Phi for All

So at the size it would need to be to be dispersed on the wind, are you saying ground glass wouldn't affect the eyes or lungs any more than normal sand? The ones grinding the glass wore cloth around their mouths and noses, iirc, and some amount of care was taken not to distribute the ground glass amongst themselves (think big mortar and pestle with some kind of partial cover). The enemy supposedly didn't realize this was anything other than normal dust until the damage had been done. In the story they had no instantaneous means of communicating over long distances.

The story isn't about silica or sand or even dust really. The group in the story took everything they had made of glass, placed it in wooden washtubs and then pounded it all into smaller and smaller pieces until they had it fine enough to float on the wind.

I think this is exactly what has happened. The wealthiest don't use social programs and therefore don't want their taxes paying for them. Corporations will always look for ways to lessen their cost of doing business. These battles have been and will always be fought and it's up to the citizen voters to make sure the unbalanced wealth doesn't gain too strong an advantage. I think the real problems occur when the wealthiest also want to pay less than their fair share of taxes. As the leaders of the corporations, they are using those charters to pay less taxes to maintain our roads, even though their corporations use the heaviest vehicles on them and their employees represent the most traffic. They use the argument of free market principles to avoid regulation while at the same time use political influence to squelch competing businesses and technologies, and subsidize themselves, which not only removes tax resources but also does NOTHING to improve GDP. The corporations have been arguing that less taxes will help them create more jobs, but when given the chance they don't do anything of the sort. And I also think deceptive advertising plays a huge part in all of this. We may not think we're susceptible, and in fact one of the tactics used is to establish that we're free to NOT listen to the advertising, which somehow makes the deceptive practices ethical. But the majority of citizen voters ARE heavily influenced by this type of spin, and I think it's played a heavy part in bringing us to the brink we find ourselves facing. If the spin wasn't effective, no one would pay billions for it.

In which case it wouldn't be "doomed to failure". The other objection I have is that you've given us a False Dilemma. It's entirely possible that al Qaeda's goals will not be realized, and neither will we win the War on Terror. In fact, it's my fear that the War on Terror has been designed to be an ongoing source of economic and political opportunity, much as the unwinnable War on Drugs.

! Moderator Note Three posts discussing consciousness were split off into their own thread to avoid derailing this topic. The new thread can be found here.

Ah, you're right, I forgot about the non-magic requirement. It's been a while and that's a lengthy (but awesome) series of books. Still, I remember thinking that it did quite a bit more damage than seemed reasonable. Not to the individual, I think it would be quite incapacitating to a person, but the sheer numbers that were affected seemed outlandish. I guess incredible luck is still not magic.

Sweet, that will help. There are some lichens that have a rusty red coloration as well. Try to get some close-up shots. It's also entirely possible that an active quarry would squish its fair share of clover mites.

If I remember that book correctly, the glass dust was specially (magically) shaped to not only be more jagged and lethal to eyes and lungs, but to also present more of a profile for catching air currents. Unless we could recreate that magic somehow, I doubt it would be nearly as effective. Also, you say "buckets" and that brings a certain type of container to mind. Iirc, they used wooden washtubs, considerably bigger, but still inadequate unless the glass was made more potent by magic, or advanced engineering I've never heard of.

The rocks themselves may have hematite or iron oxide that gives them that rusty red color. Was the coloring you noticed more uniform or more spotted or stain-like?

! Moderator Note eric55, you have failed to answer questions put to you, and have purposely taken your own thread off-topic, seemingly to avoid answering those questions. Further, your posts are not coherent. Nobody is able to follow where you are leading, and you make no attempts to explain. This is all against the rules you agreed to when you joined. This thread is closed. Please reread the rules before posting further.

I don't want a link, I want you to think. Why do you insist on a day being only interpreted as 24 hours when there are two other definitions? Why isn't the 6-day creation only six twelve hour periods, using day to mean daylight hours, the way Genesis distinguishes between day and night? For that matter, Genesis 1 tells us God created day and night on both the first day, and then again on the fourth day: How can you take one narrow interpretation when there are obviously many ways it can be interpreted? And why take an interpretation that the vast majority of Christianity rejects as false? I'm not even asking you to trust Evolution, I'm just asking why creationism seems right to you.

NO. I'm tired of you starting new threads whenever the questions get too tough for you to answer in the old threads. It's a delaying tactic and it's frustrating for people who want you to answer the questions you're asked. And stop advertising your threads, it's off-topic and it derails the current discussions. I'm pointing out to you that there are discrepancies and contradictions. You can't take something as literal truth when it says completely different things. I'm asking you why you interpret Genesis 1 as saying the Earth was created in a literal six day time period when Genesis 2:17 says Adam and Eve will die on the very DAY (yom) they eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil? You don't have many options here. Either God was lying about them dying on that DAY (yom), or God meant DAY (yom) to mean "a specified time or period" (like "back in Abraham's DAY (yom)"). And if God wasn't lying, and meant DAY (yom) to mean "a specified time or period" (like "you won't be immortal anymore and will die within a limited, specified time or period), then couldn't the Genesis 1 creation story have used the word DAY (yom) to mean "a specified time or period"? It's just that one little sticking point that keeps young Earth creationism from agreeing with what scientific evidence supports as the best explanation for an ancient Earth. One interpretation out of three possible for the Hebrew word yom. Why do you insist Genesis could only mean a 24 hour DAY (yom) when there is so much evidence against it?

