>> ^Kreegath:
So there was a spaceship hovering over Johannesburg for 20 years and no nation has even tried to deconstruct or even claim it? You'd think that the US and the Soviet Union would be the first to jump at the chance of an extraterrestrial technology advantage and would go to great lengths to get it, regardless if it had landed in either territory or not.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. -Arthur C. Clarke

In the movie you already see that they have no idea how to reverse engineer the alien weapons, even though they've been trying for 20 years. My guess would be that they must have tried the same with the spaceship but also failed. They might have removed interesting bits and just let the rest of the ship hang. They also wouldn't want to break the engines because it would come crashing down on Johannesburg.

Imagine the humans of 1930 (the electron microscope was discovered in 1931) getting their hands on an iPhone. They wouldn't know what to do with it. They wouldn't even be able to see the actual circuits let alone know how they worked. It would be a long time before they could actually discover and use anything of use out of an iPhone.

>> ^budzos:
Why? Mainly because I prefer not to drink microscopic bits of glass.


The force from the pressurized, jettisoned champagne is more than enough to prevent any glass bits from remaining in the bottle. This is a bad idea with non-pressurized beverages as the glass bits could stay inside.

Why? Mainly because I prefer not to drink microscopic bits of glass.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
So instead of working to fix the system, beginning with the examination of the flaws that led to a conviction and death sentence of a possibly-innocent man, he'd rather bury his head in the sand and declare the system flawless?
Why do you make the strange assumption that he isn't interested in helping improve the system? Such 'either/or' perspectives are not particularly nuanced and smack of propogandism.

Quoting from Ornthoron's quote:
"Obviously under such conditions (a lot of) mistakes are going to be made. If such mistakes make verdicts unconstitutional, then the whole system is unconstitutional.”

The problem isn't that the mistakes are going to be made. It's how you deal with those mistakes. If you are forced to say "I'll sacrifice a few innocent people for the sake of the system", you're saying the system is OK as is, and is worth the sacrifice in order to protect it's integrity.

The US court system has a man who was convicted in one court and exonerated in another. Instead of saying "Let's bring this up to the highest level and examine it under a microscope, since there's obviously something fishy about this case", he's saying "Even though a US court found him not guilty, I choose to ignore that fact and execute anyway".

Liberal Lies About National Health Care: First in a Series

by ANN COULTER


(1) National health care will punish the insurance companies.

You want to punish insurance companies? Make them compete.

As Adam Smith observed, whenever two businessmen meet, "the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices." That's why we need a third, fourth and 45th competing insurance company that will undercut them by offering better service at a lower price.

Tiny little France and Germany have more competition among health insurers than the U.S. does right now. Amazingly, both of these socialist countries have less state regulation of health insurance than we do, and you can buy health insurance across regional lines -- unlike in the U.S., where a federal law allows states to ban interstate commerce in health insurance.

U.S. health insurance companies are often imperious, unresponsive consumer hellholes because they're a partial monopoly, protected from competition by government regulation. In some states, one big insurer will control 80 percent of the market. (Guess which party these big insurance companies favor? Big companies love big government.)

Liberals think they can improve the problem of a partial monopoly by turning it into a total monopoly. That's what single-payer health care is: "Single payer" means "single provider."

It's the famous liberal two-step: First screw something up, then claim that it's screwed up because there's not enough government oversight (it's the free market run wild!), and then step in and really screw it up in the name of "reform."

You could fix 90 percent of the problems with health insurance by ending the federal law allowing states to ban health insurance sales across state lines. But when John McCain called for ending the ban during the 2008 presidential campaign, he was attacked by Joe Biden -- another illustration of the ironclad Ann Coulter rule that the worst Republicans are still better than allegedly "conservative" Democrats.

(2) National health care will "increase competition and keep insurance companies honest" -- as President Barack Obama has said.

