Phi for All

Wow. No apology for not mentioning there's a dancer in the answer?! You kept telling people they were wrong, but you only gave part of the riddle. In the puzzling/riddling world, this is a felony. You should be behind bras.

To me, "divagation" means "Stop what you're doing and look at ME, world!" It's very difficult to have a discussion with someone who "divagates" the conversation. It becomes a soapbox that's all about the diva, how smart and wealthy and kind and considerate and so much better than you she is, and less about the topic being discussed. Blogs were invented for one-way conversations like this. But not interesting blogs.

! Moderator Note The soul is a religious concept. Moved from Other Sciences to Religion.

I SO wish I could just sit down and work straight through this but my Fridays are full of many little jobs.... imatfaal, I think you're on the right course with that second spoiler, last post. Perhaps the left and right columns answer the Where Am I? question?

But... edit: I just realized that your "authority" might be "sage", which throws a couple of my other answers off.

Also, posting your concept to people's profile page (I must assume you're doing this to others as well as me) is often unwelcome. This is a discussion forum and unwanted, behind-the-scenes conversations about what you post in the main forums is NOT a good way to get positive attention.

You're assuming that playing ping pong with good friends isn't also a learning experience. Unless you're one of those people who reaches a certain point in life and then declares that all your opinions are etched in stone and nobody can teach you anything more, you're constantly picking up new perspectives and tidbits of information from everyone around you, which help to shape your views on just about everything. And those smaller learning experiences can have a bigger overall impact on your life than learning a new skill or field of study.

Usually, yes, but not always, and that's why I asked. Here's a link to some of your own government's alcohol subsidies, given to everyone from restaurants to liquor stores to hotels. Many people who stay at a hotel or go to a restaurant DON'T drink alcohol, but their taxes subsidize it. And even Ozzies who never set foot in a liquor store are paying taxes to help make them more profitable. More laws? Isn't it easier to give existing laws bigger teeth? It's clear you think people in general need to stop being able to easily obtain alcohol. If you get your way, what's to stop you from doing the same thing to anything else you think is bad for everyone? A heavy tax on bacon might unclog some arteries but there are lots of folks who don't abuse their pig privileges, yet the tax penalizes them too. And don't forget that too much of a price hike invites the criminal element to come in and undercut the market price. Clearly, raising prices and closing a percentage of the liquor stores has it's limitations, just like law enforcement. Even together, you're still missing some elements that would more precisely address the actual problem of teen binge drinking.

Okay, you're just a troll. Goodbye.

max13 has been personally deleted by the site administrator for being uninteresting, abusive, refusing to respond in a discussable manner and for forcing me to change the name of my dog out of fear of him catching the crazy.

I would argue, in the case of marijuana, that you would eventually have people who were better growers than anyone else, and those who couldn't grow it (for whatever reason) would naturally gravitate towards them. Would your system allow one person to grow for 19 others as well, as long as the total didn't exceed the legal maximums for 20 people? In the case of alcohol, I would argue that, while there are plenty of home brewers and vintners, distilling more aggressive spirits is not something I'd want the average scotch drinker to undertake. Perhaps a person would have to pass a certification test for a license to distill hard liquor, if you still think that's prudent? There are already laws that restrict public intoxication and harming others while under the influence. Do you feel there would need to be more or stronger laws if pot were legal? I think the best argument against your plan is that it still restricts what some don't want restricted, so it doesn't do much to end the motivation for a black market. I think there would be a LOT of people who have limited resources to grow/brew it themselves, and that sounds like demand for illegal distribution. I mean, marijuana is treated just like cocaine, crack and methamphetamine in the US, so how much more of a penalty are you going to impose? There are already too many people in prison for pot. But I do like your emphasis on education against habitual use. If the US could spend the same amount of money on that as they do on prison for drug-only offenses, I think you'd see a dramatic decrease in the amount of unwanted effects from drug use. Hard drugs, I agree, have a much greater potential to exceed recreational use. I wouldn't say that pot smokers turn to pot when they're in a bad spot, though. Most people I know who partake do it recreationally, just like the people who have a couple of beers at home in an evening. I don't think those people are harming anyone enough to warrant government intrusion.

That doesn't really answer my question, and isn't really true. There are citizens who pay taxes to subsidize products they never use (subsidies they often don't even know about), or use a disproportionately low amount of. I'm asking if you think this should be such a case, where a subsidy should be attached to the sale of alcohol (and let's say marijuana too, if it's made legal) so that everyone's money can be used to help with a reduction in harm to society overall. Again, we aren't lawless, we have laws already in place that should deal with the teen binge drinking. Either the laws aren't being enforced, they have inadequate strength or they're aimed at the wrong people. In this case, I'd say the parents who supply illegal liquor to minors need to suffer more than those parts of society that aren't involved.

Parapraxis, the slip of the tongue that may signal an unconscious train of thought. I saw this one today and it occurred to me that this happens from time to time here. We used to call this Typo of the Week, or Mistake of the Month. Feel free to compile any others from SFN that you run across. No judgements, no finger-pointing please. Just meant for fun and ridicule, mwa-ha-ha.

Often, the last thing on a person's mind as they're wheeled into an ER is covering their mouth when they cough or sneeze. ER patients are often people who's hygiene isn't the greatest in the best of situations. It's practically impossible to clean every contaminate-able surface on a constant basis, even in this day and age. And the airborne contaminates in a place where you've got everything from sucking gunshot wounds to pneumonia must be equally difficult to eliminate completely. I'm actually surprised the incident rate isn't higher than 4x. I wonder how that rate compares with a visit to a normal doctor's office during cold and flu season.

