CaptainPanic

Wikipedia?

Yeah, I agree. The ranking I put in there was by no means a ranking of importance. If anything, it may have been somewhat historical ranking. Transatlantic business probably only got going in earnest in the 70's/80's. Also: 7. The West won the Cold War, making a lot of East European countries switch in a very short time. Schools in countries like Romania or the Baltic states started teaching English pretty much over night after the Soviet union collapsed. People who had fled to the USA / UK just returned and started teaching English. The bottom line is: all kinds of developments slowly increased the number of people that spoke English. Note: we shouldn't forget that we're going off topic. This is about the evolution of English, not the reason it is the dominant language. If anyone feels the need to continue, maybe we should open a new thread (and link to or copy some posts from here).

As a chemical engineer, with experience looking at energy balances of systems, it is my professional opinion that this guy needs a slap in the face. It is not worth any more of my time.

I can give you a whole bunch of reasons why English is the lingua franca of the day, none of which have much to do with its adaptability or evolution. 1. German, French and English competed for a while in Western Europe for the dominant business language. 2. The Americans, Canadians, British pretty much won WWII in the west. Their soldiers were based in the houses of ordinary folks in countries like the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark. This introduced English to everyone. Also, German wasn't too popular in those days. 3. Along came the big Hollywood productions and marketing of these movies. Add in the popular Beatles, Rolling Stones, Elvis, etc. 4. People got used to English more than German and French. This slowly tipped the scales. 5. Once English got ahead of the other languages, the rest went pretty fast. 6. Also, in the Western world, English was the dominant language since WWII in economic terms. The USA is the 1st economy (still is). (Disclaimer: I am no historian, and anyone is free to disagree. I cannot back this up other than hearsay from older people in my direct surroundings). I just wish that the English were as keen on changing their insane spelling rules as they are adopting new words and abbreviations.

Yes, it takes an effort to become an engineer. But I can say from experience that it's worth it.

Allow me to answer the opposite (since I decided against getting a PhD, but still stayed in research). No. I think it prevented quite some stress, because I did not have the stress to publish and to write a thesis. My work typically stopped after communicating the work to the relevant colleagues and external parties. As the others said so far: this is hard to say. I guess if you stay in research the payment won't be really high anyway. Probably, although with engineers it's more the applications than the hardcore science that benefited. Funny that you ask. I never wanted to specialize for 3-4 years. But looking back, I actually stayed in the same field much longer now. I probably would have done the same. There is no financial benefit, I think. And there is little career benefit either (unless you stay at university, and want to become a professor, then a PhD is highly recommended). The main benefit is that you get a 3-4 year contract from a university, or a company, instead of a much shorter contract that ordinary employees get when they start. Also, you get your own research funds, which (hopefully) you can spend yourself on your own research. You will be more independent as a PhD then as an employee. Financially, it's all pretty much the same. But I think that you just get a few more guarantees upfront that you can do science on a particular topic for 3-4 years.

Well, it is domestic AND international. They're spying on the entire world. Regarding the international data, it's more internet, and less telephone. I have no law degree, but it seems (NSA claims) that they do nothing against the law.

All I see are some letters from the alphabet. h can mean a lot of things.

In all fairness, this was posted somewhere else, and I moved it to Homework.

Is this homework? What is your first thought? Maybe you can show us what you did so far to solve this?

And we have pointed out multiple reasons why this is not true. So, it is now time for you to provide us with a link of a research that shows this. All you are doing is repeating yourself, and that is not good enough anymore. Just show us what the radiation protection of the ISS is made of (hint: thin aluminium). Here is an article about the ISS. It says the "shielding is disappointing", and a 3-month stay is equal to 10% of the cancer risk of long term smokers. In my book, that is not "being killed quickly". And here is a list of materials and how much shielding they provide. Notice that air is on that list too, suggesting that the atmosphere itself will shield you.

Water is your only problem. You do not need any seeds. Just Google around for Death Valley: apparently there are always a few flowers in spring. But on those rare occasions that there is a bit more rain in spring, it is a bed of flowers. All those seeds were just waiting. A mountain does not attract rain because of its height, but because of the giant surface it has that can push a cloud up. So, a single pole, of even multiple poles, will not do at thing. Sorry.

