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Mr Skeptic

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Everything posted by Mr Skeptic

  1. The same reason as any other stereotype. On average, it is true or likelier to be true.
  2. I would like to pay less for medical care too, but I don't think I could agree with "cutting" a doctor's salary. (For that matter, I'd like to see more doctors with salaries.) Just how do you propose to "cut" a doctor's salary without setting any nasty precedents or having nasty side-effects?
  3. For bonus points, what would be the justification for allowing the cat to torture the mouse (which we allow), yet preventing a human from doing the same thing (which we try to prevent)? Do humans perhaps have less rights than animals? I mean, we can say that the cat torturing the mouse is being unethical but that we must allow them to act freely, yet I doubt that would be justification to allow a human the same.
  4. That exactly supports what I've said.
  5. Sure it does. When you average the people together, they support the current spending level of the government. If this were not the case, then you could give a counterexample. Go ahead and try to find any counterexample: give me any non-contradictory budget reduction proposal that the majority would agree on. You can't do it. People want lower taxes that would be implied by spending cuts, they don't want the spending cuts. They want to have their cake and eat it. And they can't have both. And their choice is clear: we wish we could cut spending, but don't you dare do it. What it comes down to is that people have conflicting desires. But it is clear which of those wins.
  6. Being a hero (by your definition) is pretty much the job description of firemen, with the restriction that fire is involved. Even though you can do a fireman's job while being a coward, at least until some dangerous situation where someone's life is on the line, the job description is putting your life at risk on behalf of (specific) other people in a (specific) dangerous situation. As Horza2002 said, another job like lumberjack might be more dangerous... but there the danger is for monetary reasons, to get lumber for the market. While it is true that we benefit from their job, it is also not like our lives were at risk, nor can we even match a given person's benefit to a given lumberjack. I think this impersonal aspect really takes away from the heroism, as of course does the money. And if nothing else, the job of cops and firemen frequently put them in a situation where they could perform an act of heroism. Thus, heroes in those professions will likely be noticed whereas they might not ever have a chance to perform a heroic act in a different profession.
  7. There cannot be consciousness without unconsciousness (see the Halting Problem).
  8. No, I'm referring to the part where we're spending tons of money and people go along with it. Yes, of course a lot of people disagree with a lot of programs, and "think" those programs should be cut. Yes, of course people want to cut programs they're not interested in to save money on taxes. But no one is willing to make the cuts. People are more interested in maintaining the "good spending for our programs" than they are in cutting the "bad spending for their programs". Otherwise, there would be no problem doing a wide budget cut leaving the budget in the same proportion just with less. Similarly, no one agrees on any specific program to cut either. So yes, people want the budget cut, but without cutting any specific program or programs. And I want a pet unicorn. Some wishes are unreasonable.
  9. Sounds like I could make all my friends and "friends" and perhaps also myself very rich. I think I wouldn't mind the government trying that on me. "Hey buddy, if you befriend me the government will give you tons of money. I'll go along with this if you give me my 50% cut."
  10. It will also give the wrong number, for the same reason that there is less dew and frost under a tree -- the dew is dependent on the temperature, and being able to "see" the cold night sky will lower the temperature. I think that you could measure the dew when it is not raining. Then, try to calculate out what you know based from the humidity, temperature, and cloud cover to extrapolate for when it is raining. I think that if any dew condenses onto rain droplets you probably have to count that as rain, unless you feel like taking rainfall readings at various altitudes and seeing if there is a difference. More problems occur because to know the dew you probably have to know the total surface area and other such details of your environment (not just the "flat land" surface area like for rainfall), and because shading will affect this, and because some dew will evaporate, some might drip and some might just stay on leaves and accomplish little, ... There's also precipitation of fog, which I think is slightly different than dew, and plays a major role for coastal redwoods. I suppose you could measure dew with a drosometer. All hail the fountain of knowledge that is wikipedia.
  11. I've built both a water rocket and an air gun using a 2 liter bottle and a valve from the inner tube of a bicycle. The rocket was easy -- just drill a hole through the cap and push through the valve, then fill with water and pump up. Then any bottle of any size can be used. However, for the gun we had to use the mouth of the bottle for a pipe, so the valve had to go elsewhere -- which will be much more of a pain to insert the valve, since you probably want to insert the valve from the inside so that the pressure holds the rubber onto the plastic. We used a non-disposable plastic 2 liter bottle (it had much thicker plastic so felt much safer) -- however, I don't think you'll find one of those anymore. Then we glued a pipe to the mouth of the bottle. If you are going to use water, you'll need your pipe to be underwater, which you can do either by having the bottle upright and curving the pipe after it leaves the bottle or by inserting the pipe deep into the bottle and then filling the bottle with water deeper than that. Either of these will restrict your angle of fire to those in which water will enter your pipe. For the trigger, we used one of the faucets that looks like a lever and goes from completely open to completely closed in 90 degrees. A word of warning: plastic bottles can explode, and are deafeningly loud (louder than any firecracker's I've ever heard and even than ones that can blow up metal pipes). I'm sure it could also hurt you if you were close to it. I suggest you find a safe pressure, from a distance, and never inflate it past a pressure you know is safe when you are near it.
  12. The majority already agrees with higher government spending than would be allowed by our current tax revenue. Now they just need to be convinced that they should pay for it instead of borrowing it.
