Phi for All

Holding extreme positions on moral legislation is one thing. Belonging to a church which is looking forward to Armageddon is quite another, don't you think? A president who wants to overthrow Roe v Wade has to go through Congress and the Supreme court, a fairly lengthy process. A president who thinks it's God's will for her to fulfill the prophecies in the Book of Revelations may just be more inclined to go to war and even bring out the nukes in a crisis situation where there's no time for a lengthy process. I think there is a big difference between Rev. Wright's church and the Third Wave Church with respect to how they might influence the judgments of a superpower leader. If a holocaust would fulfill the church's dreams of the Second Coming, why would I want Sarah Palin anywhere near the buttons? Especially if she lives up to past performances and surrounds herself with like-minded cronies?

How about letting you borrow on next year's tax refund, make it sound like it's free money from the president, spend the money to send out three notices that it's on it's way to every taxpayer, and then call it an economic incentive? That's Republican speak for you. And they only do it in election years, so their numbers look good. If the Dems get elected, next April the Reps will be sure to blame Obama for the "extra" tax you're paying, even though it was Bush's stimulus plan that caused it. This is the age of spin. It's used by both sides and it stinks.

Have you seen the videos of Palin's Third Wave church (the one that was scrubbed from YouTube)? It sounds like if Palin were to become president, she would most likely take it as a sign from God that Armageddon was near and the job of cleansing God's enemies was hers, mandated by the Almighty. Those extremists in the video clearly think this life is worthless compared to what's waiting on the other side. I think a president should be all about *this* life, thanks very much. http://www.talk2action.org/story/2008/9/13/1538/09770

Breathe the heady air, wafting gently through the room. Don't feed the dog meat! -------------------------------------------- Hiccups on cell phones; Technolobiology, can you --- hear me now, ---? -------------------------------------------- Ornamentation. A voodoo tattoo for you, I'll take the spleen stud.

I'm calling in some chemical help: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=35282

Take a look at this thread: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?p=435357#post435357 In particular, take a look at the video link in the OP of a magician. At 11:50, Keith Barry stages a trick using a volunteer from the audience, a shard of glass and a coke bottle (if you don't want to watch his other cool illusions, you can just forward to 11:50 on the video). The trick climaxes at 14:00 with the shattering of the base of the bottle using only the shard of glass and the negative emotions of the volunteer, supposedly. I think it's done with chemicals, one he slips into the bottle and the other present on the shard. At 14:00, you can see liquid when the base shatters, and the reaction probably doesn't start until the volunteer shakes the bottle. Which chemicals would fit the bill here? Both need to be colorless, low odor, when mixed in small quantities causes an exothermic reaction capable of heating up thick glass very quickly, causing it to shatter due to expansion. If you have any ideas, post them in the other thread. I'll close this thread to avoid double replies. Thanks!

I might agree if the magician was the one holding and shaking the bottle, but it was supposedly a random audience member. I agree with alan2here that it might have something to do with a bottle being more vulnerable from the inside. There is some kind of liquid in the bottom of the bottle, not much but it's there if you watch closely as the bottle "pops". I'm guessing he put a chemical in the bottle just before handing the bottle to the woman, and the glass shard had another chemical on it which created an exothermic reaction when the woman shook it from side to side. The heat caused the thick glass to expand unevenly and Viola! the bottle's bottom breaks free with a slight popping sound. An endothermic reaction would possibly accomplish the same thing, but I think frost would have quickly formed under those hot lights and given it away. Chemical reaction seems much more likely than any kind of percussive method, even if it attacks from inside the bottle.

Funny weird, not funny ha-ha. Why is regular milk disgusting, but low-fat milk with some cream added to it is not? I'm assuming the disgusting part is the fatty texture, which doesn't change by adding cacao and sugar, but maybe the flavors hide the texture for you. Or is regular milk disgusting because you know you're drinking more fat than the lättmjölk has? In that case, you're just fooling yourself by forgetting that you're adding the fat with the cream, perhaps even more than regular milk has. Sorry to nitpick but this is Jump on Seeming Disparities Week and I just forgot to tell everyone else.

What was your purpose for bringing this subject up? What aspects would you like to discuss?

I'm sure that's the answer joshuam168 is looking for, but just about anyone who lives on a corner can do the same thing.

Is this similar to the "my own conception in biological chemistry" thread? That one got closed because you were asked to post your ideas here instead of soliciting email addresses to mail it to, and you failed to respond after ten days. Do you have any further work on your protein concept to show? What you've opened with is vague. Please elaborate.

Proof that cacao makes things less disgusting.

No US president has ever stood a greater statistical chance of dying in office than John McCain would if elected. That's a fact, not an opinion. I know Obama's campaign has targeted the connection with Bush as a strategy, and McCain had to embrace neo-GOP stances he's not happy with in order to get the nod, but I can't help wonder how McCain really feels about carrying that ugly baggage around after what Bush and Rove did to him in the 2000 primaries. It's gotta be killing him, but at least *that* stress would be gone if he wins.

That's my point about the costs. I'd be willing to wager that even normal, respectful library patrons would be harder on the library porn collection than they are on the regular selections. On top of that, I can get a copy of Hot Fuzz for $15, but a copy of Crotch Fuzz is $40.