Following that logic, you can leave Earth an adult, and arrive on Mars a teenager, and creative bookkeeping is the only trick you need. But we're going off topic now

It's probably a good start anyway. You may have to follow a few courses to catch up on a couple of topics. But that probably depends on which university you want to go to. As ajb said: the bets way to figure it out is to contact the chemistry faculty at the university you'd like to go to. On a sidenote: there seems to be a bigger demand for chemical engineers than for chemists on the job market (but I am too lazy to find a link to back that up, so treat this as hearsay).

! Moderator Note Dear students, A simple reminder to all: this is the "Homework Help" forum, not the "Homework Answers" forum. We will not do your work for you, only point you in the right direction. Posts that do give the answers may be removed. Best regards, Scienceforums.net Staff p.s. Yes, this is the same text as at the top of the Homework Help forum.

Split Infinity, that link merely says that satellites would be destroyed. I cannot find where it says we all die. It does suggest that the atmosphere "boiled off" on Mars, suggesting it has had a liquid atmosphere... which is nonsense. As a scientific article therefore this is not the most convincing. Wouldn't it be easier to admit you were probably exaggerating things a bit? Sure, radiation is dangerous, and possibly the life span of humans on Mars would be shorter than on earth. And possibly cancer would be an even higher risk there. But life would not be impossible. On a sidenote, as others have said already: the atmosphere itself blocks a lot of radiation too. This is why commercial pilots actually get a measurably higher dose of radiation. They aren't toast either. On another sidenote: the Earth's atmosphere has a mass of around 5*10^18 kg. Because Mars is smaller, it would need less atmosphere. Also, you could possibly do without all that useless nitrogen. But you'd still want at least, say, 1*10^17 kg of atmosphere (50 times less than we have). Estimates say this particular comet is 1 to 50 km in diameter. Let's assume it's 50 km in diameter (and let's assume it's a cube, lol). Assuming a density of 1000 kg/m3, this means it has a mass of 1.25*10^17 kg, which is surprisingly close to the weight of our Martian atmosphere. I admit this is all very much simplified. That comet is not made of gases only. It's probably a lot of rock and water too. But it would add a significant amount of potentially atmospheric material. I'd propose a 28-hour day instead. I can never get out of bed, meaning the night is too short. And in the evening I don't want to go to sleep, meaning the daytime is too short as well. That means that 24 hours is just too short.

This discussion is not about technological possibilities, and it is not about the legality of it either. The discussion is whether we want this. A person can also stand in front of your house, and stare through your window. Technically possible, and perhaps even legal. But I guess you'd be pretty upset after a few minutes. Why? In the EU, there is a proposal regarding the right to be forgotten. If it passes, it essentially means you can ask for some data to be removed and permanently deleted. It's relatively easy to make the data-collection illegal. You'd hope that government agencies at least follow the letter of the law in a democratic country. And whether corporations then comply with such a law is another question. I guess if the fine would be big enough, they will. It's all economics in the end. Privacy is not the same thing as remaining completely private. Privacy is more about being in control of who you share some information with. Methods that used to be private are now being invaded. And some object and hope that regulations can turn that around.

No, not CO2. By the time CO2 in the atmosphere becomes toxic, our planet will be toasted from global warming. However, perhaps smog can make the air (locally) so bad that people will want to spend money to get clean air. But I think that instead even the worst governments will prefer to implement regulations to clean up the air. The last resort, in my opinion, is to install filters in buildings (and vehicles) to clean the air. I don't think that bottled clean air will ever sell. Just look at the size of the tanks of a scuba diver. Such a tank only lasts for an hour or so. Imagine going through 24 of those in a day.

Of course. It's politics that got these laws into place. And it will be politics that will (hopefully) eventually get rid of them. They got into place through fear of terrorism (which, let's admit, was nothing new), so it would only complete the circle if the argument to get rid of these laws is nothing new either. I wouldn't be surprised if the EU move is for some part economical. Because the intelligence gathered is not just the private citizens. It is also corporate information, which can sometimes be sensitive. If leaked to the right people in other businesses, it could be worth quite a bit of money.

Right, so the little discussion between you and me that we've had in this thread has ended in a difference of political opinion. You think this has not yet crossed the line that you've drawn for yourself while I think it has gone much too far already (even if they "act as advertised"). I think that may explain the style of posting too.

