Phi for All

TalkOrigins is a great place to start if you haven't found it already, especially if you're looking for answers to questions typically asked by the scientifically illiterate minority, as Ophiolite so aptly names them.

Definitely part of the problem, but as you say it's not the simple answer. The labor unions were the inspiration for PACs and the type of lobbying we see in DC today. I think too many old policies are colliding with new processes and the ambivalence of the convenience-minded public is allowing too many profit driven managers free reign when it comes to business practices. Changes are happening too rapidly for huge corporations to cope with. Lets let them fail and see what innovative new models can do for us.

I agree that these businesses should fail if they can't manage themselves properly. As long as worker's pensions are safe, some unemployment can be tolerated. Smaller corporations will be formed and employment will rise again. But I still contend that the free market model can't function properly when corporations get so big they can affect regulations through their lobbyists *and* influence public perception with their media ownership. The right to petition is unfairly augmented when a corporation has that much leverage. It is certainly the fault of the citizens that they don't exercise their right to petition more than the PACs and lobbyists, but what chance do we stand against the kind of spin and clout that can be brought to bear by a huge conglomerate driven only by becoming even bigger?

Thanks for that. Exactly. And I think these mega-corps are savvy enough to see this, profit-driven enough to exploit it, and powerful enough to sway the government and the people into believing they can't be allowed to fail. Do you believe they *aren't* pushing the stories about how many millions will lose their jobs if the bailout doesn't happen? As Pangloss mentioned, if you're Honda or BMW or Toyota, the companies that have supplied the best quality most cost-effectively in completely domestic facilities, and seem to put their customers a few rungs above where the US auto makers put them, you've got to be wondering why you aren't more highly thought of. And whether it's worth trying to compete in a market that's stacked against you for some reason.

What about in this case, where if the automakers fail it affects so many millions of jobs that we can't conceivably let them fail? Except they don't offer lower prices, they offer efficient profits for their shareholders, which is the duty of a corporation. They typically strangle all but a few competitors so they can't be considered a monopoly, then set prices where they want them. They also get suppliers to sign deals that further lock down trade. They manipulate their segment numbers so they only appear to control 30% of a market instead of the 50% or more it really is. I'm a fan of our market system but I think there is a point at which the system can be unfairly manipulated by entities that have undue influence due to their size and control of related markets, especially the media.

I feel the same way, but since I heard it I've wondered if it was just my general, long-held distrust of the mega-corporation concept or not. It makes a lot of sense to keep corporations manageable so it doesn't topple everything if one should be allowed to fail. I've seen how powerful and overwhelming some of these giants have become, especially when they were given the power to own the media that supposedly informs us. I just don't trust them with that kind of power so I was a bit worried that my bias was making the "too big to exist" concept too easy to swallow. These things are rarely fixed with simple maxims, unfortunately.

Perhaps liquids of varying densities would go well with your dyes.

How do you feel about the phrase, "If a corporation is too big to fail, it's too big to exist"?

To me, pseudoscience is usually an hypothesis that uses one or more bits to support it that have yet to be proven. Virtually all threads in Speculations & Pseudoscience ask the reader to look the other way regarding some foundational principle so they can leap to what seems like a logical conclusion. I don't mind looking the other way if we're exploring a concept, but most people who start a speculative thread want their conclusions taken as seriously as the exploration. This is where speculation ends and pseudoscience begins for me. I don't think we'd have as many problems with Speculations if the person starting the thread wasn't so adamant about passing over the unproven bits. It's like crossing a rope bridge over a chasm; we'd prefer if all the boards on the floor were there, instead of having these large gaps we're supposed to jump across, while the guide keeps telling us it's safe to cross.

People who make purchases based on price alone are on the wrong side of the quantity vs quality equation, imo. The idea of lowest prices = best deal inspires this kind of rabid shopper mentality. It lowers the expectations of the consumer and equates demand with cost-effectiveness. It's easy to prove that better quality is usually a more cost-effective purchase, but lowest price captures the short-term, convenience mentality. By implying that low-cost supplies are limited, WalMart and retailers like them prime the pump for the kind of manic frenzy witnessed on Friday. When it's all about you-snooze-you-lose, people line up and treat shopping like a commando obstacle course. It's odd, but it's like people don't want to get screwed by being left behind on the best "deals", while their subconscious is telling them they're getting screwed anyway. This consumer conflict is turning vicious and I'll bet it's going to get worse if the economy doesn't get better.

I guess the extra $ for shipping isn't offset by the 8 hours of camping out in the late November night, the camaraderie of your fellow rabid shoppers and you know, the possibility of a good trampling afterward. Someone else was telling me about it. I'll definitely check it out. I don't do a whole lot of gaming, but I'm sure I'll start doing more with the Wii. And cursing the $50 a pop for games. I'm hoping this will be something I can join my wife and daughter with. So often my wife is at her laptop, I'm at mine and my daughter is playing something on her GameBoy. It was upgrade her to DS or get the Wii for all of us.

