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.

>> ^mentality:
Where are the tales of space Jesus who died for the sins of Omecron Persei 8?
I believe L. Ron Hubbard has some works that may be relevant to this line of inquiry.



As for the other, why wouldn't God's word to the humans be tailored to their perspective? "Chicken Soup for the Terran Soul", right?

>> ^nach0s:

1) So when the grid goes out, lift short-circuits and planes drop straight out of the sky?
2) You car's battery maintains its charge via the alternator. The Prius (being picked clean by some unreasonbly attractive looking woman) charges itself (i.e. it doesn't plug-in) via friction (google it). Unless it's some EMP event, at least some cars will run.
2) For a semi-post apoc environment, the denizens look incredibly tailored and freshly primped.


Seems the idea is more like an EMP on some crazy-go-nuts scale. Even that wouldn't explain why new electronics can't be made, but, you know, it's sci-fi.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse#E1

And. . . yeah you might think the clothing and makeup industries would suffer from the end of civilization, but we have our priorities.

1) So when the grid goes out, lift short-circuits and planes drop straight out of the sky?
2) You car's battery maintains its charge via the alternator. The Prius (being picked clean by some unreasonbly attractive looking woman) charges itself (i.e. it doesn't plug-in) via friction (google it). Unless it's some EMP event, at least some cars will run.
2) For a semi-post apoc environment, the denizens look incredibly tailored and freshly primped.

>> ^shveddy:
@HadouKen24 - All that you say is very dandy and very well may be true, but you'd be shocked at how widespread it is to cling to 19th century literalist beliefs. I'm not sure what country you're from, but here in the US it's remarkably common and even presidential candidates manage to think it despite pursuing the most powerful office in the world. I grew up in a particular Christian denomination, one of hundreds, and we had an official statement of faith that stated the absolute, literal, inerrant nature of the bible. This particular flavor of Christianity has about 3 million adherants, and again, this is only one of hundreds - many of which are even more conservative in their biblical interpretation.
When you say that it has been common for some time to regard sacred texts in a metaphorical sense I think that's definitely true, especially in the case of liberal theologians. However, when you take away the literal interpretations and leave interpretative metaphor all that remains is an interesting and influential piece of literature that has no specific authority. And I think this is a good thing. But the fact of the matter is that it lowers it to the same level as Moby Dick, Oedipus, Infinite Jest and Harry Potter - all of which are books that have interesting, moralistic metaphors just like the bible.
Let's face it, religion needs the teeth of absolute truth and the threat of moral superiority to have any privileged relevance over other interesting, moral works. I see neither in any of its texts.
@shinyblurry - Give me a non-macroevolutionary reason that junk mutations in Cytochrome C just happen follow a clear developing and branching pattern that just happens to coincide perfectly with those independently developed by scores of other disciplines (such as embryology, paleontology and so on) as well as those based on hundreds of other non-coding markers (such as viral DNA insertions and transposons, to name a few).
If you can give me an answer that can account for these coincidences, does so without macroevolution, and indicates that you actually took the time to understand the concepts I listed above, then I'll take the time to write a much more exhaustive response as to why you're wrong.


Hmm, your statement is littered with all sorts of inaccurate information.

Okay, first of all, this idea of "junk dna" is dying a slow death:

http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S24/28/32C04/

Contrary to your assertion, so-called junk dna is functional. And the idea of viral DNA insertions is completely ruled out when this "random" DNA turns out not to be so random after all, and serving very specific purposes. The idea, created in ignorance, exists mainly as a fudge factor for the evolutionary paradigm. The problem for evolutionists is that natural selection cannot produce enough mutations to account for the millions it needs in the 300,000 generations it took for humans to evolve. It's a lot easier to come up those numbers when 95 percent of the genome is "junk".

Second, molecular and morphological phylogenies are often wildly divergent. This is from an Article in nature magazine subtitled:

"Evolutionary trees constructed by studying biological molecules often don’t resemble those drawn up from morphology. Can the two ever be reconciled, asks Trisha Gura"

"When biologists talk of the ‘evolution wars’, they usually mean the ongoing battle for supremacy in American schoolrooms between Darwinists and their creationist opponents. But the phrase could also be applied to a debate that is raging within systematics. On one side stand traditionalists who have built evolutionary trees from decades of work on species' morphological characteristics. On the other lie molecular systematists, who are convinced that comparisons of DNA and other biological molecules are the best way to unravel the secrets of evolutionary history. . . .

