You know, you touch on something that bugged me when I watched the Iron Man movies. Where is the reaction mass for Iron Man's flight coming from? Even a lightweight, unlimited power source wouldn't solve the problem of reaction mass. The Iron Man suit obviously uses some kind of reactionless drive -- not inconceivable, given that it also has "repulsor" technology which has no plausible physical explanation and violates classical physics.

The arc reactor idea actually is interesting to think about. Suppose you had an unlimited energy source with negligible weight. Could you build something like a rocket belt? I think you could, say by driving a turbine or some more exotic method of accelerating air. Technically it wouldn't be a "rocket" belt, but it would fit the bill. Even you'd still be limited in how small you could make the thruster due to the hazards the high velocity of the exhaust would present to the user and the surroundings.

Well, electrical, mechanical and electro-mechanical analog computation was a hot research in the 30s and 40s. People forget that "op-amp" (invented in 1941) stands for "operational amplifier" -- a device originally intended to do analog integration.

The fire control computers on WW2 naval ships were highly sophisticated electromechanical computers, although obviously too large for an airborne system. On the other hand the contemporary Norden bomb sight was, in effect, a compact, specialized analog computer.

The idea of connecting such a system directly to control something directly would have been very advanced for its time. Cybernetics as a practical discipline was in its infancy. I suspect the "computer-directed flight control" refers to flight surfaces that are automatically adjusted based on several user inputs such as throttle and yoke. This is the kind of thing that would be handled by a computer in a modern high performance aircraft, or by some complicated manual procedure in a racing aircraft of the era. That woudl arguably a kind of special purpose computation although calling it a "computer-controlled flight controller" would be a stretch.

There's the rub right there. Feasibility is a prerequisite of "making sense", and in the real world you have to deal with physics and the physical limitations of human beings. Antigravity would "make sense" if you could get it to work.

The physics of a jet pack are governed by the rocket equation: V = Ve * ln(Mt/Mp). You need to carry enough mass, ejected at a sufficient speed, to produce 9.8 m/s v every second.

The upshot is that to counterbalance the weight of a soldier and his gear you can either have your rocket eject a lot of mass at low velocity or a small amount of mass at high velocity. That's why the rocket belts thus far have only had a very, very short burn time. To increase the burn time you'd need to carry more fuel than a man could lift.

A typical infantry solider or marine carries over a hundred pounds of gear into battle. Even accounting for things he could dispense with if he had greater mobility, he can't carry much fuel to power his rocket belt. A practical battlefield air transport machine would be a small vehicle which carries more weight than an individual solider can. In other words: a helicopter.

Similar concerns attach to asteroid mining. You *can* physically go out there and return materials from asteroids, just like you *can* strap a rocket belt on a soldier. The question isn't whether physics permits it, but rather whether physics permits economically feasible retrieval of asteroid material, and that's a lot tougher than it sounds. Even the "asteroid belt" is practically empty by terrestrial standards; your chance of randomly encountering anything larger than a dust speck while crossing it is less than hitting the lottery. So prospecting for nuggets of stuff like platinum is physically possible, but not feasible. Unless we hit the jackpot with a near earth object like 433 Eros, we won't see asteroid mining until v in space becomes much, much cheaper.

No, crimea has been part of the ukraine since 1991. But even if it was as you believe, there still wouldn't be a precedance.

As for the rest of your dribble, it doesn't seem to match reality or matter much in the context of these posts.

Minimum wage should not exist, I guess you are not familiar with my comments. Nobody can force anybody to do anything, unless it is done through government threat of violence. Again, nobody is holding a gun to your head except government. Read my journal before replying to mine.

Exactly the opposite, there would be tons more jobs created for people who were previously avoided by employers due to government created discrimination. How do you read my comment and come to the exact opposite conclusion from the reality, which is this - more people are out of work due to their 'protected' status than find work because of it. These laws are taxes, nothing else. They reduce economic activity not increase it.