They'd probably lose federal funding but is there a law that prohibits a local library from loaning porn to members of legal age if the local populace wants it to? Besides moral concerns, I can see how it would be a very expensive decision (even without the loss of funding) and that may be all there is to it. No censorship, just concerns over the high costs of maintaining a county-class pr0n collection.

Hellfire and damnation are abstract punishments. You'd be more apt to receive a logical lambasting here. For instance, if you did support banning certain books, what would they be and why would you justify removing them from human scrutiny?

My 9-year-old understands the art of distraction. She knows that she can divert her parents wrath over one of her misdeeds by diverting our attention away from her. She doesn't fool me one bit, but I let politicians fool me this way all the time. It really doesn't matter who gets into office in a two-party system. Lobbyists work the Reps and the Dems equally and big businesses get even bigger no matter who is at the country's helm. And some of the businesses have gotten SO big that they rival the power of foreign countries. We spend more on defending ourselves from foreign countries than all foreign countries combined spend to defend themselves, but we are almost naked against the mega-corporations. If a foreign power were caught trying to manipulate our politics for profit the way our businesses are doing today, you can bet the public would be outraged and clamoring for war. I think the depraved state of US politics is a direct reflection of the depraved state of US corporate policies. This enemy is a mole working behind enemy lines, with full access to our leadership, our communications and even our national psyche. We say we want change and change hurts the bottom line, rocks the boat and cuts into profits.

Remove ANY book from a library and you murder a part of our world. There are books I won't read but there aren't any books I would ban others from reading.

Informed decisions need information. Decisions on who represents you in government need even more information. Democracies don't work as well when information is controlled. Banning books is banning information. Partisanship is very much like banning information. The platform Reps and Dems don't really want you listening to the other side, so they ridicule and reduce so you don't have to feel like a dummy for not thinking for yourself. I also think the Amish church is a good analogy here. The Amish discovered that too much information (in the form of high school education) caused their young people to leave the church and their culture. Would it be good for the Amish church to ban certain information from their people? You bet, for the church. But I don't think ignorance is good for the individual. So it's really a question of whether or not you consider your choices above those of your "group". If you feel that your choices should be overridden in favor of the group's choices, be prepared to be misrepresented, misinformed and misunderstood. If your "group" focuses on family and hates gays and drugs, it might take some extreme external investigations before *you* find out that your group's leader secretly seeks out homosexual relationships (through prostitutes, let's say) and methamphetamines. It's doubtful your group would ever tell you that kind of stuff on their own (unless you were also a leader). Don't you think you're better off knowing that kind of information? Would you or your group be better off being in the dark about your leader? How should it make you feel to know that, if that information had been censored, you'd still be following that leader?

I don't think it's a grinder. The cranks on most of the old grinders were on top: Plus, it looks like there is a recess for the handle part of the crank, suggesting it might be a portable instrument (no need to recess the handle if it's not traveling). My 6th grade science teacher had an old hand-crank generator to show how your muscles contract when electricity is passed through your body. He made the guys in the class look pretty wimpy, not being able to do a simple thing like let go of the leads. This box looks similar. I'll bet there's something just to the right of the picture that would give it away if we could see it.

You've done this before, I've seen the high water marks on I-10 overpasses. Hell, it's only one percent more humidity than you usually have. Hunker down, son. Good luck and don't take any chances you don't have to take.

That's because they were so full of shit from being lawyers to begin with.

I'm serious! I had no entendre in mind with the question. I just thought that "mates" on a ship might have become common usage for "fast friends" from a nation with such a long and colorful naval history. Or is that just a common analogy that's completely wrong? So what do you call footwear designed to make you look taller, "lifts" or "elevator shoes"? You've just helped me with a tricky part of my screenplay. I needed a way for Colin Firth's character to avoid getting beaten up while in prison. So now I'll just have the leader of the cell block ask Colin what he does to relieve stress....

In my region in the US, we use "pal" or "buddy" for complete strangers we really want to throttle, but can't because there are too many witnesses. "Hey pal, the line's moved," is what you say to the guy who is too busy talking to notice the queue has a 20-foot gap in front of him. "Excuse me, buddy," is what you say to the guy who has chosen to hold a conversation right in front of the main entrance, blocking everyone else from coming in to the building. For strangers who've given no offense, we use "man", "dude" and "guy". Not many terms for women like that. If I was talking to a strange woman in public I would say, "Hey lady," if she was at least 30 or had kids with her. I really don't use a generic term for women under 30. Your "mate" is your spouse in the US. I wonder if you use "mate" in the UK because of your naval history?

Take some more math next year, you went over the 15-letter limit (which we somehow warned you about somewhere when you joined somewhat). You'll fit right in with yourdadonapogos and lolromeoandjuli. Welcome. Have fun posting and thanks for your participation. We appreciate that you could be about a trillion other places but you chose here. Thanks. Well well well, for a guy who knows the answer to everything, you put your fate in my hands pretty quickly. I don't usually touch someone's fate until the third or fourth post, so let's see what you got. Welcome to SFN.