Phi for All

Private funding is only interested in researching areas of known investment returns, simply because it's too big a risk for the payoff in many cases, at least to the number crunchers. But that doesn't necessarily mean there's not much demand, only that the returns on their investments aren't big enough for the risks. The government is exactly who funds mundane and obscure research. Museums are often publicly owned, and they fund the majority of "dinosaur research". The National Science Foundation is big in this area. Public funding is needed since we can't force private companies to do something that's not profitable, and this research has proven to be extremely necessary. If we didn't have places like the National Institute of Health to do obscure research, we'd only have the research big pharmaceutical companies wanted to do. It's like investments in space exploration. Lots of folks think it's a waste of money, but we learn startling things almost every time we attempt it. Paleontology is the same way. We fill the gaps in our knowledge a piece at a time, and not always to make a profit.

"Arms" in the constitutional sense were never supposed to be handguns. Militias and armies don't rely on them, they rely on rifles (you get in big trouble calling your rifle a "gun" in the army, I'm told). We could follow the letter of the law and issue a government-manufactured carbine (something like the M1) to every citizen over a certain age. That's all you're allowed to own (unless you have a special permit for collecting, hunting, or other hobbying), and you're not allowed to modify it in any way (15 round clip only). It's to fulfill your duty as part of a well-regulated militia. Maybe, just maybe, we could start to defund some military/police/prison operations and put those funds to work helping people avoid a life of crime and guns. Imagine if our society openly showed it cares more about our freedoms than it cares about putting us in jail!

From the Wikipedia article (bolding done by me): So even Hawking radiation doesn't escape once it's past the EH.

Right?! And while the hobbyists are usually more responsible people, they still vote with/are members of/add their voice to groups that are defending the use of bump stocks, silencers, extended clips, printed firearms, and military-grade assault rifles, claiming the 2A is what keeps people off their hair triggers. You can't get any progress when so many are against ANY progress. It doesn't seem that difficult to me. There is clearly an interpretation of the 2A that takes into account that we were a fledgling nation that took control away from a colonizing force, that private ownership of "arms" included even things like cannons so we could protect what we had accomplished. We needed a citizen militia in the early days because the whole country was too porous and indefensible otherwise. Since that time, citizen militias have become unable to handle modern threats. All they've given us are civil wars, compound mentality, far right manifestos, and wastes of life like Ruby Ridge and Waco. Many modern militias are actively trying to overthrow our democracy. We should use this opportunity to rewrite the 2A and stop the erosion of our real rights, like voting, equality, clean air/water, and all the liberties that make life a pursuit of happiness.

Last year in Colorado, our state passed a law banning "ghost guns" that are 3D printed or sold as kits, which are untraceable. There's only one main reason somebody would want to own one of these: they don't want the gun traced back to them, so you'd think it's a no-brainer to ban them, right? Lawsuits have been filed against the state by gun lobbyists and shooting clubs who want the law struck down on principle. It's another "If we give you an inch, you'll take a mile" argument from inhumans who don't much care about mass murder and children dying in school. What kind of responsible gun owner would want unregulated, untraceable firearms being manufactured by anyone with an inexpensive printer?

! Moderator Note Can you give us an overview on the idea, please? It's against the rules to require anyone to watch a video before discussing something.

I think this would change the entire country for the better. It seems obvious that fear is the #1 tool in the box of corporate America, and maintaining the balance between docility and outrage allows them to charge prices the markets normally don't allow. Fear related to guns makes folks do abnormal things, and we have to stop letting corporations cash in on their social manipulation. It would be a good first step in fixing our problems with capitalism too. It's also obvious that we want to be happy, but happy people don't spend money the way fearful, sad, depressed people do.

So you feel relief once you've turned, but you still think about it and eventually you need to change again, knowing you'll feel relief again, at least for a while. You should still talk to your doctor about it, but it sounds like something you can overcome with the right mental approach. I'm the occasional victim of the inappropriate throat tickle, where if I know I can't get up for a drink of water my throat starts tickling. Funerals, lectures, movies, if I start thinking about it too much I feel like I have to do something about it. The simple answer is to stop thinking about it, but sometimes it's not easy.

