SH3RL0CK

Now the use of the plutonium for other purposes (i.e. electricity production) might be a good argument for dismantling some of our nuclear weapons. I agree we certainly don't need as many as we currently have; and uranium/plutonium are rare and valuable elements. Not sure if I agree Uranium will run out...but I agree that as we use more of it, it will eventually become more expensive (and valuable) up until we start filtering it out of seawater. Heh, maybe 50 years from now we start dismantling our nuclear stockpile and selling the plutonium so that we can pay off the outrageous debt Congress has saddled on us.

BS - You really should step back from the propaganda and really think hard about this issue. It helps to be cynical about people because the world isn't a perfect place. Nukes are a way to power regardless of whether or not the USA has them. Their potential for destructions is obvious even before they were developed during WWII. The USA, USSR, Great Britian, Germany and Japan (all major combatants) had nuclear weapons development programs. For various reasons, primarily due to the lack of resources, only the USA actually developed them during the war. Don't think for a moment that Al Queda wouldn't acquire nuclear weapons if they could regardless of whether or not the USA had them. The weapons in the USA are secure (despite claims otherwise); especially after the events of 911. Therefore, by your logic there is no need to disarm. Nuclear weapons do not preclude any nation from developing a peaceful nuclear program. You should look up the Eisenhower "Atoms for Peace" program sometime for a better understanding of the history behind the peaceful use of nuclear science. In short, I don't beleive you to have provided any legitimate reasons for disarmament of USA's nuclear stockpile.

Why the confusion? Its not like the credit card banks don't give significant amounts of money to a lot of politicians campaign funds.

Hmm...I'm thinking it October 2012 might be determined to be the best time...although I agree October 2016 is a strong possibility. I'd also give Oct. 2010 or Oct. 2014 as alternative (but less likely) possibilities.

Well, I certainly hope your experiment is not only sucessful but that you get out of your rut. That said, I do not see any way a poster could improve things; to improve or change your life you need to take actions to do so. But maybe its not all nonsense; I do know that certain posters could make life more difficult, particularly with human resources at work...

Only you can answer this. Do you like warm weather and ocean beaches? The look to the South, perhaps Maimi, or San Diego, or Hawaii; or overseas consider Australia or New Zealand. Do you like hiking and skiing? then look at Colorado or the Alps. I'm pretty sure Iraq won't be on your short list of choices, but the economic and crime differences between Europe, the USA, Australia, etc (all "Western, 1st world" nations) are minor in comparison to the cultural and climate differences, IMO.

Sisyphus, I don't disagree with you, the intent of social security and medicare was never to provide a retirement or universal health coverage. These were meant to provide a safety net to protect the elderly. Unfortunately, Congress has extended these well beyond the original intent (and increased the amount taken from our paychecks as well) but spent the money elsewhere. As such, the USA will break its promises and commitments once these programs go bankrupt. I don't feel this is right, especially since 15% of my take-home pay for my entire working life has therefore been confiscated. The government needs to meets its obligations or it cannot be trusted for anything. Or let me have this 15% and compound it over my 47 years of working and I can pretty much guarantee that I wouldn't need Social Security or Medicare when I retire. But I am very certain I will be paying for the rest of my working life and have nothing to show for it in return. Also, I'm not sure it is right to force someone to continue working based on the expectation they will live longer than people did in the past. If one has the financial resources to no longer work, why should they if they do not want to? You never know when you could get run over by a bus. I would predict that given lifespans of several hundreds of years, people would have multiple careers. The first career to afford a house, a family, pay off school, etc. Then once the house and college loans are paid off and the kids are grown, people could do anything they wanted to (which might be their current job, though perhaps on a part time basis). If I didn't have a house payment, I could easily afford to work part-time and enjoy life. Also, some jobs require hard, physical labor. Even if someone at 65 could expect to live another 20, 30, or even 200 years doesn't mean they will be physically capable of doing the job 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year.

Did you mean "Under the age of 35"? Also, why do you care what the government calls the social security tax; after all it is still 15% out of your paycheck? And are you sure you are so willing to let the government break its promises and commitments so easily? I happen to be over 35 and have paid quite a bit into social security (and doubtless I will pay quite a bit more). I personally would not be happy at all to have paid all this and then recieve nothing in return (since I am only 40, this seems quite likely)...I would call it fraud (though the government does have the right to do this). Maybe if Congress had not been spending the social security surplus on all their pet projects for the past 60 years, the system would be solvent. Alternatively the total tax burden during the past 60 years could have been less. But I am glad you are willing to pay up, hopefully you will be able to support my retirement (I intend to golf and fish all day) ... in return I promise you the promised benefits (but not the amount taken from your paycheck) will be ended before you get to use it. Don't worry people are living longer all the time; you can just keep working until you are 85 to make up for this (after all what else would you do if you were retired, its not like you would enjoy just golfing and fishing all day)

Just to provide an update: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_social_security This portion of the article says it all "The financial health of Social Security and Medicare, the government's two biggest benefit programs, have worsened because of the severe recession, and Medicare is now paying out more than it receives." I completely agree with Pangloss. We must stop spending. But it may already be too late; hard decisions may be necessary. So do we simply screw the elderly and stop paying social security and medicare or do we screw the younger and very significantly raise taxes? My guess is that eventually we will actually do both.

can you provide any references? Or is this anecdotal? The problem is that the social system set up by the government is not well designed to handle our social problems. People using religion to deny medical attention (whether out of ignorance or not) is just one example. There are many other examples that could be provided showing the inadequacy of the government to handle social situation. I know from firsthand information that people who are willing to abuse the system will be able to do so for quite a long time as the system is designed to give people the benefit of the doubt and every opportunity to change. Unfortunately, when there is a social problem, usually the only tool society has to address it is by government intervention.

