As a kid I liked to spray mosquitos with mosquito repellent. It didn't kill them, I just hoped it made them hate themselves.

The shark-repellent batspray. Premium quality there!

Rofl, "shark repellant".

If anyone didn't get that, here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dghbyBaQyI

Well, yeah, magnets don't repel against anything except magnets.

Unless there's some physics-shattering discovery some day, there will never be something compact that just repels against the surface of random ground. And no matter how much power you have, it definitely won't be able to repel against water.

At most, perhaps some day after our grandkids are dead there could be super powerful little jets that can force enough air downward in a tiny space to support the weight of a person, but human extinction will probably occur first, and static levitation is impossible.

(They use gigantic machines to generate a magnetic force to levitate a tiny frog, but that kind of force will never be compact nor support any meaningful mass.)

http://videosift.com/video/Diamagnetic-Levitation

Bob, it's been said a million times: you don't get your morality from your religion. If you did, there are all sorts of immoral acts that the Bible advocates (that you no doubt find repellent) that you would think is OK. The very fact that you have a conscience that tells you that slavery is wrong, even when you read it endorsed in both Old and New Testaments, should be enough to prove it. But I'm sure you'll find some way to wiggle out of that.

And why do you constantly equate gay people with paedophiles? Nobody is advocating in favour of child molestation. Consent is everything. 12 year olds cannot cannot give consent (neither can animals) so your bringing up the "born this way" argument is a red herring. 12 year olds were getting married 150 years ago? We know better now.

@deathcow-yes...the super hydrophilic surface should act that way in most fluids. Not sure about scratching, but it makes sense it would lose its property with enough scratches, but bending/dents should be fine.
@Kalle-yes, and also easier cleaning, and fewer barnacles. I must add, this is not a material, it's a surface preparation/etching done with lasers, but could be made into a plastic sticker/wrap. That's what they did with the near microscopic "shark skin" surface pattern, which is designed to stop barnacles/microscopic sea life from attaching, but it is also fairly new and not in wide use yet. The thing that makes this better in my eyes is it can be applied directly to the metal, and should be easy to repair in dry dock.
I wonder which is better for repelling sea life.

I saw this sort of thing happen in big college parking lot once. There was freezing rain the night before, nobody salted, and there was a quarter inch of ice covering the entire surface. Then, at about 10 in the morning after 100 or so cars had arrived, it got REAL windy.

By the time I left at noon, cars were all over the place. Crashed into each other (doing serious damage), wedged together in improbable groupings. A few had even gone over the hill leading up to the lot.

Miraculously, my car was untouched and exactly where I left it. I believe this was because it was by far the crappiest car in the lot and generates a natural repellent force. Could have been all the rusted out holes in the bodywork too.

Found the video more enjoyable once i read this:

Both green olives (Olea europaea) and Pimentos (Capsicum annuum) contain isoprenoids that are structurally similar to the methylcyclopentane monoterpene nepetalactone, which is responsible for binding to receptors in you cat's vomeronasal organ and consequently the mind-altering effect your cat experiences.
These compounds are not unusual, although thie configuration varies widely between plant species.
These compounds resemble pheromones, and as such some of them function as a natural mock-pheromone pest repellents for the plant, which is likely how such high levels of these constituents within a plants' essential oils evolved.
The vomeronasal organ is what your cat (and most other animals with the exception of humans, although there is a small indented area and partial nerve channel where it would be, left over from our evolution) uses to sense pheromones, and is where the nepetalactone in catnip stimulates pheromone receptors resulting in space-kitty.

TL;DR - it is likely that either the green olives or pimentos have a chemical in their essential oil that is similar enough to the active chemical in catnip to have a similar effect on the same receptors in the part of kitty's nose that are responsible for catnip getting her high.
(from Yahoo Answers via reddit)

Doesn't really repel/attract at the same time, but the coil does create an opposite field to the magnets, pushing it along.

Here's a better question. Will it still work if he put the battery in the other way?

Not a credentialed physicist, but I'll give it a shot.
The metallic magnets make contact with the positive and negative on the battery and feed electricity to the coil, that induces a magnetic field in the coil. With the magnets arranged properly, the field in the coil likely attracts the 'front' one and repels the 'rear' one, making the 'train' move, and taking the induced field with it.

(If I'm wrong, please correct me)

If your culture repels immigrants, actively or not, it's probably dying.

Almost always the reason is an overestimation of their skills. They realize mid way up that they lack the strength to make it to the top on their own, and since back down is even more dangerous they get stuck. Especially without ropes.

My wife and I found a father and son midway up Echo Point in Katoomba, NSW once. They attempted to climb the cliff for a daytrip, and were only 2/3 of the way up when nighttime fell, so they camped on a ledge and started screaming when the sun came up.
We were on a hike for sunrise and thats when we heard them. Called in rescue and they showed up with helicopter and a team that repelled down to them. Got them up safely after a few hours.

Rescue team was actually happy about this one. Said 9 out of 10 they are called in to scrape up the remains of suicide jumpers at that location.

Some disconnected thoughts:

I didn't mean to say what you weren't saying. Apologies. I do like what you said here, "for her to use her basic human right to not be discriminated against as a woman to leverage those men into a difficult position, sounds like a crappy thing to do." Yes, a crappy thing. I think we'd better get used to it; at least in the United States where people want to adhere to the letter of the law when it comes to asserting their rights.

Am I wrong in assuming you live outside of the States? If so that makes it easy for me to understand your stance on religious rights being unequal with other rights.

