Pakistan isn't going to promote itself as a regional center in Asia. Eventually its power to cause problems for everyone that's based on its nukes will be circumvented by everyone else's interests that oppose it. The nukes that Reagan helped it get to promote the Star Wars "missile defense" will have run the course of their purpose and they'll be taken away. Iran, India, Russia and China will carve it up, either into actual countries or just markets.
If Pakistan really did promote itself as a regional center in Asia, by cooperative development, it would have a strong future - and maybe also get to keep its nukes. But it's not going to, and the benefits to Iran, India, Russia and China mean it will not be really encouraged to. Pakistan is on a dead end path, which was probably inevitable starting with its violent start as a theocracy over a diverse population. Unless its nukes get used first, in which case it's definitely on a dead end path, even if it takes everyone else down with it.
Criminalizing Holocaust denial is a lazy shortcut. It obviously failed to stop some Germans from being Nazis, since there are still plenty. Meanwhile its abuse of free expression undermines the governments that enforce it.
It's much harder to actually stop nazism, especially in Germany where it has an actual legacy in families. But of course the harder course is necessary. Germany is at fault both for opposing liberty and for failing to snap all Germans out of their interest in one of the most hideous oppositions to liberty.
Muslim law recognizes the age of consent starting at 7 years old. So does Christian law, as explained in this article [faqs.org] that cites its sources:
In the Islamic tradition following Muhammad, betrothal could take place earlier than PUBERTY, perhaps as early as seven, but the marriage was not supposed to be consummated until the girl menstruated and was of age. In medieval Europe, Gratian, the influential founder of Canon law in the twelfth century, accepted the traditional age of puberty for marriage (between 12 and 14) but he also said consent was "meaningful" if the children were older than seven. Some authorities said consent could take place earlier.
It's true that "All religion is poison but some are worse than others.", but in this case Islam is no more or less poisonous than is Christianity. It's true that more Christians today respect females better than do Muslims (by percentage and by headcount). But it's also true that Muslims until recently overall respected females more than did Christians.
Privileges taken by Mohammed were not common among Muslims, nor are they now, any more than are privileges taken by Christian popes, kings and other lords throughout European history.
Muslim law recognizes the age of consent starting at 7 years old. So does Christian law, as explained in this article that cites its sources:
In the Islamic tradition following Muhammad, betrothal could take place earlier than PUBERTY, perhaps as early as seven, but the marriage was not supposed to be consummated until the girl menstruated and was of age. In medieval Europe, Gratian, the influential founder of Canon law in the twelfth century, accepted the traditional age of puberty for marriage (between 12 and 14) but he also said consent was "meaningful" if the children were older than seven. Some authorities said consent could take place earlier.
Then do it already. Instead of jerking off into some Slashdot post while you fantasize about American theocratic talking points.
I'm sure you also insist on having guns "to protect the Constitution", especially since Obama was elected, even though you've done nothing especially since Bush/Cheney were inaugurated despite losing the election. Despite the disapproval of that Jesus would show on the second coming, if it weren't purely superstition.
Christianity is about blocking images (pornography) while actual murder and rape of non-Christians (Iraq and any other US war) is seen as fine. Every other religion values symbols more than material welfare in many ways.
It's not the specific religion that matters. It's religion itself. It's a plague on humanity, the opiate and the amphetamine of the masses.
I refer to all gods as equivalent to "the Tooth Fairy". Or sometimes Santa if it doesn't need to be nondenominational, or the Easter Bunny if I'm alluding to the pagan basis of many "Christian" practices.
BTW, the North Sea king "Canute" in the 11th century AD demonstrated the folly of divine omnipotence by showing how he couldn't command the tides. There is no evidence that any metaphysician has ever won any conflict with physics.
No they don't. They are "intro" in the sense that they think only inside their own safe definitions. There's no bible colleges where they teach Creationism instead of evolution, and have honest introspective debates about fossil and experimental evidence of evolution. They don't have honest introspective debates about the history of religions gradually dropping opposition to one or another scientific theory as their superstition became laughable and a net liability. They're not really introspective about their necessary adoption of treating women equally to men, and other races equally to that of their founders, even though they lag behind the overall equitable treatment in society.
Bible colleges stick to dogma and contrived defenses that protect their legacy of beliefs, rather than accept overwhelming force of reality, until their existence (continued enrolment) is at stake. Their debates about competing ideas consists of learning what to say in response to those ideas so as to stick to the old belief. They're word games, fallacies, politics and denial.
