Phi for All

Greywater systems that recycle non-toilet waste water for other uses are expensive but very effective. I remember looking into one that would save about 30% of my water use. The amount we drink or cook with as opposed to what we clean with is very small actually, and the amount we use to clean with is much more variable than what we use to drink and cook with. I think recycling grey water for other uses is a great idea. I know in some countries they allow you to divert rain flow from your house gutters into catch-barrels to irrigate back yard gardens and such. I think that would be a great help in many parts of the world.

Adding a foundation of religion to any argument increases it's longevity exponentially. Aggression in the name of religion guarantees a more earnest pledge to continue fighting no matter the cost. Since this in itself is extremely destructive, ill-considered and ultimately futile, there must be someone who gains from prolonged armed aggression fueled by religious fervor. Find those people or groups and you will probably find them helping to make the problem last as long as they can.

Whether Santorum is working towards a religious agenda, a political or a corporate one, all sides (except the taxpayer side) would prosper if tax money for education went only to private companies. Conservative/liberal issues are dwarfed by the corporate quest for the profit to be made from the state and national education budgets. As far as its efficacy as a ploy, imagine this: you're a huge multinational company like Bain Capitol, founded in 1984 by Mitt Romney, among others. You lobby your ass off and you get Congress to pass a bill that allows you to own all your other companies, like Burger King, Burlington Coat Factory, The Weather Channel, Dominoes Pizza, and Hospital Corporation of America (the largest private operator of health care facilities in the world), and in addition, you now get to own media companies as well (including their news formats), which had been previously prohibited because of its obvious conflict of interest with regards to advertising and journalistic integrity. So you buy Clear Channel Communications, 850 radio stations reaching 110M listeners each week, many Christian format stations among your holdings. You lobby some more and now you get to own schools and universities with tuitions paid by taxpayers. You happen to own Houghton-Mifflin Publishing and Staples, so you got text books and office supplies covered. Your Dunkin' Donuts and Burger Kings will go on campus, of course. And now all you have to do is market a Bain loan for college freshmen to attend a Bain school to learn how to work in a Bain job to pay off their Bain loans so they can shop in Bain stores. Why is this NOT a good ploy? You just figured a way to bring back indentured servitude, profit more, control your market, control your personnel, and get half the voters to actually approve of your methodology. All because you use the unfair advantage your media ownership gives you to influence voters to get the laws regulating your corporation relaxed to the point where they overlook an ever-increasing amount of conflicts of interest and unfair advantage you're gradually accumulating.

It's all a ploy to privatize education. Corporate lobbyists are pushing to abolish state-run schools. Imagine how powerful you could be if your company could control financial markets, the media AND you could also shape the education of your future employees and customers? Turning our schools into extensions of certain Christian doctrines seems like the first step towards making us just like the Islamic countries we denounce as being run by religious fanatics. If the US becomes a religious superpower, all wars will be like the War on Terror, unwinnable by force because the enemy is an idea that grows the more you try to burn it down.

Ophiolite changed my mind about the Evolutionist argument. -ist can denote "someone who studies" as well as "follower or believer". Creationists don't seem to take exception to being called Creationists, so I suppose it's not necessarily an attempt to demean Evolution by suggesting it's a belief. We need a corollary to Skitt's Law for ranting. Whenever you're ranting at someone, you're bound to make a mistake that's much worse than what you're ranting about.

I think competing with anyone based on labor costs is a losing strategy for the US. We need markets where our strengths can only be poorly copied, where we set the benchmark for precision, design and skill. Third world laborers have a different frame of reference than the US worker. They aren't impoverished by their own standards, they just need less money for "stuff" than the average US worker. Rather than try to argue that the American worker is somehow deserving of special consideration when it comes to global economics, and call for a nationalist movement, I'd rather see us clean up our own house. We need regulations that require a company that accesses the protection of a US corporate charter to have at least 51% of their personnel be US citizens. We need corporations that are taking advantage of privileges provided by taxpayer funding to start paying their fair share of those taxes. At the very least, if we're going to use taxpayer dollars anyway, we should offer an incentive to companies that employ more US workers.

I like it. By picking a weakness that's usually detectable only in hindsight, you set up a situation where the interviewer may even defend your actions, consciously or subconsciously. Sometimes forcing something to work is the most effective use of your time, and you often never know if another fifteen minutes might save you having to start from scratch on another approach. These are judgement calls that either make you the hero or the zero, and everyone has been in those situations before. I think the desire to improve oneself is what interviewers are looking for here.

Our? We? Do you have a partner for this? What grade level are you? Is it just your idea that's due on Friday or is the whole project due Friday? How strict is the "it must not be done by other people before" rule? A completely original science project is not as easy as replicating something cool done elsewhere.

