entwined

[ We can be grateful for the existence of greed because without greed, humankind would be living in a cold damp cave .... or less.

Now theres an idea....pay no attention to what socialism really means, just look at it from a utopian perspective....and trust your government to never let it evolve into a full blown economy killing albatross.

Oh.....well from your opening post, I inferred that you wanted to know what was wrong with socialism, rather than wanting to know why the media was upset about the "hint" of socialism being somehow evil....which it ain't. Socialism is not evil, it is just an economic flop however well meaning are it's supporters.

I have thought about it....and that is why I prefer capitalism.

Oh....well I guess that explaines why the average working class Russian has so much more disposable income than the average working class American....yeah right.

Take your pick, but I personally prefer capitalism.....it seems to return more wealth to the proletariat than socialism. My opinion is that it produces more wealth than socialism, hence more to go around.

I ran accross this on another forum I frequent. It was someone's avatar. Got me to thinking, with genetic engineering, maybe we could have this as an option.....might come in handy for those small jobs.

That's about what I thought. And yes, it was NCIS......she says.

Yesterday evening, my wife and I were watching an episode of CSI (crime scene investigation?) and they showed a satellite shot of a girl being kidnapped and the face was recognizable as if the picture had been taken accross the room. I explained to her that satellite photography was probably not quite that good and she said that it certainly is that good as they do it all the time on csi....... Then I got to wondering.......this sort of thing is certainly not in my bag of tricks, so who really knows? Certainly not me. Then I thought of you guys, and I figured that some of you just might know the current capability of satellite photography, so what is the story on this? Anyone?

I guess I am open to the idea of sexbots, but the idea of child sexbots for peadophiles disturbs me. Maybe it is because I think it would only exacerbate the problem that peadophiles have with their desires......although perhaps not. It is different than virtual pornography in which computer generated images of kids are shown to peds.

I didn't know where this thread would be most appropriate, so I just settled on "general discussions." How many of you guys and gals can see yourself availing yourselves of this new "toy?" http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/life/main/5414105.html

If gravity is a result of an attraction resulting from mass, then why aren't fat girls more popular than thin girls?

Sorry about that, but I assumed that mentioning than water freezes at 32 would have been the tip-off. If I read a thread here and someone mentioned water freezing at 0°, I think I would know that he was talking Celcius..... But, no matter, the point is that the water is freezing when the air is above the freezing point of water. I think that Swansont probably answered the question....thanks to all.

Well OK, and I would prefer that prefer is spelled with 1 f instead of two, but I had no problem understanding what you were trying to say, so I wouldn't have mentioned it......tolerance anyone?

I suspected that it was something like that. We have had 3 frosts so far where I live and only one of those frosts involved temperatures as low as 31°. The other two, it was 40° and 36°. My thought was that evaporation had something to do with it, but what you discribe makes sense......I guess. I have confidence that my thermometer is not off by anything like 8°, but it is mounter under the roof portion of my back deck and the frost collects on the roof and the windshields of cars and so forth. What still confuses me is how the water droplets are able to lose heat, but the surrounding air is not. Perhaps water being a better conductor? And yes, on all occasions it was under a clear sky. And lastly, my apologies to those who are Celsius users, but converting Farenheite to Celcius is not all that tough a calculation.

frost when the temperature is 40°? If frost is frozen water and water freezes at 32°, how can we have frost on the roof when it never got below 40°? I figured one of you guys would have the skinny on that one.....

Thanks for the information guys. In the reading of the above posts, a thought occured to me....If the fluorine in this compound was liable to react to metal in a corrosive way, it would probably work it's way through the bottom of the can that currently holds it...right? Anyway, I gather from the above opinions that it will be safe enough to use for what I have in mind and if it sets the trigger mechanism up, well I can always buy another one from Browning....A bit expensive perhaps, but at what price is education too expensive....

I have a slight problem that I think one or more of you probably know the answer to. I an a skeet shooter and occasionally I need to clean the trigger mechanism of one of my shotguns. I usually do this by spraying WD40 in to the assembly and then blast out the excess with compressed air. Now compressed air usually has a certain amount of water in it, so I am worried about introducing moisture into the mechanism that could cause rusting to occure. So, I bought a can of air duster to take the place of the compressed air. Now the ingredients are listed as simply "Difluoroethane." Wikipedia says that Difluoroethane is a chemical compond that is, in part, flourine. Flourine is said to be corrosive. So, my question is, am I better off with this stuff as far as rust is concerned, than I would be with compressed air, or should I just use it to dust off my keyboard like the maker intended?

I have been thinking about the "block a minute" part of this puzzle and, while I do not dispute the arithmetic, I cannot accept that it would have been possible givin the equipment available at the time. Or for that matter, even now..... After all, you can only get so many people on the job site before you reach the point where fewer people could do more and I can't see anything like a block a minute. Something is wrong here. Either the length of time during construction is off or the total number of blocks is off or something....... I don't think aliens did it, and I am not a believer in majic tricks, but they are there, (the pyramids) aren't they?

That would be an intimidating task even today with modern methods and tools.

Suppose they constructed a long ramp from sand and placed the ropes (4 perhaps) on the ramp first and then rolled the block onto the ropes until the ends were sticking out far enough to toss them over the top of the block, then get as many men as necessary to pull on the rope thereby basically rolling the block up the ramp? The sand would prevent the block from being damaged in transit and when they got to the top of the layer, they could just shove the son of a bitch into place. When that layer was finished, lenghten the ramp and increase the height. When they got done, haul the sand away.

To answer Swansont first, no, it is not I who is worried about loss of mass to the Earth, actually I think it is the other way around--though I am not worried about that either. Now on your quotation of the GDP of the US, are you sure that you didn't leave off 3 zeros in that quote?

At breakfast the other day, one of our number expressed concern that if we keep sending things off into space, we will, one day, find that the mass of the Earth has been reduced to the point that it could affect it's ordit around the sun. We all scoffed at this and I got into it by saying that, if anything, the opposite is true because Earth is constantly gaining mass in the form of meteorites impacting here at a much faster rate than we are losing mass due to the exportation of matter through our space program. I hurried home to conduct a search to prove my point, but to no avail. Two questions; Was I right in my assertion? And where can I find scientific estimations of the rate of gain--if, of course, I was right.

I only quoted the diameter for the sake of including a number. The idea is to provide artificial gravity by rotating the vehicle. My first thought was that such a ship, if planned today, would need to be capable of being in transit--even if the voyage were to the nearest other star in our galaxy--for a very long time and having enough stocks of consumables (as alien says) to last for a period of years--perhaps decades, would require a lot of cargo space. But there is nothing cast in stone as to size or configuration. It is just that if the trip takes a long time, then it figures that the ship will have to be large, unless we figure out a was to produce replicators like the Enterprise has.... A tubular shaped ship of smaller diameter would do fine also, just spin it faster and have the humans spend a goodly amount of time on the outer decks.

If I were in on the planning for a space ship for extended exploration, I would be thinking in terms of constructing the ship in orbit. It would be shaped like a wheel with sufficient diameter to allow for all the necessities of maintaining normal living standards on the outer deck--near the rim. Perhaps a mile or two in diameter and something like say, 300 ft. in thickness? Then the inner deck(s) would contain all the necessary mechanical hardware and provide storage capacity for the things that we had not at that time learned to re-cycle. The whole ship would revolve around it's axis at a speed sufficient to provide 1 G of gravity on the outer deck and it would be propelled by whatever means was sutable at the time of it's construction. This would be of course, a rather crude affair, but such is the history of man's dominance over his environment.