Airbrush

Why do they chant "Death to America"? Because of the US lead economic sanctions which are openly blamed on the USA. Also the US supported Iraq in the Iran/Iraq war. The US supported the Shah of Iran until he was overthrown. The US is the leading "infidel" nation on earth, so it deserves to fall. Can anyone name any other reasons why Iran officially hates the Great Satan USA?

There will always be "enemies" or at least economic rivals. If there are large numbers of a population that understand the current "enemy" or rival, that nation will have more resources to understand the "enemy" and better co-exist with it. Large numbers can listen to speeches given by the "enemy's" leaders, and read their press, not just a few translators, and they can put pressure on their representatives and leaders to act in a more diplomatic manner. Also, if our president could chat in Persian with the Iranian president, or in Russian with Putin, that would help. They would be impressed.

You can learn Swedish, but you also need to learn a LPC (language of probable conflict) that you may select from the list. Hehehe.

So a large portion of the population understands the supposed enemy, and with understanding comes a chance to avoid economic conflict or even war.

"What does liberty mean to you?" It means the power to choose between two miserable jobs, thinking the one you chose is less miserable than the other, but you were likely mistaken. But in the final analysis you realized that after so much rejection, you took the first job offer to come along and clung to it tenaciously.

I believe that children in the USA should be required to learn 2 languages besides English, and one of those languages is of a culture that we may be in conflict with in the future, such as Arabic, Iranian, Russian, and maybe Mandarin.

My question is what percentage of the population of Iran supports this? It seems than when the US is involved in nuclear negotiations with Iran, the US diplomats would ask their Iranian counterparts about this. In theory, extremists would gladly destroy entire "infidel" cities to make their point. True believers in Islam would rationalize that holy war should continue nonstop until the entire world is converted to Islam. Even Iran's supreme leader would believe this IF he is a TRUE believer in Islam. According to Islam it is ok to lie to infidels, which includes nuclear inspectors.

I cannot think of why a circular orbit is tougher to detect than a very eliptical orbit. Sorry I can't remember where I heard this, I think it was an episode of "How the Universe Works" on Sci channel. Although Mercury has a seriously eccentric orbit, it will never disturb Venus, for at least Billions of years. The other planets all have slightly eliptical orbits, but they are very close to being circular.

waitforufo: "...I could be wrong however. Your system would be quite a spectacle. Perhaps we could put it on TV to compete with Jerry Springer or Judge Judy." Good idea! On second thought, there should be a 2-hour, televised debate. Judges, experts, and viewers ALL vote, similar to "Dancing With The Stars", and expert opinions weighted heavier. But the facts for and against the case MUST be presented and economic analysis done by all the experts. Experts can challenge other experts. Simple majority wins. I think that would be preferable to Ted Cruz reading "Green Eggs and Ham" for as many hours. And by "experts" I mean CERTIFIABLE, reputable experts, not self-proclaimed experts of your courtroom experience.

Each side in the argument picks their experts and jury, in this case opposing members of congress instead of lawyers. Of course timeliness is necessary, so a long trial will not do, a judge is probably a better solution. The bad decision makers are held accountable. Now you are arguing against accountability? You don't know if any heads will roll over this farce or a "roll-out". Political considerations will always trump everything else, but accountability and transparency are good things. So because the legal system worked imperfectly for you the system is broken and we should throw out accountability? A revolution if congressional log-jams are solved by experts arguing before a judge or jury? I doubt that. You haven't changed my mind. In this world, stupidity is the norm, but we don't all HAVE to be stupid. Improve the system.

waitforufo: "....One of the vital lessons I learned there is that you should spend at least 25% of your studying time investigating points of view different from your own. That studying should include making a serious effort walking in the shoes of those you disagree with in an attempt to better understand their point of view...." That is a wise attitude. Good attorneys must do this in order to effectively argue their case. "Political adversaries can always find “experts” to support their position." That is why I propose a "trial" in which experts argue the case, and a jury or judge decides whose argument is better. The people should be INFORMED before they decide. Who can inform them? Economics experts.

BTW, from the Kepler Mission we have learned that circular orbits are uncommon. Our solar system, with nearly circular orbits for most of the planets, is rare, which supports the Rare Earth hypothesis. Circular orbits give a solar system long-term stability, so life on Earth could not exist without our lucky circular solar system.

That's an interesting list Mr. Cuthber, thanks for posting that. Wow, Ted Cruz and his followers are a bunch of Neanderthals. This reminds me of how unpopular it was for the US to enter WWII, but a good thing we did.

iNow: "...Facts don't seem to matter to lots of folks in this discussion." Thanks for the info iNow. That is why I propose a debate of economists from both sides, to be judged by the best economic minds in the country. If it works for England, France, and Germany, then it should be able to work for the USA. Anyone know of any other countries that are doing OK with a comparable Affordable Care Act? Doesn't Canada have something like that? Anyone know of any countries that tried it and it failed?

