Phi for All

It makes no sense that the sellers would permit something to be put on the fruit that would end up making them taste bad. It's more likely that you got a bad batch. I don't think the seller could stay in business more than a week or two if all his clients complain that their fruit looked good but tasted terrible.

While I think that far too many legislators vote in a way that is engineered to support special interests while seeming to represent the People's wishes, what I don't like about the Republican approach is waving their hands about vital regulation while simultaneously preaching free market concepts like competition AND trying to broker a deal that will get preferable legislation passed for their corporate supporters. If you want to defend the free market, stop passing special interest legislation. If you want fewer regs, stop spending so much money trying to duck them. This may be simply confirming my bias, but when I think about the changes for the worse that have occurred in the last 30 years, the downturned economy, the fear that seems to drive the average American, the cheap meanness that seems to dictate how employees are treated by corporations, the inability to trust the news media to inform us in a meaningful way, the blockage of proven medical techniques such as stem cell research and national health programs, the underfunding of our children's educations, the gutting of federal regulatory agencies, it all points to the Republicans for me. I know the Dems have done many bad things too (I'll happily blame Clinton for the telecommunications sell-out), but the Republicans seem to come up with the most bizarre combinations of religious zeal, corruption, hypocrisy and mixed messages. Perhaps it's just that I dislike hearing terms like conservative and liberal batted around, when there are very few people who are ever just one way or the other. Conservative shouldn't mean "afraid to move" and liberal shouldn't mean "open to anything". Smart is being conservative or liberal when circumstances call for it. No one should consider themselves only a liberal or a conservative about everything.

Trying to explain a scientific concept to a general audience just involves more and more questions, since you're often required to have knowledge of other concepts in order to understand the new one. I'm also amazed at the number of "enthusiasts" who dabble in science and then feel qualified to declare a theory flawed and advance their own in its place. My favorite was the guy who claimed something like, "My area of expertise is purely theoretical physics, and I have a breakthrough concept. Mind you, this is only a theory...." How can someone claim expertise in something they so clearly don't understand?

I could go to a random forum that will tell me about the dangers of vaccinating my child against chicken pox or polio. That won't make it true. I'm old enough to remember when we (as a society) were told that between robots and computers, we'd all be able to work about 30 hours a week and have more time to spend with the family, traveling and consuming and flying around in our cars. The reality is, computers, robotics and other modern tech can easily fill up our lives if we let it. It's very easy to let ourselves get caught up in our own lives (which is normal) and forget to make time for parents and older relatives who may not have embraced the tech revolution and are wondering what the hell keeps us so busy all the time.

... you've made it legal to peddle influence between legislators and special interests who want to shelter their companies from the normal market pressures the rest of their competitors have to deal with.

Because guitar playing gives everyone more energy than it takes to play it?

lol , ummmm ok.

We never delete anything except spam. We've always hidden posts that do nothing but increase post counts ("lol", "good post", etc.). I'll unhide it, but I don't think krash661's saying what you think he's saying.

You have a very easy style to read, and you're one of the most informative members we have. Your explanations need no clarification or emphasis, but you're gracious to say so. My post was just to point out a common misconception, that science is looking to "prove" things. It's not so much about answers as it is about explanations.

Here's where most speculators go wrong. They make assertions, like "Einstein was wrong", and then they mistake the resulting replies as defense of Einstein, rather than a reaction to an assertive statement made with nothing to back it up. "Einstein was wrong because he screwed up this equation right here" is at least attempting to show where the problem is, with the math being the evidence needed for someone to check the work. Even saying "It seems to me that Einstein was wrong about Special Relativity" allows this to be your opinion, and while people will still ask you to explain, at least you won't be getting immediate defensiveness like you would with a blanket assertion.

Actually, math is the only place you'll really find "proof" of anything. For science, theory is never complete, it's always looking for better and better explanations, building on what has come before. When someone claims they have "proved" something to be true, they're violating the very heart of science, the never-ending search for the best explanation. When it's theory, you keep looking. When it's "proven" you stop looking. We should never stop looking.

! Moderator Note Moved to Suggestions, Comments and Support. Can you give links to the threads in question? Usually when a Mod closes a thread, they leave an explanation why. It's most often done when the discussion runs into problems with evidence or other lack that inevitably leads to wasted time and uncivil behavior. If it's in Speculations, there are some very clear rules about advancing your ideas, and often the OP can't offer enough to support an explanation. We close those threads so it's not an endless pile-on for every new person who reads the thread, or a place to bump and reiterate ad infinitum. If you seriously have new evidence that helps you support an idea in a closed thread, we can re-open it. Please make sure what you have is serious, since you only get so many chances before we'll stop believing you when you say you have new evidence.

