CPL.Luke

I'm kinda wondering if he'll get picked up as a vice presidential candidate for someone. As a running mate he'd bring in alot of the religious vote etc. and hi knowledge of the actual workings in science could help him make good legislation in that area.

keep in mind that he's a war hero, that will carry over very well to the repulican base. And he also won the election as mayor of NYC because of a return to competency campaign. A similar campagin will wrok very well on the national level. And the brute side of him may carry well with the republican base's concerns over terrorism.

I read a very interesting interview with Newt Gingerich in a magazine (Discover?). I was very impressed with him, particularly his stance on some science issues and his recognition of the importance of the sciences. Apparently when he was booted out of congress he went to places like U of Georgia, and MIT just to talk to professors and study a bit to catch up on the latest happenings in science. I don't think he'd come off as a candidate for the religious right as he supports teaching science in science classrooms, stem cell research, and anything science related. Anouther thing I thought was interesting is his cooperation with hillary Clinton and others, I think its possible that some prominent republicans from 10 years ago may return as democrats in '08 due to the hijacking of the Republican's by the religious right, and the general shift in idealogies to the point where the Rep's are considered the radical incompetent group and the dem's are running on a platform that would have been conservative 10 years ago. I'll try and dig up the interview. As for the "bullish tactics" I mentioned, one of them that strikes me as particularly harsh was his cleen-up of a tent city. It wa in one of the parks down in the greenwich village area of the city, he had about 50 cops go down there and kick everybody out one night. Then had the park sealed off for two years for construction. He also has been described as "the best dictator NYC has ever had" he had a habit of ignoring the liberal democrats in the city (keep in mind that city politics are already very liberal and the dem's there could almost qualify as socialists). I think on the national level Giuliani's politics are more in line with the dem's.

This thread is here to discuss the possible candidates for the 2008 presidential elections (yeah I got sucked intowatching the regular new yesterday and it was all they were talking about). To get the ball roling Rudy Giuliani (mayor of NYC 92-02) has anounced an exploritory comittee to investigate his chances at winning te presidency. Personally I think he would sweep the national elections because o his strong liberal leanings, charisma, hero status, and he's a republican. However if he ran as a republican he would have a difficult time winning the republican base in the primaries because of his liberal leanings (supports stem cell research, Gay rights, the enviroment etc.). From a personal standpoint I'm very much in favor of him for what he did for New York City, when he first came in the crime rate was skyrocketing times square wasn't safe to be in at night, tent cities in some of the major parks. when Giuliani left the crime rate in NYC was and still is the lowest for any city in America, times square is a great place for a date at night, and the tent cities are gone. Granted as these changes were occurring people hated him (for some very bullish tactics). bu the rest of the race also looks interesting, as Mccain is planning on running for president in the republican party, hillary and obama are planning on making a run in the democratic party. And after this term who knows who's going to come out as an independent.

From what I understad the profit margins on cures and treatments for fatal illnesses is ver very low, so low that its hard for a company to turn any profit off of it, these drugs are made because the CEO's of these companies have some small fragment of a heart. The reason that you see these massive profit margins is because of drugs like viagara which has literally made billions of dollars in profit on its own. Drugs like that get their prices hiked up beyond belief. and I think a similar thing occurs with vitamin supplements, cold medications etc. the drugs that people need to live cost so much because of the drugs initial R&D cost.

why do I stare blankly sometimes?

a massiv cost overrun and inefficiency are products of purely public medical research. A company can't get away with producing treatments when there are cures around, because someone else would just come out with a cure and then the first company is out of business. As for drug approvals you have to keep in mind that the US is a much larger country than most, and thus some side effects that aren't statistically significant in some european countries, suddenly become very significant in a population like the US.

