Phi for All

Until we can change the way people think about the future (something that seems in short supply EVERYWHERE), then yes, it's the best way to make sure it happens. They owned the land around that town center. With land prices in your city, believe me, they saved a lot building it where they did, and added to your city's reputation, beauty and livability. Where, without paying a lot more? Probably not as centrally located and in as nice a neighborhood. Not always accessible, not always portable on trips without expensive gadgets, not as inexpensive and foolproof, not as senior-friendly. OK. Give them back 17% on taxes. No privatized businesses would accept such a low profit, so where does the extra money for pools and parks and libraries and roads come from? I'm unaware of any union benefits that would be classified as recreation like a park or a library. Thanks. You bring up good points too. Lakes filled with people are not great places for animals, so where should they go?

That's great. I think you have above average access to wealthy friends, but it's obvious you're deserving of their charity. Their friends are most likely living the same way. Not everyone has wealthy friends like you do . Many people find it difficult to think far enough ahead to take care of needs they'll have in the future, even rich people (there's an astonishing number of wealthy people who die without a will, believe it or not). That's why taking tax dollars out of their paycheck for things like retirement and public works helps everyone. That's why Social Security and Medicare were established in the first place. And even a couple who never had children benefit from having paid taxes for public education. Every restaurant, bank, store and contractor they solicit has employees educated from public funds, ensuring a certain standard of proficiency. This building had to dovetail with the BlackRock Center for the Arts. It also fits the surrounding contours of the town center. It looks like a great blend of modern efficiency and New England historical society. Not easy to achieve. For many people, public libraries are their only access to the web. They also act as meeting places for community affairs. Oh, and they have lots and lots of books, a great way to learn and experience places you can't afford to visit, times you never lived in and things you never imagined. If you like a great movie you should read the book that inspired it. It will be filled with fantastic details the movie could never reveal in 2-3 hours. For many, books and public libraries are better than theaters and movies, an archive of knowledge that waits for the reader to start the show by opening the cover. Hardcopy education and adventure at your own pace, a priceless public hub of literate communities. I didn't say we needed more funding, I said we needed to formulate a better system and fund that. I'd like to know what Finland does to get 100% literacy and the best math and science scores in the world for $2090 less and one year more per child than we do. If we adopted their system and spent $1045 more per child than they do (saving ourselves $1045 per child), could we be better than they are? You think the current public services programs give everyone everything they need? It seems like the people who use these facilities are finding plenty of incentive to work. The fact that they have access to shared services and land their taxes pay for is motivation that has always strengthened communities and kept balance in a society too prone to extremes. I don't understand the question as written. I don't get the union/recreation facilities connection you're trying to make. I've never been a union member, but I'm glad they negotiate the kinds of wages and perks they do. It raises the bar with the people who might employ me because they have to compete. Without unions, millions of non-union workers would make less money.

How lucky for you! How many blue-collar hard-working lower middle class people is your friend willing to support with pool privileges? How will your friend decide who gets to swim? Remember, those workers, under YOUR system, also need library memberships, community center memberships, parks memberships and they also have to pay to drive on the roads, too. Right now, they're working hard but still living paycheck to paycheck for just the basics. Where is the extra money coming from to pay for the profit your privatized world will require? Are you referring to the new Silver Springs Library? If so, the old one was built 54 years ago. Not much in a structure that old to make way for improvements like phone systems and computers. By the way, the new library's atrium is set up to capture sunlight for heating in the winter and reflect it during the summer. It's got a LEED Silver rating from the US Green Building Council for sustainability and energy efficiency. I'm pretty sure you'll find many other reasons why privatization is equally undesirable in other areas. Thanks for the props, though. We need to reform Social Security and Medicare, no doubt about it. That doesn't mean the whole system is untenable. It's much more efficient to keep what works and shore up the parts that are being exploited. Here you touch on the whole point of social programs. It's not about helping the poor or charity from the rich. It's about how we want the least of us to live, and about creating opportunity that reflects what a great a country we are. You really have no right to claim that people have an equal ability to succeed in the US unless you grant a measure of our pooled resources as a society to ensure a minimum subsistence that reflects how great we want to be. If we want average-schooled citizens (based on global markers), then our current funding is barely keeping pace. If we want above average education for our citizens, we need to work harder and be willing to fund and formulate a system that will ensure that. Why not entitle everyone to have access to one? That way, the rich won't be the ones to decide who merits access. So... let them eat cake?! Pretty snooty, Marie. Despite the environmental reasons why lakes aren't good for public swimming, sooner or later, all the lakes would probably get bought up for private use. You begin to see why publicly owned lands and programs might be the best use of our resources. How can you expect the lesser people to work for you rich overlords if you don't allow them some freedom and recreation they can be proud of?