Battles between molecules and morphology are being fought across the entire tree of life. Perhaps the most intense are in vertebrate systematics, where molecular biologists are challenging a tradition that relies on studies of fossil skeletons and the bones and soft tissue of living species. . . .

So can the disparities between molecular and morphological trees ever be resolved? Some proponents of the molecular approach claim there is no need. The solution, they say, is to throw out morphology, and accept their version of the truth. “Our method provides the final conclusion about phylogeny,” claims Okada. Shared ancestry means a genetic relationship, the molecular camp argues, so it must be better to analyse DNA and the proteins it encodes, rather than morphological characters that can end up looking similar as a result of convergent evolution in unrelated groups, rather than through common descent. But morphologists respond that convergence can also happen at the molecular level, and note there is a long history of systematists making large claims based on one new form of evidence, only to be proved wrong at a later date"

They are so divergent that two camps have emerged in systematics, each claiming their phylogenies are more accurate. So your claim that Cytochrome C matches "scores" of different phylogenies is patently false, since hardly any of them agree. If want to say that isn't true, please provide the evidence. Note that "scores" means at least 40.

Third, creation theory predicts a hierarchical pattern, so finding one isn't going to falsify creationism or prove common descent. Especially in the case of the phylogeny of Cytochrome C, which has no intermediates or transitionals to be found. You do also realize that a common design can be explained by a common designer? It could simply be the case that Cytochrome C was tailored for different groups according to individual specifications, which then diverged futher by mutations. If your response is that Cytochrome C functions the same way in all life, my response is that the differences could be for coding other proteins.

Before I go any further, I would ask you to support your claims. Show me the specific data you're talking about so I can rebut it.

>> ^Shepppard:

>> ^silverpoint16:
I am still of two minds about whether I want to anything to do with this site any more. We have been harassed and our characters assaulted. Most of you appear to now believe we are who we say we are. Some of you do not. That's fine. You are entitled to your opinion; however, the harassment and personal character assaults need to stop.
Thank you to all of you who looked at the evidence and drew their own conclusions.

I've been pretty level headed about this entire thread until I read this. For some reason, the way you worded that just set something off in me.
Let me make something clear to you from the start:
You're going to take some flak.
Videosift is a fantastic place full of MANY different opinions on many different things. We come from all over the world and generally are considered a community rather than an outright forum. Since there's less people than youtube, we can basically actually talk TO one another. You'll see the same names leaving comments and upvoting on many different videos, joking around, etc. And as such, you're eventually going to do or say something someone doesn't like.
We have Winstonfield_pennypacker and Quantummushroom as die-hard republicans that on basically any political video you'll see them say something (at least I consider to be) stupid and that'll spark an argument, and then two videos later you'll see QM say something that'll actually make you laugh out loud.
On religious videos we have many heated debates, the sift as a whole is generally considered Atheist, and will argue til they're blue in the face about certain topics.
On police videos there's a few of us (myself included) that don't instantly hop on the "COP IS IN THE WRONG, FUCK DA PO PO" bandwagon, and will generally be caught in a debate or argument about it.
Essentially what i'm trying to say is.. We're not youtube. You're not going to be a blank face in the crowd, you have a personality, you have ideals, you have your own mindset, and here you'll get to express it amongst others. But be prepared to have others not always agree with them.
So, if you want to just blend in, say what you want, and make sure your feelings don't get hurt, go ahead and leave.
If you want to be a part of something that with the bad, also comes a world of good, then stay. Enjoy our little community. Just be prepared for what that entails if you do.


I like much of what you posted here. If I read correctly, you and I seem to have many things in common: Not a Republican? [check] Atheist? [check] Maligning Cops? [my Mom was the very first female police radio dispatcher in this major metropolitan area and my Dad was the booking sergeant in the city jail ... let's just say I agree that *they* aren't all bad and leave it at that] Couldn't wait to move out of the house when I turned 18? [check] though your mileage may vary, I just had to toss that in there.

