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I dont remember precisely as I think I have only read revelations in lego format (http://www.thebricktestament.com/revelation/index.html)

but isn't there only like members from the original tribes of Israel or something which are ascended to heaven in the rapture?

or is this a different rapture?

So in case you had all forgotten, people are to be raptured on up within the next hour (Surely God works on GMT no?)

And then the world is to be destroyed

In case you have forgotten.. http://laist.com/2011/05/24/apocalypse_not_quite_now_camping_pi.php

Wonder how he's going to backtrack on this one. Another angel appearing and correcting him? Maybe its a slow destruction of the world as *gasp* it is God who has been destroying the economy

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/17/hamas-israel-prisoner-swap-gilad-shalit

Israel said today it had resumed talks with the Hamas rulers of Gaza on swapping about 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for a captive soldier held for more than four years.

Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu said the German mediator who has been working to broker a deal for a year has returned to the region.

Hamas-linked militants captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in June 2006 in a raid across the Gaza-Israel border. Secret negotiations over a swap, mediated by Egypt and more recently by Germany, have been deadlocked for several months. Hamas is not part of US-sponsored peace talks that restarted last month in Washington.

Deals proposed in the past have entailed Israel swapping about 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for Shalit.

The most recent talks broke down over Israel's refusal to release a number of prisoners who carried out deadly attacks on civilians because of fears they would return to violence. Hamas insists these prisoners be part of any deal.

Hamas are, of course, playing directly into Israel's hands by setting ridiculous demands for the return of Shalit, who isn't exactly a high use hostage in terms of propaganda or advancing the Palestinian cause.  Of course, Israel don't want to strike a deal with Hamas, so they're not exactly going to point this out.

Turns out Israel are willing to trade 1000 Hamas prisoners in exchange for one captured solider. Do you think this may set a dangerous precedent Cain, or do you think Israel may prove a point with a couple of explosions/assassinations/arrests of some key targets?

The sequel forever peace by Joe Halderman is not as good. Still worth a read, as does learn to more surreal wtfness near the end of the book.

It could be everywhere, anywhere as velocity in space is not limited to 2-Directional travel (assuming you don't slow down for corners)

and whilst, no it would not be instantaneously every where at once to people on the external reference frame, to those within the reference frame it would be. So when kirk states their 5 year mission to go boldly where no one has gone before... is probably true, as he was captain in the year whatever lets say 2XXX ? so anything that was more than than say x light years away (where x is the number of years from kirk being captain to warp travel being invented/2) would be where no one has gone before.

As the information is limited to travelling at the speed of light, this means that the only way the information could be returned would be if the vessel itself physically returned to dump the data.

So as an effect of this, the second that the enterprise entered relativistic velocities, it would be seriously obsolete to encountering a Klingon vessel which it encountered, where the Klingon vessel was closer to its homeworld than the enterprise was.

There is actually a really good sci-fi book called forever war by Joe Halderman, which details a war occurring at relativistic velocities. It definitely is worth the read and will explain it a lot better than me.

Also read up about the Chernkov radiation. its my favourite scientific concept. basically due to the speed of light in water being less than the speed of light in vacuum, it is possible to provide electrons with enough energy to travel faster than the speed of light. This causes in effect an optical shock wave, where the EM energy from the electron is shifted in the blue direction, in the same way that a sonic boom is produced.

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

So nuclear reactors glow blue. which is pretty pimp to see.

Only particle we have observed at the speed of light, as a discrete packed of photons. But it is also a wave, which means it is not bound by mass constraints.

and that equation is a bit of a mind fuck,

as 1) no physical object could travel at the speed of light as it would require infinite energy
    2) the reason you can be infinitely anywhere is that at the speed of light, time is infinite/stopped inside your reference frame (that is what is meant by delta t = zero

So imagine you could instantly accelerate to the speed of light. once there you could travel anywhere in the universe, with your clocking basically frozen. meaning you would in effect be immortal until you slowed down.

So jump to speed of light and say hit alpha centuri, that's what 4 light years away? to you, it would be instantaneous, where to the rest of the the universe (outside your reference frame) it would have taken you four years.

and dividing by zero is a fallacy as it produces no real solutions to an equation. which in this case means time stops existing.

I think its just the result of plugging velocity = c into special relativistic time dilation equation.

Where Gamma = 1/ (1-(v^2/C^2))  time dilation is given by delta t = gamma * proper time

if v= C then the denominator becomes 1-1 = 0. anything divided by zero is equal to zero/infinity (i.e with out limits).

So delta t will always be zero when travelling at speed of light.

using Speed = distance over time, rearranging gives distance equals time times speed.

so plugging in our delta t, means that distance will always equal zero/infinity which as I mentioned over means it has no limits.

therefore at the speed of light you are travelling no where and ever where at the same time.



Not sure on any links, as I just rearranged it from memory. Good start would be hyperphysics for the basics

According to current relativistic theory, at the speed of light you exist everywhere at once, so wouldn't be boldly going so much, as boldly revisiting everywhere

Fire away Dok

Aside from the propaganda angle there is no need logistical logic for NK to have suicide torpedoes.

To blow up any mid sized vessel you probably only need around 200kgish of explosives depending on where you hit it/ effect method. something like Torpex perhaps.  Even a double hulled submersible can be destroyed relatively easily with a shaped charge. as opposed to something being single-man submarine sized.

As for guidance, human visibility is terrible underwater, add in reactions. A Simple magnetometer, sonar receiver or other seeker would work much more effectively, especially against surface vessels who can only manoeuvre within a limited plane.

