The thing about "free" markets, is that they don't really exist. Without state intervention, regulation and domination will simply come from within markets. Monopolies, cartels, exclusivity deals that lock out new players, etc. State interference is a small loss of market freedom that prevents vastly greater losses in market freedom. It's no different than personal freedom -- you could try living in a society where the government doesn't intervene at all, but it would take a matter of days for gangs, organized crime, warlords, and other forces to strip your freedom away from you completely. That's why governments are created -- so that the limitations on freedom can be managed and minimized. Doing away with government regulation completely results in vastly greater losses of freedom.
Frankly, I'm shocked that you would think that states should be forbidden to provide services THAT THE FREE MARKET DOESN'T PROVIDE. Small towns can't get high-speed, because no merchants want to provide it. It's not worth it. But if the people of that state feel that they want that service, and are willing to pay for it, what's wrong with them banding together to set that service up themselves? Should construction firms be able to pass laws preventing you and your neighbour from collaborating to build a tool shed that you can then share? A state is no different from you and neighbour working together -- it simply occurs at a larger scale.
Finally, state-run businesses don't necessarily interfere with the functioning of competitors. Frequently, governments will create an organization to supply some service that the free market doesn't provide, and then once it has been established, they split it up and sell it off to merchants who are willing to run these services now that they've been established and proven.
Socialism vs Capitalism isn't a one-or-the-other choice. There are productive balances that can be achieved between total government management of everything and slavery to an oligarchy of industrialists.
But seriously -- how do YOU think small towns should get services like broadband, water-purification plants, sewer systems, and whatnot?
Lastly -- "neoliberal Senators who think that minimum wage laws protect the freedoms of workers"?! You sir, are officially a retard. Neoliberalism is exactly the opposite of that. Neoliberalism is the philosophy that YOU are endorsing in your post -- that of total deregulation. Sorry man, but you're a neoliberal. I know, I know, anything associated with the word "liberal" is automatically evil because of that association with freedom, but deal with it.
Lend-lease was certainly a very important factor in the Allied victory, but that too was simply self-preservation. And like any other factor, it is -- at best -- simply a very significant one. England did receive substantial amounts of supply from the rest of the commonwealth. Allied shipping may not have been safe -- German submarines were certainly a serious issue throughout most of the war. But notice how Germany had no marine vehicles in the Atlantic, and successfully kept operation SeaLion nothing more than a delusional fantasy? My saying they controlled the Atlantic doesn't imply that it was completely safe; but Germany's supply problems were definitely worse. Limited food, desperately little oil, no natural rubber -- Germans were definitely living the scanty life, even before the war. The English were comparitively well off.
As for World War I, Germanies chances of being able to ever invade England were zero. In no war was combat EVER more seriously skewed in favour of defence -- and that makes islands veritable fortresses. At that point, England could have held off an invasion from the entire world combined (not that this is a unique attribute -- imagine how ghastly a land invasion of Japan in WW2 would have been, look how badly the pseudo-invasion of Cuba went, and the phrase "fortress North America" isn't just tossed around for giggles). Their economy, of course, almost certainly WOULD have been crushed. War sucks that way. That's the difference between being mutual losers and maybe being not quite as much of a loser when all is said and done. But they were never in danger of being invaded. Germany couldn't get any marine action in that war either. Britain was just too damn powerful navally, and is a great nation to fight air-battles over (since when you eject, you land in friendly territory, while if your foe ejects, he gets to spend the next decade in the furthest regions of the North West Territories enjoying Canadian hospitality while fighting off polar bears and rabid walruses).
Yeah, but then you'll just buy a lawnba mower robot and it'll be all good. With the new super-realistic love dolls and high-wattage white-noise machines, women are practically irrelevant; now that robots can do chores and computers can waste time and fail consistently, we can dispense with children! All we need now are some quality bots for our multiplayer games that are capable of drinking our beer and spilling chips on our floors, and we'll never need to interact socially ever again!
