Phi for All

Caffeine inhibits adenosine receptors, and I've heard that this can cause the body to generate calcium. Perhaps this can be making you hungry? I've noticed that I can't have too much black coffee on an empty stomach or it doesn't agree with me. If I have a bite of something the slight nausea goes away, but I'm not really eating for the hunger.

Well, that's 90% of what John Kyl does, he lies like this to the American people. And this kind of thing should outrage everyone, but his base will never see this response because it won't be printed in publications they're reading. And even if they do read it, he's anchored the 90% figure in people's minds so that they will always believe the percentage of budget for PP abortions is somewhere between the 3% and the 90% figures. Differing perspectives, interpreting statistics, these are used a lot with spin tactics. This isn't spin though, it's outright lying, distorting the truth by a factor of 30. I hope every statement he makes for the rest of a short career is questioned for it's factual content.

Swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the light from Venus. It's right there on page 26 of the MiB handbook.

Shouldn't the Wankel be the one with the up and down stroke? Iirc, Mazda used to use the Wankel in their RX-7, and I think part of the appeal was that you were creating rotary motion that could more efficiently turn wheels, rather than turning reciprocating piston motion into rotary motion to turn wheels.

What posts are you talking about?

We're voters and we're consumers in a democracy. We can demand better representation and refuse to buy products made by companies we disagree with. The tough part is keeping enough people interested once things start to get a bit better. Keeping on top of who represents your vote is the toughest part. Personally, I think the vast majority of people are closer on many major issues than we think. But we listen to far too many spinsongs sung to the choir and believe we're polarized. We average taxpayers need to realize that we aren't represented well by this two-party system and our present representatives.

Actually, since some of the best ideas from the Speculations forum worked out so well, we'll be entering the 21st century backwards, from our headquarters in the 24th century. Attachments don't exist in that when so we won't be having to never not fix the system now back then.

Actually, for this rating system, level 7 is as high as it gets.

I think you're looking at regulatory legislation in the wrong light. Let's say I have a new soft drink I want to sell, but the water I use exceeds the regulation 0.2 milligram per liter limit for cyanide. Actually, there's a full mg per liter and we're branding it as "Twice as cool as cigarettes and a whole lot quicker!" Are you saying the government is trying to tell people what they can and can't drink by stopping the sale of my product? My next product is a biofuel that will cost $1/gallon and runs great in existing cars but belches out a thick purple smoke. Why won't the government stay out of my business? There are tons of teenagers who think the smoke looks great billowing out of their cars and it's cheap to use. Is the government right to deny me the right to produce this great product? I'm also thinking of investing in hydroelectric infrastructure. If I can sell more inefficient incandescent light bulbs to my energy customers, we'll have to build new dams before the decade is out. Why is the government trying to tell me that energy efficiency is more important than my customer's right to buy the old bulbs? OMG, the biggest lobbies in the world are put together by big corporations interested in growing subsidies for sugar, oil, etc. There are also lobbying groups who simply have the ear of key politicians and sell their services to anyone who wants special earmarks and other funding. These hired guns are constantly hired to push for certain laws (one I read about was for the NFL; they hired a lobbyist to push a bill outlawing online poker because some of the sites offered gambling on football games that the NFL couldn't profit from). It got added into a bill providing more security for US ports. Omnicom, ostensibly a holding company from NYC, owns some of the top lobbying/marketing/PR companies in the world. Why do you say the free market was left out? The corn growers used their lobby, the National Corn Growers Association, to get us to use ethanol made from corn. They identified a market, the Federal government, and then created laws that require tax dollars from everyone to subsidize use of their product by that entity. The government did not come up with this on their own. Unless it lies in their interest to impose those regulations. The auto insurance industry in the US lobbied to allow insurers to use cheaper after-market auto parts to repair damaged vehicles, as long as the parts were certified as being comparable to the OEM parts by an independent testing group, which just happened to be set up by... the auto insurance industry.

I was going to use the same case! Use of PCBs were outlawed back in the mid 70's, and GE fought the Hudson cleanup for over 25 years before they were forced to do it. They paid fines which were cheaper than tackling the task of doing the right thing. I'm sure they're spinning it into an affinity for environmental issues; I would expect no less, it's what I would do as well if I had to pay that much. But you can't honestly believe they would have done anything to clean it up unless the government forced them to. By market rules alone, it would have been cheaper to hire PR firms to make everyone forget that you can't fish in the Hudson because of GE poisons.

Based on number of posts? You could also say that Speculations ranks #3 on the list of sub-forums that requires the most clarifications and corrections. I just wish more people would stop thinking it's a bad thing to be here. Ideas need a place to start, and even the best need to prove themselves. The reason most people get moved here is because they leaped over a few steps in the scientific method. That's when the skeptic alarms go off and everyone goes into hypercritical mode. But that's why the method works. It's baby steps in a minefield to make sure those who come after have firm ground to walk on, ground that has been gone over and is trusted to be "kaboom-free". And just because you arrived at a conclusion "safely" doesn't mean there aren't problems in recreating your path.