Regarding your generalized description of YouTube I can only relay to you MY experience with it. I joined in July 2006. It was the only social network I belonged to up until this past year. In January 2011 I submitted two videos for a contest and to my delight, one was selected for the project. It was then that I discovered how much I enjoyed the experience of making videos so started from scratch with a little Kodak PlaySport camera. I eventually bought some software and began to teach myself editing. I may not be one of the big players on the tube, but I did find out that there are some truly wonderful, REAL people there. I was steadily attracting viewers and subscribers worldwide and that morphed into an actual online community for me. I've experienced many gratifying interactions through collaborations, comments and banter and have found a good number of folks that I've come to admire and respect. Some have become very good friends. I never once felt like a blank face in the crowd and found great joy in supporting and encouraging those that impressed me. My goal was and is to tailor my comments to relate to the subject matter at hand and, more often than not, attempt to infuse a bit of humor as well. Rarely will you see anything generic from me [unless I'm really, really tired]. That being said, I certainly would never expect ANYONE to BE like me ... I fully appreciate and embrace diversity. However, I don't engage in bullying, deliberate rudeness or intimidation because, like most folks, I have a lot of stress in my life and the time I get to spend away from it on the interwebs is my coveted escape.

All of the above came crashing down for me personally when Google took over YT and changed everything to the dreaded NewTube. Seemingly overnight my progression of new subscribers simply ceased. Views diminished and everything has basically ground to a halt. I still have and treasure most of my core supporters but much of the community aspect has diminished to the point where Ive found myself searching for something more rewarding on the side. VS was recommended to me and in the first couple of days after signing up I was duly impressed. It is by far the best community site I've experienced yet.

Is it a double standard for me to support the friends who have also joined and are currently the only people I know here? I sure hope not. My goal was and is to earn the respect of others already established in this community through my participation and conduct. Not a one of us intended to take over what you have here ... at first blush it appeared to be an exceptional place to be. Time will tell. I have hope.

>> ^kymbos:

You're all fake!


hehe

also check this out someone already did a flapping one man flier ..probably on sift
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/emergingtech/human-powered-flapping-wing-plane-first-ever-to-take-flight-video/2388

"Built from carbon fiber, foam, and balsa wood, the Snowbird weighs just 94 lbs. and has a wingspan of 105 feet, which is comparable to that of a Boeing 737–amazingly, the Snowbird weighs less than all of the pillows on board.

The wings’ thrust is due primarily to a low-pressure region around the leading edge, which integrates to provide a force known as “leading-edge suction”. The wings also passively twist in response to the flapping. This is due to a structure that is torsionally compliant in just the right amount to allow efficient thrusting (”aeroelastic tailoring”). It should be noted, though, that twisting is required only to prevent flow separation on sections along the wing. It does not produce thrust in the same way as required by sharp-edged wings with little leading-edge suction."

>> ^Porksandwich:

Does Finland schooling system provide anything but education and the facilities and meals related to keeping a large group of people for hours on end?
Do they do tutoring?
How do they handle discipline?
Do they offer sports teams and fields, etc as part of the school budget?
Uniforms?
Field trips?
Music/band?
Im hoping to hear from @CreamK on this.
Like I've always felt in the US that the sports programs and all the cost associated with them plus the competition they spawn within the student body and against other schools is not beneficial. Basically you end up with a small group of players who get the school to bend over backwards to make things possible for them and everyone else loses out on it, in fact they often have to pay for tickets to even see the events their parents tax dollars make possible.


There's tutoring for students that are falling behind, it's personal one-on-one and there's a multiple programs to help students who have problems, like specail ed or for troubled teens. I actually went on one these troubled youth programs. I never had any learning problems in school, in fact i was always so much ahead in classes that i got bored and started to get in to problems and skipping A LOT.. But when they finally managed to get me in to this special class, i've never enjoyed school that much.. I did two years of math in half a year and got free choice of what to do instead of math.. I either got a free hour or i picked up another subject like literacy and the best part of it was that i choosed what to do..

