Delta1212

A lot of the "changing demographics" are the result of a larger percentage of the population being black. Most black people can trace their ancestory in this country back farther than a lot of white people can. They aren't "new" to this country.

What unethical behavior?

Re: closing times I don't know what the post office closing times are. However, there is no nationally mandated closing time for polls. The states determine when they are open and when they are closed. If the rule is that any vote post-marked by Election Day is to be counted, then it doesn't really matter what time the post office closes in comparison to the polls because the rules in that state simply say "any vote postmarked by Election Day" not "Any vote postmarked by the time the polls close."

You are presenting a false dichotomy here between trusting all of the people who run our elections completely or trusting none of them at all. I think the vast, vast majority are good, honest, civic-minded people who are doing a great service for their country. But you can always find at least one dishonest person in any sufficiently large group of people. It's entirely possible to believe that a small number of dishonest people managed to slip something by the honest people around them that might be caught on review by those honest people without being inconsistent in your thinking. However, like I said, I don't think that election fraud is a big enough issue in this country to have made a difference in this election, even as close as it was. And I think any fraud taking place on the scale that would be required (many tens of thousands of fraudulent votes spanning multiple states) really would fall into that category you are talking about where the entire election process fails to be trustworthy on any level. I also think the "recount is reasonable under any circumstances to make sure every vote is counted" meme actually is a dangerous one. In 2000, the entire election hinged on a very thin margin in a single, large state. In that case, a recount is warranted. But if we keep expanding that margin to any amount that is "close", then we're opening the door to things like what is going on in North Carolina right now with the governor's race, which I think is actually a more direct attack on the democratic process in this country than the Presidency going to the person with fewer votes. There are sexual predators that vote Republican, too. I understand this wasn't your intention, but you did just kind of ascribe a single "deplorable" group to Republicans and multiple much larger groups to Democrats, one of which would be voter fraud and another of which there is no particular correlation at all in terms of supporting one party or the other.

Has it really shrunk, though? The only swing states that Clinton is really in "striking distance" of Trump in that I can see are Michigan and, at the outside, Pennsylvania. Even if both of those went to Clinton, Trump would still have 270 electoral votes to Clinton's 268. That would give Trump the win. It would also mean that if any Electors defected, it could sway the election, but while an elector defecting from voting for Trump is not out of the question, you're unlikely to get even a couple of them to directly flip from Trump to Clinton and hand her the election in that scenario. The ones who have already voiced consideration for defecting have specifically talked about voting for some other Republican. So any defections would result in no one having a majority, which would kick it to the House to decide between Hillary and Trump, in which case they pick Trump because there is no way the Republican controlled House is picking Clinton. There is simply no realistic path that I can see for Clinton to reach the White House even in the most favorable of unlikely circumstances where you assume both voter fraud and Electoral voter defections.

While, at this point, I don't advocate a recount, I would say a few things in response to that. One, voting fraud doesn't mean someone from the campaign Paid someone to do it, nor that a foreign government got involved. Any given US election has tens of millions of people who are very passionate about the outcome. It's pretty likely that you will be able to find a couple in there who will have attempted to commit voter fraud all on their own. I don't personally think it is a particularly wide spread phenomenon in our elections that is typically worth worrying about because I don't think you will really find it on a scale that would sway any but the most razor thin of elections. Electronic voting machines do represent a potential weak point where a smaller number of people could potentially influence the count for a much larger number of votes. Again, personally, I don't think this is likely on a very large scale, and while the election was close in a lot of swing states, it wasn't 2000 Florida close. I don't think it's likely that even if cases of fraud were discovered that it would be enough to flip the Electoral vote, even if it narrowed the margins in a lot of states. Second point, even in an election where there was voting fraud capable of affecting the outcome, it would not mean that everyone who voted for the "winner" stole the outcome from the person who would have won. They voted for their candidate in good faith and simply would have lost except that someone stuck a finger on the scale. The person or persons who actively committed voter fraud would be the ones that stole the election. Saying that believing there was voter fraud (which I don't, at least not on the scale necessary to make a difference to anything) is to believe that all of Trump's supporters stole the election is factually incorrect and unnecessarily turns any suggestion of voter fraud into an attack on you personally. That's not a good way to proceed in a discussion.

