Phi for All

You're leaping over the almost 14 BILLION years in between the Big Bang and your computer being manufactured. If you can control your impatience, there are mountains of evidence you can check for yourself that support theories on ways life forms and evolves over such vast amounts of time. You can even keep your creator; perhaps He is much more patient and awesome and studious than you are, and provided the mechanisms that all those billions of years took advantage of. Your argument from from incredulity is one of the weakest there is; it's single advantage is that of saving you all the time of actual learning. Don't be lazy, be smart, study up. How can you ridicule what you don't know?

So... you completely missed the alien invasion at midnight?! It took us till just a couple hours ago to fight them off. Where WERE you, we could've used your help!

Most of your problems stem from the fact that the bike needs something to push against for traction. Perhaps you can "invent" some kind of local field that the bike creates under it's tires (obviating the need for costly and limiting buried superconductor systems) so it can maneuver any way it likes and the field always banks, inclines or declines with it, based on the center of gravity of the bike and rider. You may not need the enclosure then either, if the field keeps the rider pressed to the bike so he doesn't fly off (since an open motorcycle design looks cooler and would probably please thrillseekers more).

It was poor grammar. I'm pretty sure he meant "I saw your post and I couldn't help myself." Not your "other" post, THIS post. Really? You got all that from that cartoon? I don't think all Mexicans, Indians, Africans, other third world countries, Egyptians and Arabs hold the Mayan calendar as sacred as you do.

Not when that's all you're wearing. Let's not have a repeat of last year's New Year's Eve party, please!

! Moderator Note Moved from Modern and Theoretical Physics to Engineering.

Terrain is the key factor here. A motorcycle moving at 365 kph+ doesn't turn well, or retain control over even the slightest hilltop. It doesn't react well to anything but smooth, obstacle-free straightaway at those speeds. I can't imagine that would be a very long-lived thrill for those who desire more lethal excitement.

That's a big-time FAIL for showing how the Big Bang was impossible. Urey-Miller was an experiment showing it very much WAS possible. Just because they were intelligent doesn't mean the Big Bang couldn't have happened without them. That's actually hilarious. I think you need to look up the definition of "impossible"before you ever use the word again.

Quick, PM me your PayPal info now and we'll sort out the details of what you bought (much) later.

This is science, please cite evidence that such a thing exists. So we'll hear from you soon? Ah, the laughing-too-hard-to-puke approach. Might work. FYI, here's a thread where we were tossing around some slogan ideas for T-shirts, with the logo, of course.

No, we want people to pay US for these shirts. We're looking for a positive psychological reaction rather than a negative biological one.

The benefits to forming a Constitution that involved as many countries as possible would need to be dramatic and universal to attract those that would normally oppose it. Unrestricted (or less rigorously restricted) travel would be a big benefit, but I don't see that as a likely concession in the beginning. Trade is always tricky and I'm not sure the best humanitarian approach would be considered the best business approach. Access to education and medicine would seem to be natural benefits, but they also might be touchy subjects with some of the more fundamentalist countries. What would be the best, most basic place to start with regards to why a global Constitution is a great idea? What is going to attract the most countries to the round table?

Many lawyers and law enforcement officials echo this sentiment, but attempts to reform the system are shot down almost every time by Congress, which tells us someone is making money on the system the way it is and doesn't want it to change. I read recently where 1 out of every 31 Americans is either in jail, in prison or on some kind of supervised release. Are we really such a country of criminals? How can we consider America the best place to be when we have more criminals than any of the countries we'd rank as the worst places to be? When you think about it, our Congress has the ability to change absurd things relatively quickly, so when something seems so obviously wrong but doesn't get changed, you can usually find that profit is influencing our government representatives somehow. Can it be as simple as removing the corporate clout to solve so many of our biggest problems?

It's not against the rules, so it's strictly up to peer pressure, but could you please NOT use text speak on SFN? It's a tiny savings of your time that risks a huge amount of other's time to interpret, giving the impression that only YOUR time is valuable. There are many other reasons I won't go into, but suffice it to say that your FOXP2 protein sequence has two more amino acids than a chimp for a reason. Productive communication is our goal.

