Authors who write stories that revolve around politics/war/etc probably spend more time thinking about the what if ramifications of policy and laws on society than most politicians. Most of them go back into history books to try to put believable governments in based on history and the technology at the times.

Historians would probably be a pretty interesting group to hear from in regards to how voting and disenfranchisement were controlled through policies/actions. If they had a speaker similar to DeGrasse who could speak on it and put some life into it.

and, if you will bear with my nuttiness and take a logical leap with me:

at the heart of climate change is a psychological issue: an entire species that acts as if the world revolves around them. each unique little special snowflake.

if you are teaching your kids this, you are perpetuating the problem.

How stable are the nodes if you keep it at one of the resonant frequencies that made the "starfish" type patterns? It looked to me like it would create a revolving wave around the circumference that would be stable, but it would be really cool if it would stay like that without revolving at some particular frequency.

To continue this lesson, it is important to note that most bomb technology doesn't use enriched uranium alone. The other key material compound is plutonium. For all intents and purposes, all plutonium is man made (with only traces of 244 found in nature, of which is completely unsuitable for weapons..Pu244). Plutonium is usually needed in a bomb because of its much lower critical mass. This lower mass makes bomb fabrication easier, but that creation of plutonium is by no means trivial.

You need huge facilities, dedicated to the sole purpose of uranium exposure. Like the video mentions, normal uranium is mostly U238, this junk gains value in the creation of plutonium. Weapons grade plutonium is a special isotope of plutonium, Pu239. This need is very specific, the different isotopes of Pu can have so very serious implications for bombs. Lets go over them as we as we go over how uranium is exposed to make this very special isotope

First, we start off with U238...the fuel stock. This isotope is bombarded with neutrons. These neutrons are occasionally absorbed by the uranium, turning it into U239. U239 is highly unstable, and quickly decays (in 23.45 minutes) to neptunium 239. This will in turn, decay into Pu239 (in about 2.3 days). Sounds easy, right? Not exactly, neutron absorption isn't something you can control with ease. What I mean is, there is little to stop our Neptunium or Plutonium from absorbing neutrons any more or less than the Uranium (in fact, their absorption cross sections are typically much larger...they are more hungry of neutrons than uranium in other words). When this undesired absorption happens, the neptunium and plutonium eventually becomes Pu240...and that is a big problem.

Plutonium Pu240 is HIGHLY undesirable in a bomb. Pu240 is a medium lived isotope of Plutonium, meaning it decays pretty quick, but it is HOW it decays that is the problem. Pu240 often decays by spontaneous fission. Having spontaneous fission in your fission bomb is just as undesirable as it sounds. Firstly, all even number isotopes are poor fission candidates, so for every even number isotope in your bomb, that lowers the bombs over all yield (because they prefer to fission themselves, and for very little return energy). This is further complicated by high densities of Pu240 causing your bomb to prematurely detonate, ya...bad news. The levels of Pu240 represent yet another challenge in the level of heat they generate from their rather quick decay, though, considering the previous 2 issues, this one is less problematic, though still troublesome. And lastly, there is nothing stopping our Pu240 from absorbing yet another neutron causing yet another isotope of plutonium to arises, namely Pu241.

Pu241, being an odd numbered isotope heavier than lead makes it a rather good subject to undergo fission. It doesn't have the same set of problems as Pu241, but it rapidly decays (14 years) into Americium 241, which is not fissile, and has a halflife of 432 years. These factors add large amounts of heat to the bomb, and reduce overall yield, as well as detract from critical mass.

The solution for this is a very low tech, time consuming, laborious process with produces tons of waste and very little plutonium. One has to expose small blocks of uranium to neutrons under a very brief window. The brief window decreases the chances of undesired neutron absorption and negates much (but not all!) of the heavier forms of plutonium being created. After exposure, they are left to decay, then after a few months, are chemically processed to remove any plutonium and other undesirables (this is also very very hard, and I won't even go into how this is done), then re-exposed. This yields gram(s) at a time. To make a weapons, you need 10 killos, at least...for one bomb...if everything went great. This means you need HUGE facilities, HUGE staff, and HUGE uranium resources. Your facility would be obvious and serve no other purpose, use tons of energy, and pile up radioactive waste of the kind no one wants, heavier than uranium wastes...the worse of the worst. No such facility could exist alongside some traditional uranium facility and not be noticed, period, end of story, done.

