npts2020

Maybe, but who could say for sure? Any beings that knew enough to be able to figure out interstellar travel would likely be pretty far advanced as well in other fields I imagine.

I fail to see how changing control from an entity whose main regard in running an enterprise is the betterment of its citizens (in theory anyway), to one whose only goal is to make a profit will benefit the majority of us. Maybe someone can explain to me exactly how that works. Well, it seems to me the more "freedoms" corporations enjoy, the fewer most of the rest of us have. How is it to anyone's (other than those making money from it) benefit to allow enterprises to cause oil spills in the oceans, dump toxic chemicals into rivers and lakes, or cause acid rain? How is it to the majorities advantage to allow wages to be depressed to the point where the lowest paid workers in the world become the standard? By the standard you have stated above, the last couple of decades of the 19th century should have been among the most innovative in history, is this true (hint, try to think of major corporate advances from that time)? One of the problems with allowing corporate anarchy (or "freedom" if you prefer), is that all of the rights, privileges, and responsibilities I have ever read about in any of our republic's founding documents apply to individuals not corporations. In fact, there is nothing in them that I have ever seen that even gives a corporation a legal right to exist much less any specific rights or priveleges.

The only thing missing from that definition is the organisms.

Are you asking about memes?

Baby Astronaut; If you don't already know the answers to those questions, you do not already know everything about that dog. The point being, why ask questions of a being who you are likely to know more about than they do of themselves?

Perhaps. You have to remember, though, people who build new things are hardly "average" for their time (or probably any time for that matter). My training is in engineering but I would argue that I could build an airplane in less time and better than the Wright brothers. Not because I know more about it than they did but because I know where to get the information and what questions to answer in order to do it. The reason I would expect to be successful at the above proposition is because I realize there is a vast body of information that has accumulated since that time about what they were doing to which they had no access (it didn't exist then). IMO it is this ability to locate information and put it into a usable form that ties human knowledge together for all of us and enables faster advancement, actual understanding is less important than ability to understand.

Jackson33; I would tend to agree that massive govenment spending creates a false bottom, however, I think that applies only to things government does not normally spend money on. The price of things like roads, sewer systems, water supply pipelines, etc. are not much affected by whether the government or someone else spends the money, since it is the government that undertakes the ovewhelming majority of those sorts of expenditures anyway. I don't think individuals should be required to pay income taxes (questionably legal anyway IMO) but the companies they work for should. The reason being that the tax code is so complex that the ones who have to hire accountants anyway should just have them keep track of it all. We can argue about how that is done exactly and at what level but it would simplify things for most people and make one less thing they can get in trouble with their government over. The rest of your post seems to me like a prescription for corporate anarchy, IMO. It seems to me corporate America needs more regulation, not the indvidual citizens giving up their rights to corporations for corporate "freedom".

What I always wondered is why an alien would want to speak to a human anyway. It would be like speaking to a dog you already knew everything about, maybe an interesting communication exercise but not likely to be very enlightening and IMO hardly worth travelling interstellar distances to do, when you already have a dog in your house.

I thought it was because more ballots for Franken were challenged than for Coleman? Am I wrong about this?

Actually, I am a little surprised they even answered it.

At the rate the government is printing money this (the bold part) is a questionable proposition.

CaptainPanic; If there was an efficient nationwide transit system already, I would likely not be arguing for advancing the road technology in as sudden a change as I do. The last time I was in Europe was about 1980 and I can tell you that even then public transit there was much better than it is in most places in America today. There are some local systems that have their act together and provide good service but many do not and the national grid is pathetic for passenger travel. Also the rate of electric train use is far higher in Europe and on local American transit than for freight in the U.S. (I know there are numbers out there but I forget where I saw them). It is true that the cost of rail and interstate highway are comparable (high-speed rail is slightly more though) but I believe that by prefabricating the roadways in sections we can both significantly decrease cost, and increase speed of construction. In urban settings, any construction is going to be both disruptive and expensive so I would think the initial thrust would be to connect different city's transit systems and enable citizens in smaller communities to connect. Space for construction of merges is a problem, too, as you rightly point out. One thing about America is that our streets are mostly wider than European ones, I believe that by running vehicles (the majority anyway) more the size of a Cooper Mini than the size of a Humvee will address much of the problem along with the fact that automated vehicle don't need as much room for safety margins. We will disagree for now about the need for however many cross streets, as I have yet to do any serious consideration of the matter. Here is the link you wanted, it also has a good description of what is and isn't high-speed. Seems like it was the Japanese that did 581 kph not the Germans. The Germans were the previous record holder.

frankcox; You are correct I don't understand the arguments of creationists.....they make no sense. I recommend reading "The Great Monkey Trial" by L. Sprague Decamp. It is long but very interesting book about the "Scopes Monkey Trial" and does a very good job of describing the arguments of both sides used for the trial and giving background for each. The long and short of it is that it was impossible for John Scopes to get a fair trail in the venue he was tried, yet the majority of jurors agreed that he should never have been tried even though they convicted him (the trial was not about the truth or falsehood of evolution, it was about whether he taught it in school as a substitute teacher). BTW I can provide more evidence for evolution than you can provide for "god"

How can one argue against evolution on the one hand, then claim passing on deleterious traits is weakening the human populace on the other?