It is starting to look more and more like maybe Jack Thompson is some kind of plant. It's not unlike the theory that the Westborough Baptist Church was actually founded to raise sympathy for homosexuals -- they're so ridiculously over-the-top that it gets easier and easier to hang on to the suspiscion that they're not for real.
Oh, never underestimate the power of social "progressives" to find things to despise about videogames. And I'd wager this will pass beneath the notice of many social conservatives, who these days tend to only notice things that come in the form of movies or television. Videogames are assumed to be inherently evil, like music or books.
Remarkably, it does seem to be the "left" that focuses on tearing down videogames... which is just silly, if you think about it. Liberalism is supposed to emphasize being liberal, no matter whether the issue is gay rights or violent videogames, birth-control or gun ownership, pornography or hate speech (not that I'm suggesting conservatives endorse hate-propaganda; they just seem a bit more likely to consider it a form of protected speech).
Care to clarify that remark? Are you suggesting that IRA members are willing to die to take out their enemies but fail to make a difference, or that they're not willing to die but make a difference anyway? I don't recall any tales of IRA suicide bombings, but they did make at least a small difference. But I'm talking about government-crushing, revolution-enabling violence. The kind that Iraqi insurgents are employing now, that the Taliban used against the Soviets (and has generally failed to employ against NATO this time, now that the Afghan people have an option better than communism and psycho-relgious-extremism). The kind that drove the Nazis out of Yugoslavia, and made their invasion of Greece such a disastrous mistake that it ruined their entire plan for the remainder of the war.
It makes perfect sense though. The Army, Navy, and Air Force are all basically under the thumb of the feds. The national guard, on the other hand, is state run, and there's a pale, shabby, outside chance that national guards members would defend their state. So, if you want to sieze total power, you need to send the national guard away to die somewhere, and keep the federal forces at home to quell dissent.
You know that England was never particularly at risk in either world war, right? In WW2, England's worst prospect by the time America was attacked was having to make peace with Germany. They had won the Battle of Britain, they controlled the Atlantic, and were being well-supplied by Australia, Canada, and other assorted allies. In WW1, the worst that could possibly have happened is that France might have lost some territory.
America participated in the World Wars BECAUSE AMERICA WAS ATTACKED. WW1, Germany sank American civilian ships and tried to incite Mexico to invade America (you'll note that Mexicans, being sane, refused). WW2, Japan bombed Pearl Harbour and Germany began sinking civilian ships... again. America joined the World Wars strictly in self-defense. There was no altruism about it, they weren't trying to save anything other than their own asses.
It works for the Iraqis because they're willing to die to take out their enemies. How many Americans are willing to die for anything The few that actually have that level of dedication are in the military, and have already been trained to support the government and obery orders no matter how evil and fascist its dictates.
If even a few million Americans would be willing to die to take out military assets and politicians, the tyrant-government wouldn't stand a chance. A few million people with rifles and shotguns, taking potshots at anyone with a shred of authority? A terrifying notion. And America's advanced industrial and chemical industries mean that it's not at all difficult for people to get the materials necessary to make IEDs, rockets, and hell, maybe even some auto-turrets and other things that you just don't see on battlefields yet. A trip to Home Depot would be enough to equip someone with the tools necessary to make life hell for the government -- if that person is willing to die in the process.
If it makes you feel any better, countries WITHOUT freespeech have much more serious problems with wackjobs -- because the wackjobs tend to be the ones controlling the speech, and no one has the right to publically contradict those wackjobs that are down with the feds.
Bush the Second. He's fucked Mexico regarding free trade, and fucked Canada regarding free trade -- despite America having pushed for both those deals. Has Bush created any new free trade deals? Has he cut any tariffs, duties, or other trade barriers? Has he terminated subsidies to any types of business whatsoever?