Government-provided health care isn't a competitor; it's a monopoly product paid for by the taxpayer. Consumers may be able to "choose" whether they take the service -- at least at first -- but every single one of us will be forced to buy it, under penalty of prison for tax evasion. It's like a new cable plan with a "yes" box, but no "no" box.

Obama himself compared national health care to the post office -- immediately conjuring images of a highly efficient and consumer-friendly work force -- which, like so many consumer-friendly shops, is closed by 2 p.m. on Saturdays, all Sundays and every conceivable holiday.

But what most people don't know -- including the president, apparently -- with certain narrow exceptions, competing with the post office is prohibited by law.

Expect the same with national health care. Liberals won't stop until they have total control. How else will they get you to pay for their sex-change operations?

(3) Insurance companies are denying legitimate claims because they are "villains."

Obama denounced the insurance companies in last Sunday's New York Times, saying: "A man lost his health coverage in the middle of chemotherapy because the insurance company discovered that he had gallstones, which he hadn't known about when he applied for his policy. Because his treatment was delayed, he died."

Well, yeah. That and the cancer.

Assuming this is true -- which would distinguish it from every other story told by Democrats pushing national health care -- in a free market, such an insurance company couldn't stay in business. Other insurance companies would scream from the rooftops about their competitor's shoddy business practices, and customers would leave in droves.

If only customers had a choice! But we don't because of government regulation of health insurance.

Speaking of which, maybe if Mr. Gallstone's insurance company weren't required by law to cover early childhood development programs and sex-change operations, it wouldn't be forced to cut corners in the few areas not regulated by the government, such as cancer treatments for patients with gallstones.

(4) National health care will give Americans "basic consumer protections that will finally hold insurance companies accountable" -- as Barack Obama claimed in his op/ed in the Times.

You want to protect consumers? Do it the same way we protect consumers of dry cleaning, hamburgers and electricians: Give them the power to tell their insurance companies, "I'm taking my business elsewhere."

(5) Government intervention is the only way to provide coverage for pre-existing conditions.

The only reason most "pre-existing" conditions aren't already covered is because of government regulations that shrink the insurance market to a microscopic size, which leads to fewer options in health insurance and a lot more uninsured people than would exist in a free market.

The free market has produced a dizzying array of insurance products in areas other than health. (Ironically, array-associated dizziness is not covered by most health plans.) Even insurance companies have "reinsurance" policies to cover catastrophic events occurring on the properties they insure, such as nuclear accidents, earthquakes and Michael Moore dropping in for a visit and breaking the couch.

If we had a free market in health insurance, it would be inexpensive and easy to buy insurance for "pre-existing" conditions before they exist, for example, insurance on unborn -- unconceived -- children and health insurance even when you don't have a job. The vast majority of "pre-existing" conditions that currently exist in a cramped, limited, heavily regulated insurance market would be "covered" conditions under a free market in health insurance.

I've hit my word limit on liberal lies about national health care without breaking a sweat. See this space next week for more lies in our continuing series.

Bizarre that this didn't get sifted.
Check out this guy's gallery
http://www.willard-wigan.com/gallery.aspx
http://www.snopes.com/photos/arts/microscopic.asp

>> ^mentality:
The fascinating thing is that on a microscopic scale, processes are symmetric in time, meaning that hypothetically, if you filmed a microscopic event and then played it backwards, both versions of events would be valid.

You probably meant sub-atomic or quantum scales... a LOT smaller than microscopic.

PS: Janna Levin has a book I can highly recommend: How the Universe got Its Spots

>> ^gtjwkq:
I'm a bit confused about some things you said. You're using the concept of entropy to define the concept of time. Doesn't entropy require time to be defined? Because that would be problematic.

I don't really understand this topic myself, but here goes:

Loosely speaking, entropy is defined as how ordered a system is. So, water in the form of ice crystals is much more ordered and has lower entropy than water vapor. So you don't need time to define entropy.