All dangerous tools are regulated to some extent, and their use is restricted to those who have business using them. That's not a great argument. I could just as easily argue that you can have muskets because that was allowed by the Constitution, but that arms made after the document was ratified aren't covered. It's a much more sound argument than letting citizens have the latest and greatest military gear. That's insane, don't you think? I don't know what to say about this argument. You seem to be saying a citizen militia is what stands between us and misused military, when we've seen what the US military does to citizen militias all over the globe. Ignorant, normal people, the kind that stormed the US Capitol building in insurrection, that's the folks you want to have drones and tanks and RPGs? Which state do you vote in?

You must be assigning some kind of special importance to firearms here. As tools, the police need of a different version than a hunter does, or than a soldier does. I use tools too, but I sure wouldn't expect the experts to give up their dynamite or tunnel-borers just because they won't give me access to them. That's just crazy. Why do you think a citizen should have access to military/police grade guns? Are you thinking they need them to protect themselves from the police and the military?

Which supplies can withstand human-squashing forces?

I think they're referring to the Alcubierre metric, which doesn't actually move space but rather creates a configurable energy density field that can "push" something massive, assuming you can create a negative energy density somehow.

Is having a doctor and a maths/physics teacher as parents "standard" by the definition you're using?

It is, because the original was a double misdirection joke. The first head-fake is the mention of "autopsy", which leads one from having sex to having sex with the dead. The second misdirection doesn't come until the last word of the joke, clarifying who one is really having sex with. Brilliant!

Saw my first electric kettle in Germany a few decades ago. I couldn't believe how much more efficient it was than a pan on the stovetop! Finally found them here in the US and haven't used anything else since.

For me, tea needs to either be icy cold or blisteringly hot, and I'll keep sipping as long as it stays at the extremes. And I prefer fresh mint to lemon juice, which is weird because the only other place I like mint is in toothpaste or breath mints. I love peppermint Altoids, but I'll turn down a peppermint candy cane at Christmas every time. And while I appreciate a little honey in tea sometimes, no sweetener ever touches my coffee. Bleh, just bleh!

Or his parents inclinations and methods weren't standard and their child benefitted from the focus. I'm not saying the "wiring" aspect isn't correct, but it seems like it's arguing more for "nature" and less for "nurture", and it's almost certainly quite a bit of both.

If your doctor is after you about the fats and sweets, the bergamot in Earl Grey tea pairs really, really well with lemon, and not just because the British say so. In this case, they are spot on.

But do you think Terrence Tao could have accomplished the same without the training and support he received at a young age? You claim he's different than average, but how much of that difference was because his father was a doctor and his mother was a maths and physics teacher?

And this is why science and religion conflict. Science requires more than your incredulity and insistence. Evidence we can observe would be helpful.

See, this tells me you don't understand some of the fundamentals of science. If you posed an hypothesis that was sound, that you could support with evidence, that you could build a model upon to make successful predictions, AND that we could find no fault with, no flaws that falsify the explanation you've given, then it wouldn't be a threat to our way of thinking. It would BECOME our way of thinking, because it would be a well-supported explanation on its way to becoming a theory. Can't you see that? We've been pointing out mistakes, so how could your idea possibly be a threat?

Are you talking about the BB? It was NOT an explosion. If you're talking about stars forming from clouds of gas, what about that behavior do you find objectionable? You can visualize it? Given the gaps in your science knowledge, I suspect your "visualization" is filling those gaps with whatever makes the most sense to you, which is no way to do science.

Yes. So many that you need to be more specific about what you're looking for. From what I've read, size is only a small factor. The way the various regions are "wired", and the ways the regions communicate with each other is much more important.

I think graybear13 is channeling Emily Litella. "What is all this fuss I hear about the Supreme Court decision on a "deaf" penalty? It's terrible! Deaf people have enough problems as it is!"

Don't be fooled by pop-sci vividness. Think about it. Why have you only built 1% of the things you could have built with your LEGO blocks? Because you built the 1% of things that made the most sense to you, that were of the most value, and that pleased you most. A great deal of the rest of what you could have built made no sense, had no value, and was just plain ugly. One can easily imagine that there might be some useful chemical combinations we haven't discovered yet, but most likely there are an enormous amount of chemicals that aren't as good as the ones we know about.