Phi for All

It may not be that we need changes to our Constitution. As I said before, we may just need to redefine our goals with regards to what's already in the Constitution. I'm not really all that qualified to talk about military matters. Personally, I think there is a huge conflict of interest in the way we acquire our weapons, but I also acknowledge that there is still a need to defend ourselves. I think the military is used to further the interests of certain business sectors, and I disagree with that use vehemently. I think if you remove the conflicts of interest, you might find that conflicts as a whole will decrease as well. Money, though, that's a different matter. The US economy is so huge that it can't help but affect the rest of the world. Foreign aid, as an example, affects other countries tax rates and how they perceive us. While we currently give aid in order to help economies avoid needless poverty, much of our aid only affects a relatively small number of people in these countries, and does very little to reform policies that perpetuate the destitution. Since the US started growing sugar after the Louisiana Purchase, we have imposed tariffs on foreign sugar and subsidized our own growers with a bizarre and labyrinthine program that is supposed to protect us from the volatility of the world's sugar markets. They have done so by keeping US sugar prices at the very top, higher than any other country (so we avoid the ups and downs by remaining constantly UP). A Department of Commerce study shows that a 1-cent increase in US sugar prices adds between $250-300M to consumer food bills. The program itself, regardless of price hikes, costs the taxpayers more than $3B each year in handouts to growers who are already making 2-3 times world average for sugar production. Foreign quotas are set at the whim of those who control the programs, and we often put foreign growers out of business, then flood their markets with free food (with policies like Reagan's Quota Offset Program), which makes it almost impossible for the former foreign sugar growers to switch to other crops to eke out a living. In other words, our policies are supposed to promote free enterprise and abolish poverty, yet they only promote our own businesses, impoverish foreign economies and only alleviate hunger for short amounts of time while forcing local foreign food growers out of business. We look like huge hypocrites to a good portion of the world, especially when our military gets involved in helping "the spread of democracy".

And that's why I think it would be best to start it here in the US, invite others to address issues where US policy affects their country, and use that as a platform for others to emulate. I'd love to hear from other countries how our policies affect them, beneficially and adversely. Correct the adverse ones that don't cause us more problems and we just made a better friend. For me, the idea would be to eventually show how much better things get in the US with an update of our Constitution (or perhaps a redefining of our goals with regards to the existing Constitution). Other countries citizens pressure their leaders for something similar and more countries benefit, showing the rest that they are being left in the dust. If we all look like we're moving towards some kind of unified global understanding, I think even those who presently would demand concessions others would deem unacceptable might start to bend so they don't break.

I think it would be fantastic if we could announce to the world that we are holding this convention to address the state of our republic/democracy/political system, and that, while all decisions about the future of our country will be made by us, we welcome the input of any country that is currently trying to improve the lives of its citizens. This would seem to be a logical first step, and if it's successful, perhaps others could hold their own conventions with the same caveats. Eventually, this might lead to a global convention where any lingering abuses can be addressed.

In the long run, I think it would be best to include the global population. In reality, I think, if we were able to agree to have the convention in the first place, I can't see the majority agreeing to allow foreign countries to participate, even just to put their two cents in. We can't even adopt successful policies from foreign countries, no matter how many problems they would solve.

! Moderator Note Please, the personal attacks are unnecessary. Keep your comments focused on discussing ideas, not the people who have them. Civility, people, always. I shouldn't have to remind any of the people involved here. This really pisses me off because now I can't take part in this discussion, and I really wanted to. Next person who uses a personal attack gets some time off.

Four quarts, or four and a half to five if you change the filter at the same time (which you should). Buy the oil at an auto parts store so you can get a new filter and the people there will tell you which oil is best for your area. They can also tell you where to recycle your old oil.

Actually, the reindeer/sleigh thing is just marketing. Since 1966, Santa has used a teleporter to place all the gifts in people's homes (how else do you think he got into houses without fireplaces?). In 1987, when replicator technology became available, the elves were downsized to gnomes and all the toys were simultaneously created AND teleported to their destinations. While kids search the night sky for a flying sleigh, thinking Santa makes his round-the-world trip in a single night, the actual process only takes about seven seconds. The really hard part is removing all the milk and cookies left behind. Fortunately, that's what the gnomes live on for the rest of the year.