The fascinating thing is that on a microscopic scale, processes are symmetric in time, meaning that hypothetically, if you filmed a microscopic event and then played it backwards, both versions of events would be valid. You would not be able to tell which way time is supposed to flow. Entropy however, is the only (?) property of the universe that is NOT time symmetric. On a macroscopic scale, the second law of thermodynamics states that entropy of an isolated system will increase over time. Or you can rephrase the second law as: time flows forward in the direction of increasing entropy.

Check out this wiki page for a better explanation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_of_time

>> ^nathanofborg:
Just as water is a fluid composed of water particles and air is a fluid composed of different gases and vapors, sand is a fluid composed of solid particles of matter.


Not exactly. The physical principles that keep for instance water clumped into droplets and the ones at work in this video are very different. But it is a well-known phenomenon in physics that radically different microscopic mechanisms often give rise to similar macroscopic phenomena. Another example is the similarity between mountain ranges and the microscopic surface of certain minerals, regarding their fractal nature.

It seems, for the previous adminstration, that the concept "The Ends Justify The Means" is STILL, a Republican philosophy. This concept was always used in the Fox show '24', in which the main character routinely tortures people, and never has to face any penalities for his actions. It seems, sadly, that conservatives and/or Republicans, take this same view, that if they get what they want, at the cost of a US city being reduced to ash, its fine by them.

This IS insanity. This individual should be examined under a microscope, for giving possible terrorists not only a invitation to commite untold horror upon my fellow Americans, but fame/glory by the Republican party.

Anyone who advocates the harming of citizens in my country, to get political points for their cult-ish organization, should be sent to gitmo. Wouldnt it be amusing if conservatives got sent to gitmo, and had 'enhanced interrogation methods' used on them. Would be rather ironic, eh?

As a note to some of the posters above. The 1st Amendment, regarding 'freedom of speech' protects all persons within the country to a limit. Running in to a crowded theater and showing 'FIRE!" is NOT, covered under the 1st Amendment. Some of the stuff that comes out of Fox News, Mr. Beck, Mr. Limbaugh, and the like, is really borderline. Now, if ANYTHING, major happens, it will not be to difficult to find WHO motivated terrorists (domestic or foreign) to attack the country.

to me the commentary is... thats basically what all hotel rooms look like if you could view them through a microscope. the artist just brought the disgusting nature out for the naked eye. but i could be way off. maybe he's just a cheese lover.

If you zoom in far enough you might see Angels or Demons.

Though... we have yet to actually see any... anywhere.. in the microscopic or macroscopic universe.

Rugged like rwanda, don't wind up far or get chopped up
Quick to rush the spot like baby urine get mopped up
Tags that spray your hall with rap aerosol
Organized graffiti lectures in can control
Or level with the devil racing uptown first to fort apache
I'm much too much for any demon style to master me
From the thought's next bridge to the hell's gate, lyrically detonating
Sparking m-80's and bottle rockets it's a nigga chaser
Downtown graffiti deface a heroin debaser
Open up your eyes and clean out your nature
Wide open like the grand canyon
Emcees couldn't hang if they was lynched by the grand dragon
Searching for my style like job-corps
Coming home on work release shoplifting at the rap store
But sabotaging me ain't easy
I'm crooked like nathan wick starring as cochese
With a big baseball bat you get robbed like deniro
A sandwich still ain't nothing but a hero
Just a small sample of the abstract
When the rhyme gets crazy hot and lyrics don't know how to act
Whether shooting joints or wax
I go all out and attack crabs and herbs that's crazy wack
We all can't be pimps, and we all can't rap
You got to get your dollars on cause it's on like that
Here's what I want you to do
Niggas with the green axe and burgundy forerunner, inhuman like blade runner
When I'm rhyming all summer just listen to the drummer
Transistor blister feedback freak the impeders
Funk flow we expose frequencies in sequence
Napalm gets dropped long range like fiber optics
Check the rhyme activity your skills is microscopic
Peace to my crew and my nigga el-p
Who's here to spark it causing all these crabs to flee