Bush's government is operating at the economic level of 15th century barons -- trying to restrict any goods from entering the country so that a small number of incompetent farmers and primitive inefficient factory owners wont go out of business when faced with competition from countries where people take modern economics and globalism seriously.
Clinton cut the BEAURACRACY. Any military cuts are something completely different, and you're deliberately confusing the issue because you hate the fact that Clinton was a better conservative than Bush. He trimmed the beauracracy, fired lots of people in DC, and got rid of at least a bit of the waste in the government. And whether or not one agrees with the reasons for Bush enlarging the beauracracy, he did do it, making him a big-government pork-barrel fuck.
Republicans, favouring small business?! That's appallingly ludicrous. They favour BIG business. Notice how they've supported corporate consolidation at every turn? Notice how they've opposed free trade at every turn? Notice how taxes for small businesses and the lower classes (who spend money at local small businesses) haven't changed?
Conservatives support small business. Conservatives favour trade. Conservatives cut taxes. Republicans do exactly the opposite. Face it -- Republicans are fascists, Democrats are... something (I'm not quite sure what, but it sure ain't liberal OR conservative). Any conservative who votes for the republicans is too stupid to qualify as an adult as is any liberal who votes democrat. They may talk the talk, but they certainly don't walk the walk. Neither party does anything even remotely liberal OR conservative. Neither party is increasing freedom and human dignity (the traditional liberal values), and neither party is trying to reduce government meddling in peoples' lives (the traditional conservative values). Both meddle, interfere, and hinder. Both treat people like scum.
Let's summarize:
If you vote Republican, you are a drooling retard. If you vote Democrat, you are a drooling retard. In fact, if you vote for anyone that doesn't actually live up to the values they endorse, you need to be sent to live in the schizo ward of a psych hospital for a while to teach you value of rational thought.
So why did the Clinton government shrink the beauracracy, and the Bush government enlarge it? Is the DH not part of the government, and therefore not contribute to bigness? Why do Republicans favour military spending to create jobs for the lower class? Is that not a way of redistributing wealth from the affluent to people that would be otherwise unemployed? I suppose the GOP are actually the "modern liberals" of which you speak?
Well, lets make an analogy. At one point, there was a major problem with kids abusing stimulants (it's still pretty bad). As long as people just sat around moralizing about it like assholes, nothing changed. Once it was pointed out that if you drop by the local health food store and ask for a "weight-loss aid", they'd hand you a bottle of pseudoephedrine, people actually got serious about making a change -- banning the sale of pure pseudoephedrine. And now that it has been pointed out that all you need is some red phosphorous, iodine, cold medication, and a few other things, and you can make crystal meth, legislation is on the way to regulate those things more strongly.
Sometimes, pointing out exactly how easy it is to commit some crime is what's needed to get authorities to start taking that crime seriously. Perhaps, when -- on election night -- thousands of dumb people get arrested trying to tamper with voting machines after reading this and the elections end up being completely botched and the nation on the verge of civil war over the results, the public will finally have the sense to resolve this issue.
Screw the market, bunch of bastards. The sooner diamonds become nearly-worthless, the sooner we can start making cell-phone microchips and eye-gougers out of them.
You're aware that terrorism kills fewer Americans than autoerotic asphyxiation, right? Fewer people than food poisoning. That more Americans die every year in preventible automobile accidents that were caused by someone else, than have been killed by terrorism in all of American history?
Seriously -- if you want to kill people who crashes things into our assets, you should set up a road block and put a bullet in the brain of any driver that smells of alcohol or pot, is holding a cell phone, or is older than 70.
Hell, you could protect yourself much more effectively by slipping a plastic bag over the head of anyone who comes to work with the flu, and suffocating them before they can spread their disease. The flu kills far, far more people than terrorism, and people coming to work while sick is one of the biggest vectors by which the flu spread.
If you love freedom, and label THE GOVERNMENT as bad for doing things that are illegal and unconstitutional, you get modded up. Plus, you get the extra joy of knowing that you're not a cowardly traitor.