As is the case with so many things, try to pick the firm ones. Welcome, new humans. We're glad to have you here.

Personally, the answer I use is that I love research and find that I have to put a limit on time spent on it. A little research is always essential, but you never know if more time spent will give you a better return on the investment. I always like more information so I adjust for this weakness by forcing myself to stop at regular intervals and analyze what I've got and decide if it's enough in that situation. I think it shows some good qualities and addresses a fear many employers have these days. And it's quite true. There have been times I've spent researching something where I just kept digging deeper and eventually found a nugget of information that made it all worth it, and other times where I didn't find that nugget so all that time seemed like a waste (at least to my employer). I remember that interview. I asked you your greatest weakness and you said you didn't take office pranks very well, and had been know to spray a few suspect's cubicles with the Uzi you keep clipped to the underside of your center desk drawer.

1. I don't believe there is a god like the Abrahamic God is described to be. I do hold open the possibility that there is a higher power than humans in the universe, but I don't think it's responsible for creating the universe. 2. The Big Bang theory has the most evidence to support it. 3. Chemicals, heat, pressure, an enormous cauldron and unbelievable amounts of time. 4. It's not a "belief". We see evolution happening in the world around us every day. Every creature works to survive. If they survive long enough, they reproduce. The creatures who are best adapted to their environment are the most successful at surviving to reproduce. As each generation gives birth to the next, traits that keep creatures from surviving aren't passed along while those that help it survive continue into the next generation, perhaps even magnified. Like honeycreepers in Hawaii developing more curved bills that fit the nectar flowers they prefer to drink from, and the nectar flowers co-evolving more pronouncedly curved shapes to accommodate the honeycreepers. 5. About 4.5 billion years. There are multiple dating systems that we can use to give us this best approximation. 6. Your definitions were not provided for these three separate items, so I'll define them as I answer the question. Life, or what we would technically term "life", on other planets seems inevitable, or at least highly probable. By aliens, I'm going to define that as intelligent extraterrestrial life, and again, it seems probable that out of the entire universe there is life we would term intelligent. UFO's I will define as intelligent extraterrestrial life that is currently visiting us in some form of spacecraft, and I think it is possible but not very probable. 7. Yes, evolution is still happening all around us. It's a common misconception that evolution is working towards some kind of ultimate creature or something. It doesn't work like that, a creature that excels in one environment might be extremely unsuccessful in any other. Humans are smart, and we communicate and cooperate on a scale that is incredible compared to other creatures, but put us in a cave alone 100 feet underground and a blind millipede has a better chance of surviving to pass on its genes. As long as the planet has different environments, there will never be an "end result", just survival into the next generation. 8. There is little to support the notion of life after death, but if there is something unique about consciousness that allows it to survive the death of our body, then any "life" after death would be completely unlike anything we're used to in these bodies with these senses. 9. Again, I don't "believe" in evolution. Science gives me the tools to test any claim made by others. I can either do experiments myself (which is very cool and satisfying), or I can read about how others did the same experiments and decide if the work and it's peer reviews sufficiently support the claims so I can accept the work of others. I am able to find purpose in my life knowing that every step I take is solid and supported by observation and rational thought. I can look at the way evolution has shaped humans to be communal, cooperative, societal creatures capable of changing themselves AND their environment and allow that to guide me to a better realization of how mankind can get along and prosper together. 10. I'll echo others here and say that the term "evolutionist" is a derogatory term made up by those who haven't studied evolution. I also have to say that I don't know that the term "creationist" isn't the same way. Do creationists call themselves creationists? I've always made a distinction between someone who believes in creation and a creationist. Believing that God created everything is different than believing in an inerrant, literally-translated Bible whose sloppy maths based on people who herded sheep for their entire 900+ years of life gives us an Earth that's only 6000 years old.

Secrete means produce a discharge, funny after you just told everyone to drink a lot of water. Some of those could be spambots who mass-joined that day and marked it as their birthday. We get that a lot, a bunch of bots that create fake accounts that they never do anything with. We purge them when we can.

I resent that. A lot.

Well then, what if we change the format for Speculations? We could provide a template members can copy/paste and then input their thesis, supportive evidence and what predictions this allows them to make. There should be some questions they have to answer that will show us any educational bypasses or lack of testability. We'll identify crackpots earlier on, as well as those who can be guided. I still say that, in much the same way Archie Bunker taught a generation about how NOT to treat racism and tolerance, a good crackpot can show how NOT to approach science, but I also think we might err on the side of caution when it comes to treating speculative subjects. I also think that those people who have a hard time with what is posted in Speculations should refrain from posting disparaging remarks right off the bat. We often have to deal with people who are already irate because they're being shot down in a way that makes it tough to separate the person from the idea. If you're the type of person who calls up Rush Limbaugh or Howard Stern just to complain about how stupid the show is, you should stay away from Speculations.