There should not be any government imposed regulations upon any individuals or their busineses regarding any type of discrimination.People discriminate all the time. Who we date ( including age, race , religion, looks, political views, mental and physical abilities or disabilities and other factors), where we shop, who we hang out with, where we live, etc. etc. People must be able to discriminate against each other without gov't meddling. This is individual freedoms we are talking about. Just because a person starts a business he or she must not be stripped of their individual rights! Age discrimination must not be a crime of any kind. Government cannot be allowed to pass laws that allow people to sue because they (factually or fictionally) were discriminated against by anybody, including employers, customers, landlords, anybody. Government job is to protect individual rights, not to provide entitlements or 'solve injustice'! All these lawsuits do is create discrimination where it may not have otherwise been in the first place. Why would I hire women, who can sue me if they decide their pay is insufficient? Why would I hire a minority, if this means I can be sued if I fire them for 'race discrimination'? Why would I hire anybody from any protected group, where gov't provides it with entitlements and imposes obligations on me as an employer? Why can I not sue somebody for buying a competing product rather than mine? They are discriminating.

These lawsuits prove me right. Don't hire anybody who is not a youngr white single male - the onlygroup of people that cannot sue me if I fire them or if one does not make exactly as much money as another.

If I could get women to do the EXACTLY the same work as men, with the same results for less money than men, I would not have even one man working for me. I only care about maximizing my own profit, that is all that matters. My business is not there to create jobs, it is there to make me money, that is its raison d'etre, nothing else. I don't care onebit if you are a black illegal disabled 100 year old Marxist translesbiangaybold satanist fuck with 20 kids and Alzheimers if you make me money. However I cannot hire you if you are, because the potential risk of lawsuit is enormously hilariously outmatching any benefit you may bring the company. So I will find a way not even to interview you. You want to FIX this? Make sure that non-discrimination laws apply strictly to the government, not to private individuals and their businesses. Until such time, unemployment among the protected classes will be higher than among those, who cannot sue their employers.

There's your answer right there.

It's a bit like the uncanny valley. People who are very different from you are interesting and exotic; you know it takes some effort to understand them. People who are just a little bit different from you are too incorrigibly stubborn to bring themselves up to snuff and think and act the right way.

That's why civil wars are so bitter and inhumane. In some ways it's harder to see humanity in someone who is culturally similar but irreconcilably different than in someone who is alien. Rudyard Kipling could wax lyrical about the noble savages in "Gunga Din" and "Fuzzy-Wuzzy", but he never once penned a poem in praise of the Liberal Party.

OK, lets. The US government is far from lilly-white, but if it and allied governments were coordinating violent opposition to the Ukrainian government too, that would surely be in the cable leak.

This is just plain wrong. Obviously so. The Set {A,B} is part of {{A,B},{A,C}} even though its definition is limited to {A,B}. {{A,B},{A,C}} cannot exist without {A.B}.

You just described something existing inside of something except you are somehow equating A,B as A,C while not realizing they are by definition not the same thing.

By that definition, the word "created" defines a verb entirely confined to the meaning of making something appear out of entirely nothing, Since we don't even know if "entirely nothing" is even possible, that would potentially make it completely fictional and thus meaningless verb. I don't think many would agree.

Lol.. That is the claim though. That God created the universe and everything in it. Why are you arguing that one created the other at the same time it was inside the none existing portion if you are going to change your argument to we don't know if it is possible. The set {{A,B}{A,C}} would only exist if {A.B} and {A,C} were created outside it and merged somehow. in the end, we still have creation from the outside.

Exactly half of my point. In the (unpopular) scenario where the universe is permeable, the boundaries have meaning only in determining what is part of the universe, and things that aren't part of it do not all necessarily need to be defined by those boundaries. The other half is that, even in the scenario where the universe is a completely closed system, things can exist outside that enclosed system without interacting with it, however, if that completely closed system had an initial state (along some dimension, not necessarily limited to "time") then evidence as to the parameters of that initial state may still be evident from within the universe. Which is why we have so much chatter about such things as the CMBR assymetry and somewhat serious propositions about how to ascertain whether we are living in a simulation.