however atm China is experiencing massive growth through a practice similar to what America did in the 20's, their putting loans out at a rate thats impractical for their economy to sustain, right now the practice works because everyone wants to outsource to china for their cheap labor, but when that trend changes, their economy could collapse. Fr example, my father does business in china. He told me there was one factory that his company was considering purchasing, but when they looked at the factories total assets they found that the factory had something on the order of 70 million in assets, and only did about 50 million dollars in business. This is happening all over the place in China because the government is pumping money into their economy and financing new business ventures to he point where they're bound for economic collapse. It may be that government has a better handle on the economic situation than the American government had in the 1920's, but maybe they don't, and maybe they think that in the end this massive growth and then collapse will be good for their economy, it was for the US.

actually the Nazi party worked miracles on the German economy, they went from being one of the poorest nations on earth to being a major world superpower in merely a few years. Granted what came after that didn't work out to well, but thats still no reason to discount the things that did work out.

hmm is there any evidence that the government is "bigger" after the crash as compared t before the crash?

personally I don' trust a proprietary electronic voting system, esecially not in the current political atmosphere. Only one of the electronic voting systems has ever been investigated (diebold) and princeton was able to hack into it within 1 minute. The software for these things should be all over the place allowing anybody to look in and find errors and correct them. Then a a couple months before the election they could have a panel choose a final version of the software that goes out to the voting machines. NONE of these companies has reason to make a good voting machine, becaue if the election is rigged the guy who gets elected has no reason to investigate the election. And these companies could even rig the election beforehand and send the voting machines out pre-hacked. granted the latter scenario is a bi extreme, but the point is we would never know whether that happened or not without a paper trail. and we don't know what goes on inside of those machines.

DAk, the banks money was effectively in the stock market, they had lent it out to people who's express intent was to buy stock in the market, and the bank new this so it kept a clse watch on the stock market, if the stock went down such that the bank wouldhae lost money they made a "margin call" wher the individual who had taken out the money from the bank would have to put more money into the account in order for the bank to stay at a profit, if the person couldn't do this the stock went to the bank which would do with it what it wanted. now on aday where the stocks start to turn down, the banks were making some pretty big margin calls that people just couldn't pay, so they turned the stock over to the bank, which promptly sold it. but every time this happened the banks Lost Money, some so much that they had to shut down. But these banks didn't just deal with stocks, they dealt with personal savings, checking etc. so when they shut down people lost their life savings. So as word spread that that was what was happening people rushed the banks in order to get their money out before they closed. and this caused more banks to close until as you pointed out earlier 2500 banks had been shut down. part of what happened was that there was a fundamental economic implosion because we believed that there was more money in the economy then their actually was.

However the stock market can't always go up just because people will it to be so. If a new alternative resource that could replace oil came out tomorrow, the oil companies stock would plummet faster than an airplane without wings, and while the new companies stock would rise very quickly, their would still be some drop in the market. And in the case of the 1920's this drop however small could escalate to the level of a full fledged crash, soley due to the "economy of credit" (nice phrase demos). in other words consumer confidence is not enough.

Dak you seem to be operating under the assumption that economic crashes like the one in the 1930's occur just because alot of people went out and sold their stock one day. These crashes occur because of deep underlying causes related to the way the economy was built, or how money is loaned out and for what purposes. In the case of the 1930's crash buying on margin had made it so that the market was effectively running with more money than was present in the economy. Thanks to the way accountaints work this practice made the markets shoot through the roof, and made alot of money for alot of people. However this practice produces false economic gains and only appears to wor while the economy is doing well, and the moment that things start to go sour the entire thing collapses. That is what happened in the 1930 crash and possibly in china very soon you can't just tell everyone to keep doing what their doing and have everything work out, especially in an age of foreign investment (you can't tell foreign companies to keep sending shipments that cost millions of dollars without any payment)

ah thanks, I don't have much experience with polynomials of a very high degree beyond a vector calculus book I have that was written by someone who spent a large amount of time solving them (there was a fractal pattern on the cover that was generated during an attempt to solve a 256th degree polynomial), but because it was a vector calculus book it only spent a little time on them.