We haven't even covered bomb making problems, of which killed some of our top minds in our own bomb program. A set of incidents revolving around a specific bomb type, after taking 2 lives, was dubbed the Demon core. These are the reasons over half the budget of the DOD gets soaked up in nuclear weapons, and we haven't even covered some of the more important aspects (like delivery systems, one simply doesn't walk into Mordor). Nuclear weapons are hugely expensive, hugely conspicuous, require massive facilities and require a level of sophistication that is completely absent from the training of reactor nuclear scientists.

Reactor research and materials are orders of magnitude different from weapons grade materials and research. No bomb in history has EVER been made from reactor grade plutonium because the levels of Pu240 and Pu241 (and we haven't even covered Pu238!) are blisteringly high, way to high for weapons. Isotopic separation for Pu would be even more costly than uranium because of their mass similarities (compared to U235 and U238) and need a different set of enrichment facilities specially tailored to plutonium enrichment, of which all the people who knew something about that are Russian and American, and most likely dead or work classified to the highest degree.

The problem of nuclear weapons via reactor development is all a game to ratchet up the fear machine to get a particular end. It isn't a technical problem, it is a political problem. In the end, though, emerging technology could make enrichment easier anyway, so many of the issues I mentioned might eventually fall to the wayside (not within the next 10 years I imagine; for interested parties, google laser enrichment...coming to a world near you, but not exactly tomorrow, it's awesome stuff though). Eventually, the US is going to have to get used to the idea of more and more nations owning the bomb...but that issue is completely unrelated to reactor design and research. Reactors and nuclear weapons share about as much in common as cars and space shuttles...trying to link them as a dual proliferation argument is a political game and doesn't map on to them technologically.



I should note that I am not yet a nuclear engineer, but I did stay at a holiday inn express.

honestly, i don't give a shit about trying to sway you because i know how pig headed you are about the whole thing. especially when the crux of the discussion revolves around a semantic argument on the definition of "nothing". i just wanted to point out that the god of the gaps has been pushed even further out of the conversation.

I'm Atheist for the record, I was ONCE Mormon, nearly 28 years ago! That is what shiny feels so compelled to mention.

Yes, I MAY mention it in what I write, but he ALWAYS writes this back to me and it is this that makes me SO angry, "I'm sorry, you were a Mormon, the Mormon religion is a cult, I'm sorry you belonged to a cult; you can't understand a Christian God because you belonged to a Cult, *I'll tell him an unrelated comment*, well that may have had to do with your Mormon upbringing, etc...

And it goes on and on in that type of vein and I'm sure others have had their fair share of these types of attacks to discredit them. Because, it really is to hard to go after the core facts or logic, they are so conclusive it's scary to some. So shiny has finally made me *ignore him, I will no longer hear what he has to say to me or this community as i think it's being abused. Even after what he said to me, he continued to ask ridiculous questions some of which I ALREADY ANSWERED IN MY LONG-POST! If you don't understand general and special relativity don't keep talking like you do! Read up on it and come back! There is a very good reason why changing the speed of light won't change the value of the age of the Universe... Go find out in the first place what makes the Universe the age it is, it has NOTHING to do with the speed of light, only the state of the energy of the photons we see returning to us.

If you changed the speed of light to something else like 10 ft/s/s then things of course would look awfully weird, but how a human measures "one second" is an imaginary concept, but beyond that due to relativity energy would be conserved, we would move FAR slower and we would still be literally interacting with each other at the same "framerate" we do right now. you could say that there is something special about our view of time as it is, but everything we've tested for shows time to be a imaginary concept. It all revolves around the speed of light, literally. It may be the only thing that determines how fast we are "using" time, if we were close to the speed of light stars would begin to live their lives FAR faster than normal, BUT you will always see one second as that.

