Phi for All

Why is he against applying for a loan? He lives in a society that has set aside part of its tax revenue to loan money to help people go to college and pay the loan back when they're more gainfully employed. Does he somehow view this as charity? Would he not pay the loan back? Would he be more inclined to pay back a loan from family or a private institution? Very happy to hear about his situation, btw, I think it's great that his family could help out. There are many people who don't have that kind of support (for the hearing aids, I mean; fortunately support exists for those who want to go to college but can't afford it).

The religious right wants to allow invasive personal rights violations with regard to morality and even our own bodies. They want to legislate their own "holiness" on everyone else, with an agenda that's completely at odds with a democracy that separates church and state. Neoconservatives are merely opportunists clinging to the Republican party with no regard for what it stands for. They see money and power in policing the world, keeping us involved in conflicts everywhere, and using taxpayer revenue and legislative power to subsidize and deregulate their private interests. I think the thing to do is read the Republican platform and see where some of the religious right and neoconservative points differ. Then it's easier to see who is using the platform to bend you over. Raising the debt ceiling is nothing new. Neither is messing with taxes. Ditto altering the Constitution. Why do you feel threatened when a Democrat does it but not a Republican? I think you need to ask yourself just how far right you really are. Obama is more right of center than left, imo (and I'm not alone). Any other politician who calls him down for being too left of center is probably extremely far right. I don't think extremism is where we need to go right now. We need a fundamental shift in the way we approach almost everything. We need to start living within our means as citizens and use credit more wisely. Our major businesses are NOT looking out for the country, so electing representatives from that arena is probably going to make things worse. We need to stop thinking economically and start thinking technologically. We need to start planning based on that technology and build our smaller businesses back up, since they're the ones who tend to hire domestically more often. We need businesses that grow jobs and GDP, not just their own bottom line. Our market economy is still viable, but it's been sold out to businesses that make themselves strong by using the country, rather than building a strong company that can make the country strong through the taxes it pays, the products and services it produces and the workers it employs.

Of course it does, but in generalizing you left out the word "meaningful" and that changes everything.

I think being a religious right neoconservative AND a Republican is a lie in itself. How can the Republican platform be represented by someone who wants to invade personal rights and privacy, be the world's police and grow the federal government to accomplish those things? What kind of truly representative democracy would allow that? It's like buying an ill-fitting, out-of-style, horrible looking suit just because it has your favorite color in it.

I think you may be looking for the science dialogue forum two doors down from us. This is the science discussion forum, and often (read as "practically always") involves multiple members who are ALWAYS welcome to chime in on any topic.

OK, it's not a train, it's the glass of antifreeze you're about to drink because it tastes so sweet. You're ignorant of it's toxicity and you will NOT be able to keep your mind on your music as your kidneys cease to function and you slowly die. And it's really too bad, because with just a bit more lack of ignorance, you could be blissfully having a large scotch and letting the ethanol block the enzyme your body is using to metabolize all that ethylene glycol. To me, life is all about learning as much as possible, removing as much ignorance as you possibly can so you can prepare for problems you may encounter, do as much as you deem necessary to keep yourself safe. A little worry keeps us healthy, and a minimum of ignorance gives us the tools to ensure that we needn't worry to excess.

Which sub-forums aren't letting you post a new thread? As CaptainPanic says (in a funnily harsh way), we no longer have any minimum post counts for Politics and Religion, so that shouldn't be the problem. Pushing the right button is the only thing that comes to mind, but you must have pushed the right button to start this one. I'm flummoxed (that's right, I said it, I used the science f-bomb).

Dr. Maybe has managed, in a mere 16 posts, to get himself suspended for 3 days for failure to provide evidence for his assertions, trolling, grossly uncivil behavior including personal attacks and putting quotes around way too many words. Come back nicer, Doc, or don't come back "at all".

! Moderator Note Well, not a good start for Dr. Maybe, who joined the forum with bad intentions, apparently. Take a few days to reconsider, Doc, then come back prepared to follow the rules. Or just come back and start attacking members again, and we'll be done with you for good. Thread closed, Dr. Maybe definitely suspended for 3 days.