I hope you realize that you just explained something existing outside the universe creating the universe and in one instance, entering it.

Do I personally think we'll ever glean a proof or a disproof of any "creator" or creation-like event from available physical evidence? Probably not, and almost definitely not within my lifetime. However, from a logical standpoint, I see no proof that such a proof is impossible, and you've presented zero to back up your somewhat strange definition of words and logical constructs.

I guess I don't need to present proof as we are talking about the logic of it and you just presented all the logic needed to determine the creator was outside the creation when creating it.

There will likely never be universal proof of a creator unless the stories are real and there is a second coming and the earth is destroyed. But logically, if there is a creator that created the universe, it was done from the outside.

The US doesn't need authority from the UN to depose Iraq. Nowhere is it in the UN charter to give permission to depose any sitting government.

And the UN doesn't give orders for specific actions in war unless the action is a UN action. That hasn't happened since Korea and we are reminded often how big of a failure that was.

I don't know who told you that the UN was the government of the world but they are not. It exists in order to have avenues for diplomacy instead of wars and had treaties it administrates, but you are completely wrong in thinking the US needs or needed permission from the UN.

Also, I don't really care about what Kuwait promised or not. They weren't the aggressors, they were our friends and had been friendly with the US since it's beginning. Kuwait even allowed Jefferson to stage his operations and preparations to invade the controlling authority Tripoli when both were under the ottoman empire control.

Again, everyone learned the stories and recited them.. It was a part of their daily life. If someone got something wrong, it was corrected. The first oral stories were supposedly dictated to Moses by God, so there is no real room for error there as Moses was educated and existed after writing had been around for a while.

In order for you to think that oral stories varied to any significant degree would also require the written versions to be in conflict to the same degrees and you would have splintering in the text with claims one of correct while the other is not. If there are five versions of the stories since their creation, there would be five texts written yet we have absolutely no evidence of that outside of a few discrepancies that aren't largely material.

It is pretty safe to say that we know the oral stories weren't corrupted even if they are older then the telling to Moses.

Actually, it was a response to a reporter who asked what insights she can gain from being so close to Russia in connection with NATIONAL SECURITY not foreign policy, here answer was "They're our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska":
Read more at http://www.snopes.com/politics...

It was in response to a series of questioning about Russia invading another of it's neighbors Georgia. She also warns about Russia and the Ukraine in this same interview which she was laughed at. I would think in context, her comment on this was very rational where as yours is still completely ignorant of the facts.

Exactly. The cure for inequality is to bring them down a bit. To hell with elevating everyone else up, it's too hard. But taking and taking and taking until they are like the rest is easy.

Your example in the first paragraph isn't really applicable: imagine if the majority of Iraq's population were Americans... completely different context.

lol.. not really applicable? The first gulf war didn't end, there was a cease fire with conditions that were not met to the satisfaction of parties to the war. You are correct it is not applicable to Russia invading Crimea which is why it isn't a precedence.

Also, keep in mind that the USA had several opportunities to resolve the WMD inspection problem (like allowing the EU to chose the inspectors) but they always chose the escalating "my way or the highway" option.

And the sanctions against Iraq would have been effective if France, Russia, and China hadn't scammed the UN oil for food program to get cheap oil in violation of sanctions they voted to put in place. OF course this wouldn't have been possible without the corruption in the UN also, Kofi Annan and his family made out pretty well on it too.

The only thing about the Iraq invasion that can be legitimately traced to oil is the strong opposition by the countries and people extorting Iraq for their oil before the invasion.

Just look at who controls all of Iraq's oil exports right now.

You mean China? After the US invasion, the UN still tightly controlled Iraqi oil and over the years released larger amounts to the control of the Iraqi government until finally, they lifted the restrictions on it. If you are going to imply the US controls it or at some time controlled it, you have absolutely no fact based evidence of such happenings. China moved in as soon as the oil became available and is purchasing the vast majority of it. The best you can do is somehow conflate a situation in which the US benefits and planned on benefiting from other countries buying up the Iraqi oil.

I'm sorry but your worldview on the subject simply does not match reality much.