So changing the speed of light is rather pointless, again I've made this case, to hopefully explain some of general and special relativity's little quandaries. Once again, light always travels the same speed in the same frame of reference (including its mediums). THIS has to do with CONSERVATION of energy, it is due to the law of thermodynamics, and you can take it farther than even this as well! People responding are coming off as ones that do not know much of what they are saying, maybe I've screwed up a sentence or two, I may admit (I didn't proofread and won't, I'm doing this fast). I hope that this is sufficient.

#shinyblurry I'm sorry I blew up, but you should NEVER use people's old life as a way to attempt to disarm them of their ability to argue. Atheism is to me "SOMETHING", AS MUCH as is the end of a pencil eraser: I've erased my belief in God and it is gone; I may be Atheist in wording BUT I'm not an atheist in any form or manner with BELIEFS, CONVICTION, POWER, HOLDINGS, JUDGMENT, or THOUGHT! IT'S a damned word! Nothing more.

Two as for being Mormon, sure I might agree with you in many respects about what it is and WHAT it isn't, but I might also agree yours IS nothing but the same. DO NOT think that this is because I'm an "Atheist" holding this against you. This is a MAN holding it against YOU! Religion has it's own shames to answer for in every color and theater.

And now I'm done.

@messenger

"You said I was wrong, and "effect" is never a verb."
-
I said you were wrong, I never said that it's "never used as a verb." You've quoted most (all?) of my posts so we can be relatively certain they are not edited.
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"you talk about "personal effects". This is meaningless."
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You sure about that?
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/personal+effects
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/personal%20effects
http://definitions.uslegal.com/p/personal-effects/
https://secure.ssa.gov/poms.nsf/lnx/0501130430
For someone with English as THE major focus of their life for the past 12 years, I'm very surprised you have never heard of the phrase "personal effects."
-
*increases bullshit radar's maximum power*
So, you're telling me that the focus of your life has revolved around the English language and the phrase "personal effects" is meaningless?
*bullshit radar bursts into flames*
kay...
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In your second sentence, you have all the "effect"s and "affect"s backwards. A correct sentence could be:
My personal affects (things I own) and the effects of my person on others effected (caused to happen) other affects (moods/emotions).
-
Negative; the sentence isn't all backwards.

My personal effects (noun, see definitions' links above) and the effects of my person (noun, I did get this wrong in the original) on others affected (verb form, the definition for the noun form doesn't make sense in this context [not at all]) other effects (in this case, I suppose you could possibly use affect as a noun, but its use in the language is arguably near extinction today).
--------------------
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Also, no comma between a subject and verb.
-
What is this^ in reference to?
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Finally, you still seem confused on which word to use. We can't have someone's life's work done poorly now can we? I recommend you practice which word to use by reading up on the subject at the Purdue Online Writing Lab: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/660/01/
-
After studying, you can test your affectiveness effectiveness (see what I did there?) at their use by trying the sample exercises provided by the same site: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/exercises/4/24/42/
-
Here are some other sources that may help you better understand your own life's work:
http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/affect-versus-effect.aspx
http://crofsblogs.typepad.com/english/2005/08/effect_as_a_ver.html
http://www.esm.ucsb.edu/academics/documents/grammar_style.pdf
http://www.writersblock.ca/tips/monthtip/tipsep99a.htm
http://prpost.wordpress.com/2012/02/10/raven-remember-affect-is-a-verb-and-effect-is-a-noun-usually/
http://imgi.uibk.ac.at/mmetgroup/MMet_imgi/tools/mayfield/affect.htm <-- the most precise and concise source I could find
--------------------
p.s.
Does anal retentive have a hyphen in it?

>> ^dag:

Don't understand how solar flares keep revolvers from working. >> ^Payback:
It's probably solar flares. The locket thing is some kind of shielded power cell.



Ya, found more clips. http://videosift.com/video/Revolution-Power-Struggle "Owning a firearm is a hangin' offense."

>> ^dag:

Don't understand how solar flares keep revolvers from working. >> ^Payback:
It's probably solar flares. The locket thing is some kind of shielded power cell.



It's 15 years later with no lathes, electric tools or CAD/CAM machines to make spare parts or bullets. Hand made guns would be rampant. People would probably be hoarding the "good stuff" for military actions and guarding the Warlords. Glorified sheriffs like the ones pictured would just have flintlocks because that's all you'd need against bows and arrows.

