npts2020

Since the majority of SCOTUS seems to supposedly be "originalists"/"literalists" when interpreting the law, maybe the 2nd Amendment could be interpreted to allow only weaponry available at the time of its writing.

17 hours ago, swansont said:

Are you prepared to discuss the engineering difficulties of this? If not, you're just offering science fiction.

IMO the engineering difficulties would not be as great as the political and financial ones. Near as I can tell, the main engineering difficulties are related to scale and the fact that it has not been done before.

13 hours ago, mar_mar said:

So where does conscience come from???

Seems to me conscience comes from ones personal philosophical leanings. Consciousness, on the other hand, is one of those "eye of the beholder" type things where it means exactly whatever the person using the term wants it to mean unless there is some other agreed upon definition

It's interesting Butyric Acid is a fairly common ingredient in fragrance making. I have heard it said that every good fragrance has at least one awful ingredient, tho...

13 hours ago, iNow said:

You assume I’m unfamiliar. You know what they say about people who assume, right? Stop acting like an ass. You said being removed from a ballot doesn’t matter. It very clearly does to anyone seeking to win. This is remedially true and self-evident. Move along.

Stop F-ing misrepresenting what I have said Mr. Knowitall and post the quote where I have ever stated that being removed from the ballot doesn't matter or isn't a big deal. What I actually said was that it SHOULDN'T be big deal because of previous instances of people being kicked off the ballot. I don't have to assume anything about your knowledge of ballot access laws and their history...it's pretty obvious.

3 hours ago, AIkonoklazt said:

I'm assuming the thread is about unguided evolution.

What is the difference? If an organism manages to propagate, I would say whatever new features are propagated (regardless of how they became a part of it to begin with) have become part of the organisms evolution.

Will be very interesting to see how this turns out. The next step might be growing sciatic nerve cells from stem cells.

3 minutes ago, zapatos said:

ignoring the candidate that this issue is about.

That is the ONLY reason it is a big deal. In a world with equality Mr Trump's complaints would be ignored or swept aside like EVERY OTHER CANDIDATE that some political party wanted to exclude from the ballot. Eugene Debs ran his final campaign for President from a jail cell in 1920 with the only outside communication allowed being a single letter each week to his wife. More recently, the Green Party has had to go to court to get or maintain ballot status in multiple states every election since they have existed, the only difference being it hasn't been for a primary election since third parties generally are prevented from running them by the states.

10 hours ago, iNow said:

Exactly correct. Let’s use this opportunity now to review these exchanges with this in mind:

 

YOU: I don’t see why getting kicked off a ballot in certain states is a big deal. The major parties go to court all the time to remove lesser known candidates from ballots. 

ZAP: Winning is impossible if you’re not on the ballot, so it actually is a big deal if you have any desire to actually win. 

YOU: Ah… so you’re saying 3rd parties aren’t trying to win?

EVERYONE ELSE: What the AF are you talking about?!??

YOU: It’s happened before.

ZAP: Yep, but precedence doesn’t mean it’s somehow not a big deal. How is this not self-evident?

YOU: More moot blather and blunder…

Nice summary. Too bad you couldn't see fit to use the actual quotes in order of exchange instead of your summaries of what you wanted to see me saying but it isn't worth quibbling over. I understand that, you, like most others unfamiliar with ballot access requirements, feel that this is a way bigger deal than the many times similar ballot denial cases have been brought up. In the few cases SCOTUS has bothered to hear, they have generally sided with states over feds and even parties over states; see "Tashjian v Rep Party of Ct." and "California Democratic Party v Jones". Both struck down open primary rules in those states and not ballot access per se, except that in both cases non-party members were excluded from the primary ballot. Interestingly, the party in Connecticut wanted open primaries and SCOTUS struck down a state law not allowing it, whereas, in California the state wanted to impose open primaries on the parties and the parties managed to have the court allow closed primaries. While there is no telling what the current SCOTUS is likely to do, it seems to me, precedence would lead an impartial court to defer to states and parties unless they are in conflict with each other, which I am unsure if is really the case with Mr. Trump.

IMO, if they take any of the cases, they will weasel a decision to make Mr. Trump appear on the primary ballot by claiming voters in the 9 states that don't allow write-in votes are "disenfranchised" by not having any means of voting for their candidate if efforts to remove his name occur there. Burdick v Takushi upheld Hawaii's right to not allow write-in votes but SCOTUS also wrote in its opinion that there was sufficient means for Burdick to have had gotten his name on the ballot, a point that I am sure will be brought up at any trial. Unless, SCOTUS is going to overturn this or better define what "sufficient means" is they might not take any of the cases and just allow whatever state supreme courts rule to stand.

40 minutes ago, iNow said:

Basic reading skills and comprehension mostly 

Yes, and comprehension increases when you take into consideration the whole statement in context rather than taking just a piece of it to make an argument...