I think all we're seeing here is the spike that occurs whenever a new standard is adopted. The market forces will adjust pricing downwards once the investment in the new standard is made. I think we're at a point in our history where we need to start focusing on efficient use of resources, and the market isn't the best way to achieve that at the early stages. Frankly, after privatization of most of the country's utilities under Clinton and Bush caused prices to skyrocket, I'm surprised that anyone would want electric devices that aren't running at peak efficiency. Ethanol was, and still is, a poor choice for subsidization as a biofuel. Other alternatives make more sense. I didn't think self-service gas-pumping had anything to do with the government. Wasn't that just an option offered from the oil companies to reduce price at the pumps? I remember seeing some stations in California 7 years ago offering full-service at a higher price, but I don't know if they still do it. Pollution by industry happens. If spending part of their profits on certain tested methods reduces that pollution, then it follows that not spending it is the same as polluting to "make bigger profits". How are you spinning it any differently?

Anti-gravity isn't really anti-gravity, is it? I mean, if you could manipulate the force of gravity and its effect on objects, it wouldn't be the opposite of gravity, would it?

We tend to do poorly when our number of social relationships exceeds around 150. Perhaps the new social media technology is stretching the limit of our ability to deal with so many people.

Part of the problem is setting up government agencies and then either underfunding them or pulling their teeth when it comes to enforcement. This has been a pull and push between Dems and Reps for a long time. Another part of the problem is poor methodology. The War on Drugs isn't winnable with punitive measures. The fines, even imprisonment, is seen as an acceptable risk for what is gained. The war wages on simply because prisons make money and solve many political problems. The War on Terror isn't winnable through aggression, but it sells a lot of munitions, so on and on it goes. Industry is not really always efficient. They would rather not re-tool to make more efficient products as long as they can keep us buying the old ones. More profit can be had doing things the old way. You see some of these things as restrictions on personal freedom; I see them as clinging to wasteful but familiar ways. Sometimes we need the collective risk pool to keep us moving forward.

I think the planet will be just fine, but my environment concerns me very much. I don't think businesses have my environment uppermost in their minds when they make products, so that's why some regulation is necessary. Holding manufacturers to a higher standard is the perfect job for my federal government. And don't forget that many of the laws the feds pass are lobbied for BY the business groups. This is inefficient. Personal attacks are old technology.

Good one, I'd almost forgotten. My favorite "Don't take away our right to choose!" objection was the Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973. Health insurance was based on your age at the time you bought it before that. You stayed loyal to an insurer because your premiums stayed low and the actuarial tables made the risk pool profitable. But our "right to choose" led to the current health insurance situation, which is working oh so well for us.

It's the duty of the established technology to make the emerging technology seem dangerous or expensive or inadvisable somehow. And, in the US at least, it's the duty of the incumbent politicians whose hands are deep in the pockets of the established technology's businesses to help that process. GE wouldn't make their bulbs here in any case. They can make $14.2B in profits, $3.2B of which is US federal tax credit, and because of their offshore work force, they don't have to pay a dime in taxes.

Politicians often try to enact legislation which is meaningless or redundant because it makes them look proactive. It's a win-win situation for them because the most they can be accused of is being an alarmist, and they can easily spin that into being prepared. Your "gullibility" is shared by many. It fits into preconceived notions about religion in general having an agenda of conversion and intolerance towards non-believers. And in the case of literalists from any religion, such notions may not be unfounded. The Old and New Testaments and the Koran are full of "laws" which can be horrific if interpreted literally.

I go to the library and take my chances. If the subject is interesting or the jacket blurb intrigues me, I grab it. I grabbed four books the Saturday before last. One was OK, the second is starting to get good and the other two turned out to be crap. I only purchase books from authors I've read and liked before, and then only if I think I'll re-read the book later. I do the same thing with movies. Some movies are great but I don't need to see them more than once. Others I can watch over and over again.

What an awesome adventure! Imagine the secrets to be unlocked. If you had put away $1000 every time you posted here, you'd have enough for this sub now.

I'm not a big fan of talking heads from any compass point. They mostly seem to take views so narrow that they end up preaching to a fixed choir. And with so much news all the time, people end up listening only to those who represent their compound. It's almost impossible to find pure news sources. Agendas are everywhere!

Off-topic, but if your wife, or even an employee of yours, runs off to South Dakota and tries to get an abortion, if HB 1171 passes there, you may be able to get away with defending the unborn child or its mother from imminent lethal danger by killing the doctor. It would be considered a justifiable homicide.

I'd have to say that, at least in the US, you move into shaky ground at #4, depending on how much your careful wording skirts your intention to incite a riot, and into full-blown illegality at #6. And being an infidel, I would hope that my answer matches that of my muslim counterpart. I agree that both sides need to do more to oppose the problem. It takes courage to stand up against a popular trend, especially when your patriotism or faith are challenged at every turn. I have to say that I admire the many African countries that are standing up to their oppressive leadership these days. It shows a lot of courage we should take example from. But when I think about how we in the US let Wall Street throw our economy (indeed the global economy) in the toilet, and rather than demand conviction of the perpetrators we actually helped bail their companies out, I fear we won't soon muster the courage necessary to do what is right with regard to Islamaphobia.

Can you ask your wife what caused her to "scramble"? What part of this episode "scared her"? Did she hear anything, feel anything? Was it something outside the bedroom or inside? When you say you've done research, was that done prior to this experience or was it done this morning?