Phi for All

Judaism is a religion, not a nationality. And suggesting that Jews are not "normal men" is racism. Why are you concerned with the distinction? And when you say "wobbleheads", are you referring to people who just agree with whatever they hear in the media or do you have another definition?

In Book Talk, the idea is to discuss the book or article the OP raises, not bring up other publications with a different POV. PhDP, if you like, I can delete the off-topic posts.

I'll say I'm not opposed to having more congressional districts, with the caveat that you don't assume I necessarily support your method of increasing them. I think 6000 Reps at their current pay scale and retirement benefits would be a crippling burden after a few decades go by (and let's not forget about their reimbursable expenses). You'd need to show me how you'd change that, especially since, according to you, 6000 Reps would have less to do overall than Reps in the current system. I like the idea of having senior Reps (maybe still 435?) and junior Reps. The seniors can do the legislative groundwork and the juniors could just gather consensus from the constituency and vote accordingly. Better representation is the goal here, no? Not just pushing one group's agenda.

Oh, aye. Absolutely. So do you think the ultimate goal is going to come from some brand new source, rather than a refinement of the old? God, I remember seeing Joesph Newman on the old Johnny Carson show. He claimed he combined an electromagnet with a gyroscope and could produce an EM field so huge it could run a generator that would produce more electricity than it took to run the system. He was talking about completely free electricity. I was so heartbroken when he turned out to be a fraud. I always figured that some new energy source would be found by doing things in a way no one had ever done them before.

The solution to a metal band being too cold? Never take it off. I sleep with my watch on so it's always body temp.

Check this out: I made a small version of this once using some Kinex and a D battery taped to a paper clip. A catapult is just different, not simpler: Here's an analogy: hold a baseball in your hand and have someone hold your wrist so you can't throw it. Gradually build up the tension, then have the person release your wrist. The ball goes flying. *That's* a catapult. Now hold the baseball up in front of you like you're offering it to a giant. Let the weight of your arm and the ball make your arm drop down and turn a complete circle with the ball (like a reverse softball pitch), releasing it at the top of the arc. *That's* a trebuchet. Imagine a coffin positioned in the sling on that groove in the first pic above, so that when the coffin reached the top of it's arc, the coffin continues outward and the sling continues downward. The velocity was tremendous but I think the only stress on the coffin would be on impact with the water. It probably would have shattered completely, but this was a TV show so it just went under after being flung so majestically.

No token fee would be enough before it became too much. I think the draft is a better approach, or like jury duty, as ParanoiA mentioned. It's everyone's duty to serve when selected, part of being a citizen. It's still a False Dilemma and now it's also a Strawman, since I never argued that we shouldn't have more districts. I only questioned whether or not your approach was the right one. I think you're hearing, "ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!" when I'm just saying, "Why that way?".

So the Mayans were talking about the poles flipping? Gosh, you learn something new every day.... There you go. We just have to keep them from using enough power to destroy the earth. And they already have a mind-control device. It's called television. Funny how those in power are always trying to destroy everything they've worked so hard for. Smart enough to build it, stupid enough to destroy the Earth with it. *sigh* I'm just glad somebody's finally DOING something about the weather instead of just talking about it. Not me. I'm an American. And a military supporter. And an Illuminati.

I didn't care much for its conclusions. I'm not sure I trust that increasing representation will lower legislative costs in every instance. It may be a factor in many instances but the article fails to show that increasing representation by a factor of 11 will necessarily result in a corresponding decrease in government and government spending. Let's be careful. Skepticism is not cynicism. Don't be inclined to dismiss my concerns because they may contradict yours. False dilemma. I don't have to oppose allowing more congressional districts in order to oppose what you and Thirty Thousand are proposing. And I'm not sure it would end up being a bad thing to have more reps, I'm just pretty sure it would be bad to have 6000 reps at the same pay scale and benefits package they have currently. I don't think your system takes that seriously enough. Remember that a two-term rep that gets voted out still gets benefits that will last the rest of his/her life. It's bad enough now; I don't like to think of it being 11 times worse.

