The end of "The Age of America"?

[Callie]

Originally Posted By: Lilith

Given that American education is largely funded by revenue collected at the state or local level and run by local school boards, what exactly is all that alleged extra national-level bureaucracy doing?

It's turning the children of the US into test-taking zombies.

A poor joke, but not terribly far from the truth.

[Skomer]

Originally Posted By: Artemis~

Japan has technology that we won't hope to see for years here in America, yet they're small.

Umm, Japan's not that small. Their population is 128 million.

[Trenton.]

Compared to N. America and our population it is. Now were huge. And japan is like on a scale size of what state in america?

[Student of Trinity]

Switzerland is so inhomogeneous, the coins are all labelled in Latin, because it's the only way they can avoid antagonizing one of the five official language groups. Sure, there's also a reasonable amount of social cohesion and common Swiss identity. But not because that's easy for them. And it probably amounts to less common identity than Americans have.

 

Population size does not in principle make it harder to maintain a country's infrastructure. Sure, you need more people to administer the larger budget. But see, you have more people available. In fact, it should help, by allowing economies of scale.

 

Geographical size is a problem. Railways work great in Europe because a much shorter length of track gives you rapid transit between major centers. Climate is also an issue. In Europe there isn't the same freeze-thaw cycle with the seasons, heaving up roadbeds and rails.

 

It remains the case that American infrastructure is really noticeably crummy compared to European. Put it this way: Mercedes-Benz makes a lot of buses.

 

This is one thing to bear in mind about European economic difficulties. They are severe, at least in a few places, but there is a thick layer of armor around the basic European standard of living. And it's been this way for half a century or so now, through many cycles of local and global boom and bust. No doubt the European commitment to socialized infrastructure brings its economic liabilities, but it is clear by now that it also brings enough advantages to make the basic strategy viable over the long term.

 

If the USA dropped its military spending by, say, 80%, which would still leave it spending substantially more than any other country in the world, then it could build up to European levels of infrastructure within just a couple of decades. Americans have simply chosen otherwise. Fine; it's a free country.

[Masquerade]

all this fighting about the merits of living in large countries versus living in small countries is making me glad that i live in a country where 80% of the people live in 10% of the space, thus rendering all your arguments invalid *trollface*

[Student of Trinity]

I reckon Canadians may have got you beat, there.

[Soul of Wit]

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES

Originally Posted By: Dantius

if you are going to prosecute wars, YOU HAVE TO RAISE TAXES.

This isn't SimCity, you know. Somehow, I doubt it's really that simple.

You may not have to raise taxes, but you certainly can't LOWER them. That is why Shrub is among the worst leaders in US history. No other POTUS would even entertain such a lame idea.

Until our representatives implement significant cuts to military spending, they can keep their hands off my OASDI & HI. Same goes for cuts to big oil & big ag subsidies.

[Erebus the Black]

You're a Shrub -

If you are going to speak in acrospeak please add a legend for us non-americans.

[Dantius]

I can hazard a guess at a few of them.

 

Shrub = Bush = President George W. Bush.

 

POTUS= President of the United States.

 

OADSI Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance, part of Social Security

 

HI= Hospital Insurance, part of Medicare

 

Big Oil- Subsidies to oil companies

 

Big Ag- Agricultural subsidies.

[Cairo Jim]

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

I reckon Canadians may have got you beat, there.

I dunno about that. Australia has the lowest population density in the world. About 3 people per square kilometre, or so I've heard

[Sullust]

Originally Posted By: Dantius

Here's the problem. While I can understand this kind of "set our own affairs in order first" type of thinking, the fact is, the percentage of people in the US in real, serious need of food, that would stave if they did not receive aid, is vastly in terms of number and percent than numbers in other countries. North Korea, for instance, is a country where millions would literally starve to death if we stopped sending them food aid. Farm subsidies < millions dead.

