Phi for All

I took it to mean publicly funded, since it HAS to be paid for somehow, and we're not naive enough to believe it can happen magically. Many people refer to public education as "free" as opposed to private education where you have to pay directly. For these purposes, we should drop the term "free" and substitute "publicly funded". Leave that goalpost where it is. Free education doesn't automatically imply a free university education. That's not even practical, since there are many people who would want to study for a trade instead, and wouldn't necessarily benefit from higher education. There should be mechanisms in place to allow for low-cost loans for both those who want to go to university and those who want to study a trade.

! Moderator Note Someone else's thread is no the place to advertise your own thread or idea. No hijacking, please!

Yes, but only for the faithless sorcery bits. I'm not sure "detestable" can describe a chemist; they test everything.

One correction: since the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the media isn't the friend of the corporations, the media is their employee. And they all must be taking advantage of this, since the fact that Bain Capital, Romney's former company, owns over 800 radio stations and this was never an objection for the other side during the election.

Very good point. We often disconnect ourselves from the fact that the money used to run the country comes from us, and we elect the representatives we believe will represent our wishes on how tax dollars are spent. It's our responsibility to fix it if the system gets corrupted. We need to be reminded (kicked in the head) every few years (every day) that allowing a fraction of our tax dollars to be spent educating our population is the cheapest, most effective investment we can ever make. No sentiment attached to that, just fact. We reap the benefits of a well-educated population every minute of every day (and could do much, much better with the same funding if we could scrape off the barnacles). Some things are best funded by taxpayers, plain and simple. Sometimes the goal is not to make a profit, like with the prison system, but to reduce the number of criminals going through the system. Again, something like 1 out of 4 prisoners on the planet are housed in US jails and prisons. That's what happens when you make a business out of it, it starts growing, that's what businesses do. That's why we spend so much on healthcare; make a business out of treating the sick and you're going to find yourself knee-deep in sick people. Just don't cure anyone, that would be bad for business. Ultimately, we have to decide, as a nation, if we have enough value as citizens to pay for each other's healthcare, or road system, or welfare project, or security measures, or unemployment compensation. It's not the government who does this, it's us as taxpaying citizens granting the government the power to do these things. We need to decide it's time to start caring enough to hold our representatives accountable for letting in the ticks and leeches who feed off the system without helping the host.

I've always understood phobias to be extreme but not necessarily irrational. Is it irrational to fear being in high places with no guardrails? No, but if your fear of them keeps you from being able to climb more than ten stairs without freaking out, it's probably more of a phobia. Same thing with knives, they can be very dangerous, but there's a difference between being overly cautious while handling one and not being able to open a drawer in the kitchen because there might be knives in it. I suppose you could say it's irrational to fear knives so much, they aren't that dangerous in every situation, but compared to some phobias this one seems at least grounded in reality. I knew a woman once who got a piece of paper from a ticker-tape parade in NYC caught in her eye as a child, and now she can't stand it when someone tears a piece off a sheet of paper. That seems more irrational to me than a fear of falling or being cut, but I suppose she really believes the paper could seriously injure her eyes.

I'm pretty sure there's more than two. There are over 9000 different sects of Christianity. And it doesn't have to involve hell. Those folks I was talking about will still treat me as inferior, and while I may not go to hell, I won't fit in in their heaven either. All of this based on an unobservable god and a very old book that's full of holes. You CHOSE to have faith in a god who tells you you're right and everyone else is wrong.

Yeah, right, I've heard that before. At first I'm just investigating a low-pressure system near a big mountain, suddenly I'm physically dealing with your Smaug problem. No thanks! I love it when someone is able to capture natural phenomenon like these (well, not so much the burning crater as the lightning strikes). I never have a decent camera with me when anything like this happens.