I'm no fan of Nintendo marketing. They sell the console for just above cost and then rape you on the games. It'd be like buying a car for half price but you have to buy special gas at $12 a gallon. And I'm no fan of WalMart marketing either. Sell the cheapest stuff and make your profit by replacing it when it wears out in a few months. We never seem to learn that a $5 t-shirt looks like crap after 5 washings. I have a pair of wool hiking socks I bought 9 years ago for $12. One pair, $12 in 1999. I felt like a Rockefeller at the time, but you know what? I still have those socks, I wear them once a week in the winter and they still have no holes and haven't shrunk or stretched. Perhaps the anger involved in the WalMart incident is a subconscious loathing of this philosophy of dirt cheap. People love well-crafted stuff that is actually cheaper over the life of the product but we hate passing up a "deal" and perhaps hate ourselves for falling prey to the marketers.

So you line up at 9pm the day before the sale. You spend the night camped out as the throng swells to 2000 people in the 8 hours you're there. Finally, the guy opens the door as the crowd behind surges forward and presses you up against the front of the store. I'm willing to bet no one even noticed the employee went down and I'd be shocked if anyone had had the presence of mind to stop to help, losing the "place" they'd held so long. I think at that point people who avoided stepping on him thought they were being magnanimous. It's terrible, indeed, but not surprising given the circumstance. A person can be caring and generous and concerned, but "people" are selfish, mindless jerks, especially when they have only one thing on their tiny but focused collective brain. In a situation like that people can justify just about anything, sad as that is. I tried getting a Wii console the week before and was told to stop in Friday morning at 5am. I was NOT getting up that early for shopping, but I had no idea so many people camp out like that. What I want to know is this: since the trampling happened 2 hours before *my* WalMart opened, did WalMart bother to have their employees warn customers over the parking lot loudspeakers about the accidental death in time zones west of EST, and to please watch out for each other as the doors open?

There is a difference between intelligence and knowledge.

Copy/pasting the work of others without giving them credit is plagiarism. This is a verbal warning. Don't do this again or you will be given an infraction with points that will lead to a temporary ban. And as insane_alien says, we come here to discuss science. Your opening post is an explanation with no questions posed that might stimulate a discussion.

For what purpose? Needle, sword or hammer, you need to know your purpose to select the right tool.

GM didn't swing very hard at the EV-1 in the 90s. They tested it out only in California, leased them to a small amount of people, and their ads were bleak and lifeless and were nothing like the fun and sexy ads for their IC models. When their motivation to make fully electric cars evaporated, they pulled the leases and destroyed all the EV-1s, despite lessees who offered to purchase them. Toyota actually did the smartest thing. They revamped their popular RAV4 model to accommodate an electric motor and a battery. Their retooling costs were minimized and the vehicle was not too costly. The reason the RAV4 EV failed was that GM sold their battery patent to Chevron, who stopped selling them to Toyota and anyone else unless they were making hybrids.

WARNING! This is not aimed () at any one person, but let's be clear that this thread is NOT about guns and gun control in general. It is very specifically about bans on assault weapons. Threads on gun control in general go on ad infinauseum and really go nowhere.

There was a study in Scientific Finn recently that showed a picture of one of the mother ships. Eyewitnesses said a bunch of smaller ships that looked like flat coasters came out and scoured the countryside looking for glasses to park under.

It *is* unrealistic to expect the automakers to have a whole line of what we want when we want it when we're talking about a completely different power source. Where we can point fingers is that they waited too long to invest in retooling. They were greedy and wanted to squeeze the last bit of profit from the old system, the same way big oil doesn't want to have to start building a bunch of domestic refineries. This is a time of high profit for those who have don't feel they have to invest in the future. This is what bugs me most about bailing them out. They get to have their cake and eat it too.

Are there any brothels on Earth or in London?

Your average fruit flavored yogurt has just over 20 grams of sugar per 112 gram serving. You're either exaggerating a bit or you're eating 9000 grams of yogurt and over 1500 grams of sugar every day. Sugar isn't a dietary requirement so there's no real min/max numbers, but I believe you're like a whole order of magnitude overboard on your sugar intake. Now you're making *me* feel panicky.

If you're really eating that much yogurt you should try more variety. Too much of anything can have deleterious effects on all your systems.

RAJESHKUMAR110, for a 35 year old with a BSc, you are asking a lot of questions that sound like high school homework. Many of these questions are easily answered with a simple Google search. These forums are for *discussion* of scientific topics. We have a Homework Help section for students. Please use that if other sources like Wikipedia can't help you. And when you wish to discuss science, please feel free to open threads for that purpose.

*shudder* Bet he'd rather spend a month at Guantanamo. It doesn't get much friendlier than the Teletubbies!