rliant1864

Well of course they're not going to give grant money to some not even educated in the subject.

Not that they were entirely wrong. While Nikola's wireless transfer does work, it's incredibly inefficient, and doesn't have much range either. Your basic copper cord can carry that current a lot farther with less loss, which is why we still use them. Other things Nikola invented that actually did have practical benefits have been adopted. Alternating Current power, for instance. Of course, it's silly to think that scientists cover up things for silly reasons. Showing even the slightest viability in a concept in a hot field like world energy is the easy path to lots of grant money. And they do love grant money. As for nuclear, the opposition is pretty silly. Modern reactors are incredibly safe. Spent fuel is of some concern, but we have more than enough nowheres on Earth to store all the spent uranium that could ever exist on Earth. And at the rate of tech growth we have, we'll surely be able to safely launch that fuel into the sun or otherwise obliterate it far before it reaches a naturally non-radiated state.

I would say that few renewable projects are cash grabs. Most endeavors in that field make little money. I suppose it could be seen as a grant grab for research, but not much of a corporate grab. I think hydrogen is most likely for vehicle fuel. It's a reversable equation and doesn't take terribly much energy to produce from water, and becomes water again upon combustion. In turn that production will be fed power from equally renewable but far less portable sources such as nuclear fission, fusion, and geothermal.

For the same amount of money and effort we'd get a much more efficient reward from alternative energy research. I mean, we could technically take organic rubbish and crush it manually into hydrocarbons but that kind of money could put hydrogen infrastructure everywhere.

Socialized medicine mostly isn't about faster or better. It's about how your brother wouldn't be paying a 500k bill right now because he made the poor choice of not simply dying.

Nope. Only an attack helicopter.

Oh, I had a circle of toxic relationships in high school. The problem was that the toxic person was me.

Indeed.

You're welcome to your opinion, but you might want to reconsider the 'conspiracy kook' idea you have. I have been gently hinting at quite a few government activities over the years, and many of them are starting to come to light. (example: the firmware-based virus from Equation Group being used as a spy tool) If I started believing any guy on the internet who's convinced he's got the dirt on the government, then I'd have to bash my head with a meat hammer for disqualifying myself from brain usage.

Holy fuck you really are a troll. FEMA camps and feds, oh my!

You're joking right? That provision of the NDAA was all over the news when it was first added in 2012. Also good to know you're not really in favor of the "United" part of the United States. That's sedition.

I honestly can't tell if you're serious or not. You're every conservative's wet dream, you're fitting their caricature perfectly.

Since the global economy is very interconnected, it'd probably be more realistic to be concerned about potential environmental damage if the Keystone Pipeline were to leak at some point along its span than to try to argue that shipping crude won't benefit us at least a little bit. Trump really is the worst candidate right now. While I think the other Republicans have the wrong ideas about things, they at least understand some of how the world works (most of them totally ignorant on at least one favorite topic or another), where Trump doesn't seem to know anything about anything.

I know I exaggerate a bit, but I do see things quite differently than most people due to people I know that have worked/do work with classified information on a daily basis, and share that info with me. Unfortunately I can't share their names, (or even specific details about the info I get) as that would result in serious negative repercussions for them. (this tends to make certain people on this forum foam at the mouth when I voice my views) ...Sure ya do, bud.

Both your views are equally extreme, I hope you both recognize that.

And yet, he'd still end up being 1000x better than Obama. I'm bored. What'd he do wrong?

I'd love to give, but sadly as a college student I won't have any money for at least 5 more years. I really hope people who can donate do, I know I would. Also, Ross, have you considered taking up a career in mugging? If you combined that hair with a leather jacket and a whole bunch of metal doo-dads you could easily be a street thug from an '80s scifi film.

Essay

It's not that prison isn't harsh or long enough, it's that there's a fundamental difference between our psychology and a rapist's. One of the biggest trends amongst rapists is a very low ability to exercise self control, and they're often impulsive. No amount of prison time is going to fix that. Increasing prison time for rapists would be about as useful as throwing the schizophrenics in prison like they did 200 years ago. For crimes mostly caused by psych problems like that, rehabilitation is the best way to ethically reduce repeat offenders. That's not to say they're under house arrest or any of that implied nonsense, they're still imprisoned during their stay in these already existing, but rare, facilities. The only people who should be in real prison (22 hours in their cell, 1 in the cafeteria, 1 in the yard) are those that absolutely cannot be helped or refuse to be helped. Besides, if we're executing rapists because some cannot be treated successful then we must execute all criminals, given that between 60 and 80% of convicted criminals will return to prison with several years of release. Anything else would be a double standard.

Well, we've been predicting population crises for nearly 150 years now. Every single time we've further increase food production either by method or technology. It's been a pretty steady trend. Right now we've got enough food for 10 billion people, though much of the excess goes to animal feed and biofuels. With genetic modification we could be looking at double or triple that in a few decades. Not to mention that while you can't get far from a human settlement, much of the Earth's surface still has no human structures or food growing on it. If so inclined, we could easily set up massive greenhouses for wheat and corn in Siberia.

You need to stay very very far from power. >You miss a very unpredictable factor. It's human nature. No treatment, mind blockade or any other methods will work. Nothing will be able to change a mindset of a rapist, pedophile, maniac or any other "person" with issues this bad. They are BORN this way and they just can't help it. But to take care of this problem we need either lock them up in the darkest, deepest pit there is or rid the world of them. I guess we should shut down all psychiatric facilities and replace them with execution chambers. I seem to remember a certain someone who was big on that sort of thing... We can treat these people, help them fight against their compulsions. Those that cannot be helped, and have acted, should be locked away to protect society but those who can be helped should be. There's an entire science to this, one improving every year. But if you think there's human life out there that doesn't deserve treatment, or even to continue living, and that that decision can be made from your computer chair then there's little I can to sway to. Only hope that you never encounter any real power in life, lest we have yet another eugenics craze.

Rehabilitation is very important. Castrations, revenge killing? What is this, the fucking the Dark Ages? We're better than that, and so are our psychological treatments.

Job hunts are pretty much magic. You realize that around the time you see Art students in management and notice that there ARE unemployed engineers out there. You can do everything you can, go into a hard field with a million jobs and be just as fucked as the stats said the other guy should be. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ That's why I chose the MPA. With a degree specific enough for work but general enough for anything Public Sector, depending on where I apply I have a strong chance to be either person in that equation. A third of the Federal workforce retiring in the next 10 years helps too...

It was going to happen either way. Nobody could build a stable Iraqi government. A dictatorship, Saddam style, could probably do it but nobody's going to set that up, it would be a disaster back home. In the end the question is, do we pull out now as we agreed to years ago, or do we stay there another 20 years and let the Afghani government fall when we pull out then instead? May as well go like we agreed, not like it'll have gotten any more stable in the meantime.

This is completely true on a scientific level, actually. Pedophilia is a psychosexual disorder, not just something one goes and does out of choice. If you stuck a baby born with it on an island by itself to live for 25 years and then brought it back to the mainland it would still be just as attracted to children. Anyone who thinks pedophilia is new and caused by or worsened by modern media is just a complete fool.