Nothing. Suffering is a psychological concept, pain is biological.

I think it must be. There are way too many examples of successful policies from foreign countries that would help us work smarter, but get marginal attention simply because of the source. "We don't do things that way" is usually the common denial response. If a politician suggested that we copy a French program or any policy that works for a country considered "Socialist", it would make no difference what it concerned or how successful it was, it would be professional suicide for the pol who brought it up. It may simply be that lobbyists for people who profit from our inefficiency find the foreign angle an easy spin. It's still a play on our pride, but when something could be successful and we won't even give it a try, pride wins over brains and that's never good.

Let's steer this discussion a bit more towards Earth Science and less towards Politics or I sense a thread move coming on. Just sayin'.

Thanks for posting the abstract, DrRocket. That's what Sandra1 should have done. ! Moderator Note Sorry Sandra1, but we get too much spam to allow new joiners to link offsite. We are here to discuss, not to advertise your site.

Oh JohnB, you're lighting up a straw man. I did stipulate that they had to be on a grid for my idea to work. I agree that getting power to those that are underpowered would take precedent. But the US tends to want to bring aid in the form of US contractors building hydroelectric dams that not only mess up the local environment, they also fail to bring anything but the lowest paying labor jobs to the area, with much of the funds allotted for work going into the pockets of the local governors. It's foreign aid that does more for a select few US businesses, and usually ends with the locals having a poor opinion of us. For those areas where the power is there but inefficiently used, putting efficient appliances in the homes might solve their power problems, decrease the corruption and garner a better opinion from the population. I'm just saying we don't always have to leap to build dams.

Xittenn already pointed out that the acceleration you want yields about 6.5 G's, and average humans start blacking out around 5 G's. Without some kind of inertial dampening, you're going to need something that slows the wearer down without the abrupt ending and nothing above 5 G's. A parachute works to slow a fall, but needs a lot of distance and time to be effective. If you could project some kind of force field ahead of you that decreased your speed by 50% every second, you could get down to about 11 kph in 6 seconds. You'd still need something to push against, though, and it shouldn't be the ground.

Personally, I think there are many misconceptions about right/left, conservative/liberal labeling. Like the current major political parties, they are too encompassing to be valuable concepts in any meaningful way. If I think a widow with three kids deserves welfare from the state, does that make me left-leaning? If I think a healthy individual who is capable of working doesn't deserve welfare from the state, does that make me right-leaning? What am I if I think both these statements are valid? Why do supposedly far-right conservatives like the Tea Party want to block payroll tax cuts? I thought they were all about less taxes. As for the OP, everyone who argues politics does so from an emotional standpoint. If it were all logical choices, there wouldn't be a problem, but someone is almost always affected adversely whenever a decision is made that affects the nation. Again personally, I think where most of the problems stem are from mixing politics with other concerns, like religion or business. We all want the best education for our children, but disagree where that education should come from. I think the best use of our money is from public funding, some think privatized education is better motivated, and still others think education should include religious ideology. Emotions are more likely to increase when profit and dogma are involved. But I can be extremely emotional without profit or belief, simply because I think certain aspects of society require cooperation and communication and should be untainted by individual concerns. If attacks on your stance seem overly aggressive, sometimes it's because the other side thinks YOU are the one who is being illogical. It could be that we resort to aggression when we come up against an equally logical viewpoint as an attempt to knock it down for good, overwhelm it completely. It seems completely logical to me to stop sugar subsidies; I'm equally sure it seems completely logical to an employee of United States Sugar Corporation to continue them.

It's hard to read past Philippians 5: 22-24; they only wrote four chapters in that book.

Absolutely. In some cases, heat treating is essential to the application.

I've always heard that trying to heat-treat titanium to take a good enough edge for a sword or knife made it too brittle to be effective.

