For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power? Nothing is more natural nor common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars … But what would have been thought of that assembly, if, attaching themselves to these general expressions, and disregarding the specifications which ascertain and limit their import, they had exercised an unlimited power of providing for the common defense and general welfare? I appeal to the objectors themselves, whether they would in that case have employed the same reasoning in justification of Congress as they now make use of against the convention. How difficult it is for error to escape its own condemnation!
Indeed, there is quite a lot of data against (Biblical/young-earth) creationism.
Everything from "humans' chromosome 2 is a fusion of two other chromosomes, and we see those two other chromosomes still present in chimpanzees and gorillas and bonobos", which argues for common descent, to "when zircon crystals form, they accept radioactive uranium but violently reject the lead that it decays to, and modern zircon crystals have lead-uranium ratios indicating that they formed billions of years ago", arguing for an old age of the universe. And many, many, many, many other pieces of evidence.
Chromosomal similarity argues for solid engineering principles just as much as it does common decent. Do you have any data to suggest that the almighty did not take a working chromosome 2 (made in their own image, perhaps), and reuse it in these other animals you reference?
> Do you have any data to suggest that the almighty did not take a working chromosome 2 (made in their own image, perhaps), and reuse it in these other animals you reference?
Why would an almighty god leave markers in our Chromosome 2 that look like they are from chromosomes 2a/2b in other apes?
It's not just that there's a huge genetic similarities between the chromosomes. Which there are! Chromosome 2 also has an extra, deactivated centromere, which was used in the copying of the previous chromosome 2b, before the fusion. And, remember that chromosomes typically have telomeres at their ends to keep them from fraying apart. In a fusion event you'd expect some telomeres from the end of the ingredient chromosomes to end up in the middle of the resulting fused chromosome. And this is what we see.
Of course God could have created our chromosome in such a way that it looks very much like the fusion of 2 chromosomes from our shared ancestor with chimpanzees, down to the addition of an extra centromere and telomere region. But why would he?
But, I've also got to say, man, please don't be surprised if I don't respond much. I have no offense intended towards you, but from my perspective, arguing with a young earth creationist is about as productive as arguing with a flat earther. There are about 6 orders of magnitude of difference in age between an Earth that's about 6k years old and 4 billion, and those differences should be readily apparent all over the natural world. And they are! We see an incredible wealth of evidence for an old universe.
But... well, horse and water and all that. I can't expect to change your mind any more than I'd expect to change a flat-earther's mind.
I get that you don’t understand why a creator might do things they way they might have done. I don’t either. But surely you admit your own lack of understanding is not a scientific proof point?
If I said “I don’t understand why the big bang happened”, would that be evidence it didn’t?
Which is why I contest anyone who makes claims like “smart people like me know that Science says the earth is N years old and everyone who disagrees is too dumb to understand these indisputable facts”.
> If you see the flaw in the premise (it assumes no fraud) then the conclusion does not follow.
Right. Or he could've been grandfathered in.
But more basically: this is logically valid, but not logically sound. These are two different ways in which something may be "true" or "false", and in this format, it's not completely clear, soundness vs validity. Based on context clues like the absurd premise of pilots -> medical exam, I assumed validity, but it's still a weird format.
> Grid scale lithium batteries have an effective lifecycle of 15 years. In this potential future, global lithium reserves would actually start getting choked up before the 2050 goal.
I think the long-term solutions here are not grid-scale lithium batteries, but pumped hydro, flow batteries, or compressed air. Lithium batteries have just gotten a bit ahead on the technological growth curve because of the recent boom in production from phones and EVs, but liquid flow batteries can be made using common elements, and are likely to be cost-effective once the tech gets worked out better.
So: I don't think we can say "lithium energy storage is unfeasible large-scale and long-term" and thus conclude that nuclear is inevitable, unless we also look at all the other storage alternatives.
The main reason lithium batteries are used in cars and electronics is because they offer some of the best energy storage per kilogram. That's really important for something meant to be portable, but it's completely irrelevant for a large permanent installation.
> The article is typical handwavy crap which is popular among people living in what amounts to subtropics
To be fair, 90% of the population lives within 45 degrees of the equator. If we're talking about global energy solutions for CO2 reduction, we can go a long way just by focusing on what works in these areas of the globe.
The article does also point out that hydro/wind are going to be important at higher latitudes in winter, but they also acknowledge that they don't account for seasonal variation in demand. That's the biggest flaw I can find in the analysis.
FWIW: I'm down in a mild arid climate at 35N, and yeah, 90% of our winter days are nearly sunny, even when the lows are in the teens. It's a different world for sure.