Not believing in god/s is indeed not the same as believing there are no god/s. Believing that god/s either exist or don't is a metaphysical, unprovable/untestable position. However, given the total lack of evidence for god/s, and the overwhelming experience that no evidence equals nonexistence, the metaphysical position that god/s don't exist is the much more reasonable one. Neither "for" nor "against" is as strictly reliable as is "no opinion", but "against" is much less a purely contrived position than is "for". And since the implications of "no opinion" are only slightly different than "against", the distinction between "god/s, who knows" and "no god/s" is practically merely academic.
1. It's not the case that confronting people frankly with their delusions is "being an asshole". Letting people yammer on about their superstitions without mentioning they're deluded is the act of an asshole. 2. It's not the case that questioning one's religion is equal to conversion. Nor is entirely stopping following religion a "conversion".
Yours is a false equivalence (and a false claim to inventing an existing word "theophobia" that means something different). There is a very substantial difference between insisting everyone believe in the same imaginary god as you, instead of their own imaginary gods, vs pointing out that any religion is slavery.
First, pointing out that religion is slavery doesn't insist anyone stop believing in it. It does say that religion isn't worth believing in, but it doesn't insist anyone stop.
Second, that's vastly different from the history you mention of killing or forcibly converting all those who believe differently than you do. If religions merely said that competing religions were slavery, and kept the conflict entirely in rhetoric, history would be a lot different than what you recognize.
Third, the real problem with religion is that it actually enslaves, not just deceives. It forces people's actions, not just asserts ideas. That coerced action is completely different from dismissing a belief in words. The dismissal is not backed up with force. And it never has been.
Fourth, lack of belief in a religion is not equivalent to belief in a religion except for the opposite belief. Lack of belief is not equal to belief of a lack. And even the belief in a lack of religion isn't equivalent to belief in a religion. Because religion isn't just metaphysics, where neither truth nor falsity can be proven. Religion is practice, much of which isn't even derived from metaphysics, let alone remains in metaphysics. Most religions make statements about provable and disprovable facts, like the Earth's orbit of the Sun, the evolution of species, people turning water into wine and people flying to heaven. Believing those statements about physical events is foolish, given what we know about physical reality. Not believing them is the only reasonable position. Religion by now should properly claim only metaphysical statements, about contrived abstractions like the soul and tautologies like omnipotent beings. Refusing to judge people's character because for example they have sex with their own gender, or because they eat certain foods, is reasonable. Telling people they're less valuable or respectable on those bases is wrong and should be strongly opposed.
Rejecting religion is evolving mentally past the "evolutionary short circuit" that produced religion in the forms it's always taken. There's no reason to tolerate superstitious people who insult, repress and even exterminate people who don't accept their superstitions. There's room for compassion for those who maintain their own superstitions privately, or at least least without promoting the judgement of non-believers according to those superstitions, the same way there's room for compassion for other mentally defective people who are no harm to anyone.
Religious people don't have to believe what purely reasonable people believe. But until they stop forcing it on others they've earned little but disrespect and strong opposition.
In the USA the Catholic Church and other cults are working hard to prevent health insurers from paying for women's healthcare like contraception, even though that investment reduces payouts for the prevented conditions and reduces the amount the cult churches pay for the insurance. Despite the economics, logic and compassion arguing for the coverage, these cults are obsessed with preventing anyone from "blaspheming", even if the blasphemers aren't part of their cult.
Pakistan is far worse. But it's more a difference of degree than of category compared to the modern USA. Theocrats everywhere have more in common than divides them.
You evidently didn't even really read TFWA you quoted, either:
A colloid is a substance microscopically dispersed evenly throughout another substance.[1]
A colloidal system consists of two separate phases: a dispersed phase (or internal phase) and a continuous phase (or dispersion medium) in which the colloid is dispersed.
It's pretty clear that "the colloid" is the dispersed phase, the internal phase, the substance that is microscopically dispersed evenly throughout the continuous phase, the dispersion medium. They mix colloid into the solution to make a colloidal system.
The bottom of the film could drain into a line that's pumped back to the top of the film. The device would maintain only the top and bottom edges, while the film would form between them. Since they're projecting ultrasound across the film's surface I expect they could run the hydraulics and ultrasonics there, too.