The fact that you can't tell the difference between America and the GOP is sad and pathetic. The fact that you can't tell the difference between someone making a joke and someone making a serious claim is sad, although tragically common. Are you really surprised when someone making a political joke gets modded up, and someone not getting that joke is modded down?
Wow, I thought the taxation issue was dead... but here we are.
Canadian taxes average to 40% of earned income, American taxes 30%. Seems like a big difference, until you note that Americans get piss all of their money. Shitty schools, no health care, prisons that are basically slave labour camps, universities that only the ultra-wealthy and a few token geniuses on scholarships can attend, ghettos, etc. In terms of actually getting value for one's tax dollars, we're so far ahead of Americans that I'm surprised they're willing to show their faces in public. Seriously -- we're talking about a country where pork-barrel projects are standard operating procedure (something like 80% of NASA's budget is "earmarked" for make-work projects...) A country where there are two national healthcare programs and a drug program that all together cost about a trillion dollars yearly and manage to help a grand total of zero people. A country that spends more on its military than the GNPs of most of the world's nations combined, and yet can't afford to pay its crippled veterans' pensions.
Seriously, the next one of my fellow Canadians I see whining about taxes is going to get a ballpoint pen through the eye. Then I'll dare them to stand up for their belief in how bad taxes are by NOT suckling off our healthcare system, police force, surprisingly costly legal system, or disability programs (assuming they're slow and I manage to tag the other eye as well).
It's EXACTLY the rotation of the earth that holds it up. It's like swinging a rock on a string around your head. The only difference is that the hypothetical rock will be help in its circular path by the balance of the string's tension against the centripetal acceleration, whereas the space elevator is held in place by the balance of the string's tension AND gravity against the centripetal acceleration.
I'm not sure you quite understand how this works -- space elevators have absolutely NOTHING to do with orbiting. If the tether is pulled towards earth by its payload, if it loses some velocity as momentum is transferred to the payload, it immediately re-extends and accelerates back to the full angular velocity of the earth. That's the whole point of this: the tether is tied to the planet, so it's the planet that loses a small amount of angular momentum and gets pushed away from the payload.
Nice try though. Read a physics book, look up the chapter on rotational kinematics. Note how things can spin and stay extended without having to be in a gravitational orbit.
Well, those at or near the bottom can always think that they have some dominance. Klan members probably think they're right up there, despite being sad and pathetic and trivial even by the lofty standards of hate groups. In any case though, we're definitely entering an era where it's going to be much harder to maintain racist, anti-feminist, and christian-only ideas of dominance -- at least here in the West. Canada briefly has had a female prime minister and a gay MP, and has a very Sikh MP. The US has an extremely successful and internationally popular member of government who is black and female -- possibly the only member of her government that wouldn't be spit on if she were to make a casual visit to another country. And her predecessor was also quite black. Actually, Bush's cabinet is rather striking in its multicultural makeup. Certainly one are in which that administration has been progressive -- rather than simply talking about equal opportunities and passing silly laws, they've actually provided equal opportunities.
I call bullshit on this. If you were genuinely good at math, you'd know that a few exceptions are NOT enough to disprove a correlation, and that a correlation between high mathematics skill and low social skills does NOT imply that one is a guarantor of the other or vice versa. Therefore I conclude that you are either bad at math, or are the single math expert on the planet that did NOT learn anything about statistics.
Thanks for playing though. What kind of day would it be without some quality bullshit from one of those people that just get pissy about every piece of social research that doesn't perfectly match their worldview?
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Frankly, I'm shocked that you would think that states should be forbidden to provide services THAT THE FREE MARKET DOESN'T PROVIDE. Small towns can't get high-speed, because no merchants want to provide it. It's not worth it. But if the people of that state feel that they want that service, and are willing to pay for it, what's wrong with them banding together to set that service up themselves? Should construction firms be able to pass laws preventing you and your neighbour from collaborating to build a tool shed that you can then share? A state is no different from you and neighbour working together -- it simply occurs at a larger scale.