For proof of the fact that millions can die in a famine, just look at the Holodomor- a famine created in Ukraine by the orders of Josef Stalin. It killed more people than the entire Holocaust, a much more widely known genocide (12 million was the figure I read, versus 11 for the Holocaust), but instead of bothering with death camps and gas, Stalin simply cut off food. It's a terrible way to die, and mass casualties are very plausible.

This is probably going to come off as horribly cruel; but isn't helping starving people now only going to create many more starving people later?

In the short-term you'll be helping these people survive. In the long-term you're just contributing to an ever growing population which will only further stress the food supply and in turn lead to even more people starving.

[Callie]

Australia does have one of the lowest population densities, but Mongolia is less dense. The Falkland Islands and Greenland have an even lower density but they're not independent.

 

Originally Posted By: Lt. Sullust

 

This is probably going to come off as horribly cruel; but isn't helping starving people now only going to create many more starving people later?

 

In the short-term you'll be helping these people survive. In the long-term you're just contributing to an ever growing population which will only further stress the food supply and in turn lead to even more people starving.

Not necessarily: given sufficient economic growth the population will enter into demographic transition. Of course, a worldwide transition will probably not happen anytime soon given the lack of stable government in many parts of the world, but I'd imagine it would happen at some point in time.

 

 

[Soul of Wit]

Originally Posted By: Dantius

I can hazard a guess at a few of them.

Shrub = Bush = President George W. Bush.

POTUS= President of the United States.

OADSI Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance, part of Social Security

HI= Hospital Insurance, part of Medicare

Big Oil- Subsidies to oil companies

Big Ag- Agricultural subsidies.

I admit it; Google pays me to drive traffic to them.

A shrub is a little bush. George W's father, George H. W., was also POTUS.

[*i]

In related news, Osama bin Ladin is dead.

[Sullust]

Apparently eight years (to the day) since 'MISSION ACCOMPLISHED'...

[Dantius]

I wonder if the drone remote pilot gets that huge reward on Osama's head? It's like $25,000,000 currently...

[Callie]

Bin Laden's death feels rather strange considering how I basically grew up in the aftermath of 9/11. I was eight years old when that happened, and now I'm in college.

[Randomizer]

Originally Posted By: *i

In related news, Osama bin Ladin is dead.

Dick Cheney claims credit.

[A less presumptuous name.]

What exactly has Bin Ladin been doing in the last half-dozen years? Has he been active in anything significant, or is his death more symbolic of Bush's "War on Terror?" Maybe we can quick screwing over the Middle East now. It's been nearly 100 years (WWI really started the whole Israel mess, although it wasn't made until after WWII).

 

I think we should care more about the Beatification of Pope John Paul II (the Great). Then again, wikinews is all I ever see.

[Masquerade]

Originally Posted By: Cairo Jim

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

I reckon Canadians may have got you beat, there.

I dunno about that. Australia has the lowest population density in the world. About 3 people per square kilometre, or so I've heard

yep thats pretty much it, 90% of the coutry is desert where noone but farmers, miners and the ocasional aboriginal want to live , in fact the outback is so vast and unpopulated that a bunch of anarchists tested bombs (rumoured to be nuclear in nature, but the book didn't specify)in the desert and nobody noticed till weeks later when they reviewed the seismatic data.

[*i]

Bin Laden was more of a symbolic nature these days. One thing to keep in mind, however, is that the Middle Eastern culture tends to value such symbols as important: hence the World Trade Center as one of the primary targets. If nothing else, this will be a psychological boost and blow to the respective sides.

 

As for anarchist groups having and testing nuclear bombs somehow unnoticed, highly unlikely considering how constantly those seismic readings are monitored by global powers. You can't really hide it. Further, it really does take the capability of a nation state to manufacture the materials necessary for such a device. Also, the tests would have to have been underground (again, requiring massive resources) otherwise radioisotopes that are key signatures would have lit up radiation detectors around the world.

[Cairo Jim]

And I am lead to believe that the amount of resources spent on finding Bin Laden was something ridiculous.