Given the fact that NK has made a range of Ballistic missiles which are good enough to export, I'm pretty sure they can construct a half decent seeker for a torpedo for the say 65 kg weight envelope that a 'commando' would inhabit.
 

OK let me try and attempt to clarify

The financial world isn't one I'm particularly familiar with,  I probably should have found that thread before asking stupid questions, but having a giant discussion about finances was never what I originally intended. Returning to my original point.

My original response in regards to apathy, whilst it related to education, it was also a comment more on what appears to me as more of a systemic problem within certain areas of population that I've met. The people who I was referring to are apathetic about their future in general. They have no dreams, no goals, other than to "Buy Product X" or "Just get drunk and party and have a good time and stuff"
I'm sorry if it came out as if I was suggesting that you required education in order to achieve a job. The point I was trying to make was that very few worthwhile things just fall in your lap, you generally are going to have to work for them, be this being an astronaut, a vet or a world famous porn star.
So there is little they need to do in order to achieve any of the 'goals' that they have in life. So these were the people who fucked around in school, as for them what was the point being there.
The point of there being no work at the minute or education not being the cure all are both valid, and I wasn't disagreeing with either.
The opinion I was trying to get across was that my old high school was full of people like this during the 'economic boom' (or at least the growth of the last 10 years), and will continue afterwards if/when the economy recovers. These people will still have no aspirations. Therefore they and their descendants will still fuck around in school ruining theirs and others education. My comment towards death/famine/war was that it seems for many people they only get up and do anything when some form of competition/Impending disaster/ something that TV/Booze cannot hide suddenly occurs. As for culling the kids, I'm pretty sure that wasn't what I meant.

I am awfully certain that somewhere in the OP I crammed the idea that people are hopelessly fucked because the educational system is fucked because of The Man's greasy fingers. Even in good educational systems there are lazy kids, but most kids want to learn and get nasty when you don't give them what their brains want, and a lot of them are good at smelling bullshit. It's a system that perpetuates and ingrains their apathy.

You know, you'd figure it would be difficult to focus on getting exceptional grades for a future career when famine/disease/war/purges fuck your families' shit up rather than the other way around.

I disagree. A lot of people I went to school with did not want to learn, were lazy and considered that they knew all the needed to know to survive in life. As such regardless of the standard, or how it was delivered, they did not care. This lead them to apathy I was talking about above. And this apathy as I suggested before, seems to me as a social issue. In that these people are not given any aspirations or drive by their parents. they then have Kids and repeat. Worse is that due to lack of inspiration from any one growing up (none from parents, and did not listen to teachers, so leaves few adults in their growing up period), they become afraid of failure so they do not try. I wasn't stating a solution, just as to what my opinion of what is wrong with the current education system is. Which is something that I don't think is anyway the government's fault. All the government should be responsible is to provide the environment for people to learn/better them selves. In the 'Take a horse to water' analogy. 
From my experience, it was that there are many people exist who have no dreams and would rather drink and fuck, rather than try at something, possibly fail and have try again and eventually succeed, and its these people who I think are a main cause in lower educational standards.
But maybe I'm just missing the point, or repeating what's already been said before but in just a different way. 


Moving back onto my financial point. I Tried reading for a change, and there are still things I don't understand. I mean I get what happened, but not so sure on what could happen in the future.

So lets say the global economy collapses. Banks goes bust, Governments default. This has happened before no? The UK has done it before in the past.
My question was, what is the point at which things bottom out. I read references to Japan's Lost decade, where things just halted to virtually zero percent interest. Which is near to what the UK is experiencing now, so does that mean we can expect a similar scenario, of slow growth of x years before recovery? where things just tick over?
Will the government austerity measures designed to cut the deficit affect this in any way? I mean I thought the whole point of reducing the deficit would be to reduce the tax wasted on debt interest, meaning that money can then be used for actual useful things, stimulating the economy with new jobs right?
and whilst I understand that continuing cutting jobs will lead to the point where no more cuts can be made to reduce the deficit, What I don't understand is how the basic fact that people in jobs need to spend their money on something (food at least), therefore spawning more jobs, and so on. How will this not lead to a recovery or some sort of recovery?
Say analogous to a biodiversity model where in the predator/prey relationship fluctuates by modifying one of the variables, an equilibrium point will always be reached (ignoring an external cataclysm). so surely at some point whilst the economy is still declining, it will reach equilibrium point somewhere, yes? Where the number of money input into the economy supports a certain amount of jobs plus the taxes etc. But is the reason we are so 'fucked' is that the current financial climate may cause this equilibrium point to exist at such a level that growth will be nigh on impossible unless an external factor is added?

     

If you don't feel like answer what some of you may consider stupid, I would at least appreciate some decent links that point me in the right direction, say a decent idiots guide to economics or something?

A lot. why?

Is me asking questions in a polite manner, or trying to understand in some way offensive to you?

But at what point will the economy bottom out. I don't understand how it cannot bottom out, from simple supply and demand no?

I understand that everything is going to shit, and will still go to shit,  but surely at some point, by the simple fact that one person is employed will in fact spawn more jobs no?



Roger, what do you mean by utterly plundered. Goods are still being produced, people still need to eat, so what physically has been looted?

I didn't realise you guys had such proficiency at reading the future,
or maybe could you explaining it to me in a clear way, since you are clearly more knowledge about this then myself

Talking about education here. as in for the people who will begin their careers in the next 5+ years

Yes the job market is shit at the minute. Probably will be shit for perhaps another year or two. Never said it wasn't

Would be seriously surprised if in five years time the economy is still in the same state today.

But in five years when there will be more jobs and more demands for educated people, these people will still not care, and still have no aspirations.