Delta1212

In what specific way are the police's hands tied, and how do they need to be untied in order to make things better?

As Klaynos referenced, though, those numbers are more a function of how easy those different kinds of planets are for us to detect than a reflection of how common they each are.

The human race, united behind a single purpose, could build a paradise on Earth. The problem is getting everyone to agree on what paradise should look like.

This is a very, very broad question. It would probably be easier to look at a specific idea and explain what, if anything, is wrong with it and how it could be fixed to be more realistic than to give a breakdown of all of the things you might expect to see in a plausible planetary system.

He has skipped all but two of the daily intelligence briefings since being elected. So there's one theory out the window.

Do you know who he's running against?

I do realize that. It also applies in the other direction.

This site has taught me to treat any sentence expressing this particular sentiment with extreme skepticism.

Cognitive dissonance is a helluva drug.

I'm not sure what argument you are making, because you seem to simultaneously be arguing that if there is a problem, then everyone should care about it and that because the problem almost certainly cannot possibly have a direct impact on Stein's chances of being president, that she shouldn't be allowed to care.

What matter of course? How would that work? The only automatic recount provisions are for elections that are within specific very narrow margins which vary by state. There's no "a statistical analysis looked suspect to someone" provision for a recount, which means someone needs to request one in order for it to happen, and I believe that the request needs to be made, and subsequently paid for, by someone who was actually on the ballot. You're effectively asking why they didn't go about this in a way that is legally impossible.

I'm not sure what there is a "yet" there. One of the more famous examples is a jellyfish that obtains its biological immortality status by having the ability to revert to an immature polyp colony after previously reaching sexual maturity. It would hardly be able to do so if its cells became fixed upon reaching maturity.

Your cells never stop dividing. They are constantly dying and being replaced. If they no longer divided, your wounds would never heal, you'd never be able to gain any weight or muscle mass and you would just generally deteriorate rather quickly.

I will be interested to hear the result of this.

Chicago does have a serious gun violence problem. But Chicago is not the country. The country as a whole is the safest it has been in terms of violent crime rates for decades. And it is Chicago in particular, not cities in general. New York City, for example, is at a historic low for violent crime this year and the overall trend, like the country's, has been downward. America really is safer than it has been in decades.

Glad I'm not the only one that thought of that last point.

Your conclusion does not follow from your premise.

I'm still confused about why "the temperature of the rest of the country without California" matters in the slightest.

Yes, that is why they are called faithless. Of course, the ability to have faithless electors is literally the reason that the electoral college exists in the first place.

There's no reason to drop Texas. But that's my point. If you drop California, there is a preponderance of Trump votes outside it. But if you drop Texas, there is a preponderance of Hillary votes in the rest of the country. Pick a large section of the country that leans a certain way politically and then say that the average of the rest of the country swings the other way on average if you don't count it is a sort of meaningless tautology. There is nothing special about California in this regard other than that it is a particularly large portion of the country.

But like you said, we could do the same with Texas and the result flips. The only reason you've singled out California is that their votes get counted later than most because of a quirk of time zones. It's not related to what "the rest" of the country wants.

And the country with California wanted Hillary. You can't just cut out portions of country you don't feel like counting as if they aren't "really" part of the population.

Well, I guess we're going to find out how well he does carry it once the weight is placed on him.

Partially immigration, partially increased longevity, partially simple timing. The US has been hovering around and dipping below replacement rate more often than not since the early 70s for the population as a whole. It dropped below replacement rate for the last time around when the recession hit and has never climbed back out. The only racial demographic I see as of 2013, the last time I could find a demographic breakdown of fertility rate for, had non-white Hispanic as the only group over replacement rate, and that was 0.05 children per women above replacement, which is practically nothing. If overall fertility doesn't rebound, I would expect the population to grow considerably slower in the future even including immigration. Potentially even shrink. That said, the fertility rate hasn't been that low long enough for the effect to be as obvious. The population having children right now is still generally larger than their parents' generation, so you're still seeing people born faster than they are dying off. You need most of a lifespan to pass before that trend reverses once the population dips under replacement rate, and we're going to only just start to see those effects as the Baby Boomer generation begins to retire and move past the average life expectancy.

Black fertility rates are actually below the replacement rate in this country. White fertility rates are simply farther below replacement rate.