[Callie]

The purpose of the Afghanistan War encompasses more than just capturing Osama Bin Laden...but yeah I never agreed with it in the first place.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: *i

As for anarchist groups having and testing nuclear bombs somehow unnoticed, highly unlikely considering how constantly those seismic readings are monitored by global powers. You can't really hide it. Further, it really does take the capability of a nation state to manufacture the materials necessary for such a device. Also, the tests would have to have been underground (again, requiring massive resources) otherwise radioisotopes that are key signatures would have lit up radiation detectors around the world.

Well, manufacturing a nuclear device itself is something that can be done in any decently- equipped machine shop with access to not-very suspicious parts and materials, so that bit's easy. Getting the nuclear material itself is far more difficult, bordering on the impossible. If a group did manage to get their hands on the U-235 nessecary, I highly doubt they'd waste it all on a test in central Australia, and they also probably don't have two, otherwise it would have been detonated.


Tl;dr: It was probably a conventional bomb if it happened.

[Cairo Jim]

You'd be surprised how many Uranium mines are in Australia. None of which is used here. It's all shipped overseas

[*i]

The purpose of the war was to systematically disable the organization that attacked the US, Al Qaeda, which was tied very closely with the Taliban. Unfortunately, Al Qaeda is complex, international in score, and compromises many loosely affiliated groups. I'm sure most reasonable people agree that there was a lot of mission creep and things became unfocused to the detriment of the US.

 

Nonetheless, some retaliation was absolutely necessary. Yes, disabling the threat was important and that was mostly done with relative quickness. If nothing else, a message needed to be sent that you cannot brazenly attack the US and not expect retribution, otherwise everyone with some grudge against the nation, whether justified or not, and the resources to do so would do the same. I put the objective of capturing and killing Osama Bin Laden in that category.

 

Was it worth the resources spent? That's a philosophical question and I'm not sure you can objectively put a value on sending a message of, "Think twice before you mess with us, because, if you do, you will lose everything."

[*i]

Cario Jim, there's tons of uranium in Australia. The form it, and all other natural uranium, is in is completely useless for making a nuclear bomb. Heck, you have a hard enough time making a civilian nuclear reactor with the stuff. It needs to undergo an expensive and energy intensive process called enrichment before it can be used in such as fashion.

[Student of Trinity]

It's an awfully good paperweight. That stuff is heavy.

 

(I might be hallucinating, because when I say it now it sounds bizarre, but my memory says that the little public museum in Los Alamos had a hands-on display in which you could heft little equal-sized cylinders of various metals including uranium. Lead was markedly heavier than aluminum and tin or whatever, but the uranium was impressively heavier still.)

[Randomizer]

Depleted uranium is used for the tips of missile shells and a few other munitions. After Gulf War I, they had to clean the stuff up.

 

The stuff for bombs takes a long extraction process to get a specific isotope and ratio to create a rapid nuclear explosion. Otherwise the rate is too slow for usage.

[Masquerade]

i found a source and it looks like the jokes on me, after 5 years of debate they have decided that is was either a meteorite strike or earthquake, most probibly the former due to a huge fireball reported by witnesses.

 

*is sheepish*

[Erebus the Black]

No, it's Greenland then Falkland Islands, Mongolia, Western Sahara (Maybe), French Guiana, Namibia And Then Australia

[*i]

SoT, the Bradbury (the museum you are referring to run by LANL) does have various cylinders in their plutonium exhibit, but uranium is not one of them. Their heaviest one is tungsten, which has a similar density as both uranium and plutonium.

 

Incidentally, when I was in school we had a subcritical pile that was recently decommissioned. It was a lattice of cladded natural uranium metal hexagonal rods in a pool of light water. As part of the lab class, I got to hold one of these rods, and yes, I can tell you it was quite heavy.

[Men are from Slars]

Originally Posted By: *i

One thing to keep in mind, however, is that the Middle Eastern culture tends to value such symbols as important

I'm confused. How does "the Middle Eastern culture" value leaders, founders, and other symbolic humans more than the West does?