Finally, state-run businesses don't necessarily interfere with the functioning of competitors. Frequently, governments will create an organization to supply some service that the free market doesn't provide, and then once it has been established, they split it up and sell it off to merchants who are willing to run these services now that they've been established and proven.
Socialism vs Capitalism isn't a one-or-the-other choice. There are productive balances that can be achieved between total government management of everything and slavery to an oligarchy of industrialists.
But seriously -- how do YOU think small towns should get services like broadband, water-purification plants, sewer systems, and whatnot?
Lastly -- "neoliberal Senators who think that minimum wage laws protect the freedoms of workers"?! You sir, are officially a retard. Neoliberalism is exactly the opposite of that. Neoliberalism is the philosophy that YOU are endorsing in your post -- that of total deregulation. Sorry man, but you're a neoliberal. I know, I know, anything associated with the word "liberal" is automatically evil because of that association with freedom, but deal with it.
As for World War I, Germanies chances of being able to ever invade England were zero. In no war was combat EVER more seriously skewed in favour of defence -- and that makes islands veritable fortresses. At that point, England could have held off an invasion from the entire world combined (not that this is a unique attribute -- imagine how ghastly a land invasion of Japan in WW2 would have been, look how badly the pseudo-invasion of Cuba went, and the phrase "fortress North America" isn't just tossed around for giggles). Their economy, of course, almost certainly WOULD have been crushed. War sucks that way. That's the difference between being mutual losers and maybe being not quite as much of a loser when all is said and done. But they were never in danger of being invaded. Germany couldn't get any marine action in that war either. Britain was just too damn powerful navally, and is a great nation to fight air-battles over (since when you eject, you land in friendly territory, while if your foe ejects, he gets to spend the next decade in the furthest regions of the North West Territories enjoying Canadian hospitality while fighting off polar bears and rabid walruses).
Yeah, but then you'll just buy a lawnba mower robot and it'll be all good. With the new super-realistic love dolls and high-wattage white-noise machines, women are practically irrelevant; now that robots can do chores and computers can waste time and fail consistently, we can dispense with children! All we need now are some quality bots for our multiplayer games that are capable of drinking our beer and spilling chips on our floors, and we'll never need to interact socially ever again!
It is starting to look more and more like maybe Jack Thompson is some kind of plant. It's not unlike the theory that the Westborough Baptist Church was actually founded to raise sympathy for homosexuals -- they're so ridiculously over-the-top that it gets easier and easier to hang on to the suspiscion that they're not for real.
Remarkably, it does seem to be the "left" that focuses on tearing down videogames ... which is just silly, if you think about it. Liberalism is supposed to emphasize being liberal, no matter whether the issue is gay rights or violent videogames, birth-control or gun ownership, pornography or hate speech (not that I'm suggesting conservatives endorse hate-propaganda; they just seem a bit more likely to consider it a form of protected speech).
Care to clarify that remark? Are you suggesting that IRA members are willing to die to take out their enemies but fail to make a difference, or that they're not willing to die but make a difference anyway? I don't recall any tales of IRA suicide bombings, but they did make at least a small difference. But I'm talking about government-crushing, revolution-enabling violence. The kind that Iraqi insurgents are employing now, that the Taliban used against the Soviets (and has generally failed to employ against NATO this time, now that the Afghan people have an option better than communism and psycho-relgious-extremism). The kind that drove the Nazis out of Yugoslavia, and made their invasion of Greece such a disastrous mistake that it ruined their entire plan for the remainder of the war.
It makes perfect sense though. The Army, Navy, and Air Force are all basically under the thumb of the feds. The national guard, on the other hand, is state run, and there's a pale, shabby, outside chance that national guards members would defend their state. So, if you want to sieze total power, you need to send the national guard away to die somewhere, and keep the federal forces at home to quell dissent.