Really? I haven't had to solve a polynomial of an order that high yet, although one book I read had an extensive section on newton's method and its use in solving polynomial equations. out of curiosity how would you go about solving this equation? I know that we can get one solution spot on, and then reduce the order of the equation through division, but we'd still be left with a massive polynomial of the 2004th order. oh yeah, e^-x is also a possible solution

in other words, its just a question of solving the charecteristic equation x^2005-1=0, because there is no generic equation for solving a polynomial of this order were left to approximations. I'd imagine that newton's method could produce some values sufficiently close to x for most purposes, and you could get an approximate general solution based on that. may I ask why your interested in this particular equation?

its the 2x2 case of a formula for calculating matrix inverses. the term ad-bc is the determinant of the matrix, if this is zero then the matrix has no inverse as you get a divide by zero error (this can also be found by row reduction) the term on the right is called the adjoint of A, and is the matrix of cofactors. the cofactor of a matrix is, (-1)^(i+j)x M_i,j where M_i,j is the ijth minor of the matrix A, a minor is just the determinant of the matrix with the ith row and the jth column removed. calculating the cofactors for every I and J and then arranging them into the adjoint matrix and dividing by the determinant gives you the inverse. Although for anything other than the 2x2 case the formula is wortheless for actual calculations, similar to cramers rule. (although they are useful for proof work) that formula is extremely useful for proving that if the determinant is zero, then the matrix is non invertible. Evon there were a couple of little mistakes in your post: the Identity matrix I is always square. AI always equals A whether or not A is square. (although you have to chose the right I, if A is mxn then I is nxn and AI=A Ax=b is just a representation of a system of linear equations, and so always holds true (although its possible to make inconsistent equations, or systems without a unique solution)

no, a US state cannot secede from the Union, that being the cause of the American civil war. I think virtually every american is quite happy with that arangement. However we have the luxury of direct democratic control over our government (as compared to the description of EU democracy), and at this point in our history we all see ourselves as Americans (although it took several very large wars against foreign agressors to forge that identity and one civil war. It seems to me that Europe neither has that identitiy or for the most part want that identity, Europe is a wonderfully diverse place and if the EU wants to become a unified stae that WILL change. There would be alot of cultural collisions that would leave any particular are incredily diverse, but I think the entire continent will be forced into a certain level homogeneity. Kind of like how America is today, if you look at a place like New York City, there is a huge amount of cultural diversity. just the other day I ws there and in one city block (about 100-300 ft: 33-100m) I saw a Korean restraunt Afghani restraunt Indian restraunt Thai restraunt Polish restraunt Burger joint Italian restraunt Mexican Restraunt and a couple bars of various styles and at least one english pub and in less than ten minutes of travel I can be imersed in just about any culture imaginable. Now if you compare New York to LA there won't be that much difference in terms of identity ie. They both Feel like American cities. If the EU makes a strong effort to break down the national borders I think that same phenomenon will happen in European cities, you'll get more diversity in any singular city, but city to city it will still feel like a similar city, a European city. Maybe that Identity already exists and its relly just semantics and politics that keep Europeans apart, I've never been to Europe so I couldn't tell you whether or not thats true, but it seems that it is something that you guys should consider, do you want to be Europeans or do you want to be Brits, French, Germans etc.

hmm a clause such as "no lose ends" seems a bit unreasonable, when it comes to important parts of legislature, there has to be absolute clarity otherwise when a country leaves the EU parliament could force them to stay through all sorts of wierd back doors, and if the EU had its own military... it becomes some cause for concern. I doubt the british pint will ever have to fear the metric system though. (just offer the cops a pint when they come knocking)

but like I already mentioned in communism goods are being dlivered through trade deficets, so really your making the whole problem worse by providing that temporary relief. And a capitalist government can easily take out loans in order to make sure essential services are rendered, how do you think roosevelt paid for the hoover dam and all? Its also more important that the rich spend their money on buiding hings rather than on goods and services (which is what would happen if the wealth was redistributed) so the governments main course of action always has to be convincing the rich to build things in a depression.

the point is that capitalism provides a very convenient way to manage a finite amount of resources effectively, if the economy collapses, that means resources weren't allocated properly and this led to problems, however after the economy recovers it has corrected the problems that led it to collapse. If the government acted and implemented communism the problems wouldn't be corrected, just ignored until further damage was done. I see how switching to communism can provide temporary relief in a time of crisis, I just don't see how it could provide a solution to the crisis (or eventually lead back into capitalism) as effective measures to improve the economy and fix the problems would never ave been put in place.