[A less presumptuous name.]

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES

Originally Posted By: *i

One thing to keep in mind, however, is that the Middle Eastern culture tends to value such symbols as important

I'm confused. How does "the Middle Eastern culture" value leaders, founders, and other symbolic humans more than the West does?

Stareye didn't say that the Middle Eastern culture values symbols more than any other culture; he merely stated that they value them greatly. And thanks, Stareye, for the response. I also asked my AP US History teacher this morning, and she replied something along the lines of Osama being a delegator and facilitating various goings-on in the Middle East.

[Student of Trinity]

Originally Posted By: *i

SoT, the Bradbury (the museum you are referring to run by LANL) does have various cylinders in their plutonium exhibit, but uranium is not one of them. Their heaviest one is tungsten, which has a similar density as both uranium and plutonium.

Incidentally, when I was in school we had a subcritical pile that was recently decommissioned. It was a lattice of cladded natural uranium metal hexagonal rods in a pool of light water. As part of the lab class, I got to hold one of these rods, and yes, I can tell you it was quite heavy.

Ha — that must have been it. A chunk of tungsten and a note about how it weighed about as much as uranium or plutonium would have. That must have stuck in my mind as 'uranium is heavy', but a big chunk of even depleted uranium in a hands-on exhibit would have been insane.

It was a long time ago that I visited that exhibit — I lived there for nearly four years, but that was quite a while ago now, and I think I only went through the museum once.

[*i]

Slarty, what Master1 said. I was merely saying that symbols are important in that part of the world, not to imply that it isn't important here or elsewhere. My comment is that he served as a rallying point for that movement, and now he's gone.

 

As usual, Fareed Zakaria does a far more elegant job of stating what I'm trying to say.

[Men are from Slars]

Okay, that makes sense. Nice link!

[Erebus the Black]

Does anybody else remember a story about a kid in the US which built a nuclear reactor in his back yard?

(and btw Homer was wrong, right? it's pronounced nu-clear not nyu-kiler)

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Erasmus

Does anybody else remember a story about a kid in the US which built a nuclear reactor in his back yard?
(and btw Homer was wrong, right? it's pronounced nu-clear not nyu-kiler)

the former is the more "prestigious" pronunciation but the latter is used even by some nuclear physicists, and has been since the days of the Manhattan Project, so it's not really accurate to say that one is correct and the other is wrong

[keira]

Originally Posted By: Erasmus

Does anybody else remember a story about a kid in the US which built a nuclear reactor in his back yard?
(and btw Homer was wrong, right? it's pronounced nu-clear not nyu-kiler)

I've heard several such stories. The first that comes to mind is the one where a high-school kid built a working fusion reactor for a science-fair project.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: It's a trap

Originally Posted By: Erasmus

Does anybody else remember a story about a kid in the US which built a nuclear reactor in his back yard?
(and btw Homer was wrong, right? it's pronounced nu-clear not nyu-kiler)

I've heard several such stories. The first that comes to mind is the one where a high-school kid built a working fusion reactor for a science-fair project.

Fusion reactors? Don't you mean fission? A working fusion reactor would kind of solve literally every problem on the entire planet...

[keira]

Nope, fusion. They've made 'em, they just aren't scalable to a useful level yet.

[Sudanna]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor

[*i]

Making a fusion reactor is not overly difficult. Making one that can produce net power at steady state and last for decades is extremely difficult.

[Erebus the Black]

Originally Posted By: It's a trap

I've heard several such stories. The first that comes to mind is the one where a high-school kid built a working fusion reactor for a science-fair project.

No I don't think that was him, I remember the program said he saved up money and bought a lot of batteries and silver wrappings (either bubble gum or cigarettes), and he also got uranium some how. Quite ingenious really, he just didn't think about building shielding and that's how they found him.

Originally Posted By: *i

Making a fusion reactor is not overly difficult. Making one that can produce net power at steady state and last for decades is extremely difficult.