Currently, according to this Wikipedia article, "Private companies in the United States operate 264 correctional facilities, housing almost 99,000 adult convicts." Despite the studies (which I've shown elsewhere) that show these facilities cost more than publicly funded prisons, despite federally mandated requirements for cost-savings, AND despite the fact that these for-profit prisons only house the least troublesome inmates (they kick the costly ones back to public facilities), more are being built. Gosh, I wonder what's fueling this demonstrably inefficient use of taxpayer funds? I don't know what they call it in the prison system, but in business we call that the Recurring Income Strategy. Set up your service so the customer just pays on a recurring basis to solve their problem until it becomes part of their budget, like a health club membership. And if you're really smart, you do everything you can to keep the problem flourishing, like putting your health club near some fast food places. This bothers me as well. While there are some criminals who will never change, how can we expect the rest to change when their "debt to society" follows them around even after it's supposedly been "paid"? Sex offenders have it even worse under the present system. We punish all of them for what the worst of them do, and they have to "register" themselves publicly even though they've done their jail time. Be careful you don't throw a general blanket over the crime that fails to take the criminal into account.

Not convicted?! They treated him like a BANKER?!?!

If I had posted as a member first, my judgement as a Mod would be suspect. Posting a modnote first about a general rule (as opposed to an argumentative style or fallacy use) didn't really set up a conflict that would have required me to recuse myself. If, at any time, ANYONE seriously thinks I've compromised myself with this action, I'll remove myself from the discussion, no questions asked. I won't risk the integrity of the Staff just because I sometimes can't keep my mouth shut. Spying on our own citizens for terrorism may seem justified to some, but what happens when we start privatizing more prisons? When those for-profit prisons decide they want to expand their business, how difficult will it be for them to get hold of information collected by the government that hires them to house criminals? I know it's a slippery slope argument but when corporations are buttering up the slope with incremental changes that benefit them, the argument gains strength. I sometimes feel like the frog in the pot of water that's being slowly heated.

You'll have to tell us more so we can discuss it. We don't allow eBay links at all, especially from new joiners.

Not necessarily, and even when it does it doesn't have to mean growth of US jobs. Cisco is doing very well as a company but has been laying off US workers this year, I believe over 6000 at last count. I've found it very difficult to find out what percentage of US-based Cisco's 70,000+ employees are US citizens. I don't know what types of regulations you're talking about here.

Corporations are made up of people, but the entity itself should not be given the rights of a person because they are excused from many of the consequences a person is subject to. Are you saying it's OK for corporations to have unfair advantages because compliance might affect their workers? That we should accept excessive levels of pollution or privacy invasion because it would create more jobs? There is no real correlation between a company's profit and how many jobs it creates. That's more of a market influence.

Ultimately, any kind of world peace is dependent on a common authority. Trade is one of the elements that keep nations friendly when that trade benefits all partners, so I don't think we can eliminate that element from a global convention. The common authority is going to be the biggest obstacle in any kind of global government. It must represent all peoples without becoming too large and unwieldy. People should be the ultimate authority, even above those that govern the country they live in. People should be allowed to send delegates to a global convention even if their governments choose not to participate. This is a lot more complicated than I thought at first. Almost every thought I have about it is fraught with more complications.

It's a hypocritical practice no matter who does it. The first thing that would happen in the US after abolishing sugar subsidies is that sugar prices would come down and all the manufacturers who currently use more expensive alternatives (but less expensive than current sugar) like high-fructose corn syrup would switch to sugar. For a brief time these manufacturers would enjoy more profit from their products, and then someone would start using the savings to discount and undersell their competition. Soon prices would come down and the market would be less restricted and more free than it's been since the early 19th century. Platform Republicans, rejoice! Consumers, rejoice! The sugar barons wouldn't lose as much money as you think, considering they would no longer have to pay out all the resources to keep this antiquated, complex and counter-intuitive system alive. They would scream for a while, then they would merely sob, and eventually they would embrace it and claim it was their idea in the first place. After lifting our foot off the necks of the rest of the world, we'd still be free to negotiate trade tariffs to make sure our own markets don't come to too much harm. And the world would be a fairer place to live.

! Moderator Note Due to the sheer amount of spam we get from new joiners, I've had to remove your outside links. Please forgive the inconvenience if you're genuinely interested in learning more about this subject, or rot in hell if you're just here to spam us with dodgy snake oil claims. We've discussed this before here.

