npts2020

Or a little over $2,300 for every man, woman, and child in America. I fail to see how a nation already in serious debt expects to inspire confidence in its economy by claiming that the solution to its economic problems is to create more debt with no concrete solution for being able to pay it off. If it is necessary for the federal government to intervene in the economy then the gov ought to be spending the money directly, rather than giving it to surrogates who may or may not use the money in any beneficial manner and who are even less accountable.

I think a better idea for now would be to just make the Fed operate in a responsible manner. How much money can you basically give away before there are serious consequences? The biggest problem with abolishing the Federal Reserve is that the only way the Federal government will guarantee your money afterwards is if you buy U.S. government bonds, and who knows what that guarantee will be worth on our current path?

IMO a two party system will not represent the interests of a significant number of citizens. The problem in America is that the winner-take-all system is not conducive to having more than two parties. It has been my obsevation that as soon as a third party begins to become viable, one of the big two co-opts the main parts of the platform (anti-war, no taxes, etc.) or is taken over by the third party (think Republicans and Whigs circa mid 1850's). What I find hilarious is that the parties are far more the same than they are different, yet each one calls the other "radical".

It is a joke to claim that the TARP program has any oversight. The most anyone can do is complain about it and eventually get the overseer removed. I shouldn't have given the company that will hire me the day I leave government service that $5 billion, oops, my bad............

I would agree with you if there were no other options. However, we have a lot of options which will be more beneficial to the majority of us. In the first place, nuclear power has consistently cost more than claimed so as to become one of the most expensive methods of generating electricity and would not even be considered economically feasible if not for generous government subsidies. Coal is cheap but very environmentally damaging. After mining, even if you capture and dispose of every carbon atom emitted, there is a buildup of toxic sludge that is not easy to dispose of (save failure of your retention system and dumping it into the local watershed) as a few communities have found out recently. Wind, passive and active solar, tidal, and geothermal among others are all better options for the long term, if we desire ever to lessen environmental impact of power generation. (aside; all of the nuclear power plant cooling towers in the world do not significantly increase water vapor in the air)

The part I put in bold is only a matter of perspective. To an archaeon born in an deep-sea ocean vent, eating sulphur to survive, where you live and thrive is probably as extreme as the environment on the side of the moon facing the sun would be to you. IMO life forms that could withstand what we would consider to be extreme conditions should have been the first to evolve.

I am not sure what is considered to be insignificant. Sea salt can be composed up to 15% or more of substances other than NaCl. Most of it is magnesium chloride but there are also sulfates, calcium chloride, and potassium chloride in amounts above 1%. (The only reason I know this is from learning about nigari extraction from seawater for making tofu). I would imagine for most things that would be good enouogh but if you are looking for a particular NaCl reaction sea salt may not be the best choice (besides its more expensive anyway).

Not to pick on Baby Astronaut but you first would need a method of detecting an infinitely (or nearly so) red-shifted photon. I am not sure how far our microwave wavelength measurement goes but obviously not far enough to see objects "frozen" at the event horizon.

Irrelevant. Think about where the power is coming from when starting vs. during normal operation.

Well IMO, the opposition of the Republicans was more for show than anything else. If it had anything to do with ideology, why were Republican governors nearly unanimous in lobbying congress for passage (or are they in a different Republican Party)? After the last election the national Republicans are grasping for any issue that might turn their fortunes around, since the usual ones seemed to have little effect. Whatever one wishes to believe about Republicans and their motives, it is a mistake to believe that they are stupid. More than one analyst believes that the current economic woes are going to be around for some time and if improvement can be obstructed for two years or four years, what are the potential political benefits? It is impossible for me to imagine this hasn't been considered by Republican leaders.

I wonder if it would be practical to use a strong magnet and how much of the debris it might potentially catch (I realize not all of it will be attracted by a magnet)?