Just my logic talking. I have no clue what the actual reason is. Probably the Black Smoke Monster.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Don't understand how solar flares keep revolvers from working. >> ^Payback:

It's probably solar flares. The locket thing is some kind of shielded power cell.

>> ^xxovercastxx:

>> ^robbersdog49:
I'm a tolerant person and I hate racism, but there are very few things in the world that boil my piss as much as fucking pikies. What a bunch of assholes. Their whole way of life seems to revolve around a great big fuck you to everyone else.

Lucky for you, then, "pikey" is a derogatory term for poor people. Racism averted!


It may be where you come from, but here it's a pretty specific term for exactly this type of person. You try living near this sort of shit and see how tolerant you can be. I use the term because it differentiates these morons from the peaceful travellers they claim to be. The travellers do exist, but these guys are pikies.

>> ^robbersdog49:

I'm a tolerant person and I hate racism, but there are very few things in the world that boil my piss as much as fucking pikies. What a bunch of assholes. Their whole way of life seems to revolve around a great big fuck you to everyone else.


Lucky for you, then, "pikey" is a derogatory term for poor people. Racism averted!

I'm a tolerant person and I hate racism, but there are very few things in the world that boil my piss as much as fucking pikies. What a bunch of assholes. Their whole way of life seems to revolve around a great big fuck you to everyone else.

>> ^A10anis:
@ Shinyblurry's post starting with "Your welcome" (didn't quote the lot of it because i don't want that dribble being repeated below my post)

Your hypothetical story used to make a point about how you make yourself feel better was quite disturbing. Under the same logic you employed there.. if someone told you "kill 1000 babies" and all suffering would end for eternity, your story would only encourage an idiot to be a horrific murderer because of some deranged persons words.

Actually, the point of the hypothetical was to show the sloppy reasoning inherent in digging for treasure in a spot marked other than X.

>> ^A10anis:
You state "The only thing which is stopping you is pride.". No, it's the use of intelligence.
* It's not believing things because they make me feel better, or allowing me to think less because i can say magic did it.

So, how is you believing that you have a superior intellect to someone who believes in God not pride?

>> ^A10anis:
* It's the love of actually thinking about situations from a 'likely/unlikely true based on scientific reasoning' position, which is what drives human advancements forward.

Since there is no empirical evidence for or against Gods existence, how do you calculate how likely or unlikely His existence is?

>> ^A10anis:
* It's not naively thinking or pretending there are great things to learn from a disgusting book of prejudice, torture, fear and horror (i.e. kill your loved ones because you hear voices or let towns rape your daughters because they're of less value than a male stranger).

The bible, apart from the revelation of God, is a historical account of the actions of fallen men. Men who were sinners and sometimes did things which were morally wrong. That there was no effort to cover up those sins is a point in favor, not against.


>> ^A10anis:
* It's not believing claims that a book is an accurate account of history and the universe, when it gets the most basic things a God would know wrong, coincidentally these claims are just the way things would appear to a human's untrained eye (sun revolving around the planet).

If you want to address the accuracy of the bible, you must first accurately portray the bible. My guess is that you have only studied the bible through the lens of skeptics. Do you know the actual history of how this idea came about? The bible does not say the sun revolves around the earth, but it was interpreted that way by Claudius Ptolemy in the 2nd century. Claudius proposed a theory of geocentricity, which at the time, was far more accurate than the existing theory of heliocentricity, and he interpreted certain passages of scripture to support his assertion. These passages, specifically Joshua 10:12-14, and Psalm 93:1, do not teach geocentricity at all, but were taken out of context by Claudius and others to promote the theory.

>> ^A10anis:
* It's because the bible (unbelievable in it's own right), once claimed to be a book of literal truth, becomes more and more metaphorical as science stomps its way all over the human races ignorance of the universe reaching greater level's of understandings that are testable through mathematical predictions.

The scientific theories which contradict the literal truth of the bible, such as the theory of deep time, macro evolution, and abiogenesis, are not subject to empirical testing. You cannot prove these theories in a lab. They are inferences based on circumstantial evidence, and are not truly scientific. You must *believe* them, and real science is based on knowledge, not belief.

