Phi for All

I think you realize no one but you can do this. As ramin said, hold yourself accountable. Things and other people are only temporary motivation. Motivate from within, otherwise you'll always be looking for others to motivate you. If you're happy with yourself, you can be happy anywhere with nothing BUT yourself. Then things and people can come and go, but you'll still be motivated and happy. And no, I'm not going to put a damn smiley face on this. It'll be hard, but you're smart and tough and you can do it.

One of the best places to observe this is when we are driving, set apart in a microcosm where we're the sole inhabitant. We assume everyone else is either a horrible driver, a drunk, an inconsiderate prig, a rich a**hole, a consummate imbecile, a doddering ancient or a road rage warrior. But if WE cut someone off, or tailgate because we're in a hurry, that's completely different....

I'm not optimistic about him doing much more than looking when I hear he quotes spending increases based on what Congress approved, rather than on the amounts actually spent due to his discretionary powers. He's waving figures about that he's not entitled to since he's hiding the real numbers with the other hand.

So everything non-biological is included in that "etc"? My mistake, never mind, I'll shut up now. *edit* How about the contents of the stomach? Nigerian food, lack of anything comestible from the UK, could that help?

"A Nigerian man, newly arrived in the UK...." This part could be determined by currency from Nigeria in the victim's possession, indicating country of origin and the fact that he hadn't time to convert to British currency yet. No thief/murderer from the EU would balk at taking foreign currency along with any pound notes the victim might have had.

I never gave Enterprise mush of a chance. I saw one episode, lost most of a good dinner and called it quits. I'm a fan of Live long and prosper, but not for that show. Stuff Monkey = a pack rat, one who keeps things indefinitely. Stuffed Monkey = a plush toy, usually kept on a girl's bed. Stuffy Monkey = a Brit with a head cold; a ninjutsu ryu.

I think this thread needs to be moved to the "Only Post IF You Agree With Me" Forum, which I'm advising Administration we create immediately.

This would make some other forums I've seen a much quicker read.

I find the intelligence required to turn on a computer, log onto the internet and navigate to this site to be sufficient. In most cases. Are you suggesting that everyone be a rocket scientist or just a scientist, ROCKET?

If this were the present case, you would get no opposition from me. If we were to defend ourselves while diplomacy shows our good intentions to the rest of the Islamic world, the heat of fanaticism would die and Al Qaeda would be hard-pressed to find a following. Taking the offensive into Iraq and being so brutal about it may make some folks at home proud but it only adds fuel to an already raging inferno over there.

What, you can't throw a piece of straw that high, Mr. Muscles?

My point was not in support of agricultural subsidies. It was in response to Tetrahedrite saying, "As long as the rich have their tax cuts everything's alright!" I'm starting to think maybe Bush put the farming cuts in the budget knowing it would eventually get stricken, giving Congress a way to impress their constituents. He can always point back later and say, "I tried!"

"Load a camel from the ground, he won't get up and you will frown." --unknown Arab philosopher

Unfortunately, it was Dickens who used the phrase "As the last straw breaks the laden camel's back", not an Arab philosopher as one might surmise. While I would never excuse or justify violence of the level Al Qaeda has used, I would imagine that there was not one "precise reason" for us to be on their "hit list". As with most things, I'm sure it built up over time until it reached a critical mass. Al Qaeda was an offshoot of the Mujahadeen resistance movement, opposing the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s (where they actually received our help in equipment and training). I believe they eventually broadened their scope to include all countries they felt oppressed Muslim society, such as Israel and the United States. I don't know why you bring this up after quoting my earlier post. My point is simply that further violence from us is what Al Qaeda wants. Diplomacy and negotiation would destroy them where all the bombs and torture we can produce just makes them grow. Disprove THAT statement if you want any further debate from me.

But he's cutting some of the rural projects as well. Farmers aren't going to like this new budget one bit. This doesn't sound like he's trying to set brother Jeb up in 2008. He may not think he has to maintain popularity since he can't run again, but if he burns too many people he'll throw the election to the Democrats in 2008 (and the House and the Senate before that). Even if you believe he can fix the election results, does keeping taxes low really gain him enough popularity to offset burning the majority?

I think building the first one would necessitate living on it as well, first as a ringworld, then as a complete sphere. If we were sophisticated enough with the process after that, we could automate and build them robotically without the need to populate them, strictly for the energy potential. The real question now is whether Drax Reborn would like his thread to be about Dyson Spheres or about stored energy transmission from space to Earth.

Poke enough people with that insensitivity stick and I'm sure you're going to end up on everyone's ignore list. Ignorance is one thing, but choosing to ignore someone's opinions deliberately and continuing to argue without taking them into consideration is trolling. Please be warned.

There is your mistake. We live on the inner surface. (Edit) Not all of the surface is necessary for solar collection. Remember how incredibly vast it is.

The light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off due to budget cuts.

Personally, I wouldn't mind paying more taxes if it meant some of these programs didn't have to be cut. Bush has never vetoed a spending bill but won't raise taxes to cut the deficit. What's going on here? Bush's $2.5 trillion budget story

Drax & 5614, you're not paying attention to Sayo's post #5. A Dyson sphere starts out as a ring around a star. The huge surface of the ring takes the place of a need for any planets. Energy transmisiion is not a problem because you are living on the ring. Eventually, the ring is built up into a sphere. But long before that, the surface of the ring is greater than all the surfaces of the system's planets put together. On who? The planets outside the sphere are most likely uninhabitable.

I agree and I disagree. Torture is definitely not a reliable way to get information from someone who already believes you are a monster capable of any atrocity. Reverse the situation: if you were about to be beheaded by Al Qaeda, would you betray your countrymen hoping for mercy from your captors? But as to terrorists doing all that they can do to us and what we do has nothing to do with it, you are forgetting that they didn't just spring from the ground as evil beings. They hate us for a reason, and only part of it is because we are not of their faith. Some act on our part (real or imagined) triggered their leap to terrorism. At its roots you will probably find some form of violent aggression where we should have used diplomacy. And before you immediately start posting about diplomacy being weak and invasion showing our commitment to strength, please know that I believe there are times when we need to show strength, when it may be necessary to kill a few in order to avoid killing a lot more. But it doesn't work with terrorists. In fact, they are praying we'll over-react. They are small and their followers few, so they goad us into a huge display of aggression, depleting our resources and giving them the means to recruit more followers. The more we fight, the bigger they get. The more we kill, the more outrage we incite. The more lives and money we spend, the more we fall into the trap of the zealot. Negotiation and diplomacy shows us to be reasonable people, and the terrorists can't stand before that. Their followers will begin to disappear and go back to their lives once we take off the monster mask and start treating them as people instead of savages.

And if openly torturing a prisoner guarantees that more people will be beheaded if captured, what kind of strategy is that? I don't believe in giving in to terrorist demands either, and I also don't believe torturing prisoners gains us the kinds of long-term benefits we think we will get. Aggression feeds the religious fervor among the fundamentalists, and torture gives them the justifications they have been praying for.

No. She created the posts in a few days. And on the last day, she edited them. She works in mysterious ways.