I would disagree with the notion that taxes are the final resting place for dollars. The government has never successfully run a surplus for any significant period other than to pay off a previous deficit. That means the money has to be going somewhere i.e spent on goods, services, subsidies etc. The biggest problem is that the government is fairly inept at doing it and often gets little return on its dollar. If this can be changed through better oversight and direction of funds, IMO there is no reason government spending cannot significantly help in putting our economy back to a positive direction. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged*note: The "multiplier effect" of job creation for military spending should also be true of any other kind, so really does nothing to justify spending on military over anything else

Only if they come into your house or assault you....um, well I guess you could take them quail hunting if you are the vice-president.

I also noticed that the most users ever was just a couple of days ago as well, way to go.

Sisyphus; And the Germans have tested their trains up to 581 kph but America has no similar high speed trains. Very few freight trains are electric either and if you are going to build that kind of infrastructure (electric) anyway, why build it for huge trains that many people will not use for the same reasons SH3RLOCK has articulated. High-speed/heavy rail is the most expensive infrastructure we could possibly build and the least flexible for getting where you want to go. IMO one of the biggest technical challenges for automation is what CaptainPanic has stated about intersections. The problem there is that roadways are based on a centuries old design that predates the Romans "paving" the Appian Way with flagstones, and were never meant for high-speed traffic. Even an automated system will not achieve high speeds in an urban setting where there are pedestrians, bicyclists and the like competing for the same space. Intersections are the point where all of these competitors get in each other's way. While difficult, the problem is not intractable. One way of going about it would be to elevate one direction (N/S or E/W) and have the other run at street level in heavily populated areas. Another might be to redesign some intersections so that they are like a bridge where crosstraffic passes under or over. It would not be necessary to have as many cross streets as there are now for the same reasons every street doesn't cross a river (or even small creek).

frankcox; I would like to see your sources for the assertion that a significant percentage of scientists do not believe in evolution, since I happen to know a few people who make a living as scientists and all of them believe in evolution. Furthermore I would like to know where you get the notion that creationists generally "win" debates with evolutionists about the subject of human origins. The most recent debate in a neutral arena I am aware of where there was a "winner" decided was Kitzmiller vs. Dover board of education. In that debate, the intelligent design (or creationists if you prefer) were represented pro bono by the Thomas More Law Center which has over 300 lawyers working for them. What do you suppose the outcome of that debate in court was? Were those 300+ lawyers unable to understand the subject matter well enough to adequately present the intelligent design side of the debate? The problem with saying the gods created everything is that it doesnt try to explain any mechanism for how he/she/they/it accomplished such a thing. That is where evolution comes in. Evolution only describes a process and allows the large percentage of scientists who are religiously inclined to both believe in evolution and their religious precepts. I have never met a person who believes in creationism or intelligent design who is not deeply religious. Finally, I would say with pretty fair certainty that nothing you have said in the preceding diatribe disproves the ideas of evolution, abiogenesis, or natural selection. The more studies that are done, the more secure those ideas have become not the other way around.

A nine year-old could hardly be considered a consenting adult, which I believe should have some bearing on the matter.

The problem IMO is the way economists view "economic activity". Why is producing a trillion dollars worth of bombs or barbie dolls the same as producing a trillion dollars worth of houses or machine tools? It seems to me that the former will not provide for any vital needs or increase the ability to produce more goods, whereas the latter will. It also seems to me this is why we are in as much trouble as we are at present. How long can any economy last without ever increasing its ability to provide for its citizens or produce tangible goods?

A blimp would be great until the first big storm.

Well if we want to give a blastocyst rights, why not children as well? (Am I the only one who thinks it is probably the same people who want to do the first don't want to do the second?)

CaptainPanic; I have always heard water transport was the most efficient, also. Problem is that is even more limited than railways for where it can usefully go. Also passenger trains are excluded from those numbers.

Like I said we gotta find some way of spending the money, otherwise someone might think you don't actually need it and give you less next time.