Well, if you're talking about the Keystone Pipeline, there are some issues that came out after approval was given. It turns out the Texas-based environmental assessment company that gave the green light had a financial interest in the pipeline's approval. Cornell University did a separate study and found that only a fraction of the promised jobs would actually happen. Much of the opposition is from Canada, because they would actually lose more jobs to the US. The opposition from the US came from an unlikely source, the mostly Republican Nebraska farmers who didn't want the pipeline going anywhere near the Ogallala aquifer. President Obama announced that they'd have to reroute around the sensitive areas, and the Republicans are using this to slam him as being against job creation, and the whole thing is getting tabled until after the election next year. Honestly, I wish Obama would stand up and call the Republicans on this crap and point out that the greatest opposition comes from part of the Republican base. He did the same thing with the debt ceiling, refusing to bring it to the public's attention that the Republicans had happily approved Bush's raising of the debt ceiling FIVE TIMES, but refused Obama's request, caused us to lose credit rating, and then, you guessed it, blamed Obama for the whole thing. Obama's desire to not burden the public with political snarls and leave it to the "professional politicians" is his biggest failing, imo. We've talked about this before. Oz still has a realistic understanding of what "conservative" means. In the US, the mega-corporate political lobbies have spent huge amounts of capital to equate conservatism with patriotism (at any cost), free market business (at any cost), and anything that's NOT what the Democrats think is important (at any cost). It's led to some very strange and warped interpretations of the Republican platform that Eisenhower had helped to make a respected stance. The crazy has them now, and the corporations can spin them like tops, always to the "right", of course. I've always said that third world countries don't need more electricity, they need more efficient appliances. If we spent a tenth of what it would cost for hydro-electric dams and gave every household on the grid a modern refrigerator and a washing machine, we'd solve their power problems AND gain the trust and admiration of the populace.

Thanks, good catch. Now that's what I consider to be a good, conservative reply. For too long, corporations have tried to conflate free market economics and deregulation with being conservative. Doing the smart thing, doing the right thing is not giving huge corporations carte blanche with respect to our safety and environment. When it comes to emissions and their affect on climate, why is it NOT conservative to want to do the right thing?

No, completely different in the approach to survival. Where is the person starting from? How is the person reaching such speeds before hitting the ground? This is more of an engineering or physics problem, not a chemistry thang. Which section would you prefer to move to?

I guess we just need to agree to disagree with you disagreeing.

I disagree. If anything, a regulation requiring cost-benefit analyses or safety-testing before a new product is sold to the public actually employs more people, since someone has to do the testing or analysis compliance. Remove the regs and you lose those compliance jobs too. What you actually have here are corporations who know a product will sell for x under current regulatory cost models. If they can make the regulations go away, claiming it will create more jobs, they can save the regulatory costs and treat it as profit. These are the same corporations who promised job creation if the Bush tax cuts were extended. You haven't forgotten that little lie, have you? How well did THAT work out for us?

Another idea is to create a multilayered material that has it's softest layer on the outside and gets progressively harder, with the aim at slowing whatever is trying to get through it. Of course, nothing is going to stop an object with more mass that's traveling at the speed of an F-15. You could be wrapped in 2 tons of titanium but if a 22 ton F-15 hits you at Mach 2.5, I don't think you'll survive.

I don't think that's a conservative stance, I think it's a corporate one. Regulation eats into profit, but it also usually represents the best balance of efficiency and safety. Corporations want to shave every fraction of a percent they can from operating costs. A true conservative appreciates spending the right amount of resources on doing something safely rather than underestimating and having huge expenses when something goes wrong. It should be obvious to everyone by now that non-sustainable policies are, again, the cheap workhorse for corporate short-sightedness. Saving the world is only expensive when it's opposed by those who want their money quickly, at the expense of those who come after. Everyone I see who is opposed to AGW always suggests that correction will be too expensive, and they always overlook the fact that if everyone were to get behind it, it would be half as expensive as they're leading everyone to think it will be. @ the OP, I think a world full of any one type of people would be horrible. If everyone was a scientist, the music would probably suck, the fiction would be boring and the architecture would all be right angles.

The problem you run into when you want to make something "strong" is that the harder the material, usually the more brittle it is. Titanium is incredibly strong and hard but it would make a very brittle sword that would shatter more easily than simple carbon steel. It also really depends on why you want the item to be strong. Is it so it can withstand the most impact? The most weight? Are you making a hammer or a bridge? When you say indestructible, does that include high temperatures or corrosion, or just impact?