Phi for All

I agree, but don't be so hard on yourself. I can see why my analogy made you think we were playing sports. Flip. Flop.

It doesn't really matter when you're making vague, debunked accusations. Implicating the government is implicating the Obama administration. And it's simply not true that the government blamed it "on an angry mob pissed off at a rovocative [sic] film about Mohammed for almost 2 months". You're repeating a lie. In a large region where "impending volatility" is a day-to-day concern. To borrow from American football, we don't have the forces for a man-to-man defense. When you play a zone defense, you try to react as quickly as possible to threats as they happen, knowing that you risk giving up a little to prevent giving up a lot. In this case, it's tragic that the little involved a secondary embassy and four people's lives, but this is the real world and Ambassador Stevens was a big boy and knew the consequences. He chose to stay where he was. Again, if allowing him to resign gives him the ability to uncover this deep secret you've been hinting at for 13 pages, why would Obama do it? And where does that fit into your latest squawk about there being something wrong with the story of Petraeus' resignation? You're making less sense than usual.

I agree completely, so I'm wondering why you (and FOX News) keep saying the Obama administration did that? When something is debunked as untrue so many times, the fact that you keep repeating the untruth makes your stance vacuous at best. His only part was that his quick-reaction force wasn't configured in a way that would have let him respond to this threat. I blame this part of the problem the least since the Libyan government, the February 17 Brigade and the CIA team were supposed to have been in a much better position to offer support. I don't get why you think Petraeus' resignation is some kind of cover-up by the Obama administration. Wouldn't he be more valuable as a scapegoat, openly blaming him for falling down on the job instead of this embarrassing admission? Where's the benefit, the motivation?

This is the kind of fatuous, slanted, manipulative propaganja that FOX News worshippers love to get high on. It has no substance, no motivation and plays on vague doubts and fears held by poorly informed and dimly educated mob-mentalists. What it fails to actually say gets gleefully filled in by the masses who then fail to question why this situation is supposed to be anything more than what it looks like.

In the end, no matter how you dress it up, it all boils down to corporations with way too much clout, masking their private primary agendas with secondary and tertiary concerns that play on the fears and desires of an under-educated and under-informed populace. All the crazy wackiness is just smoke and mirrors so our laws and thus our public funds can be manipulated to serve the few instead of the many. While it may seem futile to many to fight such insidious greed, we must keep in mind that our system allows us to change this if we can be tenacious and smart and require that our leaders be tenacious and smart as well.

It never ceases to amaze me when I hear this kind of inhuman, hate-filled raving coming from someone who claims some kind of moral high ground. I'm sure, in your narrow view, the vast majority of those slutty whores are out there having sex with everyone but you and something drastic needs to be done to make sure they all pay for it, no matter the context, no matter the situation. This stance on sterilization is simply the next step along the road to further hypocrisy and malevolence cloaked in the guise of "doing what's right". I find it shameful that you lack the ability to place yourself objectively in the positions others may face in their lifetimes while claiming the same rights as those who can. Your views are anathema to a functioning, healthy society of cooperative, intelligent, compassionate, real human beings. Even the fact that you would separate a "woman's rights" from those of "a human being's" tells me that your perspective is extremely detrimental to civilized human development.

No need for all the hand-waving. The whole telling us what to do bit is called "government", and it doesn't matter who's in charge at the time, it's what we pay them to do. What we should be concerned with is how SMART their choices are, how they choose to use the funds we give them to make our society better. The fact of the matter is, no one can stop anyone from making a mistake, and no one should stop anyone from correcting a mistake. I'm sorry you assign some magical importance to newly created embryos just because they could one day be a human. Both sperm and egg are alive already and an embryo is just another stage of development. If you let it continue to develop there are all kinds of moral, financial and temporal responsibilities to be faced. The context of conception can differ greatly from the context of birth and child-rearing, and no matter how many holier-than-thou hypocrites get in the way, no one should be held responsible for unwanted biological processes. Since abortions will continue whether they're legal or not, it all boils down to how safe you want them to be and how many more resources you want to exhaust fighting the inevitable. I merely wanted to address your argument from incredulity regarding freedom and liberty and how making decisions about your own body is basic to that freedom. I'm really not interested in your pointless and ultimately futile misogynistic assertions. Grow a uterus and let the government tell you what to do with it, see how it feels.

