npts2020

This part is a really big deal on an aircraft carrier if one of the planes crash on the flight deck. Those jets are mostly magnesium and once the jet fuel ignites the magnesium, they have to be pushed overboard before burning a hole down through the decks.

If there were no friction between the ground he was standing on and his feet, Snoop would have nothing to keep him from being pushed backwards and would continue sliding/rolling until running into something.

Not if there is still any money in the TARP fund. It has far more to do with who has been in your corporate management and on your board of directors and how much money you donated to whom in congress. I don't doubt that the majority of congress really has little clue of the effect bailouts have and are just doing it because someone they think knows better than they says it is a good idea. There are some there who know perfectly well what a high stakes gamble flooding the market with currency backed by nothing is but figure they will not be around to have to clean up any mess, so why care? When there is some accounting for the money and a transparent and consistent system of making loans to corporations by the government, then maybe I will believe that the whole purpose of the bailouts to date has been for any reason other than to allow Wall Street to loot the American treasury. iNow; One can only hope they can get to the bottom of the money trail to start figuring things out. Pangloss; You live in a Democracy (sort of), that makes you the overseer. Now how much time you got to devote to your job of overseeing? This is how we got here, there is nobody with the ability and power to do any meaningful oversight. We will be lucky to ever get the particulars of exactly what has happened much less hold anyone accountable.

And I am all for it. My question to you is why are we not treating ALL of the corporations we are giving money in exactly the same way? You cannot convince me that AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddy Mac, Citibank or a host of other corporations getting "loans" from the government have run their businesses any less ineptly than the Detroit automakers. What is the criteria being used for who does or does not get bailed out?

Well I am against the idea of bailouts. Unfortunately, that is not the path our leaders have chosen. Given that we are already doing bailouts to the tune of trillions of dollars to entities that IMO are less likely to pay it back than the automakers, it just seems stupid to me to not loan money to the three companies who have putatively produced more wealth than any other three anyone could name in the past century. At least it would be giving money to someone who actually produces something and has tangible assets unlike your average financial institution......

Bio-tagging was the reason I had heard also but there is probably a host of uses for similar types of tagging other than flourescence as well. Why brand your cattle when you can just have them flouresce?

Well, time for migration, mating, hibernation and I am sure some other things are not likely to be related to being hungry for more than a few species.

Exactly. Kinda like hanging them instead of leaving them in a pile, then blowing hot air over them.

I completely agree with those who say that the government bailing out businesses is generally a bad idea. The problem is that we have already given ridiculous sums of money to businesses this year. In this respect we are being penny wise and pound foolish. Even compared to only the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, what the automakers are asking for is a pittance. When you are flooding your financial sector with trillions of dollars, why is it so untenable to spend less than a tenth of that on the largest part of your manufacturing sector? What do you suppose the numbers of jobs saved per dollar spent is for either sector's bailout? You may trivialize the hardship that some people will face from the collapse of the Detroit automakers but I believe if there is no plan for the resulting mess, it will end up costing us all far more than the money they are asking for. Finally, the auto industry has a perfect record for paying the government back, can the same be said about the financial sector?

There are far better reasons to be a vegetarian than any concern for cows or chickens. It is a personal choice I don't expect anyone else to follow unless they care to for their own reasons. Whether any "aberration" of an animal or plant is a good or bad thing, I think is an entirely different subject of discussion. Other than proof of concept, I see little reason to make pigs flourescent. Whether this is good or bad, I guess you would have to consult with a bio-ethicist (kinda like asking the preacher if it's ok).

My parents were both creationists but I don't recall ever thinking about things in any other than an evolutionary manner. Even though I was still mostly "going along with the program" until graduating high school I can recall having an interesting conversation with a pastor about this topic at about 12 years old where he couldn't answer any of my questions to my satisfaction. Soon after I read "On the Origin of Species" and could only think about how much sense what Darwin was saying, made. There was no looking back after that, everything I have learned since has reinforced my evolutionary outlook and I have spent ever since trying to correct family and acquaintance misconceptions about the subject. We could always popularize "Monkeys' Uncle" bumper stickers.

