npts2020

One of your problems with visualization, IMO, is that propellers only move at a small fraction of the speed of light, making dilation effects pretty negligible. Other forces (cohesion?) overwhelm this effect.

And what do you suppose the fastest possible amount of time it takes to get any individual to Guantanamo? I would be very surprised if anyone made it to the prison there in less than a week from the time they were taken into custody. When is something imminent? If you accept the proposition that torture is sometimes useful (something I have seen zero evidence in support of), why should you not just go ahead and do it as a matter of standard practice?

ParanoiA; Nice try but the question doesn't really answer itself because any scenario where you take people into custody can involve "stakes too high for a person to really comprehend". My personal belief says that all human beings should be treated the same regardless of their national origin, race, or creed so why restrict torture to non-Americans or to some few individuals that are imagined to be able to provide useful information, when anyone might have that same information? Just because there are people out there who do torture does not mean that it is a good practice for a supposedly free society to sanction. I would like for anyone to show torture fits into the worldview that America is purportedly trying to win over the "hearts and minds" of the world with? One thing that hasn't been mentioned is that by the time any prisoner arrives at Guantanamo Bay any "imminent" situation would have already played out.

That is exactly what i told you to google describes, even better, they have a whole movie(s) showing how it works. The same sort of concept could be applicable to the wings being speculated on by the OP. The giant caveat is that it may not be possible at all and certainly isn't possible with the current science and technology available. IMO that is what good science fiction does, make the seemingly impossible, plausible.

Well, after googling jupiter/ionosphere the first hit is a lengthy, but interesting treatise by R. V. Yelle of Arizona University and S. Miller of University College of London. They seem to think the upper temperature limit of the ionosphere is the 1200 K mentioned by D H and that there is a large gradient through it, possibly as much as 800 k. This compares to 2200+ K that the Earth's ionosphere maxes out at. Why haven't we lost all of our atmosphere on Earth to space yet?

I have never even met anyone who has met the man but he doesn't seem to mind trying to explain his ideas in language everyone can understand. In the article he gives an excellent description of what practical application his ideas might have. I especially liked the part about him saying most of his ideas are probably wrong but he has fun with them and it is OK to be wrong.

Most of those who use torture, realize that the thing it is most effective for is intimidation of more than just the one who is tortured. Why do you suppose that most democracies around the world are against it and for the most part only dictatorial countries use it? How does this fit into the plan to win hearts and minds of the world? Again I will ask (for a third time), if torture is an effective means of gathering vital information, why not just torture every individual you pick up on the battlefield or from a suspected terrorist hideout?

I am not an expert on this subject but it seems to me that language is just the expression of conscious thought. I would submit to you that it is possible to have thoughts for which there is no language and impossible to have language with no thought.

Mr. Havel is a great man we can all aspire to be like. Unfortunately, I hear he is ailing at the moment.

For the most part the lines are drawn by whatever political party is in charge at the time. Sometimes the grossest abuses are challenged in court but rarely with any success.

OK, so for the sake of argument we say that a single American life is worth using the most extreme methods your values judge you may take for prevention. Why not just torture every individual you pick up on the battlefield or arrest in a suspected terrorist hideout? You never know what small piece of useful information a given individual might have.

IMO; Thought does not require language or science, language requires thought but not science, and science requires both.

It is just taking advantage of the human propensity for "group-think", IMO. Humans are far more alike than they are different. It is still impressive though.

Try googling "The Guyver", you might be interested in the concept of body armor presented. The movies (animated and live action) I found pretty entertaining as well.

I agree. It would be more surprising to me for there never to have been any kind of life. The problem is in proving it.

Do conservation laws require photons to be emitted in pairs?

Why not just torture everyone you pick up then? Any individual "might" have that piece of information you need to prevent "disaster" and save umpteen lives.

None in particular but it seems that if Obama can influence who her replacement is in any way, that a supportive junior senator would be a better senatorial ally than a more senior senator who may or may not be completely on your side. After all it is usually the senate that gets legislation tied up or passed more than the house.

How about waterboarding (something people have been prosecuted for as torture by the American government since the Civil War) or just good old fashioned beating to death? Are those getting a little closer to the "level" of a terrorist? The problem is that some of the methods used have been clearly defined as torture for many years. In eight years (or over 7 years if you only want to consider since 9/11) what laws have been proposed to change those definitions? Every interrogater I have heard interviewed or read (at least a dozen if they are actually all different people) has stated that they got better information without torture than with. If you apply enough pain to someone they will tell you whatever they think you want to hear. If torture was efficacious and needed, why would it be wrong to torture everyone you picked up off of the street since anyone might have a small piece of information you could use?

Maybe Hillary was seen as an impediment to the Obama agenda if left in the senate to promote other interests?

It does seem unlikely anytime soon but if humans are around long enough to learn to do something like that, I think it is inevitable someone will at least try to do it.

I agree with AIP that usable superconducting wires would be the most immediately useful thing on the list. IMO the LHC shouldn't even be on the list.....yet (once it does what it was built to do is an entirely different matter).

You have to remember, at the end of the day Obama is still leader of the Business Party. Agreed he is a liberal businessman but a businessman nonetheless.

ecoli; Is the failure to keep corporations from behaving badly more due to lack of law enforcement or lack of laws? I do not agree with your assertion that government based on majority rule is the problem rather than an economic system based solely on greed. If you wish to claim that the two are incompatible, we may find some common ground but I am not sure I entirely agree with even that. Show me some data that points toward everyone being wealthier because of capitalism. Unless you mean that only capitalists are everyone and nobody else counts, you cannot. Additionally, I believe that several tens of millions of Chinese who lived lives on the verge of starving to death before their revolution might disagree about government redistribution of wealth never being successful. How much lower was their per capita standard of living in say 1970 (before the current economic boom) compared to during or right before their revolution? I agree that environmental degradation is caused by failure of government to regulate a "free" market (regulating corporate freedom vis a vis societal and individual rights and freedoms). Yet you and others argue the market is not free enough! Another thing I fail to understand is, why the actions of a single person would be easier to obfuscate and keep secret than the dealings of many. Even the authors of the link you provided don't make the claim that millions of people were killed because of any market considerations (they were killed because they opposed the soviets). To get an idea of the standard of living 6.6 billion people could expect, divide total world gdp (about $45 trillion) by that number of people and you come up with about $6,800 per person if the wealth is distributed evenly. Finally, which corporations have decided to adopt Google's corporate philosophy?

The problem is that cleanup of environmental damage frequently (I would say more often than not) costs more than the individual or corporation causing it could possibly pay.