Check it and I inflict it quattro nine fifty lungs misty
Color me maxmillian cause I'm that crazy robot
Teetering on the edge of outer space
Spitting buckshots till black holes surround me, you found me
As far as I'm concerned I've got your ashes in an urn
Big up, the temperamental hold none barred kid
What's your confunction? tracks is type dusty
Drinking water out the well of life and i'ma piss it back rusty
Flesh and phonics, you're God damned right
I'm on 'em like aeorta pacemakers hooked up to clappers
Clap off (*clap clap*) welcome to my free-form jubilee, look at me
The witness to the shit you wanna be
Dba lyrical p known as a simp and I'm a sycophant
Feeding on fats passed and dipped
In and out of my invisible state
Forerunner rep tyrannical
Wrecks like tecs bust mechanical
Rusty goner weasel painting beats on an easel
Shoot a head up, what bitch you're boxing shadows
Look out my way you pull your breath out to battle
Breaking your double helix, and now the shit is single
Not mono, I burn the needle out your vinyl
El-p the third gunner on the grassy knoll
Stroll, keep the seventh seal of heaven in my pocket
You're faggot like sprockets, motherfuck the houston rockets
I'm so sick of recycled metaphors
Bet but I'd fuck laura ingalls only when she's done with her chores
Got rappers tip toeing on a highway to heaven
Got manners like bruce banner when he's stressed
I'm sick of your corny beats and your crowd-involved hooks
Cause I'm a thinker
Evil anus letting off stinkers

Bj eight steps to perfection
The sum of each part forms an octagon
Let rhyme styles get sparked

Ep eight stpes to perfection
The sum of each part forms an octagon
Where rhyme styles get sparked

The holy terror, last moves you never won't win
Playing taps on a violin
You can never comprehend the rhyme origin
I rate one like a chinese, jamaicin like a chin
Hot rocking corduroy, ballys that's so fitted
Niggas came and assed out my tracks and left 'em shitted
Fuck the movement, lubricate the smooth shit
Just to letcha know, never do I use it
Strictly the blueprint for the ghetto music in my cipher
Shorty the sniper jeep like cherokee
When I take aim handling wall to wall emcees
Mr. madman attract lyrics like magnets
They fuck up speaking cavernous when I'm stabbing it
Like the juice, then go bronco busting loose
That's my word, you couldn't shoot or try to compute the math
To kick any type sport like the vandal
I manhandle, emcees get murdered like tennessa
Or trapped in the bedroom with the texas chain saw
Massacre one two three you're taking and tell 'em
Eastwick underground new york be the dwelling
I keep telling 'em the state of the mind be the mentals
If you murder up in the ghetto you murder in a temple

This is great. The same affliction applies to the medical field and anything else for that matter. People are just so sure of themselves, an open mind would go a long way.

We have some really old medical texts attributing all illness to "humours", vapor like gasses.
Here's a great quote as a rebuttal when the idea of bacteria came around:

"The facts on which the Bacteriologist build need not be, and are not, denied. Specific Bacteria do exist, and they do more or less serve to convey disease, but adequate investigation compels some of the first medical authorities in the world to consider the inference of the Bacteriologists that infective diseases are usually conveyed by Bacteria utterly delusive; because they find that the universal efficient cause of the whole group of infective diseases is some form of miasmatic volatile poison, which on entering the human system, or any other animal system, produces the disease, and at the same time produces the Bacteria characteristic of the disease, a part of the poison, and probably a very small part only, being made up into the microscopic parcels which the Bacteria are." ~ Dr. John Nicol , a most esteemed correspondent, editor of The Beacon at Tioga Center, N.Y. June, 1895

This is actually a microscopic close up shot of my left ass cheek. Pale white and pockmarked.