If we could use ultrasound to structure an on-demand horizontal thin film barrier strong enough to resist convective air currents, we might have a really useful energy conservation measure. We could create temporary "drop ceilings" that keep warmed air from rising high above head level to the regular ceiling. The air above the film could be left unconditioned, so a much smaller volume of air would require energy to keep warm. Two films a centimeter apart could very well insulate the boundary. We could do this with a transparent plastic film, but I think a colloidal film could look a lot better than being saran wrapped like leftovers.
But I doubt we can get such a film to span any large area without sagging and bursting. Though maybe if we depressurized the upper volume to match the sag...
The Geysers is the first one, and old. Do you have a link detailing the negative carbon budget typical of geothermal projects initiated since 2005? And if the US ones suck while foreign ones don't, that's not proof against geothermal but against the US.
I love New Orleans, especially for the food. I lived there for years, return every year, and I just got back a week ago.
But I was very pleased with Houston's food. I think it has the most restaurants per capita of any US city (and therefore anyplace in the US) - though it's hard to believe it's more than SF. I found it very easy to get good food of many different varieties. But that was in my hosts' neighborhood and where they go around the city. It's no New Orleans, but noplace else is. I suggest you get a Houston chowhound to show you around. As a New Orleanian you'll appreciate it more than most would.
Tornado zones aren't everywhere, but they will be much more so. Most of the US is at risk of various weather catastrophes, especially floods and droughts/fires. As the climate changes faster than species can adapt, it will all get worse, probably mostly everywhere. The area left for 300-500M people to reliably live in and off of will be far too small.
Not to mention the pressures on America's global economy as hundreds of millions of climate refugees stress their local infrastructure, resource wars escalate beyond borders, and energy gets rationed among those who can afford it as its true costs finally force themselves home.
So? Germany and Denmark also have among the highest gasoline and fuel oil prices. Because their economies actually charge closer to what these energy sources cost.
Unlike in socialist Republican paradise USA, where the government for a century has been wealth transferring from all the proles into the subsidized wallets of the oil/gas/nukes cronies who run the place, keeping fuel prices seeming low by separating the subsidies and costs of damage from the retail price.
Geothermal could replace all the coal/gas/nukes making electricity, and power our vehicles. But because nuke fetishists always insist that "only nukes" this or that, the nukes cronies get all the subsidies and smart alternatives like geothermal languish.
Yes, you're competing with oil, coal, gas and nukes boondoggles for $billions in subsidies every year. Only the really dangerous stuff should get the free handouts.
Geothermal plants can totally replace all US nuke and coal plants within the next 5-10 years, coming online 2-3 years after breaking ground. With another 10 years of research they can probably be deployed practically everywhere in the world.
They generate no emissions, use mostly the same (steam) generating equipment as nukes and coal, are completely sustainable.
Con Ed power is about $0.20:KWh, so an extra $0.02 is a 10% increase. Still pretty hefty, especially on top of the criminally highest electricity rates in the country.
Slashdot Mirror
Pakistan isn't going to promote itself as a regional center in Asia. Eventually its power to cause problems for everyone that's based on its nukes will be circumvented by everyone else's interests that oppose it. The nukes that Reagan helped it get to promote the Star Wars "missile defense" will have run the course of their purpose and they'll be taken away. Iran, India, Russia and China will carve it up, either into actual countries or just markets.
If Pakistan really did promote itself as a regional center in Asia, by cooperative development, it would have a strong future - and maybe also get to keep its nukes. But it's not going to, and the benefits to Iran, India, Russia and China mean it will not be really encouraged to. Pakistan is on a dead end path, which was probably inevitable starting with its violent start as a theocracy over a diverse population. Unless its nukes get used first, in which case it's definitely on a dead end path, even if it takes everyone else down with it.
Criminalizing Holocaust denial is a lazy shortcut. It obviously failed to stop some Germans from being Nazis, since there are still plenty. Meanwhile its abuse of free expression undermines the governments that enforce it.
It's much harder to actually stop nazism, especially in Germany where it has an actual legacy in families. But of course the harder course is necessary. Germany is at fault both for opposing liberty and for failing to snap all Germans out of their interest in one of the most hideous oppositions to liberty.
All religious action except prayer is for political reasons. And even prayer is often for political reasons.
Religion is the politics of metaphysics.
Muslim law recognizes the age of consent starting at 7 years old. So does Christian law, as explained in this article [faqs.org] that cites its sources:
Privileges taken by Mohammed were not common among Muslims, nor are they now, any more than are privileges taken by Christian popes, kings and other lords throughout European history.
Muslim law recognizes the age of consent starting at 7 years old. So does Christian law, as explained in this article that cites its sources:
Then do it already. Instead of jerking off into some Slashdot post while you fantasize about American theocratic talking points.