It would be illegal for any elected official other than the president, who is not legally obligated to use a blind trust.

Yeah, that Calc looks like it is using a very simplified model of hair color inheritance. It misses out on a lot of range within the categories that it is describing. Your other calculations seem like they'd be closer to the mark than a 100% chance of anything, which I would be very wary about for any kind of inheritance prediction, but especially only going back to grandparent generations. In any case, an 11% chance isn't all that unlikely. It's about the same chance as having three daughters in a row. Certainly not something you'd expect to happen, but also not something liable to elicit a reaction of "Wow, that seems almost impossible!" which is sort of the vibe I get from the reaction you are having to this hair color thing.

You are obfuscating. Nobody wakes up one day and randomly finds themselves at a Constitutional Convention. There is usually first a lengthy conversation about whether something needs to be changed or not. So, in your opinion, is there any threshold of discrepancy between popular and electoral vote that could be reached that would make you think "Hmm, maybe a constitutional amendment, brought about through the legally defined channels for doing so, would be a good idea." Incidentally, Trump has yet to actually win according to the rules laid out in the Constitution. As you say, the popular vote doesn't matter, only the electoral votes. And Constitutionally, the electors can do whatever they want. Since they haven't voted yet, Trump hasn't won yet. We all know he is going to, but if you're going to be a stickler for constitutional law, you can't pick and choose which elements you want to follow.

A few things that are important: 1. While a chromosome mismatch is generally a hinderance to fertility, it is not a guarantee of fertility. It is possible for a mutation to break apart a chromosome. Because of the way DNA combines, this individual may have fertility issues when reproducing with an organism that has a normal chromosome count, but successful reproduction is still possible as they will have all of the same genes capable of matching up with each other, just with a slightly different division. How much this affects fertility is highly dependent upon the specific circumstances, but it is possible for the variant to then spread through the population by chance. Once a high enough proportion of the population has the abnormal chromosome count, they will wind up crossing with each other, and have fewer fertility issues when breeding with an individual with the same abnormal chromosome count. And since they will have an easier time reproducing with one another, and those individuals with the original chromosome number would have an easier time reproducing amongst themselves as well, you've set up a probably future speciation event between those with the original chromosome count and those with the new one. 2. Yes, you can see what are likely the early stages of sexual development in, for instance, earthworms, which are hermaphroditic and perform the roles of either sex when exchanging genetic material. From there, you can trace out a fairly straightforward hypothetical where some traits make individuals more effective in one role or the other and you wind up creating a sort of sexual dipmorphism that ultimately results in obligate male and female members of the species. A lot of the biggest stumbling blocks in conceptualizing processes that seem like big step changes is failing to figure out how they actually can be broken down into smaller intermediate steps instead of the great big leaps it looks like they are at first glance.

You can say similar things about any religious or cultural doctrine. Most people following Sharia don't stone their daughters and most people following Biblical law don't bomb abortion clinics. The problem is not whether one follows a set of religious precepts. The problem is the murderous loon. The question is whether answering in the affirmative to the question of whether one follows "Sharia law" is highly correlated with being a murderous loon. The answer to that question is "no."

Well no shit. He's the President of the United States and they're not idiots. You don't publically laugh at him. You publically flatter him, because that's how you get what you want from him.

You think his Twitter rant about Hamilton and SNL makes him look capable and strong? How is that leading us to victory? The average joe on the street might respect him, but the Russian and Chinese leadership are going to run rings around him.

Immortality, like cold fusion, is always only 20 years away.

Backing up stupidity makes you look more stupid, not less.

Regardless of whether you agree with the sentiment, is this an appropriate response from a President? Over the weekend, he complained about the play in multiple tweets over a span of more than a day, and also complained that SNL was unfunny and biased against him. Part and parcel of the Presidency is accepting the fact that you are going to be criticized, challenged and made fun of publically. Pence himself said that he was not offended by what happened at the play, and said that he would leave it up to others to decide whether that was the appropriate venue to deliver the message. He told his children that the boos in the theater are "what freedom sounds like." I do not particularly like Mike Pence. I disagree with him on quite a lot. His response is, however, about how an official elected to one of the highest offices in the country should react to that situation. It concerns me that Trump feels the need to go into very public attack mode anytime there is public criticism of him, and that he thinks it is appropriate to tweet about how his critics are "unfunny" or "highly overrated." Not only do I think that the lack of decorum demonstrates an equal lack of respect for the responsibility of the office of president, but I think the fact that we have a leader who is sent into a tizzy on social media by fairly politely worded criticism directed publically at his Vice President from the cast of a musical doesn't do us any favors in projecting strength to the rest of the world, which is one of the things Trump supposedly ran on being able to do. If he doesn't cut it out, we're going to be a global punchline.