It's completely possible that you value the concept of your own progeny above the vessel you'd use to create them. It's also possible you feel the need to control the actions of others that you deem unacceptable. Both explanations have ample evidence to support them.

I sincerely hope not. I also googled "asshole gauge", and since Gauge is also a semi-popular feminine name, I was similarly disappointed. MIT has had some promising success with an application known as the Jerk-o-Meter *, but its applications are all voice-activated and not at all suited to our internet discussion forum format. * I sense further elaboration and hilarity in an upcoming installment of Swans on Tea.

I understand, but I think it's clearly our plurality voting system that's at fault. If people thought voting for someone who represents their views more closely than one of the major parties, and felt that their vote might not end up helping someone from the majority opposition party, I think they'd be less likely to support an Obama or a Romney choice. We clearly need a system that in no way seems like you might "throw your vote away", or in essence vote unproductively.

I would love to see that. I was actually thinking about reviving this thread myself, since my state voted to draft a proposition limiting campaign contributions by corporations. Montana went even further and established a policy that denies corporate personhood based on the Citizens United ruling because corporations are NOT people.

I think I see what you're saying, that since the Republicans represent the right and the Democrats the left, and they're the majority parties, Obama is the only productive choice for those on the extreme left and therefore represents the way they vote. Is this correct? I think most people from the US here would agree that we would all benefit from more diverse representation. I've voiced this concern many times myself and that stance seems to go unchallenged. Personally I would be much more interested in discussing ways to correct our two-party reliance, and practical ways to approach voters with a better way to elect our top officials.

One of the things you must learn to do is look for the fallacious logic. When the issue is low dosage levels of fluoride and the argument against refers to ingesting huge amounts of fluoride, which is clearly a strawman fallacy, it should tell you that the argument is intellectually dishonest. Why would they do that? Part of it is misunderstanding and fear. Another reason is these people have alternative products they want you to buy. Note that while the "natural" movement is telling you how evil chemicals and vaccinations and synthetic products are, scientists, pharmacologists and synthetic manufacturers aren't telling you the same thing about "natural" products. Organics and natural products are perfectly fine, they'll tell you, but they're generally not sustainable for the whole planet. When you start making products for an immense market, you find that you need modern ways of quickly producing what you need. Organics and naturals are meant to appeal to people who are easily frightened of things they don't understand. And believe me, there is A LOT to understand when it comes to science. And the knowledge is all layered, so in order to understand one thing, you have to understand four other things first, and those four things really require a basic understanding of even more things. I get it, it's a daunting challenge to educate yourself in science when it's so much easier and seemingly intuitive to believe the con men handing out candy bits of pop sci "wisdom". They make it very appealing and a lot less time-consuming. People will tell you all kinds of things to sell you on their products and services. They'll tell you they can remove bodily toxins through your feet if you'll buy their Energy Field Osmosis Detox Foot Bath session. Or they'll tell you they can remove built-up earwax using their Holistic Pressure-Differential Ear Candling technique. It's up to you to find out that there are no physiological mechanisms in the body that would draw toxins to a single part (there's really not a consistent definition of toxin; the body needs a variety of chemicals to do what it does). You're the one who has to discover that the Ear Candles are made of cloth impregnated with the very wax that seems to get pulled from your ears. You're the one who has to decide what to believe. We have a whole planet full of a growing population that doesn't seem all that docile or sick from chemtrails or dying from pesticides or fluoride poisoning. @ellementcollector1: We have no reliable methodology or equipment for measuring how much of an asshole a person is. I googled "asshole probe" and believe me, it's not what you'd expect.