Done. I still haven't seen anything more substantial than, "This should work". And many of the arguments are fallacious. You state that these extra reps should be paid the same to attract the best people, but clearly that isn't happening now, and I doubt it would change for the better with more reps. The article states that the extra $2B/year in salaries should be viewed in context with the $2.7T in current federal expenditures. This is a Red Herring since it really does nothing to support your argument. It's like arguing that it's OK to hire more workers just because your company is making a lot of money. Shaky ground for supporting conclusions. Why, because we're so good at it now?

They'll be inclined to reduce the size of government and spend less?! That's more speculation than I'm comfortable with. I actually think 11 times more reps would come up with 11 times more expenditures. Don't forget that when you "open a door for the admission of the substantial yeomanry of our country", you also open the door for the admission of substantial corruption. And telling me that, if I question the expense, I don't deserve to enjoy a better country is completely condescending, like telling me I don't support the troops if I object to the war. In fact, this now sounds like the kind of campaign that some businessmen and some politicians cooked up in order to fleece the taxpayers even more, by increasing the federal government while telling us that it will decrease the federal government.

Sorry, doG, I was responding to the OP. I tend to do that before responding to responses and alternatives. I agree with you about the two-party system. I also agree that we need the passion that motivates a Boston Tea Party. And I agree that we need better representation. But if you aren't paying the 9500 other reps who aren't in DC, how are you motivating them? Would this be a mandatory service, like being drafted (don't laugh, I think we'd get some very qualified people who would otherwise be loathe to touch politics with a ten-foot poll [sic])?

I was mentioning this to my wife the other day. One of the reasons compacts get a bad rap is safety. The argument is that small cars get crunched too badly by the bigger cars. But when the majority are driving compacts and Smart Cars and motorcycles, doesn't that argument go away? Or will the big rigs and heavy transports always make that an issue? Side note: At the gas station the other day I heard some very un-ladylike swearing coming from the next bay. A good-looking soccer mom was staring open-mouthed at the $112 total on her pump. It seems the 10mpg H2 she was so proud of getting last year now costs her about $5 per round trip to come down from the hills into town... to get gas.

Sorry if it's been brought up before, but how do we pay for 6000 Reps? The average pay for a member of Congress is $169,300, and each member is vested into a government retirement program after five years, including health benefits that last even when they're no longer in office. They also get provisions for private secretaries and offices paid for by taxes after they leave office. And they can retire with 80% salary when they're 50. Congressional pension benefits are 2-3 times more generous than what a similarly-salaried executive could expect to receive upon retiring from the private sector.

I think you'll see a lot of things that don't make sense as the supply of oil dwindles. Remember that the oil companies are in a prime profit spot, where all their R&D has been recouped long ago and prices are high and getting higher. This is that gray time when the oil boys are unwilling to leap to new technologies because they haven't wrung the last drop of profit from the old one yet. It will be interesting to see when they'll stop suppressing the technology that hurts their oil profits. All the fixes I can envision rely on electricity (electric cars, maglev trains, etc) so clean ways to create it are going to be a must. I'm glad to see initiatives like LEED being embraced at the same time as this shortage is going on. If we can replace oil with something much cleaner maybe we can gain efficiency AND environmental responsibility in the same stroke.

i think the coolest use of a trebuchet in modern times was on the TV show Northern Exposure. Chris the DJ built one for fun and ended up using it to fling the coffin of a friend way out over a lake to bury him at sea. Completely, totally awesome.

A trebuchet uses gravity via a counterweight as opposed to the tension a catapult utilizes. I don't think a trebuchet is that much more difficult to build. Five pounds is quite a lot actually. So is criticizing the advice you get after you asked for it in the first place. While a kit may not be acceptable for your school project, I see nothing lame about copying a proven design. It takes a lot of energy to redesign the wheel... or the trebuchet.

