Phi for All

What a fiscally liberal thing to say! It's people like you that are going to bankrupt this country with your leftist application of social reform with no thought of what it costs hard-working, financially conscious taxpayers. I know you're trying to lead me towards a certain cost/benefit ratio regarding sex/STD program success but that isn't feasible. As in science, you stick with the theory that provides the best answers at the time, but only until a better theory comes along. Right now, sex education with condom distribution is what works best to prevent teenage pregnancies and STDs.

Ah, a chance to stretch my socially liberal, fiscally conservative legs a bit. It's not the fact that the abstinence concert comes from an evangelical Christian base, it's the fact that abstinence programs don't work and are a waste of taxpayers money. Sex education together with a condom program works the best, but a, "Don't have sex until you're married, here, have a condom" approach is still more socially AND fiscally sound than, "Don't have sex until you're married, sing along with me now..."

My wife and I were talking the other day about sarcasm and she made a comment about a roommate she once had who spoke Swedish and explained how crucial the lilting cadence was. We realized that sarcasm in English is normally expressed with exaggerated tones using innocuous words ("No, he *NEVER* gets angry..."). It got us to thinking about how it works in other countries. Is sarcasm expressed the same way in other languages? Especially in languages that often use cadence and emphasis to change the meanings of words? How does your language express sarcasm?

Extremely well said, Pangloss. While we value a diversity of opinions here at SFN (after all, if we all agreed on everything, all but one of us is unnecessary), too often we apply logic a bit too much where opinion should give more leeway. It can come off as a desire to suppress a certain point of view and I think all here would agree that arguing a fine point shouldn't be shouting down that point.

Firstly, you're mixing quotes from my responses to different people. Secondly, you are reaching with both hands into the assumption bag about my mentality, based on what I've said so far about this matter. It shows you have a rabid response to any kind of inquiry that is at odds with your opinions. And thirdly, despite attempts and entreaties to avoid going off-topic in this thread, you persist in doing so. Let's start another thread or resurrect one of the old WMD threads. Didn't I say that I was arguing against that very point. Oh, yes I did, just a bit earlier, in the first sentence of the last paragraph in post #30. It is an area denial agent, meant to flush out an enemy so you can shoot him with bullets. It only kills when one can't leave the area. If used underground, where it's density concentrates its effectiveness, in a closed area packed with people like a subway, it can be lethal, as in the Tokyo subway attack in 1995. Sarin is a weapon, I'll grant you. Mass Destruction? Two people got "destructed" in the Tokyo subway attack, a venue with circumstances that heavily favored Sarin's lethality. Do you think the American people would have counted Sarin as a WMD worth invading Iraq for if they had been told more than "deadly nerve gas"? To (hopefully) bring this back around to the topic, I think the Bush administration had a plan that involved oil (their area of expertise) and began gathering justifications and reasons to implement that plan. Countries rarely go to war for just one reason and I can hardly fault them for killing as many "birds" as they could with this trillion dollar "stone". What remains crucial to me is whether they unfairly manipulated the bidding processes and bypassed our own market structure to favor their own, and whether they had to resort to lies and subterfuge against the American people to do it. Meetings kept secret with "supreme" fanaticism don't look to be counted in their favor.

The priests help over-tested animals wreak their revenge in undeath. Zombie rats wearing makeup can go anywhere.

Sign the petition?! Firefly was great beyond mere words but I would hope it now serves as a warning to all network execs that proper diagnosis and a little resuscitation effort can help them avoid malpractice responses to the expediency of just pulling the plug. But resurrection, after all this time? I think that would take more chemistry than the show ever had to keep it from smelling terrible and being more than a bit, you know, creepy. I'll stick to bringing out all the DVDs once a year, watching them all in their proper order, with Serenity at the end (which I liked). Btw, did you catch Chiwetel Ejiofor in Kinky Boots? It took me a while to place him, actually. He put the edge in Serenity for me, scarier than any Reaver.

And this is what uber secrecy does, it reduces the ability of the people to keep tabs on their government, and effectively elevates the importance of paying attention to circumstances. The Washington Post revealed some of the key people involved in the secret meetings but I'm hoping that, if there is anything worth hiding, Kucinich can figure out a way around the SCOTUS ruling regarding these so-called "normal 'interagency' review of major domestic policy" meetings. And I agree that Kucinich needs to find more hard evidence because all the circumstances surrounding the Bush administration seem to get written off as conspiracy. And dammit Dennis, you're pandering to that by making insinuations without substance. I didn't say "he" needed to do anything. I was asking why you consider it a "simple fact" that the Bush administration could have faked "large numbers" of WMDs if their intent was to mislead the public. The report is an excellent one, but it's a strawman for my argument that gases like Sarin hardly constitute WMDs as the administration claimed. I made no assumptions and attributed no motivations (no one had to do much more than say "nerve gas"), and you'll find only facts about Sarin from this CDC link so you won't have to rely on my misinformed opinion.