This is a very good point. It's far too easy to claim the other guy is crazy, and indeed it has been my kneejerk reaction to the majority of Republican actions of late, and it bothers me greatly. I know it clouds objectivity to dismiss a whole group of people because of the unreasonableness of the most vocal fringe elements. In my most objective moments though, I still conclude that it's the religious right that is causing such jarring dissonance within the GOP. Their insistence on sexual control and their hyper-conservatism is completely at odds with a platform of less government intervention, personal privacy rights and supporting great schools. There must be some way they can stop allowing so many extremist ideas to overcome the good things they want to accomplish, and I hope the president can help them find that path, being a more sensible religious man himself.

First, the first $40M in taxes collected don't just go to general education, it will go to our public school capital construction assistance fund. The money will build new schools and renovate old ones rather than be used for teaching (a fine point, but one that was made clear to voters; this is for education infrastructure). Second, and I think more importantly, this will allow us to grow industrial hemp. I would think most of the US should be thanking us for this. When we can show that it's really easy to tell the difference between cannabis for recreation and hemp for rope and oil and paper and biofuel, I don't think the Feds can get away with busting us for industrial use. This will force them to reconsider the use of hemp as a SMART way to grow our economy using sustainable, practical means. And third, of course, we'll be saving law enforcement from having to conduct and prosecute on the 10,000 yearly cases of marijuana possession that clog the system and make it harder to investigate more meaningful crimes. All the laws that govern alcohol use will apply to marijuana. The only thing I'm unclear on is how they'll be rating "under the influence" when it comes to driving impaired. Blood alcohol levels are fairly well understood, and afaik before legalization if you registered ANY traces of marijuana on a roadside test you would be arrested. I don't know if they really have an acceptable level of cannabis intoxication the way they do alcohol.

OMG that's funny! I shalt be breaking the 8th Commandment with this all day long. Thank you very much!

Could you give us an overview, please? It will be difficult to get anyone to read your book (even if you actually attached a copy), especially since it's not conventional physics. Perhaps start with an excerpt so we can see the foundations you've laid and how they differ from accepted theory.

So you really believed Romney when he said he wouldn't raise taxes on anyone, that he could pay for his plans with closing millionaire loopholes in the tax structure? Even after he admitted in September that he'd have to raise taxes on the middle class? That's your class, isn't it? That's what I couldn't believe from my middle class Republican friends, they kept saying Obama would raise their taxes but Romney wouldn't. And that's not what either candidate said.

You said it better than I did. But I'm still a better asshole.

I don't know much about why Puerto Rico remains a territory instead of a state. I would think we would welcome more taxpayers and a full state in Latin America, and I would think the increased taxation on the population and businesses would be offset by the same kind of economic surge that Hawaii felt when it became a state. I love the similar climate of the Yucatan peninsula, and with the crime surge in Mexico I would prefer vacationing in a US territory. ' I have a milestone anniversary coming up. I'll check out Puerto Rico as an island getaway.

In other words, read the same pop culture, paranoid, fringe-appeal, time-wasting novelties you're reading? The ones that have references to other pop culture, paranoid, fringe-appeal time-wasting books so you know they're true? Word of advice, if the information these books contain is treated like it's sacred, that means it can't stand up to much scrutiny. Do better research before you buy into them.

This is a science discussion forum. It's just so assholes like me can share accepted, meaningful, scientifically supported ideas and have them analyzed by other assholes who are interested in reality.

Nope. Probability of 1. Probability of 1. Monkeys and humans evolved from an earlier common ancestor. Humans did NOT evolve from monkeys. And since it happened that way, probability of 1. At what point do you decide that a total lack of evidence to support the existence of these creatures might lead you to believe they don't exist at all? Again, alien life is much more highly probable than supernatural life.

Really? I'm hoping, since he's not angling for re-election anymore, that he either gets a new head of the DEA who can read the memos, or he reminds Ms Leonhart that the Attorney General asked Justice Dept officials to commit to "efficient and rational use of its limited investigative and prosecutorial resources".

I feel like imatfaal, my good mood refuses to be dampened. I'm running on about 5 hours of sleep, 3 tall coffees and the elated knowledge that we won't have to watch DC dig out the eight-year hole we spent four years filling in. I feel like building something!