* remaining silent by right *

To make this prank a true illusion, you need to put your sound source in something nobody associates with making sound, like a book or a pot with a plant in it. A short range transmitter (think walkie-talkie) could be concealed in an object like that, and when the sound comes out it won't be suspected right away. Radio static could be a problem with the walkie-talkie idea, and it would be ideal if you could simply work with a one-way wireless transmitter to a receiver with as big a speaker as you can easily conceal. If it sounds tinny and scratchy, it's obviously a speaker and the illusion won't hold. Cloth is good for covering a speaker without muffling the sound. Having two or more sources for the sound will prevent the mark from zeroing in on what's making the noise/voices. If you take a thick hard-cover book from a used book store, you can carefully cut out a compartment in the pages and the front cover, then recover the book with cloth, making sure to dress up the cover to look legitimate. A small silk flower arrangement can be placed in a plastic pot you've cut your speaker hole in, and the speaker goes where the dirt would normally go with real flowers. Again, cloth or a woven wicker place-mat can be used to cover the plastic pot without impeding the speaker sound much.

I don't think any president could be the cause of these things. These are vague problems, though real enough, and I just don't see any way they could be anything other than completely subjective perspectives. Partisan politics?! My main gripe about Obama is his over-eager concessions to the Republicans in an effort to mend fences broken during the Bush administration. I know why he does it, but I don't think his approach has been particularly strong for the people who elected him to represent them. As for welfare, are you talking about the stimulus efforts? I could agree that much of the bailouts started by Bush and continued by Obama were corporate handouts and violated free market principles, but I think it would have been political suicide NOT to have pumped some funding into stimulating the economy he inherited. He's lowered taxes for more people than Bush did. That's important to you, right? He's actually shrunk the federal government and reduced government spending, and that's important too, am I correct? The stock market is doing much better during his administration, I'm sure everyone is glad about that. He ended the war in Iraq, he's bringing troops home from Afghanistan and he got bin Laden, all very laudable accomplishments, I'm sure you'll agree. He's cut prescription drug costs for Medicare recipients. He's created more private sector jobs in 4 years than Bush did in 8. He's been so much more transparent in his official dealings than Bush ever was, including disclosure of White House visitors, which no president in the history of the US has ever done, and he reversed Bush's protocol of barring the media from showing soldier's caskets arriving from overseas. Bush did a pretty good job with Russia, I actually thought that was a strong point for him, but Obama got a nuclear arms reduction pact signed with them. He established the Credit Card Bill of Rights so credit companies can't raise rates arbitrarily. And I know you probably don't like Obamacare, but it does prevent insurance companies from denying claims based on pre-existing conditions, which always angered me about health insurance. And he's done a great deal for small businesses, although I don't think any president after Eisenhower ever did enough (I personally think small business promotion is what will help bring back the middle class, raise tax revenues, strengthen the economy and cure most of our unemployment woes).

! Moderator Note OK, this little bickerfest is over. Thread closed, recess is over, I think it's nap time for the lot of you.

Oh, I think we were divided into warring camps back in 2000. Look how close the presidential voting was then and in 2004! I also think it's incorrect to say he's done "even less as president". You may not like the man, and I have some criticisms of some of his choices, but he has done quite a lot to be proud of. I don't think anyone could do that job without garnering criticism from somewhere, but I think we should be honest about what any president accomplishes.

NASA has some interesting things in the works, my favorite is attaching what amounts to a streamer to the satellite or piece of debris to slow it down, make it more likely to fall back into the atmosphere. Some kind of orbiting recycling center is my next favorite, a station that could somehow match speeds with and bring in and recycle dead craft and debris. This could bring financial incentive, but there has to be some kind of international agreement that allows for this without causing international legal incidents every time it happens.

There are current protocols that require new satellites to have the capability of retaining enough fuel to eventually push them back into the atmosphere to burn up. Pushing them out beyond Earth's orbit is too costly in terms of energy. Prohibitions on metals like titanium that don't burn up are also being pursued. New satellite launches are only a small part of the political problem. Countries like China give the nod to some of these protocol requirements but not on an official level. China also refuses to give up their anti-satellite programs, which causes other countries to want them, and China has tested their ASAT program with disastrous results for the space debris problem. They literally blew up a satellite and created a huge problem for everyone. There are obviously some secrets involved that countries want to protect, but we've come to a point where security needs to shift from "don't touch our stuff" to "we can't protect our new satellites from the debris of our old ones". This could be that threat to Earth we've all been waiting for that could bring us together as a species, but there are a lot of twitchy politics that aren't being handled fast enough.