Regardless of how the meat got cooked the first time, it seems likely that the smell of roasted meat was what got early man to try out cooking. I know vegetarians that love the smell of a well-grilled steak, and for a meat-lover the smell makes it hard to avoid your own drool.

Vegetables, roots, tubers, greens, as well as fruit. I think there was always hunting to go along with the gathering. I've never heard of completely vegetarian early humans. I'm thinking lightning strike. The original microwave oven zapped a deer or something and the men finally crept out of their hiding places to go over and check it out. Smelled great, tasted even better, didn't cause any stomach pains. The concept of God probably started on the same day. Bad microbes. Everything from discomfort to death. Many vegetables are more nutritive raw, but as others have pointed out, raw foods require more of the digestive process than cooked foods. I believe with potatoes, most of the nutrition is in the skin, so it depends if the spuds are peeled or not. When yams break down, either through cooking or digestion, they create hydrogen cyanide (raw lima beans do this too). The gas escapes when you cut the cooked yam, or as it's boiling in the pot. In your stomach, the gas is absorbed. In small amounts the body can handle it, but if you're eating a lot of raw yams, lima beans, apricot kernels and other substances containing cyanogenic glycosides, you could be in real trouble. It probably varies between people, as with any poison.

What are the odds that extraterrestrial life could form and evolve to our present level, survive the discovery of uranium, and then venture off-planet, managing to find Earth in all that massive space, within the fifty-year window of our current interplanetary capabilities? I too believe there MUST be extraterrestrial life, but I don't think we've encountered any of it yet. It would be like threading a microscopic needle with a thread several thousand light-years long.

Gold, just like the ring on that finger. My other ring and my bracelet are silver. Sort of Art-deco meets left brain anality. Philistine. Eyeliner should match your clothing, not your accessories. *Mascara* comes in black or brown (although with my coloring, sable is a more conservative choice). And for your 411, I don't use eyeliner. It takes away from the effect of my startling blue/bloodshot eyes, the right one about 15 degrees out of kilter with the left. I can usually look at you AND your girlfriend, though I'm probably just pretending to look at *you*.

No detention? Sending teens home when both parents are probably working sounds unreasonable. I heard that my old junior high has a detention program where the consequences are appropriate; if you get caught throwing food in the lunch room, you're put on lunchroom cleanup detail. It's effective because *everyone* has rotating lunchroom cleanup duty, but detainees will take your turn for you. There are fewer food fights because all the kids know what a PITA it is to clean up afterwards. Mine's not a teen yet, but the most effective technique with Her Rebel Highness is to make her the authority figure and ask how she'd deal with it. She almost always responds more strenuously than I would have.

Friends used to have an enclosed patio that wasn't part of their forced-air heating system. They had a large cylinder made of glass or clear plastic that was filled with water (it must have held about 15-20 gallons). They put food coloring in the water for effect and it looked quite decorative but basically the water would heat up from the sun shining on the patio all day, then radiate that warmth for a good part of the evening. Very passive but very cheap.

I wear a Citizen WR100 Solar-Tech analog watch. It's the most expensive watch I've ever owned, and I really questioned whether or not it was worth it at the time. I set it to the atomic clock at http://www.time.gov and it won't lose more than 2-3 seconds in a month. I never have to wind it and it doesn't need batteries. I have to be careful about covering it up wearing long sleeves in the winter since the watch needs light to run, and the calendar is usually off by half a day (I never need my watch to tell me what date it is though). Other than that it's been the best (and best-looking) watch I've ever owned. I'm also a one watch kind of guy. I wear the same two rings, one on each ring finger, the same silver bracelet on my right wrist and the same watch on my left. Boring? Consistent? I just like them and see no need to mix it up. Jewelry is not my strong point so variety is not an appeal.

Could pieces of the nan be falling through the grill to burn below? Or are you basting the nan with butter or oil or something else which might add to the CO level?