Yeah, I think you and me are not playing the same game here on the politics forum. You're more focussed on facts, while I definitely allow bit of sensationalism. I'm just trying to play the game of politics. I may not be good at it, but we're not doing science here where we are all on the same side. This is politics, and we're also talking about my interests. The reason everybody is acting now is that everybody is simply riding the wave. This is the moment if you try to achieve something. I am just supporting anyone who wishes to achieve change, and improve privacy. I am quite aware that this is supposed to be legal in the USA (not that anyone ever asked my opinion as a Dutchman, but they're still checking my data too). I just think that the law should change, so that it becomes illegal. I am not suggesting anyone is doing anything against the law. But looking at the responses from all the politicians, they seem to realize that when mommy said they can have "some cookies" she definitely did not mean 200 million cookies.

Given the fact that quite recently there are proposals for "the right to be forgotten" in the EU, the EU may not let this go so easily. Also, the EU and Germany have more than once raised privacy issues with large corporations. It is my opinion that the USA (and therefore the NSA) has no rights to snoop around any European data. I know that the data often goes through US-based data centers, and is handled by US corporations, and that if you read the US laws, this is not against the law. But I never voted for those laws, and I do have rights. This has been mainstream news in most (if not all) EU countries, and I notice an old sentiment coming back that I last saw when Bush was the president. I am very pleased to see that the EU is taking this issue up as a whole, and not as 27 individual players. I am curious to see how the EU will play this. And I kinda hope they will have a very big mouth to the Americans, simply telling them to stop or sanctions will follow (which would probably hurt the EU too - I know that).

Agreed. They don't seem to listen to the actual conversation on the phone. What about emails? Checking photographs (face recognition)? File transfers? Skype? Banking/financial data? All the information I see suggests that they simply grab all the data directly from those large internet companies. So, there they do read everything, and regarding Skype, they may "listen in" after all. With all the data collected, they don't need to literally listen to the words I say on the phone. They already know pretty much everything. (Especially since they're also monitoring my bank account). swansont, it almost sounds like you're trying to make this sound less awful then it is. But I know you're probably just correcting my small mistake. So, just a personal question: you're ok with the government checking all your online data, and your 'meta-data' of your phonecalls? But if they listen to the actual words, that would be the final straw? Because that's what it sounds like to me now.

An example where light can pass through a solid by 'diffusion' (note, I use this term loosely) is paper. Some photons get absorbed, but some others just bounce off a number of fibres and come out the other end. So, while some light does pass through the paper, you cannot see anything sharp through it. It's all diffuse.

First my 2 cents, before I respond to some of your posts: I am offended that the USA is listening in on its own citizens, as well as people across the world (no doubt including those of their allies). Since I am a chemical engineer, I probably use a whole bunch of words that make some alarms go off. Given the magnitude of the spying, I bet there is not much needed to get some extra attention from a US-based spy computer. (Hello, NSA, greetings from Holland). But also, the US economy is on its knees, and yet your government chooses to spend billions on surveillance of ordinary citizens, preventing absolutely nothing. Where's the logic in that? I mean, I can understand some of the laws in the US that support large corporations. In the end, someone gets rich. But this stuff is the same as burning your money. It is as stupid as using giant high tech bombs against a mountain in Afghanistan. Also, it's not as if we did not suspect this years ago. Even SFN has adapted its rules according to the new world where we expect governments to spy on us (example). Terrorists won't be so stupid to just send an email, asking for some TNT. What do they expect to catch? Citation needed. Are you sure they don't just record and store all phone conversations in some audio format? Are you sure that phone conversations aren't run through a database that checks for suspect words and phrases, which would mean they are essentially listening in? I agree that there is not a human listening in on all we do. But computers have been technically capable of doing this for years. Nonsense. If you really want privacy you just pull the plug on those NSA datacenters. The problem is that many people have been scaremongered into believing that there is indeed a threat that they need to be protected against, at all cost, otherwise the Jihad Communists are coming with Anthrax Nuclear bombs, developed by sleeper cells that have been dormant since the sixties. With the exception of the Bush election in 2000, all other presidential elections in the last decade seem legit. And even the Bush election was probably legit too (there was some controversy). So, you all actually voted for this. If you want privacy, use your vote differently.