Discipline is there, you got many levels of it. Mostly it's handled in conjunction with parents. Detention, personal tutoring or changing to a smaller group, workshops where you can fix bikes and learn sciences with more hands on approaches etc. Mostly it's not a punishment as such but personalized programs to tailored to fit for the needs. Expulsions are very rare, in my school years i heard of two incidences and both were changed to smaller group where they both stopped skipping school in two weeks time. Those smaller groups consists of one teacher per 5 students or even less..

No sport teams are provided by schools, they are handled by sport teams junior programs. There is of course 1-2 hour classes per week for sports but it's more to do with learning to enjoy excercise than competing.

No uniforms or mandatory dressing codes. There is the basic decency expected when it comes to dressing and one peculiar code is that you are not allowed to wear a hat in class... Those baseball caps can hide your eyes... I know, it's a bit strange..

Field trips: yes, there are both provided by the school and then longer ones where the students do bake sales etc to gather money and those are voluntary.

Music is a subject and schools can provide the means to do them more in your own free time. The bands are not a part of schools but usually every city has one or to schools that concentrate more for those programs. It means a few extra hours but provide a good base for secondary musical education institutes where you can enroll at young age. Those institutions are publicly funded too and work in conjuction with all levels schools and they continue seamlessly to provide education for music teachers and professionals up to master degrees. You can go to those schools when you're grown up too and they have a tuitions, in the range of 100-200€ per class. So once again, money is not a hurdle for education.

It's been a years when i was in basic school, i graduated in 1989 and went to secondary school in 1991. That was about the time when the education reform was moving to that state too so i had to mixed field of teachers. Some were not up to job and some were just wonderful personalities. Now adays it's up to standards too and in fact, i'm enrolling in one next fall to finish up my graduation..

The downside of Finnish system is that you can not even get a job as a cleaner without finishing some sort of courses for it.. So even for basic shitty jobs you need a basic education in that field... But since those are basically free of charge (some require a 100-200€ fee, not a problem...) everyone has a chance. Also when you get a better job the companies often provide the follow-up studies that fit to that job description. The cost of those are divided by the goverment and the companies.

>> ^Diogenes:

@criticalthud
let's be really clear... i agree with your position on corporate personhood
but... we can use "citizens united" to abbreviate the scotus decision: Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission... and how that decision has overturned several previous legal precedents and aspects of bcra -- and we can also use "citizens united" to refer directly to the non-profit group of the same name...
i'm just pointing out the latter (the npo) filed suit against the fec because they felt that a media corporation (moore, et al) was violating bcra - the fec dismissed their complaint -- then the group made a similar 'documentary' about hillary clinton and promoted it with the same style and timing of moore's anti-bush film - a lower court barred it, stating that it violated the bcra -- this background led us to the troubling scotus decision
what i was pointing out was that bcra, etc, was already allowing corporate political advocacy through the media, i.e. movie producers, book publishers, newspaper conglomerates, and television networks, etc
this, imho, is what really muddies the waters


thanks i really appreciate the clarification. muddy waters for sure. You raise some good points. Especially in distinguishing an over-reach of political influence from entertainment and documentary media. But are we getting to the point where campaign finance legislation will necessarily intrude on free press and the works of film-makers? what is your take? I would prefer to think that legislation could and should be narrowly tailored in this instance.
and (edit)
@bmacs24 I think it makes sense to start with the fundamental underlying legal ambiguity by which the power grab occurs. The war on "terror" is another ambiguous area of laws that also leads to incredible abuse.
Otherwise you find yourself caught in the minutiae, trying to re-arrange the top bricks on the shit-stack

I haven't seen any of your worst 10 which pleases me greatly.

Hanna, Super 8, Tree of Life, and Melancholia all fall into "ok/good but not great" for me.

Drive is teetering on the edge of awesome just for style alone... or perhaps I'm just biased because Ryan Gosling is such a fucking babe. (But he really is a great actor too -- everyone should see Lars and the Real Girl and Half Nelson.)

I really enjoyed X-Men: First Class.

I haven't seen it yet but I'm excited about Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy because of the fucking amazing cast.

Peacefull protest demonstrated in a video giving a happy feeling is not *happy. Fuck off.