  13. There's three kinds of jobs. One type produces tangible goods, contributing directly to wealth. One type provides useful services. And one type is overhead or trading (trading of things like stocks and derivatives, I mean) -- it provides nothing of value but is nevertheless necessary. The government, of course, taxes all these jobs. However, production jobs are limited by resources, people, and capital. Service jobs are limited by people. However, overhead jobs don't really have limits. For example, trillions of dollars are traded in the stock market every day. No actual wealth is generated -- money simply trades hands from the losers to the winners -- but I guess this is necessary to set the price of the stocks. In any case, an amount equal to our yearly GDP gets traded every week or so. Of course, the effect is to siphon money from those who are more clever or at least more lucky, away from other investors. The government could of course put a huge damper on this roller-coaster by limiting the rate at which these transactions are done, which I think would stabilize things greatly. However, why do that when instead they can just let some people win and some lose, and then tax the winners and so get extra tax revenue? Even better, it's usually going to be rich people on the winning end and poorer people on the losing end, which is extra nice since they get taxed at a higher rate and also this way they can (indirectly) tax the poorer people without them even noticing, as an extra bonus helping to make them more dependent on the government, essentially getting more taxes from them that they don't notice but of course making sure they notice any government assistance they get from our nice nice government. Of course, some people might say that such motivations would be too low even for our government. To these people, I say just look at how the government treats normal gambling. On a similar note, it would be in the government's financial best interests to encourage the exploitation of poorer people (essentially a money transfer from poor people to rich), and then taxing the rich. Due to our progressive tax system this will increase the government revenue, while at the same time making it seem like they're being nice to the poor by taxing them less. So that's my little conspiracy theory for the day. What do you think? Would our government encourage or at least not prevent non-productive jobs if it would increase their revenue? Would the government encourage or at least not prevent the rich from exploiting the poor so that they can tax the money at the higher rate? Or am I being overly paranoid?
  14. Fair is fair. Doctors have their right to free speech. And people have the right to ignore the doctor's note from a doctor who is known to be a big liar. However, that might require re-writing company policy.
  15. I've used both. The split keyboards I greatly dislike. The Dvorak keyboard was nice, and I might even have increased my typing speed. However, due to compatibility with other computers I quit using it, since I can't properly change my settings for the school computers. By Dvorak keyboard, I mean the key configuration but with a regular QWERTY keyboard. Note that you'll essentially have to re-learn how to type, and then you might forget the other layout and have trouble typing in the other layout. However my older brother remains a devout Dvorak user.
  16. If you can get yourself a nearly unlimited budget that you can use to give away to everyone so frivolously, then you can also hire someone to simply torture them on your behalf. To socially isolate someone completely via that method you'd have to bribe 6 billion people, good luck with that.
  17. Where's the outrage? Where's all the Democrats complaining about how Republicans abuse procedural rules to delay necessary bills? Wait, sorry, wrong team. Forget I said anything.
  18. Nature of course is not conscious of us, but I doubt that is what you meant. Did you mean perhaps homosexuality is an evolved adaptation to reduce population size? If so, then homosexuals have lower fitness and get weeded out by natural selection. Not only could that not evolve, but if that was there to start with it it would disappear. There's plenty of possibilities left. It could be that homosexuality increases reproductive fitness. It could be that homosexuality is an occasional side effect from some trait that increases reproductive fitness. It could be that homosexuality increases the reproductive fitness of others that are genetically related, so indirectly increasing the reproductive fitness of a homosexual (your brother's kid counts as half your kid from a genetic standpoint). Sensing a pattern?
  19. Some journals (and quite a few professors) want science papers written in the passive voice. If nothing else, it serves as a constant reminder that what is being stated is supposed to be factual and objective. It also makes personal opinion plain to see as it must refer to the author while the rest of the paper does not. However, I prefer the use of personal pronouns, at least in some cases, since they seem to make the paper more readable and sometimes less wordy.
  20. Not even close to fast enough for the nerve signals to even leave the eye, much less register in the brain.
  21. http://myfootprint.org/en/about_the_quiz/faq/ Yes, it is an estimate. To calculate the exact value you'd need to know the brand and model of every product you ever used, and the quantity, including, say, the toilet paper from a public restroom. Do you like nature's system of population control? Big fan of violence, famine, disease? I'd take draconian population control over nature's population control any day. But we're not even discussing that. lemur just wanted to know what a sustainable population was. And maybe voluntary population control will suffice, which is my hope. Anyways, how about leaving the rude insults for people who are actually advocating involuntary population control?
  22. All that would be needed to prove/disprove this would be a bit of his DNA. Of course, most religions probably know better than to want the truth to be known. It would be sacrilege or something to perform that test, so you better take it on faith.
  23. In electrostatics, the charges will move until there is no net force acting on them.
  24. Are we talking about population control or floating cities? Population control only works when it can reduce the reproductive rate of the population, and in general one person voluntarily reducing their own reproduction is going to be insignificant unless the population as a whole does so as well. Hence, population control advocates who actually want to do something toward that goal must involve other people and not just themselves. There is no question that if people don't reduce the rate of population growth then war, disease, or famine will do it for us. However, there does remain the possibility that the population will voluntarily reduce their rate of reproduction as is the case in many developed nations which actually have negative population growth. And all that is probably quite irrelevant to floating cities. These cities are unlikely to be self-sufficient and so would depend on the land dwellers to provide for them. Yes, they will increase the livable surface area, but that would be by an insignificant extent, especially if you compare to the land created by the Dutch. And yes, floating cities would be immune to sea level rise themselves but indirectly they will still be dependent on the land, and so still vulnerable to sea level rise. And they will be much more expensive than moving elsewhere. It's not as if land surface area is our problem. So, I say, go floating cities because they look awesome. Do we really need some big important reason to build these? Isn't it enough that they would make a nice tourist attraction?
  25. You mean like this? http://myfootprint.org/en/visitor_information/ or http://www.footprint...ge/calculators/
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