America participated in the World Wars BECAUSE AMERICA WAS ATTACKED. WW1, Germany sank American civilian ships and tried to incite Mexico to invade America (you'll note that Mexicans, being sane, refused). WW2, Japan bombed Pearl Harbour and Germany began sinking civilian ships ... again. America joined the World Wars strictly in self-defense. There was no altruism about it, they weren't trying to save anything other than their own asses.
If even a few million Americans would be willing to die to take out military assets and politicians, the tyrant-government wouldn't stand a chance. A few million people with rifles and shotguns, taking potshots at anyone with a shred of authority? A terrifying notion. And America's advanced industrial and chemical industries mean that it's not at all difficult for people to get the materials necessary to make IEDs, rockets, and hell, maybe even some auto-turrets and other things that you just don't see on battlefields yet. A trip to Home Depot would be enough to equip someone with the tools necessary to make life hell for the government -- if that person is willing to die in the process.
If it makes you feel any better, countries WITHOUT freespeech have much more serious problems with wackjobs -- because the wackjobs tend to be the ones controlling the speech, and no one has the right to publically contradict those wackjobs that are down with the feds.
Bush's government is operating at the economic level of 15th century barons -- trying to restrict any goods from entering the country so that a small number of incompetent farmers and primitive inefficient factory owners wont go out of business when faced with competition from countries where people take modern economics and globalism seriously.
Republicans, favouring small business?! That's appallingly ludicrous. They favour BIG business. Notice how they've supported corporate consolidation at every turn? Notice how they've opposed free trade at every turn? Notice how taxes for small businesses and the lower classes (who spend money at local small businesses) haven't changed?
Conservatives support small business. Conservatives favour trade. Conservatives cut taxes. Republicans do exactly the opposite. Face it -- Republicans are fascists, Democrats are ... something (I'm not quite sure what, but it sure ain't liberal OR conservative). Any conservative who votes for the republicans is too stupid to qualify as an adult as is any liberal who votes democrat. They may talk the talk, but they certainly don't walk the walk. Neither party does anything even remotely liberal OR conservative. Neither party is increasing freedom and human dignity (the traditional liberal values), and neither party is trying to reduce government meddling in peoples' lives (the traditional conservative values). Both meddle, interfere, and hinder. Both treat people like scum.
Let's summarize:
If you vote Republican, you are a drooling retard. If you vote Democrat, you are a drooling retard. In fact, if you vote for anyone that doesn't actually live up to the values they endorse, you need to be sent to live in the schizo ward of a psych hospital for a while to teach you value of rational thought.
So why did the Clinton government shrink the beauracracy, and the Bush government enlarge it? Is the DH not part of the government, and therefore not contribute to bigness? Why do Republicans favour military spending to create jobs for the lower class? Is that not a way of redistributing wealth from the affluent to people that would be otherwise unemployed? I suppose the GOP are actually the "modern liberals" of which you speak?
Well, lets make an analogy. At one point, there was a major problem with kids abusing stimulants (it's still pretty bad). As long as people just sat around moralizing about it like assholes, nothing changed. Once it was pointed out that if you drop by the local health food store and ask for a "weight-loss aid", they'd hand you a bottle of pseudoephedrine, people actually got serious about making a change -- banning the sale of pure pseudoephedrine. And now that it has been pointed out that all you need is some red phosphorous, iodine, cold medication, and a few other things, and you can make crystal meth, legislation is on the way to regulate those things more strongly.
Sometimes, pointing out exactly how easy it is to commit some crime is what's needed to get authorities to start taking that crime seriously. Perhaps, when -- on election night -- thousands of dumb people get arrested trying to tamper with voting machines after reading this and the elections end up being completely botched and the nation on the verge of civil war over the results, the public will finally have the sense to resolve this issue.Screw the market, bunch of bastards. The sooner diamonds become nearly-worthless, the sooner we can start making cell-phone microchips and eye-gougers out of them.