>> ^bcglorf:

This is not HAPPY.
I am Canadian and this is an underlying conflict that is simmering away waiting to explode.
This was a single border crossing that happens to be on a Mohawk reserve. The federal government decided to arm the border guards at all crossings across the country. The argument against arming the guards in this particular crossing was that it would lead to an armed conflict between some of the people there and the border guards. That means absolutely crazy tensions already exist.
The conflict in Canada that has been brewing for awhile now is that the Mohawk people on this reserve, and many natives on other reserves across the country do NOT recognize themselves as Canadian citizens. They do not recognize Canada as their nation. There are treaties that lend legal weight to that interpretation, so they are in many/most cases right on this too. The trouble comes in when large portions of Canadian tax dollars are still being distributed to these non-Canadian reserves. Again, there is legal precedent in the treaties for this too, but it is becoming a major point of tension.
The most damaging tension in this is that the leaders of the reserves are nominally the leaders of their own independent nation, but it is a nation that is nearly 100% reliant and dependent on a much larger nation. When something goes wrong on a reserve, like the housing falling apart or the water supply failing, who gets blamed? The reserve leaders demand it's Canada's fault for not funding them. Canada says it's the reserve leaders fault because they DID fund them. The reserves are nominally independent so they largely refuse to allow any input or support from Canada except cold cash. The victims in all this are the people living on the reserves with corrupt or incompetent leaders and/or the ones living on reserves that aren't adequately funded by Canada. Those poor residents are pawned off between the two with both the reserve leaders and Canada's leaders declaring it's not their fault the housing and water there are no good.
The situation on reserves as a whole in Canada today is horrible. The conditions on any given reserve compared to it's neighboring 'Canadian' towns are stark and shameful. It's the fault of both the local leaders and Canada's leaders for their failures to workout a solution for the people's problems.
What it's created is a system that segregates people based on race, generally leaves the segregated communities in underprivileged conditions and assesses and distributes tax dollars differently, again dependent upon race. It's a system tailor made to create racist resentment and tension. What's worse, fixing it ultimately means revisiting ancient treaties which is inevitably going to open up yet more racist resentment and tension.
This is SAD.

This is not HAPPY.

I am Canadian and this is an underlying conflict that is simmering away waiting to explode.

This was a single border crossing that happens to be on a Mohawk reserve. The federal government decided to arm the border guards at all crossings across the country. The argument against arming the guards in this particular crossing was that it would lead to an armed conflict between some of the people there and the border guards. That means absolutely crazy tensions already exist.

The conflict in Canada that has been brewing for awhile now is that the Mohawk people on this reserve, and many natives on other reserves across the country do NOT recognize themselves as Canadian citizens. They do not recognize Canada as their nation. There are treaties that lend legal weight to that interpretation, so they are in many/most cases right on this too. The trouble comes in when large portions of Canadian tax dollars are still being distributed to these non-Canadian reserves. Again, there is legal precedent in the treaties for this too, but it is becoming a major point of tension.

The most damaging tension in this is that the leaders of the reserves are nominally the leaders of their own independent nation, but it is a nation that is nearly 100% reliant and dependent on a much larger nation. When something goes wrong on a reserve, like the housing falling apart or the water supply failing, who gets blamed? The reserve leaders demand it's Canada's fault for not funding them. Canada says it's the reserve leaders fault because they DID fund them. The reserves are nominally independent so they largely refuse to allow any input or support from Canada except cold cash. The victims in all this are the people living on the reserves with corrupt or incompetent leaders and/or the ones living on reserves that aren't adequately funded by Canada. Those poor residents are pawned off between the two with both the reserve leaders and Canada's leaders declaring it's not their fault the housing and water there are no good.

The situation on reserves as a whole in Canada today is horrible. The conditions on any given reserve compared to it's neighboring 'Canadian' towns are stark and shameful. It's the fault of both the local leaders and Canada's leaders for their failures to workout a solution for the people's problems.

What it's created is a system that segregates people based on race, generally leaves the segregated communities in underprivileged conditions and assesses and distributes tax dollars differently, again dependent upon race. It's a system tailor made to create racist resentment and tension. What's worse, fixing it ultimately means revisiting ancient treaties which is inevitably going to open up yet more racist resentment and tension.