How on earth is that a fact? I think you underestimate how difficult it would be to effectively fake the manufacture signatures of a nuclear device. Why supply evidence that can be studied at length when fear and misinformation work better and are more easily denied? The administration found it much easier to sell the myth that some gases normally used for area denial were, in fact, some sort of James Bond, one drop drops you dead in your tracks, nerve toxin WMDs. Most people still think Sarin gas will do that to you.

Calculated by experts, collected and misinterpreted by "the Internet". Don't cloud the issue, you big fugazzi. Fortunately for you, a physicist working with atomic clocks who's Inbox must be chokingly rampant with communiqués from said believers, basic inexpensive spam filters usually snag anything labeled "X". Perhaps, but you and JyBrd seem to think the rest of us have some sort of problem retaining any kind... any kind of... um, what were we talking about?

I checked out IRC Chat and I'm glad I did!

I see several possibilities:1) "The Internet" is deliberately misinterpreting the data NOAA has collected, 2) another government agency (*cough* DARPA *cough*) is experimenting on Southern Californians by manipulating their perception of daylight hours to get them to party less, 3) TV "reality shows" have made the memories of everyone NOT in Southern California unreliable and sketchy (*cough* Hollywood *cough*), 4) JyBrd has penetrated the Matrix. I'm also working on a hypothesis involving trolls but it's not ready for review just yet.

And you think that's enjoyable?! Science never kids!! And when I say "never" I mean not more than a few times a day.

The costs of building integrated solar are spread out over the lifetime of the system, and I assume wind is the same, so they do include the up-front costs and have no "clean-up factor". Is coal, nuclear and hydroelectric figured the same way?

Stereotyping to some degree is inevitable when you're emulating a phenotype for use in a doll. Is it the "tongue-out" that bothers you? Not all Downs kids do that, but not all the dolls did either. I didn't get that at all, maybe because my daughter has karate classes with a boy with Downs, known him and his family since she was in pre-school. I don't think Drew's parents would see it as shocking or twisted and Drew himself might even get a kick out of it (he's still young enough to where a boy having a doll isn't that big a deal). They looked pretty cute to me. And try producing dolls like that in limited quantities, it gets expensive. They're probably buying regular doll clothes and marking them up too, that adds to the cost. $50 is more than I'd want to spend on a doll, I agree, but I'd look at it differently if my child's self-esteem were an issue.

You mean export it to the US in wine and cosmetics?

Maybe you should build it.

A freedom fighter is successful at the beginning of the fight, during the fight and after as well. They are successful even if they're losing, as long as they don't give up. A terrorist is only successful if they can get their enemy to overreact in a huge way to relatively small but vivid acts of inhumanity.

Psoriasis clears up. Down syndrome doesn't. I see it as an attempt to show a Downs child that they're people too, and that there are dolls out there that resemble them. Have you ever seen the comedian Carlos Mencia make fun of people with Cerebral Palsy? He rags on everyone, so why should they be different? Some of the CP people find it offensive, but most don't, probably about the same ratio as all the other ethnic, gender and social groups he makes fun of. Many appreciate the fact that he sees them like he sees everyone else, like people.

And architect David Fisher is going to get some obscenely rich people to help invest with this building.

Shoot, I'll have my Space Trebuchet built before that. It uses solar wind to crank a bucket of spent fuel up from the earth's surface and then hurls it at the sun.

I voted solar as my fave, but nuclear is a more likely alternative. Right now, I'm a big fan of BIPV, Building Integrated Photovoltaics. I'm even considering a job in the industry. There's a company in CA making a roofing sheet that generates a decent amount of power while integrating with the building envelope. Innovative stuff that serves multiple beneficial purposes make my nipples hard. I'm planning a trip over to NREL sometime in the next few weeks. I should see if they have a PR scientist who'd be willing to join up here for energy discussions.

Troll infraction issued.

This "knowing" is your biggest impediment to learning. You keep asking the same questions because you've already made up your mind.

One dog (Pembroke Welsh Corgi), two kittens (just got them two weeks ago) and fresh-water fish. We recently had five butterflies we raised from larvae, but once they metamorphosed we released them.