I'm very sorry to hear about your condition. It's the kind of situation where you really need other people to help you. Without knowing you, one of the first things I thought of when I read your words was how much I would hate being thought of as a "burden", and how much I would probably push people away if I were in your circumstances, people who were genuinely concerned for me and simply trying to help. It's hard to be positive when negative things happen to us, but people have a harder time being around negativity unless they have the training for it. Your friends and family might just be waiting for you to WANT their help. I would suggest that you need to find a professional to counsel you. Friends and family are great but they are ill-equipped when it comes to problems they can't overcome for you. It sounds like everyone in your life (including you) feels helpless against this extremely unfortunate setback, but there are those who are trained to help you cope. Please seek out such a professional. Internet forums are for learning, but right now you have a wound that is tainting everything for you that we can't ever properly help you with. It takes someone who can talk to you face to face and get to know exactly what you're dealing with.

I hope you're not trying to dodge important questions brought up in that other thread. I'm sure that isn't the case, so before it gets deleted, I'll grab one exchange from there and ask again for your reply: Knowing both sides of an argument is the intellectually honest thing to do. I don't "believe" in the Big Bang Theory. After everything I've read, BBT has the most evidence to support it, and it's actively and constantly being studied and refined, so I trust it to be the best explanation, unless something better supported comes along. The order of creation only differs by one point, so "no apparent order" is inaccurate (especially for someone claiming an inerrant Bible). And the question of whether man and woman were created together or it was man first, woman second should at least show you that the two Genesis versions are subject to interpretation, which means you can't say one is literal and the other isn't. As for a literal six day creation, Genesis 2:17 says: Obviously, Adam and Eve did NOT die the day they ate the fruit of the tree. This must mean that "day" (yom in the original Hebrew) has multiple interpretations, such as during daylight, 24-hours, or an indeterminate time like "back in the day". Could it not be that six days could be billions of years to your god? Wouldn't it have been easier to write a six day creation as an explanation to the iron age Hebrews of the time, as opposed to what the geological record shows us really happened?

Ridiculous ≠ interesting.

I would say "no" to both questions in the title. "Doomed to failure" is a foregone conclusion and I can't agree with that. And I don't think the War on Terror is winnable the way we're prosecuting it. Our overall strategy seems to create MORE terrorists rather than fewer. Effectiveness is subjective. The War on Terror has been the most economically effective war to date for arms dealers.

Generalizations NEVER work.

There is rarely time to ask when multiple people are responding to a thread. The longer we wait, the more responses to the off-topic post add to the derailment. Nothing? You bring up a discussion from another site about "how we might come to moral decisions without religion" and say it has NOTHING to do with religion? Btw, I moved that thread to General Philosophy yesterday. I hope you can forgive such a grievous error on the part of our staff. Since this is a problem only you seem to be having, and at multiple sites, lex parsimoniae suggests a more economical explanation.

! Moderator Note sammy7, this thread is not about computer games, so your comments are off-topic. We had hoped you would get the hint with the deletions. Please stop trying to derail the thread.

I think rather than paving the way for their own destruction, they want to draw certain parallels in order to gather followers who will help justify their negativity and grow their base of power. "The end is near (but we've got backstage passes)!"

Gah, you were so close to being able to change your avatar after the last time someone implied that you were trying to make people fear you! Now you'll have to keep it for another six months. Bond gets put in the crosshairs once again. When people are grasping for straws, he becomes the target of reticle!

Knowing both sides of an argument is the intellectually honest thing to do. I don't "believe" in the Big Bang Theory. After everything I've read, BBT has the most evidence to support it, and it's actively and constantly being studied and refined, so I trust it to be the best explanation, unless something better supported comes along. The order of creation only differs by one point, so "no apparent order" is inaccurate (especially for someone claiming an inerrant Bible). And the question of whether man and woman were created together or it was man first, woman second should at least show you that the two Genesis versions are subject to interpretation, which means you can't say one is literal and the other isn't. As for a literal six day creation, Genesis 2:17 says: Obviously, Adam and Eve did NOT die the day they ate the fruit of the tree. This must mean that "day" (yom in the original Hebrew) has multiple interpretations, such as during daylight, 24-hours, or an indeterminate time like "back in the day". Could it not be that six days could be billions of years to your god? Wouldn't it have been easier to write a six day creation as an explanation to the iron age Hebrews of the time, as opposed to what the geological record shows us really happened?

Well, how can they both be literally true? Genesis 1 says humans were created after the other animals, men and woman together. Genesis 2 says humans were created before the other animals, man first and then woman after from man's rib. How can both be literally true?

So Genesis 2 must be literally true as well?

! Moderator Note sammy7, you have been given citations which you are choosing to ignore. This is against the rules you agreed to when you joined. Please refute the arguments given or acknowledge their points, but ignoring them and claiming they don't exist will not be tolerated. Don't derail the thread by commenting on this warning; please use the time to address the points others have made.