Actually, the system that exists in the US is pretty fantastic. What we need to do is to hold our leaders more accountable to that system, and stop electing them without a plan. We need to realize other countries have really successful versions of democracy too, and learn from them. The French wouldn't have elected either Obama or Romney because neither of them had a solid plan for how they would fulfill their promises. They were both empty air, but we've spurned the intellectual approach which would have required them to show more substance. We need to stop electing leaders we could sit down and have beers with. We need the intellectuals back. For that we may need to adopt the school system of Finland, which regularly boasts the best public schools in the world. We need to stop the legalized corruption that is the SuperPAC. We have a decent system for getting things done, but ever since the end of the Eisenhower administration, we've allowed the military-industrial complex to gain more control than is wise. If you let Big Business write the laws, they will always benefit the corporations over People. Corporations already enjoy privileges People don't have, and thanks to Citizen United they also have People's rights on top of that. That needs to stop immediately, and corporate charters need to be re-evaluated. We need the corporations, but we need them to honor the country that issues their charters too, and they aren't doing that currently. If we take every issue and model our "country" on which country deals with that issue best, we should be able to create a fairly effective society. I believe in sharing best practices, and when you find yourself spending way more than someone who is doing the same thing you're doing, maybe even doing it better, you can bet you've got something bad attached to your system that shouldn't be there. Like the US spending twice what other countries do on healthcare, and getting poorer results. That's not smart, something bad has attached itself to our healthcare system.

In that top photo, where the lightning strikes the ground? That's where I threw the Ring into the lava.

You can't help but make SOME judgements about people you've just met, it's the way we are. We're highly communicative, so we look for all kinds of signals that will let us interact. We're highly cooperative, so we're always looking for circumstances that will let us use our skills to best advantage. You can't gather that kind of data so quickly and not be forced to judge some of it. It's a necessity that we have to make some value judgements along the way. The whole negative concept of "judgement" is a false dilemma. We can make good, smart judgements about people we've just met too. We should avoid stereotypes and generalizations based on some of the exterior qualities you mentioned, but being "a good judge of character" is desirable, right? When I hear that someone goes to church, I don't automatically assume they're some kind of Westboro Baptist. Neither do I automatically think they're an idiot or wrong for believing the way they do. But if they were to tell me that they believe in The Truth and anyone who doesn't believe exactly the same way is wrong and beneath contempt and will go to hell, I'm going to make a judgement call and say I don't want to deal with that person when it comes to religion. And since that person will probably make EVERYTHING about their religion....

If you want this transition to be peaceful, I think you need to work with what's already there and aim the system in the right direction. If you want a major regime change, it won't come without some loss of life. Too many people would think they were fighting a usurper or a despot, and while it may not be true, it would be very easy to make you seem like one. Honestly, if you want a major shift in the way we look at our world, you need to include economics in your approach. I think the way to get the society you're looking for is to make people understand that some things work very well within a free market economy, but some things are just not right for capitalism. Medicine really shouldn't be a for-profit business, it doesn't fit the model very well. The goal should be healthy clients, but healthy clients don't spend healthcare dollars. So we treat symptoms so people can continue doing whatever caused their symptoms. There are lots of things like that, where privatization really doesn't make sense. We need to come to grips with the whole "money" thing. Wealth is becoming too lopsided and it's gaining way too much influence in our governing bodies. If we're going to continue to promote Democracy, we have to start representing the wishes of more people. And the economic models need to allow people the freedom to dream of the stars, not just scramble from paycheck to paycheck with no time or money left for future vision.

Shoot that writer, he didn't give me what I really wanted. I understand the consistency is pretty good, a lack of marbling that may actually be good for us, and it needs seasoning like any other burger (honestly, I couldn't believe the "I miss the salt and pepper" critic; you can always add those, you know, or cook with them next time). I wanted to know what it tasted like, and all we got was, "there is quite some intense taste" and "what was consistently different was flavour". Intense?! Intense good, intense beef, intense bad, intense what? And if it's taste is intense, is that what's making it "consistently different"? I'm at a loss to understand what is meant when one says a single burger's flavor was "consistently different". "Consistently different" from bite to bite, "consistently different" from a regular hamburger patty, what is "consistently different"? It makes me think there is something around which these guys are skating.