So that's why my cat can power himself when the lights are out!

I know MY wife, and if I were you, my wife would NEVER understand why I cut a brownie that way. It would be like tying her to a chair and forcing her to watch me fold a road map the wrong way. Well, the top-half/bottom-half cut gives you half each for the bake sale, but you're going to need more cuts for brownies if you don't want the rest of the wives mad at you. The next riddle is "If zapatos has 25 wounds each requiring between 5-8 stitches, how much suture will the doctor need to finish the job?"

Can you draw us a picture or does that give away the answer? I can't imagine how (or why) you would take a single rectangular brownie that wasn't along an edge and also not parallel to any of the pan edges. Was this piece at a strange angle? Because that's the only way you can cut a rectangle that isn't parallel to any edge of a rectangular pan. My best solution includes suffering. Instead of cutting the brownies with a knife, she kills you with it, gives the remaining brownies to one of the bake sales and tells the other bake sale that she made an identical batch for them but you ate it. Or, if she doesn't want to go to jail, she could stand the remaining pan of brownies on edge and split them down the center, then cut each half into rectangles. This would make two identical batches of thinner brownies.

Add another male to your statistics. Good luck!

! Moderator Note divinum1, your posts come off as "preaching", stating questionable arguments as if they were predisposed to be true, allowing no room for debate. This is against the rules you agreed to when you joined. Please refrain from preaching in future posts.

Still not sure whether it's a thread or professorial propaganda.

Ultimately, it's Congress that votes on laws, but the public votes the members into office. If we let the politicians know why we are voting for them, and that their term is dependent on how they represent our wishes, the public can make the difference. But not nearly enough. Scientific research, free from special interest biases, is something we can trust to give us legitimate answers to our problems, rather than deceptive legislation that favors certain businesses. The quality of public education has been systematically eroded by special interests that want it privatized for profit. Those who stand to profit want to make it look bad and then swoop in with "professional" help. No Child Left Behind was supposed to address the quality but is clearly hamstringing educators by forcing them to spend valuable time studying for rote memorization assessment tests (and you can buy software from President Bush's brother Neil to help your school pass those tests). We need to scrap the poor methodology and look to other countries that have successful public education for guidance. The wealthiest people, the ones who are most actively orchestrating who gets elected to public office, are shooting down anything that spends tax dollars on programs that don't directly benefit them. They are showing a disgraceful lack of long-range planning. If we consider ourselves the greatest country and want to stay that way, why are we only ranked average on education internationally?

superball has been suspended for 7 days for hijacking other member's threads to link to his own threads, and for ignoring repeated warnings to stop.

Dude, when was the last time you slept? This is the kind of thing one says that makes perfect sense after being up for several days, but no one else has the least idea where you're coming from.

He said "deifying" scientific factor, not defying. I think he's saying that he's God's new antenna.

Why would anyone pay someone money to do this to Vinko Rajic? Do they gain anything? No. Why is Vinko Rajic the only person in the world who has this ability? Does it help him? No. If people like this existed in real life, why do they allow Vinko Rajic to talk about them on the world wide web? If they really existed, would they hesitate to silence him? No. Perhaps Vinko Rajic needs to see a doctor at the hospital and show him all your posts from around the web. The doctor would probably help you where the policemen can't.

We certainly have had members go on a binge and freak out on us. Some come back a bit contrite, some stay away out of shame, others blame it on problems at home. Maybe someone did put something in superball's water! Is there an anti-Xtacy?

And we all know where that leads! michel123456, that's going to keep me chuckling for the rest of the weekend. I hope you meant to be that funny in French, too. I apologize, iNow.

The Frogs, a play by Aristophanes, perhaps. Refers to those who repeat what they hear rather than think for themselves. I think he believed he was a continuous flow of information for us.

I also noticed that his name changed often when he signed off on a post. It became alternately "super ball" and "super-ball" in addition to the original spelling. Classic iNow. My comment on "good posts" suddenly means I thought superball was a "marvelous poster". Further evidence to support the idea that you find it hard to separate the idea from the person. I agree completely. I liked the exchange superball had with swansont on the Casimir Effect. He showed he was interested in learning there (I guess I'm hoping that was the real superball). The spark he showed early on makes me a bit sad to see this thread of paranoia and hatred. Some people come here 100% determined to disrupt instead of learning. I don't think superball was like that, but he definitely had some odd ideas. That alone doesn't condemn him, but a thread like this makes him look beyond odd.