I just saw the movie Space Junk 3D at the IMAX theater in our museum of nature and science. It's a fascinating look at the problems we have with all the orbital debris from satellites and rocket boosters in the various Earth orbits. It's not so much the sheer volume of zombie satellites that aren't functioning anymore, it's the fact that collisions in orbit happen too often, and every time it does, two satellites become thousands of smaller bits of debris whizzing around at an average of 17,000 mph. Each of those bits has the capability of producing exponentially more debris as these clouds of junk intertwine. The problem was given a name back in the late 70s by NASA, who named it the Kessler Syndrome after their scientist who proposed it. I was very fortunate to meet Don Kessler after the movie, where he was part of a panel discussion along with the director of the movie and some other scientists who are on the leading edge of trying to solve this mounting problem. What I really want to discuss is the politics involved here. When satellites are sent into orbit, the country hosting the launch is responsible for whatever happens to that satellite, including any damages it may cause. Live satellites can of course be shifted out of the way of potential collisions (the ISS has to maneuver several times a day to avoid possible collisions with pieces bigger than what it was designed to withstand, which is only marble-sized and smaller debris), but the ones whose fuel has run out (zombies) are incapable of maneuvering. And once satellites have collided, it's almost impossible to monitor who the debris belongs to, at least for liability purposes. Every country wants to maintain ownership of everything they shoot into space, and you can see their point, but they don't want the responsibility of taking care of what damages their debris does to other country's satellites. One solution that's been proposed is to treat space derelicts like sea derelicts. Once a craft has lost its ability to maneuver, it becomes potential debris and would no longer belong to those who put it there. Salvage (which is a bit beyond our present technology), or at least the right to deal with another country's property without reprimand, would be at least possible then. Some very creative ways to slow debris down so its orbit decays and it burns up on re-entry are being developed, but the problem right now is political. Imagine someone leaving a car stranded in the middle of the highway, but they can legally refuse to let anyone touch it because it belongs to them, and they aren't really required to remove it themselves. And while the owner can be made to pay for damages to the first person who runs into this car, after that the liability is fuzzy because there are now two cars worth of debris on the road, so who's responsible for the next collision? I know there are often some sensitive technologies involved in these satellites, and countries and corporations who spend the money to get them up there want to make sure they protect every aspect of their investment, but it seems like we really need something more in place. This is truly something that threatens the Earth as a whole, and needs to be addressed by every nation that relies on space technology. If we don't do something soon, it might become impossible for us to send extra-planetary devices out through the clouds of debris that fill the orbits. What do you think?

I think all our emotions are valuable, as are our experiences. Until you have some kind of prescience that tells you ahead of time what lessons will be valuable to a child in later life, trying to prevent bad experiences could rob a child of a lesson they may need at another time. Trying to stop suffering sounds great, but sometimes the greatest harm comes from doing what you think is the greatest good. Avoiding emotions doesn't sound healthy/

I seem to be the only person in the world who doesn't have an accent like the rest of you.

Wouldn't it be a hoot to have a backyard party where velociraptors start poking their heads out of the foliage every so often, like they're surrounding the guests in preparation for their own feast?

I'd love to see a physiological blueprint for a centaur skeleton. How do you replace a horse's neck and head with another spinal column? The thoracic vertebrae juts almost straight out, parallel to the ground, before joining the cervical vertebrae, so a human spinal column would have to begin at the wrong angle. Something tells me that six limbs is not a viable design for a mammal, otherwise we'd have seen something like it in the fossil records.

It's great that you're so supportive of Aethelwulf. You both have a lot in common, including the same ISP. I'll bet you even wear the same size socks!

I don't care if everyone had to have pilot's licenses to drive, flying cars is just a horrible idea. Everyone always imagined being on a highway stuck in traffic and then pushing a button and having your wings pop out so you could jet above everyone else and make it home in no time. No one ever mentioned that EVERYONE would be doing the same thing and there wouldn't be gridlock on the ground, it would all be in the air. One of those ideas that sounds fantastic but is extremely impractical. Gah, do you know how much it costs to get a pilot's training and license these days? I like michel's PAL-V, but I can't see anything like that being used to fly in cities. What a fantastic machine though for the person who lived an hour outside town in a rural area. You could fly from your home until you reached more populated areas, then land and drive the highways into work. I could see communities allowing something like that. I just can't see a couple hundred thousand flying cars all trying to avoid road traffic during rush hour in a big city.

Glad to have you posting with us again, Severian. Have you been busy at CERN this whole time?

Do you have any evidence that such a user-title exists?