So since it did happen, we can quite easily see that the problem isn't with the universe. Based on the information you gave us in the OP, the problem happens when you do this "think" thing. The mechanism seems broken and you should have someone check that. Have them check your "explanation" mechanism while they're at it.

It seems to the person presenting the idea that it gets rejected "out of hand", without thinking. The truth is, the editor can easily see that this perpetual motion device doesn't account for any workload placed on the system. He doesn't have to reject it because perpetual motion is impossible, he rejects it because the system shown can't do more than move around for a long time. There is no extra power to operate something else, because as soon as you burden the system it shuts down. There have been over-unity devices that were submitted for review. The one I remember most was Joseph Newman's. He made a motor out of a big electromagnet that he spun like a gyroscope. He claimed this produced an EM field large enough to continue to run the motor AND power other devices. This guy had lots of people fooled. He was even on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. His claim was like honey to bees for people like me who knew some science but weren't specialized in it. Here was the Holy Grail, two scientific concepts put together in a unique way that changes normal laws to allow something new and exciting. But Newman was a big old fake, and he bilked many investors out of their money. He could never answer review questions but kept insisting he was being stifled because he was right, instead of being criticized for being wrong.

I'm not sure I like this phrase, since the definition of "out of hand" is that it was done without thinking or discussion. While an editor might stop the process before it gets to be discussed, he's not doing so without thinking. He's started to read the submission but found something flawed in the foundation of the work, an assumption made or conclusion drawn that makes anything else the editor might read seem suspect. If you were showing me your new car design, I might take the time to explain that it's not efficient to have a 90 degree angle on the windshield, but I'd stop you immediately, seemingly "out of hand", and just reject the concept outright if I saw you had square wheels. I'm not even going to bother trying to explain to you why your idea won't work.

I'd love to see a link to this if you have it. Most Americans don't realize how much they already support healthcare through their taxes, even if they have no coverage. They also don't realize that our healthcare isn't the best in the world. And they don't realize that they've been heavily spun against foreign systems, especially European healthcare systems, which means they have no smart, tested alternative and therefore are at the mercy of what insurers and politicians cook up together.

I would add that the USSR had a very inflexible administration, which is at odds with a lot of effective bureaucratic functions, so they ended up with a system that lied to itself. On paper they looked great, hitting all their numbers, doing what they're told, but in reality they were rotting from the inside. For the Soviets, it became more about sticking to "The Plan" than reacting to world events and national pressures. The part of Capitalism that Communism needs is the incentive to keep improving. It's built into the free market process, but where's the carrot with a Communist approach? And perhaps I'm being too subjective here. I personally wouldn't mind it if one company made all the world's cars, with just 10 models to choose from to cover various needs, especially if I could get either the finest quality for today's prices or today's quality at a substantial savings. That's just how I feel about cars; I like driving a great vehicle, but they're really about transportation to me. And I wouldn't mind having a toaster built like the old AT&T phones you could throw against the wall, that would last a lifetime.

The part of Communism that's seductive to me is in manufacturing. Without all the need for competition from a free market, you can focus on making the best, most durable product you can, and not dilute your efforts having 30 different companies making 300 different toasters. At least theoretically. I envision really well-made products, inexpensive due to economy of scale, that last practically forever. Landfills NOT filled with disposables and crap products built to fail quickly. Maybe some day we can figure out how to combine the efficiency of a communist industry with the flexibility of a capitalist bureaucratic structure and make a better mousetrap. I think it would be better in the long run to simply have a Minimum Subsistence program in place, something that would ensure that no one starved and everyone could have a roof over their heads. Temper this bit of liberalism with some tough stances, this is no frills living, and no politically correct terminology to make it seem nicer. This would be a program you don't want to use if you can help it, but it would be there for anyone who needed it.

I've seen this piece of evidence, along with charts showing how effective medical practice is around the world, for several years now. The only good thing people can say about how much more we spend is that we get comparably better care for the extra money, but it's clear we don't. We're only leading the world on a few types of cancer treatment. There are plenty of countries offering better overall care for a lot less money. Why this doesn't raise all kinds of red flags with more people is beyond me. If paying extra doesn't get us extra, why are we paying extra?