I'm sure you also insist on having guns "to protect the Constitution", especially since Obama was elected, even though you've done nothing especially since Bush/Cheney were inaugurated despite losing the election. Despite the disapproval of that Jesus would show on the second coming, if it weren't purely superstition.
Your psyche is totally screwed and illogical.
Christianity is about blocking images (pornography) while actual murder and rape of non-Christians (Iraq and any other US war) is seen as fine. Every other religion values symbols more than material welfare in many ways.
It's not the specific religion that matters. It's religion itself. It's a plague on humanity, the opiate and the amphetamine of the masses.
I refer to all gods as equivalent to "the Tooth Fairy". Or sometimes Santa if it doesn't need to be nondenominational, or the Easter Bunny if I'm alluding to the pagan basis of many "Christian" practices.
BTW, the North Sea king "Canute" in the 11th century AD demonstrated the folly of divine omnipotence by showing how he couldn't command the tides. There is no evidence that any metaphysician has ever won any conflict with physics.
No they don't. They are "intro" in the sense that they think only inside their own safe definitions. There's no bible colleges where they teach Creationism instead of evolution, and have honest introspective debates about fossil and experimental evidence of evolution. They don't have honest introspective debates about the history of religions gradually dropping opposition to one or another scientific theory as their superstition became laughable and a net liability. They're not really introspective about their necessary adoption of treating women equally to men, and other races equally to that of their founders, even though they lag behind the overall equitable treatment in society.
Bible colleges stick to dogma and contrived defenses that protect their legacy of beliefs, rather than accept overwhelming force of reality, until their existence (continued enrolment) is at stake. Their debates about competing ideas consists of learning what to say in response to those ideas so as to stick to the old belief. They're word games, fallacies, politics and denial.
Not believing in god/s is indeed not the same as believing there are no god/s. Believing that god/s either exist or don't is a metaphysical, unprovable/untestable position. However, given the total lack of evidence for god/s, and the overwhelming experience that no evidence equals nonexistence, the metaphysical position that god/s don't exist is the much more reasonable one. Neither "for" nor "against" is as strictly reliable as is "no opinion", but "against" is much less a purely contrived position than is "for". And since the implications of "no opinion" are only slightly different than "against", the distinction between "god/s, who knows" and "no god/s" is practically merely academic.
+1
1. It's not the case that confronting people frankly with their delusions is "being an asshole". Letting people yammer on about their superstitions without mentioning they're deluded is the act of an asshole.
2. It's not the case that questioning one's religion is equal to conversion. Nor is entirely stopping following religion a "conversion".
So yours is merely a straw man.
Surprising? Nobody confronted them about any delusion of theirs.
"I'm rubber, you're glue" is not an argument.
Yours is a false equivalence (and a false claim to inventing an existing word "theophobia" that means something different). There is a very substantial difference between insisting everyone believe in the same imaginary god as you, instead of their own imaginary gods, vs pointing out that any religion is slavery.
First, pointing out that religion is slavery doesn't insist anyone stop believing in it. It does say that religion isn't worth believing in, but it doesn't insist anyone stop.
Second, that's vastly different from the history you mention of killing or forcibly converting all those who believe differently than you do. If religions merely said that competing religions were slavery, and kept the conflict entirely in rhetoric, history would be a lot different than what you recognize.
Third, the real problem with religion is that it actually enslaves, not just deceives. It forces people's actions, not just asserts ideas. That coerced action is completely different from dismissing a belief in words. The dismissal is not backed up with force. And it never has been.
Fourth, lack of belief in a religion is not equivalent to belief in a religion except for the opposite belief. Lack of belief is not equal to belief of a lack. And even the belief in a lack of religion isn't equivalent to belief in a religion. Because religion isn't just metaphysics, where neither truth nor falsity can be proven. Religion is practice, much of which isn't even derived from metaphysics, let alone remains in metaphysics. Most religions make statements about provable and disprovable facts, like the Earth's orbit of the Sun, the evolution of species, people turning water into wine and people flying to heaven. Believing those statements about physical events is foolish, given what we know about physical reality. Not believing them is the only reasonable position. Religion by now should properly claim only metaphysical statements, about contrived abstractions like the soul and tautologies like omnipotent beings. Refusing to judge people's character because for example they have sex with their own gender, or because they eat certain foods, is reasonable. Telling people they're less valuable or respectable on those bases is wrong and should be strongly opposed.
