Delta1212

The problem with a lot of inspirational quotes is that you can read a lot of different things into them, and what the quote represents depends heavily on who and what you think is drawing inspiration from it. For instance: That applies equally well to someone living under the Third Reich standing up to Naziism and someone living in America who is a white supremacist. The lion quote is similar. The Mussolini connection gives it a different context than the Captain America quote, but on its own, it can apply equally well to anyone who is fighting for what they believe in instead of bowing to the will of someone else and letting things happen in order to keep themselves alive. Whether that is a good or bad thing depends entirely on what it is the person fighting believes in and what it is that is going on around the "sheep."

Every part of you body used to be part of something dead, human or otherwise. On the molecular level, you're a Frankenstein's monster of recycled parts.

He definitely lost the popular vote. By law he won the Electoral College. In reality, the vote in Florida was so insanely close that I'm not sure a definitive answer is reasonably possible, and who "really" won there is heavily dependent upon what ballots are counted, what is considered a valid/in-valid ballot, etc. We had an election that was too close to call, so the people responsible for calling it called their preferred candidate the winner and Bush became President.

If you want to be with your fiancée, keep your mouth firmly shut. If she wants them in her life, it's not your place to tell them to screw off on her behalf. The only time it's ever really appropriate to step in and make a decision like that for a loved one is when their health or well-being is at serious risk, not just when they have to deal with assholes. That's a choice they get to make for themselves, and it's your job to be supportive. That said, if she's ok with it, putting a little distance between them and you so that you only do need to see them around holidays may not be a bad idea if your fiancée doesn't feel any particular need to be close to them other than obligatory holiday get togethers. Honestly, I have a pretty fantastic extended family compared with a lot of people, but I still think the fact that my immediate family lived on the opposite coast of the US from almost literally everyone else played a big part in our maintaining very positive relationships with everyone. When you only see someone once or twice a year for a week at a time, the potential for really serious conflict drops significantly. Sensei is also probably right that it's best if they aren't readily available for regular baby-sitting or weekend trips while any kids are growing up. But all of this is something that, again, you need to decide with your fiancée and not for her. Certainly you shouldn't wait until you are married and then expect to dictate how she relates to them or them to her. Definitely something you need to discuss ahead of time.

Speaking of which, the diagnostic psychopathy checklist: glib and superficial charm grandiose (exaggeratedly high) estimation of self need for stimulation pathological lying cunning and manipulativeness lack of remorse or guilt shallow affect (superficial emotional responsiveness) callousness and lack of empathy parasitic lifestyle poor behavioral controls sexual promiscuity early behavior problems lack of realistic long-term goals impulsivity irresponsibility failure to accept responsibility for own actions many short-term marital relationships juvenile delinquency revocation of conditional release criminal versatility

That seems about as useful in a President as having one who is an expert painter or a piano prodigy. I mean, it's cool and all, but kind of irrelevant to doing the job of President.

There was a time when almost nobody understood how to work a computer. Now anybody is entitled to understand. There was a time when almost nobody understood what electricity was. Now anybody is entitled to understand. There was a time when almost nobody understood how biological inheritance worked. Now anybody is entitled to understand. There was a time when almost nobody understood how oxidation worked. Now anybody is entitled to understand. There was a time when almost nobody understood how to use calculus. Now anybody is entitled to understand. Science marches on. When something is new, very few people understand it not because it is impossible to learn, but because very few people have tried to learn it, the resources for learning it are generally very scarce, and people's base education was generally not geared toward laying the foundations for learning that subject. Eventually all of those things stop being true. What was bleeding edge because core knowledge. People become more open to the ideas instead of spending a large chunk of their learning time trying to find the seams and poke holes in it. Foundational knowledge takes the new late stage knowledge into account and students become aware that that knowledge exists much earlier even if they don't learn it directly. Fields and technical professions get bolt up and around it so that it is required knowledge by many more people just to do their jobs rather than more esoteric knowledge of interest to only a few. It's hardly surprising that a paradigm changing theory would go from only being understood by the person who developed it to being very widely understood by the scientific, engineering and science-minded community at varying levels. That's not evidence that everyone is misunderstanding it because only Einstein was capable of knowing how it worked. That's just how humanity tends to learn things as a collective.

Why martial arts?

I think that was singularly as in "particularly" not as in "solely."

I think you're going to have a difficult time managing to simultaneously get only people who don't particularly want to be President and a grueling, hellish process that will weed out anyone who isn't really dedicated to completing it unless forced to do so. The people who legitimately don't want to be president are going to drop out of the program you described very, very quickly. You cannot select people who don't want the job and then motivate them after their selection to want the job through the perks of having the job. Presumably the perks would be known about ahead of time, and therefore anyone who would be motivated by those perks would already want to be the president to begin with. Then you run into the problem of who, exactly, gets into the pool in the first place. How are you selecting these unambitious, well-tempered geniuses? How are they evaluated as they progress through the program? Who decides who gets eliminated and who goes on?

Does someone think they aren't explainable? I thought the explanation was, you know, relativity.

