I'm sure to you it was an investment in the future. Right now I'm seeing it as giving money to someone who was careless about what he said and actually for a moment gave support to those who want to dismantle the welfare and federal aid system that he took advantage of. Quite frankly, if you think ending welfare will fix more problems than it will cause, you aren't thinking clearly. Some of them might be able to find jobs, but not most of them. They will lose their homes, live on the street... then what? They won't be able to get a job while living in the tent city across the street from your house. Theft will skyrocket from them taking the food they need to survive. We've been here before... no welfare. It wasn't a pretty place.

Again... this is not what you said earlier. Just want to make that clear. I'm sure you don't consider this welfare, but the people who subsidized your loans probably do... or did you not receive any subsidies? At all? Are you paying the grant back with interest? I just want to hear you admit that it is federal aid... after all, you did claim that you didn't qualify for federal aid.

Wow... this is a far cry from the "no more welfare" that you said earlier. What do you think your Pell Grant was. It was a form of welfare. You were given money from the government that you didn't have to repay. Did you have subsidized student loans? There it is again. These are all forms of federal aid. Without them, would you have been able to pay for college?

I'm pretty sure the risk of nuclear explosion is zero. There just isn't enough uranium in the fuel for it to go supercritical in that way, especially without a moderator. If somehow all the fuel were to pile into a nice neat sphere in the bottom of the reactor, yes there would be some neutron-induced fission, but nothing near the power output of the reactor while it's in its normal configuration. The moderator in this case is water, which would not be present between uranium atoms if all the fuel somehow came together. Now, if we're going to talk about a Maxwellian Demon that is going to bring all the U-235 together (only about 5% of the mass in the fuel) then we may have a problem, but imagine what else we could use that demon for.

So, should we not pursue research unless there is a clear benefit from the technology it produces? Or perhaps we should only reach for the stars (okay, other planets for now) when war threatens us. If we followed those lines of thinking, we wouldn't have some amazing technology that we have today. The LASER would never have been reported on as there was no immediate benefit from it. Quite simply, you cannot say that research is practical or not until after it has been done. The results aren't known before you start. New technology comes from the most interesting places and it would be a mistake to not try to push ourselves beyond the limits of what people think possible.

I'm curious, though... what have we ever done that wasn't costly at first? Cost never comes down until something becomes readily available. It will never become readily available until we actually do it. No one will ever discover/make something better than a rocket until we actually do the research to make something better than a rocket. In this case we actually have a clear benefit of producing a better rocket... making it safe(er) to send someone to Mars (for example). Sending someone to Mars has a clear benefit... a probe can only do so much in its exploration. Probes are very slow and are not nearly as versatile as a person. As far as the knowledge gained from exploring Mars? No one knows for certain every tid-bit of knowledge that could be gained from it because the only thing that comes close to this was sending people to the moon. Why not try to send someone to Mars?

Though in your case, I think it's more than just one bit that's flipped. I've read some of your posts Mr. AC.

What he means is that if each section was hexagon in shape, you could still use the same type of watering system, but dramatically reduce the area in the corners that the watering system misses.

In an attempt to answer his question, there are a few possible reasons (of many more, I'm sure) that I can come up with. It might be inconvenient to lay out hexagonal access roads that form the borders of these sections. This also most likely stems from initial property plots being given out in square segments and now if you buy up neighboring plots, it's too expensive to sink new wells so that you can hexagonally segment your sections. It's also possible that those corners that the irrigation system appears to miss may not be as useless as they seem from high altitude photographs.

No, there is a reason the leap seconds are counted on New Year's Eve. That's coming out of your vacation buddy.

I think you're off by about 3 orders of magnitude. Isn't this 2 microcuries/liter? (2*10^6) * (1*10^-12) = 2 million picocuries = 2 microcuries.

I think the difference is that Al Capone DIDN'T pay off the right government officials. That's probably not the case here.

X-rays can cause electron emission, but I don't know if there would be enough for you to sense a current through your body. The only way I know how to produce x-rays from an electrical source is to accelerate electrons and collide them into metal. It's possible what they are feeling is the electrostatic field in which the electrons are accelerated. It's also possible they are imagining the whole thing.

... the photon spectroscopy being performed by the Chandrayaan-1 satellite still in orbit.

From the article "An anonymous Chandrayaan-1 scientist said MIP's mass spectrometer detected chemical signatures of organic matter in the soil kicked up by the impact". From the information I could find it sounded like the mass spectrometer was directly on the impactor and was only to be used for atmospheric analysis as the MIP descended. If the mass spectrometer detected the debris kicked up by the impactor either it separated and passed through a cloud of debris or it survived the impact. I can't find the details on whether or not the MIP had two stages, the impactor and sensors or if another probe went through the debris cloud. I thought analysis of the debris kicked up by the impactor was only through photon spectroscopy, in which case I would have to wonder if earthshine played a part in this organic signature. However, it has been said that organic doesn't necessarily mean life and that it wouldn't be implausible to find it on the moon.

Oh, I see where you might think I say that poker is better than all investments (actually, I don't but judging from Free the Cowards post above I doubt he will read this part). It's nice of you to go to Wikipedia and take a small snippet of a sentence that supports your stance. There is a maximum to the house rake. In most games you don't have to pay an ante so you don't pay the rake to see a hand. Hell, not everyone plays in a casino... not everyone plays poker where a rake is taken.

You know what? I'm not going to sit and explain things about poker that you obviously don't know. Why are you arguing this when you don't have all the information? How about this... go buy some stock and see how much you're charged for it. Oh, that's right... pay the broker's 'rake'. Sure, there is a maximum, but the exact percentage then is determine by how much you put in. Sound familiar?

Another misconception that you seem to have is that the stock market generates wealth. It does not. In order for you to get the value of your stock, someone has to buy it... they have to put the money back in that you pulled out. If you're lucky enough to get a dividend, then you have to realize that a very large portion of that money was kept by the company for 'reinvestment' or compensation to the CEO/Board/etc... When it comes down to it, what happens when a major company goes out of business? Do people get all the money back that they invested in it? Essentially whoever bought the last round of stocks from that company gets stuck fronting everyone who made money in that stock that came before them. Not all companies 'assets' can be liquidated. Seriously, what 'wealth' does Microsoft have that can be liquidated if it were to go out of business?

What it comes down to is that there are vast similarities between gambling and the stock market. I use poker as an example of a form of gambling that has many benefits over investing in stock. When you play poker, you have all the available information right in front of you. When you are in the market, the information is usually hidden in closed door meetings... you don't know when mass hysteria is going to cause people to dump the stock that you invested in.