I thought the same thing, only brother instead of dad. Like two vastly different people were using the same account.

How bizarre. I have to say, superball, you had an awful lot of good posts when you first joined. You genuinely seemed to want to learn. I really enjoyed a lot of what you had to write. Then you started talking about religion in a science thread, it got moved to Religion and you flipped out big time. You claimed you were NOT a religious person and would NEVER post in the Religion section, that you didn't want to be identified with ANYTHING religious. And now this thread. A real head-scratcher. My heart goes out to you. You sound pretty paranoid and that's a sad way to live. Maybe you should stay away from science forums if this is how they make you feel. I wish you all the best.

Corporations, especially the biggest ones, are chiefly concerned with making a profit. The biggest will pay enormous bonuses to executives who can map out a way to make another half a percent (for a company like General Electric, half a percent more profit figures out to be over $72M). They will perform every legal contortion they can to make that profit. Sometimes, breaking the rules is even profitable. Microsoft is famous for paying SEC fines that were in excess of $10,000 a day because they stood to make a great deal more. As long as fines were the only cost to them, they could crunch the numbers and still make money. The key here is the regulations. If the fines aren't stiff enough, we need to raise them. If they allow a manufacturer to put too much pollution into the air or water, we need to write tougher regs. The corporation officers don't want to go to jail, so make sure jail time is part of the consequences. Stop their ability to soften the laws and regulations and you can stop the practices that hurt the country. The corporations will claim they're being stifled, that the market is threatened, that what they do is best for everyone. They'll spend a carefully calculated amount of money trying to keep things in their favor, but won't exceed an amount that isn't profitable. If we stay tough, hold them to high standards and make them wipe their feet before they come tracking filth into THIS house, they will eventually realize the cost of scamming the system is too high. The corporations aren't evil, they're just like the scorpion in the story. It's in their nature to ruthlessly pursue profit. Toughen the regulations, make it clear this is the framework in which they have to operate if they want US business, and they will adjust and turn their sights on other ways to squeeze another half a percent out. They won't leave as long as there is profit to be made. Science needs to be funded by the public to stand as a benchmark for reality, and to discover new means of utilizing a work force that has lost it's former trades. Since we already have twice the military budget of any other nation on earth, we could afford to divert just 10% towards scientific research and still have plenty of security for the country. If we stopped the Bush tax cuts and ended our costly wars we could further improve research and pioneer work that the US needs to prosper. And while we're at it, let's stomp on the idea of privatizing everything and start funding public education again. I feel that's a priority that has too long been neglected and one that will haunt us for a generation or more. Public schools work if you take your foot off their neck.

First, the "reason" is in the rules we all agreed to when we joined. Second, when the thread strays into another subject section, there is no "threat", we have only two choices: delete or move, both are "actions", based on "reason". We deleted only the off-topic complaints about the move to Religion. I moved it back into a science section, the best compromise available to me. Aren't you being a little dogmatic yourself, Mr Convinced-He's-Right? At least you didn't run off with our ball. I'm saving your post, in case you decide maybe you were being hypercritical. If not, I look forward to your complaint thread. We save those, too.

! Moderator Note Off-topic posts have been removed. I'm going to move this to the Speculations forum strictly because the thread started out attempting science but moved to more religious responses. If it can continue in a scientific vein we can leave it here, otherwise it will be moved back to Religion.

In the US, our National Public Radio is supposed to be like that. I find them more informative than any televised news, they have sponsorship from private business but no real obligation to them and no commercials are allowed. Since Republicans are against anything the federal government sponsors that could be part of the economic market, they tend to view NPR coverage as slanted towards liberals. Since the Democrats support social programs like NPR, it furthers the Republican notion of bias. They may not be completely objective but I find them more so than any other news broadcast. It actually surprises me that more people don't appreciate a news program that tries to report the news as neutrally as possible. I'll bet a poll would show most people want just the facts so they could make their own decisions (seems like a likely default position, right?). To me, it's very important to have differing perspectives, and I especially like hearing what the BBC has to say about US news. I've heard stories there that aren't even covered by US sources.

I would say it's the way the technology is used that is to blame. We make things affordable on the front end and then pay the consequences on the back end. We've wasted a lot of resources on inefficient convenience. Technology also helped make us aware of the problem, so it's not all bad. It will most likely play a great part in helping to deal with it, too.