Some of the most dangerous words ever spoken. Truth, with a capital T the way you're talking about it, is not universal. You said yourself you have a problem with people when their beliefs don't match yours. Yet they claim THEY have the Truth just like you, only it's different. The way you believe changes Truth all the time. That's why "Truth" is the least trustworthy explanation of all, yet many people think it's the strongest. In a way it's like faith, beliefs that pretend to be strong but have no foundation in reality. Truth sounds strong but changes depending on who you're talking to.

I hear you saying that you tend to make harsh assumptions about people based on how much their religious beliefs deviate from yours. Oddly, I try not to make judgements against religious people until they do what you've just done. The one thing that seems clear to me is that no group has any evidence to support what they say, so all are equal. No religion is more right than the others. Assuming you're right and everyone else is wrong in a matter like this is the height of folly to me. Nothing personal, please, it just seems like you're trying to decide which horse to bet on when you can't see any of them, and there's a lot of evidence to suggest there isn't even a race to begin with. You happened to be born into a certain religion, and now you somehow believe your family was smart/lucky/blessed enough to pick (?) the One True Religion out of all the thousands of religions and tens of thousands of sects. What if you'd been born in the next county over? The next country?

As you say, because science works with theory we can realize when a better explanation needs to supersede an old one, and move forward with this new knowledge. Of course there's a lot to learn. One of the beautiful features of the scientific method is being able to model reality and make predictions based on what we already know, and that helps us learn even more. It sometimes helps us predict where something new might be. I love NOAA, they're just up the street from me, but they need funding like any other agency. When they say "95% of our oceans remain unexplored", don't forget that the oceans are a lot like space; most of it is uninteresting and empty. Perhaps the reason that much remains unexplored is because there isn't much there in most of it. And of course, there is expected to be plenty of life in places that are too costly for us to get to right now. Similarly, much of the Earth's species are in places we have no other reason to visit. Many things live in the ground we haven't seen because as big as the Earth's surface is, what's beneath it is much, MUCH bigger. Are we really supposed to dig them all up just so we can say we've discovered more of them? Perhaps we should wait until our technology matches our curiosity before going deeper. We've known about dynamite for a long time, and we used to use it in archaeology, but we stopped. When we hear that 90% of what is living remains undiscovered, we also tend to think in terms of critters we can see. Much of what hasn't been discovered is microscopic. I'm sure there's parts of Spanish and multiplication that have the vast gulfs of nothingness that the sea and earth have. The right 10% of Spanish will make you understood in most social settings. The easiest 10% of the multiplication tables should be more than enough to get the average person through their whole life. Science does have a very good grasp on the world and how it works. Science also understands and accepts the fact that there is much we don't know. Advances in science need to be cautious and thoughtful. Keep in mind that discoveries often require their own counterpart that may not be temporally compatible. The steam engine was discovered well before there was compatible engineering and materials to take advantage of it's abilities. Similarly, we may be able to drill deeply into the Earth, but using current techniques to discover new species may be counterproductive.

Whatever the claim, frzmaw is asking us for advice on how to improve a machine we know little about. It's slow, it uses big magnets, it needs to be more efficient, and it allegedly converts "energy from one shape to another". We can make guesses or we can ask frzmaw for some more information.

Why do you hate talking to idiots? I assumed it was my hat. A smarter person should be able to address any intellectual level at or below his own. If you can't make yourself understood you must not be explaining in a way your audience understands. That's part of the capabilities a superior intellect gives, being able to address a wider range of subject matter AND understand how to apply that knowledge. You don't talk trigonometry to someone at the basic arithmetic level. That said, I agree about willful ignorance being a capital crime. I don't understand people who can say something like, "I haven't studied much evolution theory, but the whole thing seems preposterous" without a big red "EDIT!" button going off on their forehead. Perhaps we could market an ankle cuff that triggers an alarm when the wearer deviates too far from reality and logic. Probably have to lobby to make them mandatory like air bags.... It's all about saving lives, and sanity.