This is SAD.

>> ^marinara:

You miss the entire point.
Why would you concentrate on my characterization of the church, and ignore the fact that the elites in charge of this proposed bank would have unlimited money.
And the church is no stranger to power.
Yes, I love Ron Paul, Yes the Church is chasing power, Yes the Church will not care to use the proposed world bank to eliminate poverty.
Tell me how the Church is working to eliminate poverty now?
Tell me when the Church has given away power?
Tell me why I shouldn't love Ron?


Not really missing the point, just focusing on the part of your comment I find interesting.

Basically my read on all right-wing thought is that it's almost entirely motivated by fear. The modern, highly distilled version we have here in the American right is a particularly insane bunch who believe that every institution with any kind of power is evil. Not just too wrapped up in its own self-serving goals to meet the needs of ordinary people, but actually out to maliciously do harm to everyone else because they're all apparently inhuman monsters bent on our destruction.

That's what Ron Paul is a spokesman for.

The Catholic church is a lot of things, and it's made up of a lot of people. It's had a particularly awful history, but I do believe that in large part the modern Catholic Church believes what it preaches when it comes to social justice. I don't really see how or why they'd bother teaching social justice if their true goal was to abolish social justice. Take a look at right-wing churches in America for an example of how they could be twisting the teachings of Christ into some grand justification for Ayn Rand-style market fundamentalism, as well as hate and intolerance.

I also find the whole "fear the Fed" thing to be tiresome and quite misguided. If you think it's physically impossible for Central Banks to ever do any good, you simply need to go out and educate yourself on modern monetary theory. Read Milton Friedman if you think Keynes was some demon summoned straight from the bowels of hell. If you just think the institution is just being run by corrupt people, then presumably you're in the "fire Bernanke, and put a liberal conservative in his place" club. Or maybe you're like me and just want to modify the Fed's charter so there's more democratic accountability, and a clearer mandate.

Or we should just put the Pope in charge.

Mostly though I just find the very idea of a conspiracy amusing. The Pope isn't saying "the Catholic Church should be the Global Central Bank", he's saying "there should be a Global Central Bank whose mandate is to cure poverty". I like that idea! But, I think a) it's obviously politically impossible, and b) a global monetary union would be harder to pull off than the euro monetary union, and the euro is headed for collapse as it is...

But like I said originally, this seems tailor-made to get Ron Paul-style conspiracy theorists all in a tizzy, and apparently I was right!

Also, aren't we tailoring life quite a bit already? Cows don't look like natural cows anymore, they've been tailored to produces far more milk than they did before. Bananas never would exist in the for it does now if not for artificial selection by us.

The day we artificially create life will be a good day.

Somebody has to pick the apples and work the fields. But I guess that's below most of these people. They paid a lot of money for their Studio Arts degree and need to figure out how to pay it off.
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,2073703,00.html

Funny thing is, my degree is in Industrial Design - I found a sector that I wanted to work in and I pursued that sector for 2 years by taking jobs where the skills I learned translated over to where I wanted to be. In other words I built a tailored résumé to get into my chosen profession. I spent years busting my ass to get where I am - I worked late nights and I continually expanded my education through reading and real-world experience. I also moved to where ever the jobs were. If you're in Detroit I would suggest finding a family member somewhere else you can stay with for a while and getting the hell out. Just like the Irish did for the better part of the last century -except they left the entire country! (The emigration trend in Ireland finally went positive in 2000)

If you are dumb enough to list your PHD on your application to McDonald's the I have to question your intellect to get said PHD. Just because you have it doesn't mean you list it.

My guess is that in most cases the problem isn't that they can't find a job, the problem is that they can't find a job that will allow them to pay off their debts and maintain their accustomed lifestyle. For that I recommend: http://www.daveramsey.com

As a side note, my wife has $35,000 in student loans which we are paying off. But we manage our money wisely and make sure we keep expenses in line - including buying only a house we could afford.
I also make sure that if anything should ever happen where I should lose my job - I've got 3 other companies that I could go to work for. It's called a back-up plan and with this economy it's also called necessary. At the same time I do everything I can to make myself indispensable to my employer. Which being on the sift isn't helping.