Rejecting religion is evolving mentally past the "evolutionary short circuit" that produced religion in the forms it's always taken. There's no reason to tolerate superstitious people who insult, repress and even exterminate people who don't accept their superstitions. There's room for compassion for those who maintain their own superstitions privately, or at least least without promoting the judgement of non-believers according to those superstitions, the same way there's room for compassion for other mentally defective people who are no harm to anyone.
Religious people don't have to believe what purely reasonable people believe. But until they stop forcing it on others they've earned little but disrespect and strong opposition.
In the USA the Catholic Church and other cults are working hard to prevent health insurers from paying for women's healthcare like contraception, even though that investment reduces payouts for the prevented conditions and reduces the amount the cult churches pay for the insurance. Despite the economics, logic and compassion arguing for the coverage, these cults are obsessed with preventing anyone from "blaspheming", even if the blasphemers aren't part of their cult.
Pakistan is far worse. But it's more a difference of degree than of category compared to the modern USA. Theocrats everywhere have more in common than divides them.
You evidently didn't even really read TFWA you quoted, either:
It's pretty clear that "the colloid" is the dispersed phase, the internal phase, the substance that is microscopically dispersed evenly throughout the continuous phase, the dispersion medium. They mix colloid into the solution to make a colloidal system.
The bottom of the film could drain into a line that's pumped back to the top of the film. The device would maintain only the top and bottom edges, while the film would form between them. Since they're projecting ultrasound across the film's surface I expect they could run the hydraulics and ultrasonics there, too.
If we could use ultrasound to structure an on-demand horizontal thin film barrier strong enough to resist convective air currents, we might have a really useful energy conservation measure. We could create temporary "drop ceilings" that keep warmed air from rising high above head level to the regular ceiling. The air above the film could be left unconditioned, so a much smaller volume of air would require energy to keep warm. Two films a centimeter apart could very well insulate the boundary. We could do this with a transparent plastic film, but I think a colloidal film could look a lot better than being saran wrapped like leftovers.
But I doubt we can get such a film to span any large area without sagging and bursting. Though maybe if we depressurized the upper volume to match the sag...
No link. Whatever.
The Geysers is the first one, and old. Do you have a link detailing the negative carbon budget typical of geothermal projects initiated since 2005? And if the US ones suck while foreign ones don't, that's not proof against geothermal but against the US.
I love New Orleans, especially for the food. I lived there for years, return every year, and I just got back a week ago.
But I was very pleased with Houston's food. I think it has the most restaurants per capita of any US city (and therefore anyplace in the US) - though it's hard to believe it's more than SF. I found it very easy to get good food of many different varieties. But that was in my hosts' neighborhood and where they go around the city. It's no New Orleans, but noplace else is. I suggest you get a Houston chowhound to show you around. As a New Orleanian you'll appreciate it more than most would.
Tornado zones aren't everywhere, but they will be much more so. Most of the US is at risk of various weather catastrophes, especially floods and droughts/fires. As the climate changes faster than species can adapt, it will all get worse, probably mostly everywhere. The area left for 300-500M people to reliably live in and off of will be far too small.
Not to mention the pressures on America's global economy as hundreds of millions of climate refugees stress their local infrastructure, resource wars escalate beyond borders, and energy gets rationed among those who can afford it as its true costs finally force themselves home.
So? Germany and Denmark also have among the highest gasoline and fuel oil prices. Because their economies actually charge closer to what these energy sources cost.
Unlike in socialist Republican paradise USA, where the government for a century has been wealth transferring from all the proles into the subsidized wallets of the oil/gas/nukes cronies who run the place, keeping fuel prices seeming low by separating the subsidies and costs of damage from the retail price.
Geothermal could replace all the coal/gas/nukes making electricity, and power our vehicles. But because nuke fetishists always insist that "only nukes" this or that, the nukes cronies get all the subsidies and smart alternatives like geothermal languish.
Yes, you're competing with oil, coal, gas and nukes boondoggles for $billions in subsidies every year. Only the really dangerous stuff should get the free handouts.
Geothermal plants can totally replace all US nuke and coal plants within the next 5-10 years, coming online 2-3 years after breaking ground. With another 10 years of research they can probably be deployed practically everywhere in the world.
They generate no emissions, use mostly the same (steam) generating equipment as nukes and coal, are completely sustainable.
Con Ed power is about $0.20:KWh, so an extra $0.02 is a 10% increase. Still pretty hefty, especially on top of the criminally highest electricity rates in the country.