Corporations are people, is that what you mean? Corporations love it when people conflate the collection of individuals that make up any business with corporate personhood. That way they get to become "We, the People", in ultimate authority over every office and position in this country, over every congressperson, executive and Supreme Court judge. The fact is that corporations aren't liable in the way people are, that's why they're set up the way they are. Corporations are given charters to do business within limited parameters. They can go bankrupt without affecting the assets of the owners. Corporations can't go to jail. But lobbying has allowed corporations to spend undisclosed amounts on advertising that affects election outcomes. It is flat out wrong to let corporations enjoy all the freedoms and power of personhood with none of the responsibilities and consequences. The Constitution is all about keeping government's influence in private lives to a minimum, but corporate charters are all about government oversight into the dealings of business. Corporate personhood is a HUGE conflict of interest. What type of regulations am I talking about? The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 is a good example to use. We're trying to improve the financial regulatory system that allowed our current crisis to happen, but the Dodd-Frank Act is over a year old now and most of the changes have yet to be put in place. We have new rules but policymakers are dragging their feet (perhaps at the urging of their campaign financiers?) about issuing those rules and implementing the changes we desperately need to start meaningful reform. Relaxed environmental regulations throughout the Bush II era didn't create more jobs, even though corporate executives claim that's what would happen now. In fact, regulatory jobs were lost in both public and private sectors. The savings went straight into the pockets of investors and executives. Bush II did a lot of damage to environmental regulations in his last year before he left office, like reducing the time the public has to contest the use of public lands for things like uranium mining to a mere 15 days, essentially removing all Congressional authority to make emergency land withdrawals, and pulling the teeth from the Federal Land Policy Management Act. This has all happened before. Twice in US history, the people have sought to curtail special interest influence in our government. Andrew Jackson's opposition to the National Bank was famously hailed as removing the unfair influence of private concerns over our government. The 20th century progressive movement, arguably begun by Republican Senator Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin, challenged the corrupt President Taft's special corporate interests with his National Progressive Republicans League, made famous by Theodore Roosevelt. Special interest corruption by corporations intent on changing laws in their favor is a cyclical dilemma, one we can overcome only with constant vigilance and oversight. And now is the perfect time for reform, when crisis is upon us, the economy is in peril and the need for correction is so visible. This is the time for We, the People, to demand that this unfair influence be stopped, that our government be realigned with OUR needs, not the needs of chartered businesses, lobbyists and robber barons. It will only get harder the longer we wait, the more we listen to corporate advertising telling us they have the answers.

OK, after conferring with other Staff members, I've decided to participate. Our rules prohibit a Mod with prior involvement in a thread from moderating that thread, but if I give up any further Staff action I shouldn't be in conflict. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ I aim the blame for many of our current problems at the corporate sector, but it's our politicians who allowed them too much control over the regulations that restrict them, and we're the ones who voted for those politicians. So I know the real blame is ours, the voters, but I think I know how to fix it and that's the only thing we should be really focused on. Corporations just want more profit. It's what they do, the nature of the scorpion. It's a great thing if you're an investor. It's different if you're a competitor, or an employee, or an ordinary citizen. You have recourse against unfair practices at every level, you just need to exercise them. And we have to understand, we absolutely HAVE to understand, that regulations are the necessary checks to balance out the power corporations have in our society, and we absolutely HAVE to understand that corporations will fight HARD to make sure those regulations have as minimal an impact on their profit as possible. The corporations will argue that they won't be able to survive. They will argue that they are being strangled by unfair government regulations. They will do this because success means more profit. And if they don't succeed, they will continue to do business here. There are too many examples to list where big business claimed they would die if something wasn't done to help them out, and we didn't fall for it, and they did just fine. Just as there are too many examples to list where they demanded and we caved in, and we now regret that we were so weak and stupid and forgetful. Most of the privacy violations from big business are aimed at making more money. Most are fairly innocuous, cookies to tell them more about what we like. If we privatize prisons and law enforcement, expect those privacy violations to be turned into ways to make money by putting us in jail. Expect to be painted as a violator, a criminal, a perpetrator. The government has a different agenda, but since so much of our government is directed by our businesses, the public and private agendas can often overlap. The solution to all of this is to regulate both businesses and politicians, take back some of the control we've lost by being complacent and letting "the professionals" handle everything. Big Business will call it un-American. They will call it unfair and stifling. They will kick and scream and at a certain point, when it becomes unprofitable to continue the tirade, they will claim they supported the measures all along, and that it's the best thing for the country. Hopefully they will look elsewhere for more profit for a while, but they will continue to try to get us to relax the regulations in any way they can get away with. Scorpions are necessary, even vital, but if we aren't careful with how we treat them, aren't WE to blame if they sting us?