Just imagine, our next President sits down with Kim Jong Un in a landmark negotiation. In a surprising move, Un opens by offering to dismantle the entire North Korean nuclear arsenal, step down as the head of government and allow the reunification of North and South Korea, but his one non-negotiable stipulation for doing all of this is that the President has to fix his hair so it doesn't look so stupid before they leave the negotiating table that day. Wouldn't you want to know whether we had a President who was capable of taking advantage of such an unprecedented opportunity in the event that it arises?

I don't know if I've ever seen such an inherently irrelevant question before.

I guess it depends on what the meaning of 'be' is.

But I'm talking about the better than 30% that Romney got four years ago to the 15% currently has. The racial and education makeup of the 18-29 demo did not change enough in four years to entirely account for that much of a shift in support. If everyone in that cohort maintained their exact voting pattern from 2012, but the 26-29 year olds simply aged out and were replaced with new Democratic-leaning 18-21 year olds, then even assuming that the youngest in that cohort had absolutely no one who was leaning Trump, that would require almost 50% support for Republicans among the out-going group that left the 18-29 year old range between 2012 and now. If Trump has even single-digit support among 18-21 year olds, it means Romeny had over 50% of the 26-29 year old vote in 2012 in order to explain the current numbers. Assuming, of course, that we're going with the theory that no one has changed their vote between last election and this one and it's solely a result of demographic trends as people age. The idea that Romeny got over 50% of voters in their late 20s is utterly ridiculous, which means that some percentage of 18-29 year olds who supported Romney in the last election are not supporting Trump this time around and it isn't just a case of the group being made up of different people.

Based on iNow's numbers, Trump's support among youth voters has dropped by more than half from what Romney's was. There has not been enough of a shift in the racial demographics of America's youth in the last four years to account for even a majority of that loss all on its own.

Which is why I said Trump is even more of a mess. I think there exists a segment of voters who could be swayed either to vote for Hillary or not vote for Hillary, but there is a very large segment of Republican voters who can be swayed either to vote for or not vote for Donald right now, and probably a surprising contingent who might even be convinced to vote for Hillary. It's moving people over one category from major party voter to third party voter or third party voter to major party voter that is going to be the real battle for undecideds this election. The campaigns have similarities in the kind of work they need to do and the types of voters they need to target to shape opinions, but yes, the scales are very, very different with Trump having more ground to make up and more potential ground to lose within his party's nominal base than Hillary does.

If we're imagining that undecided voters are some people who simply can't decide whether they like Hillary or Trump better, no, there probably aren't a very significant amount of such people who will be voting in November left in the country. But that misses out on a huge number of voters who are still actually undecided in this election. You have two candidates that both have large groups that they are very unpopular with, and those groups do not perfectly overlay voters for the other party. You have disaffected Bernie supporters that Trump is going to try to appeal to and strike a chord with about Hillary being corrupt in the hopes that they decide to either not vote, vote third party or even go over and vote for Trump, while Hillary is trying to pull them back into the fold on her end. Trump's side is an even bigger mess, with plenty of Republicans who have either already decided they won't b voting for him and are trying to decide whether to vote third party or hold their nose and vote for Hillary, and other Republicans who hate Hillary enough that they are considering voting for Trump, but aren't completely comfortable with Trump either and could be convinced that voting for him isn't worth it and that they should go third party. You are very unlikely to find anyone that you will flip from supporting Hillary to supporting Trump or from Trump to Hillary, but you might move a waverer from one candidate to a third party or from a third party to supporting one of the candidates. And there are likely to be more people who fall into that category this year than in your typical election year. Which makes for a lot of "undecideds" whose vote could be swayed this year, even if there aren't many people left who don't already have strong opinions about the candidates. Thinking about the choice as being a binary for Hillary or Trump misses out on this fact.

You'd probably be better off with a beanbag cannon that could fire off the equivalent mass of beanbags over the final second or two of your descend rather than trying to throw a single bag all at once right at the end. Hitting the ground doesn't hurt you because it's the ground. It hurts because it stops you very quickly. Anything that stops you that quickly is going to have the same effect. It's the difference between gradually slowing down in a car and slamming on the breaks.

I've gone under general anesthesia twice, and yeah, the thing that most distinguished it from sleep is probably the complete lack of any sense of time having passed. One moment you're sitting there, the next everything is over. When I wake up in the morning, there's usually some continuity of having felt like I was asleep for awhile or remembering falling asleep or waking up.

Things don't have to be far away to appear contracted. They can be right next you. They can pass by right in front of your nose. They can collide with you. You can directly interact with them. And when you do interact with them, they will behave as if they are the length you measure them to be in your frame, not their rest frame.

Further clarifying: The rest frame measurement is not "the can." It is just one more shadow among many. It's the shadow we're most used to dealing with and have the most intuitive understanding of, but that is still not the same as actually being the can, or even being the most accurate representation of the can.

Better in what way?

And yet you are insisting that one specific measurement really represents reality over all others.

But the rest frame is not taking the donut in hand and looking at it from all perspectives. It is looking at the top down perspective, where it looks like a flat circle with a hole in the middle. But it also looks like it's completely covered in frosting. There is no one single perspective that gives you a total view of the donut, and there is no single frame of reference that gives you the total "true" measurement of an object.