When congressman Cruz was filibustering in congress to try to stop Obamacare, why didn't he get into the economic impacts of it? He had plenty of time to go into great detail WHY Obamacare will bankrupt the US. Here is my new congressional proposal. Whenever congress reaches a stalemate about the budget or similar issues, both sides should bring in their best economists and have the economists debate the issue. The debate will be moderated by a panel of economic EXPERTS. Then the winner of the debate gets the green light.

Enthalpy knows this already. His question is (I believe) "HOW do you get to relativistic speed?" Right Enthalpy? Currently scientists don't know how.

Yes, there is no limit to how much matter can fit inside a supermassive black hole. But not all the matter of a star or cloud of gas/dust, that falls into it, will ENTER the supermassive black hole. A good amount of it is blasted away in polar jets. Those jets are called quasars.

Then this means that scientists currently don't have a clue WHEN unmanned missions may be launched to nearby stars. Maybe within a few hundred years from now? Only when the cost of such missions comes down enough. Then I would suppose multiple similar unmanned missions would be sent over a period of years to all the nearby stars with Earth-like planets that were discovered by the next generations of space telescopes.

We are not discussing stellar black holes that form from a single massive star collapse. We are talking about supermassive black holes with masses of Millions or Billions of solar masses. They had to form very early in the universe, before any stars formed. Their formations would be extremely energetic events. Not all the matter can cram itself into the giant black hole, so most is blasted off as polar jets which lasted less than a Billion years. Those polar jets are quasars. Quasars are the result of the early stage of SBH formation. I never suggested all supermassive black holes ARE quasars, only that they FORMED as quasars. ".....The difficulty in forming a supermassive black hole resides in the need for enough matter to be in a small enough volume. This matter needs to have very little angular momentum in order for this to happen. Normally, the process of accretion involves transporting a large initial endowment of angular momentum outwards, and this appears to be the limiting factor in black hole growth. This is a major component of the theory of accretion disks. Gas accretion is the most efficient, and also the most conspicuous, way in which black holes grow. The majority of the mass growth of supermassive black holes is thought to occur through episodes of rapid gas accretion, which are observable as active galactic nuclei or quasars. Observations reveal that quasars were much more frequent when the Universe was younger, indicating that supermassive black holes formed and grew early. A major constraining factor for theories of supermassive black hole formation is the observation of distant luminous quasars, which indicate that supermassive black holes of billions of solar masses had already formed when the Universe was less than one billion years old. This suggests that supermassive black holes arose very early in the Universe, inside the first massive galaxies." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_galactic_nuclei

That many questions is a tall order for anyone. Start with a few and see if anyone wants to answer. I will try at a few. Comets are all basically made of the same stuff, water ice and dust, in different proportions. They rotate randomly according to outgassing that spins the comet every which way. Gravity of any massive object will affect the comets path. What affect can a comet have on the sun? How much effect does a fly have on an ocean liner?

Our galaxy is not a quasar NOW, but when our supermassive black hole (SBH) first formed it was a quasar. How can a SBH form without a quasar stage, no matter how long it lasted? I'm just using common sense, no wiki article to back me up. The question is: do all supermassive black holes begin as quasars? I think the answer is yes. How could it be no?

Was the Milky Way's supermassive black hole (SBH) ever a quasar? I do believe ALL supermassive black holes begin as quasars simply because that is what happens to gas and dust close to a SBH until all local stuff gets "eaten". After that, it goes dormant. How could a SBH form and not be a quasar upon formation? Even if the quasar stage lasts only Millions of years, it had to be a quasar to begin with.

There is no debate about when space-time ends. Either it ends in a bang or a whimper, either expansion stops and reverses (very unlikely from what we see) or it continues expanding until all the black holes and black dwarf stars evaporate, or when a big rip occurs. When there is no way of detecting any change to the universe, then OUR space-time ends. There could have been OTHER space-times before ours appeared about 13.7 Billion years ago or other space-times beyond our visual horizon.

You mean did I copy and past? Yes. No physics there at all? Well, that's the best I can do right now. Did you go to the Wiki article and read it all, and you discovered there was no physics there at all? Well, it may be a hundred years before there is physics related to this. Other than the physics, does it not address the opening question? I think it does the best that can be done in 2013. "....Given sufficient travel time and engineering work, both unmanned and sleeper ship interstellar travel requires no break-through physics to be achieved, but considerable technological and economic challenges need to be met. NASA, ESA and other space agencies have been engaging in research into these topics for decades, and have accumulated a number of theoretical approaches....." Wiki disagrees with you. How can NASA and ESA research this for decades and no physics involved?

Exactly, the big bang came from something that existed before it. Just how strange that "something" was is anybody's guess.