Very true in the washer. Similar to swinging a wet towel around your head. It would be a mistake to think that has more than a negligible amount, if anything, to do with the drying in a dryer, though.

ParanoiA; I hate the idea of giving Detroit money as much as anyone but with no alternative opportunities on the horizon (besides the national personal transit system I like to talk about) you are likely to have 10% or more of the population unemployed for a significant period of time. The last time we just allowed everything to fold, it took nearly a generation and a large scale war to return to anything resembling a healthy state. I don't relly follow your analogy about pain being good for anyone, how much pain do you suppose Bill Gates suffered to get where he is? At any rate I don't see how unnecessary pain can be helpful to anyone. If the government is willing to leave people to struggle on their own why should those people even support the government to begin with? IMO the concept of social Darwinism (pain is good, weeds out the weak, etc.) is the fallback way of looking at things for those with a lack of enough imagination to visualize other human possibilities.

I will even sell you asteroid insurance in your new universe.

IMO you have answered "what is science" in your last full paragraph and I think few on this forum would much argue with it. As to "what is scientific objectivity", I say it is the ability to overcome preconcieved notions in order to see what ideas best fit experience. Objectivity in general cannot be perfectly defined since everyone relies on prior experience to shape their view of the world. I realize these are imperfect definitions but, like science, are the best we have at the moment and subject to change (usually incremental) when something better comes along.

Other than my being a vegetarian, there is probably nothing wrong with it. Likewise, chickens with four wings, cloned beef, or any other abberation of an animal you can think of. Not that I think that those are any worse than the "normal" meat for eating, they are just not on the menu.

It is important to remember that numbers are an artificial human construct based on the appearance of the universe to us, whereas the universe stubbornly resists fitting precisely into our constructs.

It is the heat that dries the clothes, not the centripital force. The reason a drier rotates is for the same reason you hang clothes on a line instead of just leaving them in a pile to dry.

ParanoiA; I agree that the dollar is probably in at least as much trouble as any automaker but the pain will be felt by far more than those in the auto industry. The question is what do you do with all of those people currently employed by that industry? If left to the "market", you are likely to be dooming many places to a generation or more of high unemployment and related problems. Who do you suppose will end up with that bill? It seems like everyone in the world except Americans think that nationalizing the big three is the most sensible thing to do. If there isn't a plan to weasel the money out of the TARP program by inauguration, I would bet the ranch the issue will be revisited by the end of January.

If I am not mistaken they said the whole pig, even the meat would glow. What cooking would do to its glowing I wouldn't speculate and tasting it to see if it is the same or safe I will leave for others.

I'm a little slow and had to put this in a form I could understand but it seems pretty much true to me.

I would tend to agree with that Dutch writer that nothing new is being produced by the auto industry and that its weight in the economy is far disproportionate to its value. A large portion (if not most) of what the big 3 owes in liabilities is to their worker pension and health care funds and it could easily be hundreds of billions of dollars that they owe. This debt is why investors are not lining up to buy auto manufacturers stock and lend them money. IMO Ford is the healthiest (probably more due to luck than anything) and is unlikely to undergo a lot of change. Chrysler is probably the worst off and is likely to either merge with one of the other auto companies or go belly up outright (less likely). GM is so big that it is unlikely to fail outright but that also makes it harder for them to do anything about their condition, we may live to see them become a financial institution instead of car manufacturer. *I wish I had a better source but a mid-level exec from one of the big 3 was on a NPR radio talk show yesterday saying that labor was only 10% of their cost of making a car.

Scientific American had an article about this a couple of months ago. If I remember rightly, the researchers inserted jellyfish genes into a pig embryo. I think the green glowing was under UV light, but still a pretty impressive accomplishment.

This is probably one of the best cabinet selections in many years and certainly one of the best Energy Secretary appointments ever. Now if only they actually listen to him.......

Isn't that still photons or matter?