Is it really that easy to get Deuterium or Tritium?

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Erasmus

Originally Posted By: It's a trap

I've heard several such stories. The first that comes to mind is the one where a high-school kid built a working fusion reactor for a science-fair project.

No I don't think that was him, I remember the program said he saved up money and bought a lot of batteries and silver wrappings (either bubble gum or cigarettes), and he also got uranium some how. Quite ingenious really, he just didn't think about building shielding and that's how they found him.

Originally Posted By: *i

Making a fusion reactor is not overly difficult. Making one that can produce net power at steady state and last for decades is extremely difficult.

Is it really that easy to get Deuterium or Tritium?

They're just hydrogen isotopes. Deuterium isn't even radioactive, and both can be found in seawater. Extracting them is tricky, though- I believe you can actually get both from lithium hydroxide somehow, but I'm a bit unclear on the physics/chemistry of that, since I'm not a nuclear physicist like *i.

[Randomizer]

Tritium is used or use to be used to make the phosphor on wristwatches glow. I remember when some got into the water supply in Tucson and was found in the University of Arizona swimming pool.

[A less presumptuous name.]

Wikipedia doesn't lie

 

Originally Posted By: Wikipedia

Hahn, nicknamed the "Radioactive Boy Scout", is an Eagle Scout who received a merit badge in Atomic Energy and spent years tinkering with basement chemistry which sometimes resulted in small explosions and other mishaps. He was inspired in part by reading The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments, and tried to collect samples of every element in the periodic table, including the radioactive ones. Hahn diligently amassed this radioactive material by collecting small amounts from household products, such as americium from smoke detectors, thorium from camping lantern mantles, radium from clocks and tritium (as neutron moderator) from gunsights. His "reactor" was a large, bored-out block of lead, and he used lithium from $1,000 worth of purchased[1] batteries to purify the thorium ash using a Bunsen burner.[2]

---

Although his homemade reactor never achieved critical mass, it ended up emitting dangerous levels of radioactivity, likely well over 1,000 times normal background radiation. Alarmed, Hahn began to dismantle his experiments, but a chance encounter with police led to the discovery of his activities, which triggered a Federal Radiological Emergency Response involving the FBI and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. On June 26, 1995 the United States Environmental Protection Agency, having designated Hahn's mother's property as a Superfund hazardous materials cleanup site, dismantled the shed and its contents and buried them as low-level radioactive waste in Utah. Hahn refused medical evaluation for radiation exposure.[1

[Rowen]

Originally Posted By: Master1

Wikipedia doesn't lie

Originally Posted By: Wikipedia

Hahn, nicknamed the "Radioactive Boy Scout", is an Eagle Scout who received a merit badge in Atomic Energy and spent years tinkering with basement chemistry which sometimes resulted in small explosions and other mishaps. He was inspired in part by reading The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments, and tried to collect samples of every element in the periodic table, including the radioactive ones. Hahn diligently amassed this radioactive material by collecting small amounts from household products, such as americium from smoke detectors, thorium from camping lantern mantles, radium from clocks and tritium (as neutron moderator) from gunsights. His "reactor" was a large, bored-out block of lead, and he used lithium from $1,000 worth of purchased[1] batteries to purify the thorium ash using a Bunsen burner.[2]
---
Although his homemade reactor never achieved critical mass, it ended up emitting dangerous levels of radioactivity, likely well over 1,000 times normal background radiation. Alarmed, Hahn began to dismantle his experiments, but a chance encounter with police led to the discovery of his activities, which triggered a Federal Radiological Emergency Response involving the FBI and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. On June 26, 1995 the United States Environmental Protection Agency, having designated Hahn's mother's property as a Superfund hazardous materials cleanup site, dismantled the shed and its contents and buried them as low-level radioactive waste in Utah. Hahn refused medical evaluation for radiation exposure.[1

What can a boy scout not do?

[Student of Trinity]

Evidently there's such a thing as being too prepared.