Most space heating is in the Northern parts though, so those are the ones that need to be addressed. There are solutions that are a pareto improvement, but it's a coordination problem and the USA is sufficiently broken and unable to solve those.
Weird that we can afford how many hundreds of thousands per bomb but can't be bothered to pay entry level wages to manually verify each site. I'm sure the DoD has access to something even better than Google Maps.
Does it matter, at this point? If you go and tell someone who’s lost their home and half their family in a strike, "oops, it was just bad intel", do they hate you less?
Yeah, but… I think if you’re bombing a child’s school because of bad intel, the deaths are on you either way. We’re not going to be like “oh, this war was necessary, which means it’s no biggie that you accidentally killed two hundred children because you didn’t do your DD”
I sometimes wonder if our modern philosophy of requiring intentionality for crimes is the wrong way. You can launder intentionality be not trying too hard. If you try really weakly, it's called negligence but even that isn't as morally bad as intentionality. Perhaps we should forget about trying to read the mind of a state or criminal and only judge them by their actions.
In my country, punishments for killing people with deliberate violence varies from 8 months home detention (bus driver punched a passenger in the face, knocking him out so he fell backward and cracked his head on the ground), to several decades (man grabbed scissors from the kitchen, ran to his ex girlfriend's room, and stabbed her repeatedly). Both victims are equally dead but the courts decided that the perpetrators' feelings mattered far more than what they did. Perhaps if the bus driver had been weaker and needed a weapon, he'd be in prison for 10 years instead of free? Perhaps if the ex-boyfriend had used his fists outdoors on a concrete pavement, he'd be free? Seems grossly unfair.
I made a face, reading this article. They present the US gov't's very large and scary liabilities and future obligations, but they don't present the other side of the picture, the future income streams. (How much can the US government realistically expect to earn annually via taxation?)
Without being able to compare future liabilities to future income, we're lacking critical context. It's like they wrote half an article; kinda frustrating.
There is no feasible scenario where tax revenues will allow the US government to pay a 39 Trillion, soon to be 40 Trillion debt. And paying the debt its not even in discussion right now.
What is in discussion, are the multiple, very feasible, and very realistic scenarios, where an increase in interest rates, and a run from the dollar...Will force the US government to spend over 80% of the tax revenue, JUST TO SERVICE the debt interest....
> Most likely outcome is that they make huge paper profits that are then absolutely worthless because the dollar collapses
Seems like it'd be pretty easy to diversify into inflation-protected assets after taking big profits.
But I also don't see the dollar collapsing any time soon. The dollar's strength is built on the US economy, and the US economy is still one of the strongest in the world, with high productivity per person. We'll see some inflation, sure, but nothing that the rich insider traders can't hedge against.
I do not expect that there will be any real justice here. They're not gutting the average American -- they're bleeding us, extracting a small enough amount of value that they can get away with it. And we don't live in a just world.
I think this is a big part of both the impact of globalization and the U.S's waning power. Back around 1950, right after WW2, the "first world" (the developed west, not including Russia or Warsaw Pact countries) had a total population of just over 500M, and the U.S. was 150M of those, just under 1/3. And the remainder were largely dependent upon U.S. capital, machinery, and technology, having just bombed each other back to pre-industrial times.
Today, the developed world is about 3-4B people, and the U.S. is 350M of them, less than 10%. China alone has lifted about 500M people out of poverty and into the middle class in the last 2 decades, a population larger than the total population of the middle class in the U.S. The population of Asia is around 4.86B, 15x the size of the United States, and an increasingly large number of them are living a lifestyle close to what Americans enjoy.
>Seems like it'd be pretty easy to diversify into inflation-protected assets after taking big profits.
Assets are yours only as long as there's a government to enforce your ownership rights over those assets for you. In case of government or societal collapse, your physical assets then are free for the taking to the ones with the most men with the most guns, and your paper assets are worthless.
I believe the dollars strength is built on its unassailability as the petrodollar and foreign reserve currency, which lets the fed set interest rates and print money while creating less inflation than any other currency. The world looks very very different when energy markets aren’t fulfilled in dollars in ways that most citizens won’t understand.
That’s false. The petrodollar is irrelevant because two non-US companies trading using an intermediate currency like the USD create a balanced buy and sell of the intermediary.
But why is Iran insisting the Chinese Yuan be used? Because they're idiots?
Because Petrodollars make our global economy work, and Iran wants their partner China to be in control! If Americans lose sight of their need to maintain their role as *THE* lingua franca of international trade, then all hell is lost. The US cannot afford its military without massive consequences if it can't raise extraordinarily cheap debt through purchases of oil in US dollars immediately turned around to buy US debt to maintain that money's value.
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