Its difficult to assess anything as we do not have the neighbors side of the story. IMO, they should have helped, but you cannot fault them for not helping without talking with them. As has already been implied, do you even know they were home at all? Or noticed the tree (it could have been missed if they only are at the house at night)? There have been times where I and my entire family are not at home, even for a couple of weeks. Have you talked with them at all since the tree fell down? Perhaps there are circumstances you are not aware of. That said, you did what you had to do. Regardless of their failure to at least notify you (which I agree they should have done), you cleared the tree and fixed the fence because otherwise your cattle could get out. The fact that you rolled the trunk into their yard, I don't see as being too bad. It is their tree after all, and has value for firewood if not suitable for lumber.

You have some very large underlying assumptions that you need to address. I presume this thread to have a very large probability of being spam and that you will never return, so I am only going to ask a few questions for now to point out your possibly flawed assumptions... Why do you consider nuclear weapons held by the USA to be a threat? Why not sit back and rest considering these weapons are in relatively safe hands? Why not take comfort that these nuclear weapons quite possibly prevents additional carnage along the lines of WWII? You call nuclear weapons a catastrophe...considering they have yet to be used (except at the end of WWII) where is the catastrophe? Also, you need to explain the "catastrophe" of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as it can easily be argued that the use of these weapons saved millions of lives. Why must these be decreased at all? And if so, why promptly? What is the harm in maintaining the status quo? Considering the rise of nuclear proliferation by less-than-stable nations, why shouldn't the USA increase its stockpile? And develop the SDI/Star Wars technology? I really doubt the President was talking about nuclear weapons in the above quote.

How about a simpler (albeit incomplete) explaination? Consider the orbit to be around both the earth and the sun. Or maybe consider the orbit to be between the earth and sun. In other words, a satelite orbiting the L2 point is really orbiting both the earth and the sun at the same time.

ParanoiA: If we are going to resort to a dictatorship for efficiency and performance then our fearless leaders might as well screw the world over as well as us. Why not? I am however, more optimisitic. I don't forsee a dictatorship in the near future; just increased apathy and complacency from the American citizens and our politicians. I do think the USA is heading very quickly down the road to full socialism which is bad enough... but until the media dies (I give the mainstream print media about 5-10 more years but cable, TV networks and internet bloggers quite a while longer) a dictator such as Hitler is, I think, not in the cards.

Interesting point, and I tend to agree. Polls tend to show wide public acceptance of civil unions granting equal rights and responsibililties, but for reasons I do not fully understand civil unions are not acceptable to the gay community. If someday the public accepts the actual word "marriage" as applying to both gay and straight couples, what word is to be used to differentiate between hetero and homo marriages? Surely some word or phrase is necessary in order to convey all the details regarding a discussion of any couple. Doubtless society would coin a new word or phase to convey the meaning; which it seems would bring us all back to where all this started. Why not just use the current terminology of marriage for hetero couples and civil unions for homosexual couples? This seems a reasonable course of action which would guarantee equal rights while maintaining the necessary vernacular. If we are to continue to fight over the vernacular, then I have to wonder when this will stop?

If you have virtually no knowledge of electronics, might I suggest a simpler (and safer) project first? High voltage isn't something you want to play around with unless you know what you are doing.

I agree this is the best location despite it being against the rules (Rule # 1, has to stay on the earth). In addition to being geologically stable, the moon will not have weathering, erosion, corrosion, etc. It would also be very easy to find being visible from anywhere on earth. This message would last even several billions of years from now; essentially until the death of the solar system.

I haven't seen any of this. Can you show me several examples?

Why not carve the words, in extremely large letters, on the earth itself? If mountain ranges last millions of years, and we can find impact craters from asteroids from millions of years ago, then why wouldn't similarly sized letters last as long? Of course this should be done at a location geologically quiet. We would probably need to use nuclear weapons to create such massive letters and words.

Well, fortunately, mammals have been able to compete with the 40-foot long plesiosars...but being water-loving creatures these prehistoric creatures certainly survived. This is confirmed by by coelocanths... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coelocanth and the Loch Ness Monster http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loch_ness_monster which as we all know is certainly a plesiosaur

Well obviously he didn't take them onboard. That is why they became extinct, they were all drowned in the flood

Ah the internet. Truely the greatest creation of Al Gore.

I would conjecture that yes, xhenia is meeting more older people. But xhenia now is noticing that in addition to an increase in the median intelligence level, the median intelligence level is increasing with the age of the individual. So is society becoming less intelligent as time progresses (perhaps due to our inadequate educational system), or is it that as people get older they continue to learn? [/ conjecture] I am confused where the decrease of 13% of brain size is coming from. Perhaps xhenia would come back and clarify this point for me?

Instead, I'd paint the tires, jack the wheel off the ground, then set the tire onto a peice of paper. Then jack the wheel off the ground again and remove the paper. This will account for a change in shape in all directions, rather than just an increase in width of the tire. As such, you will have a better measurement of the tread surface area because there could be an increase in the length of the tires contact with the ground in addition to an increase in the width. Ideally, this should be done for multiple air pressures. Perhaps you could measure it fully inflated, then let 5 or 10 psi of air out of the tire and measure again. Repeat until the tire was fully deflated. Make sure to deflate all tires at the same time to assure the weight of the car is being distributed evenly. (of course you should also re-inflate the tires when you are finished:D ) If you can show very little surface area change between 40 psi and 5 psi (i.e. the surface area at 5 psi isn't 8x the area at 40psi), then you should easily be able to disprove F=PA.

OTOH, Obama's pick might surprise people; Obama isn't afraid to do unconventional things. Likewise, the new justice could well be a surprise once they are confirmed as was Souter.