The idea that the core ideology of conservative is resistance to change isn't exactly shocking. It's pretty much right in the name.

Serious question: What do you think of Donald Trump's response to the statement?

You claim in 2 that it must be in its stable state if it is infinite in extent. Why? I don't see how one follows from the other.

You seem to frequently take very personally things that are explicitly not aimed at you.

They voiced fears that they would not be protected under the new administration and hope that they would be. That is not a lecture, and I don't see what is disrespectful about, very politely, informing your Vice President about your fears as Americans. How can the President and Vice President address the concerns of their constituents of the constituents are told that it is disrespectful to tell their leaders that they have concerns when presented with an opportunity to speak to them?

It's not, because what you're describing is the British view of the colonial behavior. You're looking at the people at the time through the lens of knowing what happened afterward and from a very pro-American standpoint. Which is understandable, but if you take a step outside of what you know about how history unfolded and try to view things from the perspective of the British and loyalist aristocrats, it's very interesting to imagine how the actions of the colonists and major patriot figures would have been viewed and to compare that view to later and more modern interactions between protesters and the government and the reaction by the population to those events. The Boston Tea Party would be labeled vandalism by most people if it happened in modern America. And while the Boston Massacre would undoubtedly still be a very controversial event, I think you'd find far more people defending a police action against a violent mob than you would people who think the British were in the right in this country. We're very used to viewing historical events and modern events through completely different lenses because we learn historical events as a battle between heroes and villains who have been pre-picked based on how the events turn out while modern events are much more complex struggles the results of which we don't yet know. But the parallels you can find between modern day events and historical ones are very interesting and often exist in ways that you wouldn't be inclined to think about unless you can turn off the expectations of who is right and who is wrong and shut out what you know about the ultimate results of history.

I thought the statement by the Hamilton cast was fairly respectful in tone.

While I don't support pillaging and destruction of property, the original and most lauded protest in all of American history was literally pillaging and destruction of property that has been elevated to the level of myth in the American psyche. The only reason we don't think of the Boston Tea Party in those terms is because that isn't how it's framed for us when we first learn about it, and because historical events tend to take on a sheen of unreality. But for the people living at the time, the stuff you don't like now is exactly how that event looked. This is exactly the kind of behavior America was founded on. Not justifying it, just pointing out that there is a distinct difference between "thing I don't like" and "thing that is unAmerican" in this case. I don't like when protest turns destructive, but it is extremely American.

While it may, hypothetically, be possible to read someone's thoughts through brain patterns, there are major signal to noise ratios that we are not technically capable of overcoming right now, and the best we can do requires plugging a cord directly into brain. Even with that, there is a huge amount of data that needs to be crunches to figure out what signals represent what kinds of thoughts and we don't even have access to most of the signals in order to start that process, let alone an existing library that would allow us to do any real interpretation even if someone could get at those brain signals, which presently they can't. There is also the problem that brain patterns are not completely consistent from one person to the next. It is much easier to read signals that indicate specific motions than specific thoughts, because while motor control signals are relatively consistent across individuals, thought patterns are not, and it's much harder to get at exactly what the thought is that correlates with a given pattern whereas the end result of motor signals is obviously externally apparent. There is simply no way to do what you are describing using present technology, and the scale of the knowledge that would be required to do it means that even if someone built a machine with the capacity for mind-reading, there would be no way to use it. It would be like someone building the software that Wikipedia runs on but having no entries. It's a great platform but you won't learn anything from it until someone goes in and enters actual information. In this case, collecting that information is not something someone, even someone with a lot of resources, could realistically do hidden away in a lab somewhere. In other words, the thing that you are worried about does not exist and you need to look elsewhere for the cause of your problem. There isn't a technological answer in the way you are thinking there is.