Since I have never viewed credible evidence of precognition and seen plenty of evidence of people seeing things that are not there, I would have to say the explanation lies in that direction. Memory is not perfect, and your desire for there to be an umbrella in the car could easily get transferred to believing there was an umbrella in the car, especially if you are distracted thinking about something else at the time. That does not mean you are delusional or anything of the sort, similar things with memory happen to many people. Anyway, I think this is a far more likely explanation (even if it isn't right) than any form of precognition.

Stock options are simply a way of getting around the maximum pay rule. As I understand it, they are not reported as compensation (as of about 1996) and generally inflate the bottom line by whatever their value is by diluting all shares some corresponding amount. Furthermore, they are usually transferable any time after issue so if the exec thinks the company is not faring well he may cash them in (especially if the person is on the way out) upon recieving them. One proposed solution is to make recipients wait until the stock gets above a certain level before they are allowed to sell their shares. Personally I think if they just allow the executives to loot their companies, it will become apparent that much sooner that the "economic stimulus" will certainly stimulate somebodies economies, just not the ones it is advertised to stimulate.

Well, I for one certainly hope you are right.

I liked Jimmy Durante but wouldn't know where to get any of his actual stand-up routines other than what was on tv.

Problem is that Apple has two things going for it. Firstly, the primary requirements for becoming a Supreme Court nominee the past couple of decades, has been views in favor of enhanced Presidential powers and favorableness toward corporate activities (forget all of the abortion and civil rights hand-waving). Secondly, I am not sure how versed in the technology most of the justices are to even realize many of the implications of their decision in this matter, most people in their age demographic know very little about things like this.

For decades now I have been under the impression that early Earth's atmosphere was mostly methane and ammonia. In addition to being different composition, the Martian atmosphere is much less dense than early Earth. Having said that, some of the life forms (I am thinking some archaeons, there might be others) that exist under extreme conditions on this planet could concievably live under some Martian conditions as well. Mars does not have the gravity to be able to hold an atmosphere such as exists on Earth, however......

I wonder how many collisions like that we can have before whole regions of space are basically unusable for satellites?

The main problem with the experiment is that nothing ever launched from earth by humans has even remotely come close to going far enough to arrive at any known black hole. Even the fastest spacecraft launchable in the near future would take decades (maybe even centuries) to arrive at the nearest one.

That is kind of what graphite lubricants do. It would be possible to construct the rod out of a diamond and IMO should last longer than one constructed from most other materials so long as there is little vibration or shock (diamonds are notoriously brittle). It would not last forever though, think about a diamond needle on a turntable.

Ah, that does complicate things a bit. I could imagine placing the tray on something like a turntableto rotate the glasses under the spigot but can see no simpler way of doing what you want to do without bringing robotics into the picture.

I had to vote other since my most relevant formal education has been mechanical/nuclear engineering. (I knew if I held out long enough someone would make another category.) Aside to ajb; Mathematicians were only doing what their society says they should be doing, making as much money as they can. In a culture where laissez faire capitalism is considered the ideal, I think anyone trying to assign blame needs to look hard into a mirror. For every part of the current financial crisis from the housing bubble to Bernie Madoff there were warnings well ahead of when things turned sour, the problem is that everybody seemed to be maximizing profits so those with any authority to control things, did not act. It seems as if you wish to assess blame there is plenty of it to go around.

Scientific or not I think there ought to be somewhere to discuss economic principles at this site. IMO much of economics is as aimed at obfuscation as much as explaining anything and it would be a worthwhile exercise for those here that are interested to parse out. Just my 2 cents. To the OP; how could such a thing be made to happen?

If I was building it, I would use an electric eye (light beam) that gets broken when you place the glass under the spigot. Then have the dispenser pump out a specific amount with settings for two or three size servings (if required).

IMO that is doubtful. If the measuring device is releasing energy (heat) it has to be releasing it to somewhere i.e. the medium surrounding your measuring device, thereby raising its temperature some incremental amount above absolute zero.