I am not insisting that discrimination be protected. Far from it. If you were being discriminated against you would want me in your corner. I detest discrimination. What I find interesting about all of the cases you mentioned, the only reason a gay couple has given for asking the state to enforce the anti-discrimination laws is over the issue of marriage and the issue of marriage alone. The photographer and bakers apparently served the gay community in other capacities from their storefronts without incident. No lawsuits, no nothing. I think we have to ask 'why?" What is it specifically about marriage that would cause a Christian (or a Muslim, or any number of religions for that matter), to say, "I can't participate in that?" I suspect that if the couple in question had been a man and two or three women getting married that the business owners response would have been the same - that is not our understanding of marriage, sorry we can't in good conscience go there." At the risk of repeating myself, their refusal isn't about the people they refused. It is specifically about the act of marriage.

As an aside, I find it ironic to the nth degree that the State of Oregon is trying to legally compel the bakery owners to participate in a ceremony that is illegal in the State of Oregon. Marriage among gays in Oregon is illegal. Sigh. This is why I wish religion, of any sort, would get out of the business of telling people what to do. I would like to see a withdrawal from the legislation of religious tenets that are not in line with the US Constitution. Then gays could marry freely in this country and this argument could be put away.

Many of the problems in this world could be resolved if the religionists didn't feel like they needed to make everyone outside of their religion believe and behave like they do. As I see it, in a free society, a religious belief should not be able compel those outside that belief to do anything.

You may be familiar with openly gay author/blogger Andrew Sullivan who has written about this subject. He says: I would never want to coerce any fundamentalist to provide services for my wedding – or anything else for that matter – if it made them in any way uncomfortable. The idea of suing these businesses to force them to provide services they are clearly uncomfortable providing is anathema to me. I think it should be repellent to the gay rights movement as well.

There is, of course, extensive writing on this issue by all sides and we may never be able to untangle it here but I have enjoyed getting your perspective.



“what is to stop the members of Westboro Baptist Church from showing up at a bakery run by gays and demand they cater an anti-gay event?” answer; Anti-discrimination laws.

I hope you're right. I hope we never have an opportunity to find out. But here is, in part, the text of Oregon's law:

Except as provided in subsection (2) of this section, all persons within the jurisdiction of this state are entitled to the full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities and privileges of any place of public accommodation, without any distinction, discrimination or restriction on account of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, marital status or age if the individual is 18 years of age or older.

"Religion" doesn't not have a special designation of 'unless' in there. I can see those Westboro Baptist a-holes notice that and will have some gay bakers baking a cake for them every day of the week.

All of this discussion is really a digression of my initial post which was to say: If our communities were stronger, if we'd risk more relationally, if we'd put down the electronics and get to know each other, it sure would be a lot easier to get along. We would have less use for the legal system to resolve our differences.

Let me ask you, have you ever seen a law change someone's heart? I haven't.

Delaware is considered a northern state. Maybe not by you but by others.
And when I lived in Maryland, everyone there seemed to consider it a northern state too. But ok, you don't consider it a northern state. Cool.
(Ask anyone in Boston if he is a "Yankee" and see how that goes!)

But what's your point now? You agree that the Civil War was a "War to preserve the Union, not a Lincoln crusade to end slavery". That's why he did not invade or interfere with the border states. They did not secede. So how is this relevant to the original point about Jon Stewart thinking otherwise and going off on Andrew Napolitano about it? And are you now trying to claim that the north was acting in "self-defense" because of southern attacks on federal forts?


"In 1862, the General Assembly replied to Lincoln's compensated emancipation offer with a resolution stating that, "when the people of Delaware desire to abolish slavery within her borders, they will do so in their own way, having due regard to strict equity." And they furthermore notified the administration that they regarded "any interference from without" as "improper," and a thing to be "harshly repelled.""

The proposal was never put to a vote. It was not tried in other states. And it was not addressed directly to the slave owners but to politicians in the Assembly. No effort was put into it.

Among the tactics employed by the British, French, Spanish, Dutch, Danes, and others were slave rebellions, abolitionist campaigns to gain public support for emancipation, election of anti-slavery politicians, encouragement and assistance of runaway slaves, raising private funds to purchase the freedom of slaves, and the use of tax dollars to buy the freedom of slaves.

The most charitable thing I could say is that Lincoln tried but failed to come up with and implement any other way to end slavery but to engage in 'bloodshed and violence' (putting aside that he claimed to not care to end slavery except as a way to get one over on the South).

Still, that only says something about his competency, his "political genius" as some say (or lack of it), but not about whether there were other options available that could have worked without the 620,000 dead and 800,000+ more maimed-or-disfigured-for-life.

Of course, there is no empirical way to 'prove' or 'disprove' that any more than there is any empirical way to 'prove' or 'disprove' that, without two nukes, Japan would have lost the war, or that without the Korean war, the Communists would have taken over the world, or that without the Iraq invasion, Saddam would not have built "weapons of mass destruction" to unleash on the world.

What if 'peaceful secession' would have neutered the federal enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act (which Lincoln strongly supported), creating a flood of runaway slaves that could not have been stopped and would have broken the back of the slave system'?

The Soviet Union collapsed on its own without the US and its allies going into a bloody war against it. Maybe if the US had started a third world war with the USSR, it would have collapsed sooner. But it certainly would not have been worth the 'blood and violence'. And it is far from certain that the 5 years of Civil War accelerated the end of slavery, while it has certainly served to bolster and continue the decades of segregation, discrimination, and abuse that followed.

The first Republican president seems to have set a precedent for later Republican neocons. When faced with a problem ---> go to war.