We... seem to... be caught... in that cake's... gravitational pull, Captain. Recommend we send down a landing party with forks set for "dessert", sir. It's nice to finally confirm that Jupiter's core is made of flour, oil and cocoa. Please, nobody tell swansont about this thread. The triple threat of puns, Star Trek and cake could warp his... I mean, be the icing on... look, he's got important work to do and can't risk getting fired over threads like this. He really kneads the dough.

We use what's most efficient for the locale (or at least that's the hope). Steam wouldn't be efficient for a moon colony, where we'd find that solar was much better than using what little water we had for steam. In Colorado, we get a LOT of sunny days so solar companies love it here. Also, we have abundant natural gas and use that for heating and hot water, as opposed to the US east coast that uses coal and oil a lot. When we figure out how to "send" electricity from a space-based solar array, I'd love to see a worldwide project set up to supply some renewable energy (private enterprise might beat us to it though, since there are now conglomerates whose pockets rival those of some countries). It would be immensely ironic if the most efficient way to utilize a space-based solar array was to send a focused beam to the Earth's surface where it could heat up a steam turbine to create electricity.

Most of these type of teasers have a singular answer, like the one with the dead guy in the desert with a pack on his back. This one relies on a pretty complicated back story, and so you could technically come up with multiple answers that satisfy the scenario without actually being the right one.

It's hard to imagine any water-based drink that could be cold enough to still flow and do that kind of damage to the esophagus. I wonder if it wasn't mostly alcohol chilled to a much lower freezing point than water. Since we're the only animal that cooks its food, I wonder if we've developed any other evolutionary traits that help us deal with hot food. I like the lip-testing concept. The lips are tougher but more sensitive than the tissue in the mouth and esophagus, and make a good guide for what will burn and what won't. I would imagine there must be an upper limit to how hot most common foods get. You may cook meat at 500F, but chances are you're not going to take the meat itself much past 200F without destroying it. The emphasis and the emoticon allude to a misunderstanding on my part, but I still say the warmth would be unlikely to make any muscles cramp up. I avoided questioning the whole "laptop on my stomach" vs "pillow over my head" dichotomy, and will defend that decision rigorously. I sense there is still much I don't know about your "stomach" . Absolutely, but you don't sound like one of them. I don't want to deviate too much farther from the OP, but there are gender-specific problems that can cause cramping of the stomach in women. That may not be the case with you, but it deserves a mention.

The process seems to require testing against the soft tissue in the mouth before swallowing. I would imagine that any food hot enough to burn your mouth might have a bad effect if you swallowed it anyway. I've burned my mouth on food but never swallowed it while it was that hot. There may be a mechanism similar to the gag reflex that keeps you from being able to swallow food that would burn your esophagus and stomach, but I've never tested it before. It's unlikely that the heat caused cramping of the muscles in your stomach, but I say this only because heat seems to make most muscle groups relax rather than cramp up. Same with EM fields, they really aren't a mechanism for the symptoms you describe. Why would they affect stomach muscles and not leg muscles when the computer is on your lap? When you consider the two week time lapse between events, it seems more likely that something else was the cause of these cramps. Food poisoning or some sort of food intolerance may be culpable, since it sounds like there was no recurrence. There are many other possible reasons why your stomach was hurting, but most would have had more than a single instance.

It could be that your bananas are super fresh and just take longer to ripen. It could be like the difference between fresh laid eggs and store-bought. We had a friend with chickens and we weren't even supposed to start refrigerating the eggs for at least a week after we'd gotten them. They were incredibly fresh and we just weren't used to how long we could keep them. Do you grow bananas where you are? Could it be that they are just fresher than what one might get at a store where the food has been shipped from another country?

Here's a red flag on that article. There's a big difference between "your child would refuse to speak to you" and "estrangements between parents and adult children". Estrangement can happen just because you haven't spoken in a while, but doesn't automatically imply that the child is "refusing" to speak to the parent. I think there's a big difference between the "silent epidemic" you're talking about and children who're angry at their parents for a specific reason. One is perhaps a societal trend that should be addressed specially, the other is a normal part of life and has lots of solutions already in place.