^agreed since there have been a couple of analogies to America in this thread, its worth pointing out that originally the Federal government in the US was very weak, and over the course of 230 years it grew to the point where it makes most of the relevant decisions to peoples lives today. But it took a long time for this to happen and there was a lot of opposition. For instance in 1783 the independance war ended. in 786 the articles of confederation were signed, which grouped the colonies into a loosely bounded set of independant states that agreed to fight together in a war, and also some trade agreements but that was it. after several yers of this the US was on the verge of collapse, with Connecticut and Massachussettes on the brink of war with eachother. So the articles of confederation were scrapped and the US constitution was formed. At the time this was very unpopular, as it made each individual state subject to a federalgovernment (which was very cleverly set up, even though it doesn't seem to be fairing well in the age of 24 hour news) out of curiosity can a member state leave the EU if it felt that the EU's restrictions were not in its national interest?

hmm maybe there shoud be anouther thread on money vs. no money... but ignoring that aspect of the argument, there are several measures that can be put into a capitalist system in times of economic catastrophe, for instance every dollar in a US bank is federaly insured. also if the stock market drops by more than a certain percentage it shuts down. buying on margin is now illegal. And if there's a bank rush the banks shut down to give people a cool off period. And finally there are limits on how much liquid capital a bank has to have at any given time. and in the event that the economy does colapse the government can take out loans in order to cover public works projects etc. in order to get the economy back in order. I have to run rightnow but I'll post more later.

and how do you suppose we drag them along? I agree with the premise that the middle east is the one place on earth that doesn't have the same vision of continued economic prosperity like the rest of the world has, and this has to stop for humanitie's sake, but they have also demonstrated that traditional warfare utterly fails to do anything to them. In fact it strengthens them this is because all of the rebellious youths are turning to rebellious organizations (like humas, al-quaeda etc.) in order to rebel. There is nothing more attractive to a teenager looking for something meaningful than "oust the infidels". And in that part of the world arms are so pentiful that for less than a dollar someone can toss a grenade at a humvee and cost the US economy over a hundred thousand dollars. Or we respond to this grenade throwing with million dollar missiles, or increased troop levels. When the fact is that you can never get all the grenade throwers. and over time the economic bleed and lost friends gets to be too much and you leave. and who takes over? the religious radicals who you were fighting in the first place. As middle-eastern history has proven, the only way to govern those tracts of land is to make defiance unthinkable, this is what sudaam did, and up until the invasion of kuwait the country did alright for itself. This is something that America does not want to do, and indeed can not do, because its not our country and so we don't benfit from relative peace that has to be enforced with tyrrany, and we certainly don't benefit from the hate that it would bring upon us (remember that nobody liked sadaam over there either). What we need to do as a country is to drop the middle east (I'm ignoring Iraq for the time being to outline a general policy), we need to stop trading with them and then we will just let them sit. We can develop alternatives to oil and we can spend the billion dollars a day that were currently spending in Iraq on making iron clad borders, heck with that much money we could have every single car electronicly scanned on its way into New York City, LA and anywhere else in the country that we think needs it. We can always use israel to carry out airstrikes against nuclear facilities (thats how we kept sadaam from getting a nuclear reactor back in the day). Eventually The people of the middle east will grow tired of their governments using the West as a scape goat, just like the american people are growing tired of Bush and the republicans constantly using the terrorists as scape goats. Eventually there will be popular movements in the Mid-East to end the oppression, to end the religious propaganda, and to allow democracy. Opressive regimes do not last forever. This happened in the soviet union in America (remember slavery anyone) and the rest of the world, the change will happen, but not as long as the governments of the middle east have America to blame.