Where is this money coming from? Are you talking about redistributing the wealth every year?! Where is the incentive to work? And where do you get the money after the first year? You robbed all the rich people to pay the poor people last year. Why are the people who are capable of making millions of dollars going to continue when it all gets taken away every year and given to those who can't make millions?

So, it's only one day a year, but the trade could be permanent (assuming the guy who is doing the job now doesn't ever want to switch back). I don't agree with this. It's one thing to cross-train at your place of employment, it's quite another to trade those jobs like a commodity. For one thing, you may be doing the job, but it's the employer who actually "owns" the job. Without you, the owner gets someone new; without the owner, the job doesn't exist. And the owners may not like the way employees switch. They may not want just anyone in those positions, even if they are qualified. And you don't think any other millionaires are suddenly going to be pissed off? A big problem with redistributing the wealth is that people think they'd suddenly be rich. If you use the CIA Factbook and look at the US GDP divided by the population, you get roughly $50,000 per person. Here's the main problem with this concept: your ideas of "high priority", "problem", "worked hard" and "deserve it" are not universal. I know some very wealthy people who would probably scoff at what you think of as hard work. And my point with spending money on "stupid things" is that it's all subjective. Designer clothes can be very important to some people, and you actually want them to be, so people can make money in the designer clothing business and not compete with you in YOUR business. The same with booze and car accessories. One man's junk....

Job trading is a great idea. I actually recommend that to clients. If every employee at a company can run all the machines, handle all the stations, covering shifts is easier and training costs go down. It also gives everyone a better sense of how the whole company works if you've done more than one job there. I got the feeling though that you meant trading permanently, or at least long-term. I think in that case you'll almost always have one unhappy person who was forced to trade away a job they liked. As for the whole leveling the economic playing field argument, you'll be hard-pressed to find enough wealthy people to participate. While it could be argued that there are those wealthy individuals who wouldn't mind sharing their wealth with some deserving families, I think they would object to some kind of system where their hard-earned money ends up in the pocket of someone who just wants the money without working for it. Also, how would you feel about your system if tomorrow someone offered to pay you $1M for one of your ideas? How would you feel if the bank then told you that you can only keep $5K and the rest would be redistributed to 199 other deserving people? You could argue that $5K is better than nothing, but wouldn't it make a huge difference to you, a person who might be able to set up a budget so you could live a long time on $1M? How many people who get a $5K chunk of your money are going to spend it on something you think is wrong, like booze or tricking out their car or designer clothes?

Trying to work effectively in bipartisan politics is made much more difficult when the Republicans switch support just because the Democrats have found something they like about a specific bill. How else do you explain so many complete turnarounds in the last several years? McCain and others practically destroyed any shot at comprehensive immigration reform with their complete reversal of stance. McCain has also flip-flopped on cap-and-trade, seemingly just when the Democrats started to look at evidence that greenhouse emissions might be reduced. The Republican stance on deficit spending has changed so dramatically in the last decade that they've lost the right to use that issue against the Dems forevermore, afaic. The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform proposed by McCain and five other Republican sponsors almost didn't come to be; all six voted against their own bill. A lot of the savings that will pay for Obamacare have come from smart cuts to Medicare spending, something the Republicans have always supported until the Dems did too. Just last year Romney was against Medicare spending cuts and increasing taxes. Just this March, the GOP did a complete 180 on that stance. Neither the Dems nor the Reps are doing very well on campaign finance disclosure. They seem to bluster about it and sponsor bills that get voted down, and neither side is doing much to reduce the influence money has over our legislation. What bothers me most is the inefficiency of it all. There are some great ideas out there, but they often don't get the attention they deserve just because of which "side" you're on. Common ground is ignored in favor of fencing off your particular issue-base. Plans are made and legislation is passed based first on the top percentage who will benefit, and last on who's will is represented. And no one is really asking why some things are done better by private market interests and some things are better funded by the public. So we'll probably end up with a healthcare plan that's inefficient because many of the people putting it into effect don't believe in it. It will be like FEMA, or any other bureaucratic function that the Republicans don't believe in. It will probably work under a Democrat administration, and it probably won't under a Republican one.

It seems to me that the Republicans have been working to stall any progressive agenda of any kind, even if it makes sense, even if it was their idea in the first place. They have invested a great deal in the "Liberal is the new Communist" campaign, and that's a shame. We've moved away from representing great ideas to representing ideologies that have to stretch to fit people they were never meant for.

If you love someone, you want them to be safe, healthy and happy above all. Money is more important because it gives you the means to be responsible for the well-being of those you love.