Phi for All

Cowardly Violent Extremism Playing Into the Hands of Business? Spending Billions on Worldwide Aggression For Less Than 10,000 Fanatics? Opposing Religious Zealotry By Blowing Up Mosques? Fighting Fire With Gasoline? Diplomacy Makes Us Look Weak? Reciprocity on Steroids? Gimme Allah the Oil? This is the problem with labels. Short ones makes great sound bytes that bypasses reason and good judgment and strike at emotions. Labels long enough to actually describe the problem with an eye towards rational thinking tend to bore people so fewer people read them. So if you're selling the public on a costly war with an objective made impossible by the methodology involved, you bypass good judgment and go for short and emotional.

This is all good stuff folks, keep it coming. Is there anything you'd be really mad about if we changed it? What kind of post testing do you do? If I write a post, preview it and decide it's rubbish I just hit the "back" button. And if you post it and hate it you can always ask a Staff member to delete it. Just a suggestion until Cap'n comes up with a testing area.

Ever the optimist, Dak! Unfortunately the sheer volume of misquotes, misunderstandings and misinformation that creation slanderists spread offsets any contribution we can imagine they might make.

This seems like a lecture. Was there anything you wished to discuss on our discussion board?

You're banned forever. Fixed.

Great point. When ideas are written as though they are textbook fact it shuts down logical responses. It seems as though you will brook no criticism of your ideas when you pose it this way.

I'm moving this to Modern and Theoretical Physics for a more comprehensive viewing.

I'm sorry, did you say something?

Raise public awareness to the point where it becomes an election issue. Then force sanctions of every imaginable kind. I'm tired of US invasions but this would be an instance where we could be the good guys we imagine ourselves to be.

The Ignore List works though. At least it used to. Before I became a Mod I had the luxury of using it on certain cretins. Then blike asked me to moderate but he told me I couldn't ban everyone on my Ignore List. *sigh*

I think I dated aswokei's desktop once.

I've always hated the phrase. It serves to keep the enemy vague, the war indefinite and the people at home fearful. What a carefully spun phrase and a coup for businesses who serve the industry! And I've always said fighting unconventional terrorists with conventional means is like a Warner Bros cartoon where the country bumpkin tries to rid his house of flies with a shotgun. Other than diplomacy and economic coersion with the nations who give terrorists a home I don't have a substitute. Actually I do, but it involves giving me the US defense budget for 6 months. I will spend it on ninjas (we'll see who's terrified now). I get to pocket what I don't spend.

I have to admit that the idea of using hindsight to craft something better was appealing when I first read the article, but this got me thinking differently: The fact that so much information is available for the price of an internet connection is pretty amazing and the sheer power it represents is staggering. And it shrinks the world in a way that unrestricted travel can't hope to compete with. What would happen if worldwide web access fostered a global community that threatened to bring the world to the brink of peace? Would arms manufacturers protest that the internet was restricting their business?

It's perfectly acceptable to ask questions from your homework. We just ask that those are posted in the Homework Help section so it gets the proper attention. You mentioned that no one had responded to your other thread and sometimes when it looks like homework in the Biology section people think you're trying to cheat the system by getting "answers" rather than "help". We understand now that is not your intention.

I spotted this article about scrapping the existing Internet and rebuilding it to address concerns that weren't in existence when it first began. Much of it's architecture has been a cobbling-together process and many feel that we could do better with a complete restructuring. In a way, the original intent was not unlike building a beautiful house in a small community where there is little need for security. Everyone knows each other and trusts each other. But then the community grew very quickly and soon the beautiful home has a completely different look and purpose and now, rather than continue to fix the leaks and locks it might be better to build something more suited to current needs and then bulldoze the old house once you've finished the new one. What do you think? Can this be done effectively? With all the new players in the market can everyone have what they want from Internet 2?

I hate compound mentality. Without diversity there you get stagnation. A science-only city might be prolific for a while but after a few generations all those like-minded people would probably end up with zero creativity. It seems intellectually incestuous somehow.

Placing homework questions in the Homework Help section will probably get a quicker response.

Is this for school homework?

Unless you object strenuously, let's try moving this thread to Engineering and see if we can stir the pot, as it were. I can always move you back if our engineers find this question too... challenging.

A leak from a septic tank would stink wouldn't it?

Does your neighbor have a sprinkler system? He may have a leak somewhere. I was referring to having the hole dry. Sure concrete will set up in water but you don't want a post in a hole that keeps filling up with it. I'd want it dry before I committed to building anything with that as a foundation.

Click on your "buddy's" username on any post. The bottom choice is "Add X to your Buddy List". I do believe it lets you know somehow that your buddy has been profound again. I'm going to try it myself, using insane_alien and Snail as my Buddies. Don't get any grand ideas though; it doesn't mean I'll help you move or give you a ride to the airport or anything.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales I didn't know this. /me adds it to a very, very long list of things

Anyone else like to see it revived? This is your forum so speak up.

I call it suspicious, but then I'm not a big fan of people who join in order to start a thread that aims our membership elsewhere. It's happening a lot lately. plymwebed, prove me wrong and respond to this with some of your own thoughts rather than the "Read the full story here!" marketing you're probably being paid to do.