You have to accept a lot of bad with your good in most things, and when it comes to speculative ideas, there are always going to be more bad than good. Do you know how many television and movie scripts are written as opposed to those that actually get shot and shown to the public? Science is the same way, with more failures than successes. Many human endeavors have more failures than successes. I don't see how we can promote learning and the exchange of ideas if every Speculations thread gets shot down in the first few posts. As others have said, even the worst ideas proposed here are a learning experience for someone. I agree that crackpots are everywhere, but you have to treat each instance separately. For those who might just learn something by having their idea scrutinized by the membership, nothing is worse than being shut down in an offhand manner. I think the real problem we're taking about here is when an idea is wrong based on lack of education but the poster is convinced they can bypass the study because their idea just "feels" right. Then we come up against the "you're too hidebound", "you reject everything that isn't mainstream", "you refuse to think outside the box" retorts, and they're not wrong in principle, though they usually are in fact. Perhaps we need a more reciprocal relationship with posters in Speculations. Whenever we sense someone trying to do an "educational bypass", we should be able to explain that we're taking the time to read the hypothesis and review it, and we must insist that the poster reciprocate by taking some time to read relevant material to help explain the review. To me, this is the distinction between the person who thinks they have a great idea and the crackpot: the crackpot has already rejected certain studies (usually maths) and refuses to go back and learn the material.

Happy Birthday, Moontanman. You're the greatest, too.

To start off, I would suggest mass-production of a standardized space module that could house a group unit, and be combined with other modules as needs increase. Get as many independent group units up in orbit as is cost-effective. The modules would allow groups to salvage old satellite debris to pay for expansion, and fix current satellites at a cheaper rate. As they clear space debris, they can keep hooking up more modules until they are city-sized. I see this as a good, sustainable model for operation until the modular platforms are big enough to handle more serious lifting and flights to the asteroid belts. If you're talking about a city that flies around in the atmosphere, I think it would always take too much power and offer only mobility. It's appealing for land-based tourism if you can plan on having a whole other city stop by for festival, but how does that benefit the Flying City folks? You could probably milk some invitations to all the major cities for a while, they throw you a party, you bring your city to theirs. Your city could technically deliver any goods it manufactured, but it couldn't be cost-effective.

I sell witty back stories for a living.

You said the teaching was something you couldn't get from your current program or school. If you've already asked your boss about teaching and he has nothing for you, why should you feel guilty seeking it elsewhere? The work he has you doing isn't the same as teaching. It's not like you're doing research for him and now you also want to go do research for someone else at a different school. It's not apples and apples, you can't justify a phrase like, "Is there not enough work to do here?"

If you're going to engineer your emotions to facilitate good eating habits, why not use positive rather than negative reinforcement? Associate your toothpaste with a tasty desert, squirt some lemon in water and associate that with the best cream soda. Every bite of vegetables gets you one mental snapshot from your future GQ photo shoot where women are salivating, yes, I mean literally drooling over YOU.

So dirt gets vibrated off your body? You'd probably have to stand a bit differently in a sonic shower. Is it supposed to hit you from every angle, all at once? I think it would feel pretty funny until you got used to it. My wife would probably hate the tickling it would be bound to generate. How do I clean my ears in a sonic shower?

Argument from incredulity, mostly. The system is so complex, so it must have creator! I find this argument weak, because the system is actually many smaller processes given incredibly vast amounts of time to work in. This type of system needs no one to oversee it. And if there was a creator, why didn't he do a better job with our eyes, our backs, our legs? Why are there so many flaws in the design if they stem from an omnipotent, omniscient creator? You can't claim we're so perfect we must have been created and then overlook the flaws that preclude being perfect.

Whatever you do, don't use Cards Made Easy. How do you know about their being "good" and "not so good" if you just found them last night? What criteria do you look for in a card printer? On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the absolute best company you could ever imagine dealing with, and 1 being some cut-rate, slimy ink-monkeys like Cards Made Easy, where do you rate each of the printers you've found? Ahhh! No, run away! These are the guys I was telling you about. They hire people to mention their name on forums like this one, and act like they're just interested, spamming their name and what they do, mentioning "business cards" in every sentence. Seriously, dude, biggest mistake of your life. These guys will print your cards all off-center, there'll be misspellings, dirty words, some will be upside-down, some will be completely blank. Half of my last order were THEIR business cards, I didn't even know what I was handing out, probably got them a lot of business.

The time a piston spends at TDC and BDC at zero has to be measurable. Even if it's a nanosecond it's still measurable.