How big of a deal was made of and how much press has ANY of the previous attempts at removing names from ballots received? AFAIK cancer has always been a big deal.

You need to better define what"life" is. If we are talking about organisms like viruses, there are indications there could be life on other planets or their moons in our solar system. If we are referring to LGM (little green men) or the like, the jury is probably still out. Humans have only been able to even detect a planet outside of our solar system for a bit over 30 years and we still have yet to develop the capability to determine exactly what is on any of those planets. OTOH, if you believe evolution to be a valid theory, mathematics say there should be life in many places, especially since some of those places have had a few billion more years to evolve than our small corner of the universe.

8 minutes ago, zapatos said:

1 hour ago, zapatos said:

It is harder to win elections when you are not on the ballot. If your goal is to win elections, or to help a person win elections, then getting kicked off is a big deal.

How did you get that ⬇️ from this ⬆️?

1 hour ago, npts2020 said:

I see, so third parties aren't trying to win elections?

I was asking if it was your belief third parties don't try to win elections but it got somehow twisted around to being a positive statement. The whole point is that Donald Trump is FAR from the first person this has happened to. The reason it has never been to the Supreme Court is that they have let state SC rulings stand because elections are run by the states according to the US Constitution, not the federal government. To have uniform elections across the country seems very unlikely, to me, since it would probably require a constitutional amendment.

43 minutes ago, npts2020 said:

Democrats and Republicans go to court EVERY election to exclude names of candidates from third parties, sometimes even after they jump through all the hoops to get on it to begin with.

How did you get that ⬇️ from this ⬆️?

21 minutes ago, iNow said:

You seem to be suggesting that 3rd parties… go to court in attempt to… kick themselves off the ballot… in the elections they mean to win? 

5 minutes ago, zapatos said:

It is harder to win elections when you are not on the ballot. If your goal is to win elections, or to help a person win elections, then getting kicked off is a big deal.

I see, so third parties aren't trying to win elections?

I don't see why being kicked off the ballot should be such a big deal. Democrats and Republicans go to court EVERY election to exclude names of candidates from third parties, sometimes even after they jump through all the hoops to get on it to begin with.

On 12/23/2023 at 2:32 PM, TheVat said:

Might be interesting to look for studies of MPB that compare smokers and nonsmokers,

like this?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9069908/

12 hours ago, AIkonoklazt said:

What is the solution to Hamas wanting Israel to disappear along with all of its people

I'm all ears

Stated or not, that seems to me to have been the attitude on both sides for much longer than the past couple of months. It also seems to me that in a contest to see who can be the most inhumane, no side is deserving of support, especially in helping to facilitate that inhumanity. There may very well be no solution but if there is one, I think eliminating war profiteering as an ulterior motive could go a long way toward someday changing the attitudes enough to implement it.

It shows just how intractable this problem is when people as smart as those who frequent this forum can't even come up with good ideas for a solution. Seems to me that, nobody is arguing Israel doesn't have a right to defend itself only that such a right might have limits. Would Israel be justified in dropping a nuke on Gaza (leaving aside the fact that they are unlikely to do so on their own border)? That would almost certainly eliminate Hamas, along with the rest of the local population... Or should the IDF be limited to special forces operations or something else?

The next question is do the people of Gaza and the West Bank have any rights? If so, what are they and how are they enforced?

Even after reading this entire thread and seeing news and pundits trying to shed light on the subject, I am still sorting things out and trying to answer the above questions. IMO neither side has any claim to being the "good guys". Furthermore, it seems Oct. 7 was allowed to happen one way or another. How is it that an intelligence agency that knows where Hamas command centers and weapons stockpiles are was completely clueless about such a large scale operation?

In addition, you have people who want conflict, i.e. weapons manufacturers, those who think it helps keep/get them into power, religious fanatics etc. I see no workable solution as long as these people are allowed to control the narrative and make all of the decisions

Also, from 1949-1987, there was something called the "fairness doctrine" (then partially in effect before being entirely abandoned in 2000 when the part guaranteeing a person attacked on air equal air time was tossed out) which required equal air time for candidates for public office and editorial content to report both sides of a debate, among other things.

Once you know the expected temperature to be reached at reentry and how hot you want to allow the inside temps to get, it is a simple matter of looking up the thermal conductivity of the material under consideration and using the formula contained here... https://www.toppr.com/guides/physics-formulas/thermal-conductivity-formula/

On 10/30/2023 at 6:26 PM, exchemist said:

Where is iron smelting on this chart? 

High temperature industrial heat?

On 11/10/2023 at 9:56 AM, dimreepr said:

It's only the stupid, most unevolved, virus humans that would chose to kill the host...

I understand just enough Polish to guess they are telling us their interests are climate science, medicine and AI. Not sure there is really a question or topic to discuss.