This is the result of a carefully constructed propaganda campaign, imo. I've seen this strawman setup with the Occupy Wall Street movement. The real protest is against unfair corporate practices and their influence over politics (something Moore has championed over and over again), but the propaganda machine twists this into class warfare. It's even describing it as between "the capitalist class and the working class". The movement is NOT against capitalism or the wealthy, it's against giving corporations too much power, including the rights of citizens when they have fewer liabilities and less accountability than citizens. Moore doesn't attack "the rich" unless their corporate practices are corrupt and dishonest. I haven't liked all his documentaries, but let's at least look honestly at his work.

! Moderator Note astrocat5, if we lock a thread it displays a lock at the bottom and nobody can post at all in it. We have no need to artificially block anyone from viewing or posting to an open thread. It is quite common for a thread's visitors to drop off when it reaches a certain size. People start to read, realize you aren't willing to show any evidence and stop coming to waste time with four pages of hand-waving. Also, this is NOT a democracy, it's a privately owned science discussion forum, one with rules you agreed to when you joined. You do NOT have the freedom of speech to post anything you want here. Finally, since you have not responded to requests to back up your assertions with any observable evidence, much less attempt to offer a better explanation than current theory, your idea has become speculative only. I'm moving the thread to Speculations (which may actually revive your audience) so please read the sitcky notes regarding speculative threads. There is no need to respond to this modnote.

New information for an old topic: http://news.yahoo.com/japanese-company-proposes-space-elevator-2050-215100396.html We could see this in our lifetime. Unless some kid pushes the buttons for EVERY floor. That could take forever.

Predictions need to be testable now. "In some point into the future 'etheric eye' will evolve" is too vague to be a meaningful prediction. He needs to be able to show that, if he applies sacred geometry to a phenomena, it will result in x, and his tests need to be reproducible by others, and further his idea needs to explain things better than current understanding. Are any of his claims even falsifiable?

You reach a point of diminishing returns. Charge too much and the black market undercuts the price, smuggling to avoid the taxes. Prohibit the substance and the black market will charge what it can get. And we really should be talking about marijuana in this thread. Sorry if I misunderstood, Freddy. It just sounded like you were assuming the price increase behavior modification was only positive. Wizard's Second Rule: "The greatest harm can result from the best intentions." - Terry Goodkind I don't drink at all and I still consider that to be an affront to civil liberties. Can't we just tax it to cover the costs to the country? I'd like that better than trying to figure out which personal freedoms were "less important" than others. Or taxing everyone for problems caused by an identifiable segment of the population. Do you think I should be taxed even though I don't drink? Is this an area where my money should be used because it means a "reduction in harm to society overall"? Really, Oz has no laws already in place for contributing to the delinquency of a minor?! For child abuse?! I'm sure you do. Wouldn't it be easier and more elegant to simply strengthen these existing laws?

I have to try this since it's been bugging me whether you're a bot or just suffering from bad translation. If I get another robot answer then we'll know for sure. "Rigid with racism performance"? Does this mean they were focused on winning for their country? Why were the hurdle races different? Have you watched a lot of Olympic games? You bring up too many concepts here. Fair and unbiased practices but the Indians are boycotting the games because somehow the "conditions" are easy? How could they possibly make races easy? Slant the tracks downhill in all directions? Fill the pools with dense gas instead of water? Where on Earth did you get the midgets? Since everyone is still running the same 75m and high-jumping the same five feet, why is this deluded? Isn't it a good thing to be able to see more of the arena? If you don't think so, you should watch the games on your cell phone.

Mainstream scientists don't "prove" things to be true. They reach logical conclusions as to the most likely explanations, explanations supported by the most evidence. This allows them to make predictions which they can also test to check their conclusions.

What a Flip answer!

So increasing the price actually turned the teens towards harder liquor, and allowed them to control how much alcohol was mixed with their "soft" drink. The decreased affordability actually modified their behavior by giving them motivation to drink stronger liquor, without the restraint pre-mixed alcopops imposes. Yes, and probably more often in a very detrimental way. Shame on you for forgetting all the education that was also made available. With the last big push against smoking, people became aware for the first time that manufacturers were actually adding addictive substances into the product. It suddenly became more than just "it's bad for you". Punish everyone for a problem with teens? That might not be a popular choice, nor one that upholds individual rights. Again, you're skewing the demographics, this time to include illegal behavior on the part of parents. Look, the idea obviously failed in this instance. It's a bad argument by itself, you should drop it. And that's why I said, very carefully, that I wouldn't sanction privatization without severe restrictions. But I agree that that's one slippery slope you can always count on to start sliding down. You'd have to constantly watchdog those corporations to make sure they didn't lobby to reduced those restrictions. And you'd have to start by killing the concept of corporate personhood, which I hope the American people will shortly realize is killing our country. Actually, I'd rather see us take a lesson from Portugal. Take ALL the funds from the War on Drugs and use it for education and treatment. Don't legalize them, but stop jailing people whose only crime is having/using a personal stash of drugs. Education is the best solution for almost everything, and in this case it's the one that has the best chance of minimizing the dangers and the numbers of users as well as protecting individual rights.

You'll have to go through betta-testing first.