's not being close-minded to acknowledge that the Romans were less ignorant than "the ancients".

The real success in terrorism lies in all the help they get from American conservatives.

Hard to blame dad if he wasn't there (was he?). But I'm a dad and if that were me and my child, I'd hold myself to blame if my daughter ignored zoo safety. We had annual passes to the zoo while my daughter was young. She got excited like all kids, and there were some close calls. I wouldn't have blamed anyone but myself if she'd ever gotten over a barrier though. I thought everybody knew they're minimal security and that you need to make sure your kids stay off them. The zoo hadn't had a problem with the barrier before. Ever. When I said I blamed the mother, I had just read testimony that said a bystander heard the boy tell his mother he was going over the barrier and down to the water, and that the mother responded simply by saying NO. So there was a warning the mother missed, and it seems to be the only real negligence involved. Other than the fact that any child that gets taken to the zoo should be reminded by their parent or guardian about the warnings that are all over the zoo about staying behind barriers.

! Moderator Note Moved to Speculations due to the non-mainstream science involved. Please help everyone out with your non-standard terminology. What do you mean when you say "realms"? Since this is a science discussion site, can you provide any evidence to support your ideas? Please show this as well, since I can guarantee someone is going to ask for it. You don't need to respond to this note, I just wanted to help get you started on the right foot in this discussion.

You're the young person who is currently being exposed to multiple political perspectives you aren't used to hearing in the home. You're only the idiot if you don't think about them, and look at them objectively. OK, sounds plausible. First thing to look at is something comparable. The Bwindi Impenetrable Forest in Uganda sounds just like that. Except it just makes it difficult to get through, not impossible. The border between Uganda and the DRC is still hotly disputed. It would create a lot of firefighter jobs though. This might actually work as a curb to immigration from Mexico (which is negative, and doesn't need curbing). They might not need to come to the US if they find jobs at the border making bamboo furniture.

It's amazing how often this very subjective objection overrides the objective goals of job creation, immigration, and improving the economy overall. I still say the worst part about the Donald is that he lowers the intelligence level of any discussion. My initial reaction to the Scott Adams video was "Hey, let's start the 'Carpetbagger Don' meme to spoil his base in the racist South!" I shouldn't be stooping to stupid. Oooh, there's the meme. "Don't Stupe!"

So Hillary "exaggerates quite a bit", Sanders had 0% of the "Pants on Fire" type of lies that Trump is infamous for. Yet you prefer the liar. OK. I also don't know what you mean by Hillary being "trim". Are you talking about her body, or is this a youthful term I'm unfamiliar with? Finally, you should understand that without immigration, this country would have died out long ago. Immigration is important to every country that wants innovation and progress. Everything we allow that undermines the attractiveness of the USA as a place where immigrants can come to make their dreams come true hurts us deeply as a nation. We're a superpower because of large scale immigration. You're right about the knee-jerk reaction to "immigration", though. Now that you're aware of it, notice the same things about all controversial issues. You can't say "welfare" or "abortion" without the same thing happening. This should be a signal to you that there are levels of complexity you probably aren't considering.

As an early contributor to what is now a much more deeply understood process, Darwin is an easier target for creationists. They usually pretend that Darwin's work is the state of the art so they can criticize the current theory. It's fallacious logic, but I'm not sure the fallacy has a name. It's almost a genetic fallacy, where the theory of evolution is suspect because Darwin didn't know everything we know today.

When you say, "Either way, they still lie", you're attempting to make Clinton's lying on a par with Trump's, like it's OK because they all do it. This is NOT the case. All politicians need to have their feet held to the fire, but it's disingenuous to claim that a 2% Truth ratio is just as bad as a 22% ratio. You lost. They were Eisenhower Republicans. In fact, I'm a Sanders supporter mainly because his policies are similar to Ike's, not because he's running as a Democrat. It's not a big deal, but I find most young people vote the way their parents do until they go to college, where they're exposed to more than the one ideology. I also can't find anyone who supports Trump for rational reasons. They say it's because he's a businessman, but he's a very sleazy businessman, as anyone he's owed money to will tell you. They say it's because he speaks his mind, but when was that EVER part of diplomacy? And when he lies so often, speaking his mind doesn't sound so great anymore. They all seem to be emotionally invested, but can't say why a Trump presidency would be anything other than a global embarrassment of national proportions. There's no part of being POTUS that he would excel at.

! Moderator Note It's obvious this thread has quickly run its course, passed it's freshness date, and gone sour. Glad the event was only "near", Alan. Stay safe. Thread closed.

This is a big part of what's going on (among others, since that's usually how senses work). My corgi (enormous ears) will suddenly show up at my side, wanting comfort for no reason (which is odd), and then a few minutes later the cats are at my side as well. A few minutes after that and I can hear the distant thunder myself. It's my three-stage storm warning technology.

No. Politifact also has the same treatment of Clinton. If you don't think the lies are that important, then take a look at how they both stack up in the True/Mostly True/Half True categories. It's a much better gauge of how much you can trust what they've been saying. But your dad is voting Trump?

! Moderator Note The OP has failed to support the assertions made in accordance with the rules of the Speculation section. Specifically, continuous claims of errors were never supported by evidence or examples. It's clear that many gaps in mathematics knowledge are hampering successful discussion here. Thread closed. You are not welcome to bring this subject up again until you've studied it quite a bit better.

! Moderator Note Please do this, or something substantive like this, instead of using the poor methods you're employing now. You aren't answering the concerns about this whole idea being a non-starter. More rigor. Otherwise this thread will be closed.

Don't you mean exactly 4 cubits?