You're aware that terrorism kills fewer Americans than autoerotic asphyxiation, right? Fewer people than food poisoning. That more Americans die every year in preventible automobile accidents that were caused by someone else, than have been killed by terrorism in all of American history?
Seriously -- if you want to kill people who crashes things into our assets, you should set up a road block and put a bullet in the brain of any driver that smells of alcohol or pot, is holding a cell phone, or is older than 70.
Hell, you could protect yourself much more effectively by slipping a plastic bag over the head of anyone who comes to work with the flu, and suffocating them before they can spread their disease. The flu kills far, far more people than terrorism, and people coming to work while sick is one of the biggest vectors by which the flu spread.
If you love freedom, and label THE GOVERNMENT as bad for doing things that are illegal and unconstitutional, you get modded up. Plus, you get the extra joy of knowing that you're not a cowardly traitor.
The fact that you can't tell the difference between America and the GOP is sad and pathetic. The fact that you can't tell the difference between someone making a joke and someone making a serious claim is sad, although tragically common. Are you really surprised when someone making a political joke gets modded up, and someone not getting that joke is modded down?
Canadian taxes average to 40% of earned income, American taxes 30%. Seems like a big difference, until you note that Americans get piss all of their money. Shitty schools, no health care, prisons that are basically slave labour camps, universities that only the ultra-wealthy and a few token geniuses on scholarships can attend, ghettos, etc. In terms of actually getting value for one's tax dollars, we're so far ahead of Americans that I'm surprised they're willing to show their faces in public. Seriously -- we're talking about a country where pork-barrel projects are standard operating procedure (something like 80% of NASA's budget is "earmarked" for make-work projects...) A country where there are two national healthcare programs and a drug program that all together cost about a trillion dollars yearly and manage to help a grand total of zero people. A country that spends more on its military than the GNPs of most of the world's nations combined, and yet can't afford to pay its crippled veterans' pensions.
Seriously, the next one of my fellow Canadians I see whining about taxes is going to get a ballpoint pen through the eye. Then I'll dare them to stand up for their belief in how bad taxes are by NOT suckling off our healthcare system, police force, surprisingly costly legal system, or disability programs (assuming they're slow and I manage to tag the other eye as well).
It's EXACTLY the rotation of the earth that holds it up. It's like swinging a rock on a string around your head. The only difference is that the hypothetical rock will be help in its circular path by the balance of the string's tension against the centripetal acceleration, whereas the space elevator is held in place by the balance of the string's tension AND gravity against the centripetal acceleration.
Nice try though. Read a physics book, look up the chapter on rotational kinematics. Note how things can spin and stay extended without having to be in a gravitational orbit.
This is a good point, which is why purists often refer to these devices as "Beanstalks".
Well, those at or near the bottom can always think that they have some dominance. Klan members probably think they're right up there, despite being sad and pathetic and trivial even by the lofty standards of hate groups. In any case though, we're definitely entering an era where it's going to be much harder to maintain racist, anti-feminist, and christian-only ideas of dominance -- at least here in the West. Canada briefly has had a female prime minister and a gay MP, and has a very Sikh MP. The US has an extremely successful and internationally popular member of government who is black and female -- possibly the only member of her government that wouldn't be spit on if she were to make a casual visit to another country. And her predecessor was also quite black. Actually, Bush's cabinet is rather striking in its multicultural makeup. Certainly one are in which that administration has been progressive -- rather than simply talking about equal opportunities and passing silly laws, they've actually provided equal opportunities.
It's good that you realize that I assume you're idiot. It shows that you at least possess minor powers of inference.
Thanks for playing though. What kind of day would it be without some quality bullshit from one of those people that just get pissy about every piece of social research that doesn't perfectly match their worldview?