>> ^A10anis:
Quote "Yet, it wasn't evidence at all, it was simply what I preferred to be true.". Seems like not much has changed, except your preferences.

Your preaching is nothing more than the same unjustified crap that those who don't have facts to support them continue to make. IMO you've either given up on your critical analytical abilities, or you're a troll copy/pasting.. given how similar your sentences are to other preachers.

What changed is that I fairly investigated the claims of Jesus Christ, instead of dismissing them based on a superficial knowledge of Christianity. When I did that, I received supernatural evidence that they were true.

>> ^A10anis:
Christianity is a sacrificial cult, full of unsubstantiated claims.

Your gross mischaracterization not withstanding, how have you investigated the claims of Jesus Christ?

>> ^A10anis:
Jesus's so called miracles appear in many other religions, usually descriptively to the letter.

Have any actual evidence to support this claim? Be sure to include the original sources and not just the claims of skeptics.

>> ^A10anis:
Your beliefs come from a time where women were valued as little more than a discard-able possessions.

Galatians 3:28

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.

Scripture teaches that woman have the same value in the eyes of God as men do. God has assigned us different roles, but he shows no partiality between men and women.

>> ^A10anis:
And If your God did exist, then said God can go fuck themselves, as i have no desire to follow the direction and teachings of a psychopathic asshole.

I would suggest it is the distorted lens through which you see God that informs your negative opinion of Him.

>> ^A10anis:
PS: although I'm not censoring myself too much, it's not my primary intention to offend you (but don't care too much either), just can't stand how people spouting this type of content can think they 'should' be taken seriously.

Atheists rarely censor themselves when they speak to Christians. Nothing you've said here is unexpected. I do not take offense at what you said; on the contrary, I care about you as a human being made in the image of God, and I see you as being worthy of love and respect. My hope is that you come to know the love of Jesus Christ. You simply have no experience of God at the moment, but God is willing to show you He is there at any time. He loves you more deeply than you understand. Draw near to Him and He will draw near to you.

@ Shinyblurry's post starting with "Your welcome" (didn't quote the lot of it because i don't want that dribble being repeated below my post)

Your hypothetical story used to make a point about how you make yourself feel better was quite disturbing. Under the same logic you employed there.. if someone told you "kill 1000 babies" and all suffering would end for eternity, your story would only encourage an idiot to be a horrific murderer because of some deranged persons words.

You state "The only thing which is stopping you is pride.". No, it's the use of intelligence.
* It's not believing things because they make me feel better, or allowing me to think less because i can say magic did it.
* It's the love of actually thinking about situations from a 'likely/unlikely true based on scientific reasoning' position, which is what drives human advancements forward.
* It's not naively thinking or pretending there are great things to learn from a disgusting book of prejudice, torture, fear and horror (i.e. kill your loved ones because you hear voices or let towns rape your daughters because they're of less value than a male stranger).
* It's not believing claims that a book is an accurate account of history and the universe, when it gets the most basic things a God would know wrong, coincidentally these claims are just the way things would appear to a human's untrained eye (sun revolving around the planet).
* It's because the bible (unbelievable in it's own right), once claimed to be a book of literal truth, becomes more and more metaphorical as science stomps its way all over the human races ignorance of the universe reaching greater level's of understandings that are testable through mathematical predictions.

Quote "Yet, it wasn't evidence at all, it was simply what I preferred to be true.". Seems like not much has changed, except your preferences.

Your preaching is nothing more than the same unjustified crap that those who don't have facts to support them continue to make. IMO you've either given up on your critical analytical abilities, or you're a troll copy/pasting.. given how similar your sentences are to other preachers.

Christianity is a sacrificial cult, full of unsubstantiated claims.
Jesus's so called miracles appear in many other religions, usually descriptively to the letter.
Your beliefs come from a time where women were valued as little more than a discard-able possessions.
And If your God did exist, then said God can go fuck themselves, as i have no desire to follow the direction and teachings of a psychopathic asshole.

PS: although I'm not censoring myself too much, it's not my primary intention to offend you (but don't care too much either), just can't stand how people spouting this type of content can think they 'should' be taken seriously.