npts2020

SkepticLance; I would like to point out to you that when Europe and America were becoming industrialized, the populations were a few millions at most and caused enough environmental damage to be noticable. What do you suppose the effects will be if billions of people are permitted to undergo change in the same fashion and at today's rate of resource use? From what I can interpolate from all the writings and data I have seen, we are very near (or even past) the point of no return for melting both polar regions and most (if not all) of the glaciers on Earth. I find it hard to believe that will be a net win for humanity and so far we have "industrialized" only a fraction of the world's population.

As many as it takes. For me that is about one Samuel Smith's taddy porter if I drink it in less than ten minutes.

Anyone with normal body chemistry can survive many days without food and not pass out. Try googling hunger strike/Bobby Sands or fasting/Dick Gregory. I know both those individuals have gone without food for over a month (Sands died after 66 days but was not in the best of health to begin with).

I agree with The Bear's Key that the investigation should be with an aim more toward exposing the process for undertaking a war in Iraq, warrentless wiretapping, etc. than prosecuting people for it. IMO the main reason people don't want any light shed on this matter, is that it would show repeated criminal activity at the highest levels of our government in a breadth of activities spanning many years. Just being able to follow the money trail, I think, would be revealing but who has the authority to do something like that?

Isn't that what makes great art (not to say this cartoon is great)? IMO the concept probably came about from the story of the chimp being shot and hearing something along the lines of "a monkey could have written that stimulus bill" and putting the two together. The realization that it could be interpreted in different (especially negative) ways probably came very shortly afterward and surely would have occurred to the artist. If Mokele's estimation of the artist is correct, their motivation seems pretty obvious and expected. What may be harder to discern is the motives of those who published it, unless they thought there was little likelihood of much backlash (which seems stupid in light of how anything that might be considered racial is verboten these days).

Mr Skeptic; I disagree that you need political parties to figure out who to vote for unless are you looking at the candidates for the first time on the ballot while in the voting booth. One can always go to an organization they like that rates political candidates (there are many that do this) and get their information there, not to mention that newspapers, magazines and organizations frequently endorse candidates outright.

You don't need a search engine to find wikipedia.

I will be the first to stick my neck out and propose a first plank for a platform. All policies, programs, and initiatives will be designed according to the best science available at the time.

Would any advanced AI even regard us as life? They may view us in the same way many (dare I say most?) biologists view viruses or prions, something that has signs of life but is not quite life.

Also, since Venus (and Mercury) is closer to the sun than Earth it will never appear directly overhead and be near the horizon whenever rising or setting, closely following or being chased by the sun.

I am not sure but I would think one reason would be weight. I can't think of any magnets that would be strong enough but light enough to not significantly increase the payload. Then you have the extra weight for all those solar panels........ Finally, I am not sure we have built a magnet strong enough to significantly affect a high energy photon (the main ionizing radiation not stopped by the hull of the ship) over the distance of passing through the ship.

2 cents time. Bush was only the figurehead and IMO arresting and putting on trial everyone who had anything to do with his, shall we say less than kosher, behavior would be like trying to do the same for every person involved in the marijuana industry in America. There are millions of people profiting from the war on terror and related ventures. If people want to have GWB's head on a spike, I would have little sympathy but I think a complete exposure of his activities and castigation for them would probably be enough for most.

Pangloss; This is what we need an economics forum for. Basically I agree with what you are saying but I think that economists have not been brought to task for their lack of precision at explaining what happens in the real world. IMO economists are generally far better at justification than they are at explanation. There is an interesting debate going on between utilitarians and prioritarians about how to valuate the future well-being of humanity vs present well-being of humanity. Utilitarians say that a person is of the same value/status regardless of their place in our timeline. Prioritarians say that present life is of more value than future lives, since the economy grows and future generations will be wealthier and better off than we are today. I believe where someone is in this debate will pretty fairly give their view of whether or not creating debt for future generations is appropriate.

IMO no political party will ever have the "appeal" of the Republican or Democratic party. Once you open the door to viable third (IMO second) parties there is likely to be diluting of electorate support, many voters would likely not remain in the R-D camp. If parties were banned altogether, it would force voters to learn something about the candidates in order to know who to vote for. Suggestion for platform building, start with how contentious issues are to be decided.

No, I would have voted Nader (yes I am one of those who always "wastes" their vote) since he is one of the most able politicians never to be elected but wanted the Greens (who most represent my views) to be able to get election funds (they didn't) even though I think Ms. McKinney is a bit of a dingbat and disagreed with her selection.

One of the problems IMO is that people work pretty hard for their money (in general) but don't realize they have to work almost as hard to do anything worthwhile with it (i.e. take the time to understand exactly what you are investing in instead of giving it to a surrogate).

it is interesting that a blastocyst has "all of the rights of any person" but a child does not. What happens when the day comes when a human can be cloned from other cells without an egg or sperm? Does that mean every cell or organ in the human body will have to be given rights? I wonder how that would affect transplant technology?

Although it seems counterintuitive it is a fact that the more reactive a metal is the faster it gets to its steady state surface color (which is rust or oxidized metal) and the tighter the bonding of that oxidation to the underlying metal causing the rusting to stop sooner. Tight bonding=shiny surface. A chemist might excoriate my terminology but that is the basic reason. BTW pennies are mostly zinc these days.

What! Greed causing an economic disaster? No way, who could ever have predicted that?

It depends on how much I claim to know about the subject. The more I know about a subject, the stronger my opinion and the worse it is to be wrong. If I know anything about something it is hard for me not to have some kind of opinion about it. It just seems to this science nerd that evolution is such a basic part of science that in order to have no opinion, you would need to know almost nothing about science.

A Gallup poll released the day before Darwin's 200th said 39% of Americans believed in evolution, 25% did not, with 36% apparently too uninformed to have an opinion.

I kind of like the no-party solution. It would force politicians to come up with their own ideas. It might also reduce the amount of money spent on elections. I agree with Pangloss that parties should reflect uniting underlying principles, unfortunately, that is not the case in America today. Today the only reason to be in a political (rep or dem anyway) party is to get elected. There is no one thing that would distinguish a person as being in one party or the other. This is actually fairly (dis)ingenious, since that means parties can be both for and against the same issues and can be used to dupe an uninformed public into percieving whatever is desired.

You have to remember that these guys' jobs are to defend the system tooth and nail, far more than explaining why anything happens. One does not tell a lumberjack that there is no bacon for breakfast because you hoarded it all for yourself, you say there was someone who needed it more so "we" sacrificed a little to give it to them.

C'mon Bascule doncha know laws don't apply to the president?

Unless some sort of criminal activity can be proven there is no way to recover the money (and even then only if those convicted have assets to seize). Basically, the money was given to the treasury secretary to spend in any manner he saw fit (the B.S. about not being intended for the auto manufacturers was just that, without basis-even if it was only for financial institutions it could have been given to GMAC, Fordcredit, etc). Anybody not liking the way the money is spent has the sole recourse of complaining after the fact and other than altruism there is no obligation to spend the money in any beneficial manner. The bailouts from last year and this year are the biggest money heists in the history of our planet and will make a few people rich while perpetuating an untenable situation for a little while longer and eventually impoverishing our government, to the point of being unable to provide services and possibly even govern. BTW I would be very surprised if too much money was not given out, and even more surprised if anything is done about it other than finger-pointing and obfuscation.