The Dems, err, press coin a new phrase for Kerry's

Orange County Register ^ | 3/7/04 | DAVID M. HALBFINGER

[RGF]

Some aides and close associates say Kerry's fluidity is the mark of an intellectual who grasps the subtleties of issues, inhabits their nuances and revels in the deliberative process. They call him a free thinker who defies stereotypes. Others close to him say his often-public agonizing - over whether to opt out of the system of spending caps and matching money in this campaign, or whether to run against Al Gore four years ago - can be exasperating.

[Cultural Jihad]

Well said.

[fish hawk]

What is a flipflop
is it worn on your feet
is it the top of a Zippo
or a white toilet seat

What is a flipflop
to answer your query
is a Liberal Democrat
name: John Effin Kerry

[RGF]

LOL.

[GraceCoolidge]

inhabits their nuances

How do you inhabit a nuance?

[1rudeboy]

Of course, when referring to a Republican, "fluidity" is re-defined as "indecisiveness," or even better, "inability to stand-up against the Party's right wing."

[RGF]

Join the club. I'm obviously not bright enough to figure that out either. You must be a conservative.

[jigsaw]

LOL! Most excellent! Kerry's new campaign slogan.

[mystery-ak]

This is going to be their answer to Bush's upcoming media ads on his voting record!...LOL...sad thing is, some of the moronic voters will buy it.

[jigsaw]

If you can enlighten me as to what useful purpose Kerry serves, then I might agree with you.

Well, when my toilet is running (like Kerry is), that Fluidmaster makes a lot of whiny noises (like Kerry is.)

But a 'useful purpose' for Kerry, well, he is the modern day Pied Piper leading the RATS to eventual extermination.

[Starboard]

Fine, then let's call him Fluidmaster (one of which I have in my toilet.)

I just installed one yesterday. Just like Kerry, the Fluidmaster is a device that is adaptble to nearly every tank. By the way, didn't Al Gore invent the Fluidmaster?

[freeperfromnj]

I saw Nadler on some new show yesterday and he kept referring to him as President Kerry. He must have said it at least 5 times.

[dawn53]

flip flops

Some artistic type person has got to come up with an anti-Kerry sign or bumper sticker using "flip-flops" (the shoes).

Maybe contrast cowboy boots to flip-flops, I don't know, because my little brain isn't that creative, but there are lots of folks on FR who are.

[freeperfromnj]

new show = news show

[Mike Darancette]

What is the nuance of a planeload of American citizens being flown into a building?

[Starboard]

Some aides and close associates say Kerry's fluidity is the mark of an intellectual who grasps the subtleties of issues, inhabits their nuances and revels in the deliberative process.

Today's Washington Post had a front page article on Kerry titled "Kerry Dots Deliberation with Decision". The fawning reporter (Laura Blumenfeld, Washington Post Staff Writer) sounded like a 10th grade civics student:

"...[Kerry] makes decisions with simple consististency. He researches aggressively before choosing. He always deliberates, even if only for a second. What differs in each case is how close he is to the ground."

[seowulf]

Intellectual Fluidity is non-Newtonian! Who'd a thunk it?

Through Thick and Thin

What do ketchup and liquified plastics have in common? Both can change from thick to thin and back, a property that scientists are trying to better understand.

"Beware the ketchup bottle
None will come, and then a lot'll"
-- anonymous

June XX, 2002: Everyone has fallen prey to the ketchup bottle at one time or another.

After struggling for minutes to pour a meager two drops, an avalanche of the red liquid suddenly gushes out and buries your perfectly cooked burger. It's as though the ketchup suddenly decided to convert from a thick paste to a runny liquid.

In a sense, that's exactly what happened. Ketchup is one of many substances, including paint, whipped cream, and nail polish, that share a property called "shear thinning." Normally thick like honey, they can become thin and flow like water.

One might think that such a common occurrence would be well understood. But often the most challenging puzzles in science are right on our dining room tables. Scientists are just starting to get a grip on why shear thinning occurs.

"We have a good understanding of how shear-thinning liquids behave, but not the details of why," says Robert Berg, principal investigator for an upcoming shuttle experiment on shear thinning called the Critical Viscosity of Xenon-2 (CVX-2). "The details depend on what happens at the molecular level, and that is still poorly understood."

The experiment, which will fly aboard the STS-107 shuttle mission in July, will look at shear thinning from a unique angle. The goal is to advance scientists' basic understanding of liquids that have this "Dr. Jeckle and Mr. Hyde" behavior. Physics will certainly benefit, and in the long run, so will industry. Many industrial processes, such as those involving plastics and other polymers, use just these kinds of liquids. Better physics theories are the tools that industry uses to improve their manufacturing processes in often unforeseeable ways.

Simply put, shear thinning is when thick liquids become thinner when jolted or stirred -- that is, when some parts of the fluid are moving faster than other parts.

It's a useful property: Without shear thinning, paint wouldn't flow so easily off the paintbrush, or if it did, it would be so thin that it would run down the wall.

The shuttle experiment will be superior in several ways to just studying paint or ketchup here on the ground. Like most shear-thinning liquids, ketchup is actually rather complex. It has many ingredients, each with its own properties. And it consists of particles of a wide range of sizes, from the microscopic ions of dissolved salt to the visible bits of pureed tomato.

Instead of ketchup or shaving cream, this experiment will use the element xenon in a delicate state between liquid and gas, called the "critical point." Xenon is very simple: it's chemically inert, so its molecules consist of a single atom. Pure xenon is about as close as you can get to the "flying billiard balls" of an idealized gas or liquid. This simplicity will make it easier to learn from the experiment.

Simple liquids are usually more like water or honey: they're either thick or thin, and they stay that way. But this changes near the critical point -- a twilight zone where fluids exists as both liquid and gas simultaneously.

"Fluids at the critical point sort of resemble a hazy fog," explains Gregory Zimmerli, a scientist at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, and project scientist for the experiment.

"If you looked closely at this fog, you would see a flurry of little regions constantly fluctuating between liquid-like and gas-like densities. Theory predicts that this fine-grained structure should make the simple fluid shear-thin, like more complex fluids do."

Scientists have suspected this for over 30 years. But it's difficult to test on the ground: liquids at the critical point compress under their own weight like a badly made soufflé.

With the xenon floating in a small test chamber onboard the space shuttle, a copper screen will vibrate inside the fluid. The resistance to this vibration measures the fluid's thickness (which scientists call "viscosity"), in the same way that you can feel the thickness of honey by trying to move a spoon through it.

The motion of the screen will also stir the fluid, causing it to thin, and varying that motion and the fluid's temperature will let scientists probe the nature of this sheer thinning.

At least that's what scientists are hoping to see. The ketchup-like behavior of fluids at the critical point is still only theoretical. Even simulations using supercomputers can't prove the theory.

"Especially near the critical point, there aren't computers that can simulate the fluid's behavior," says Berg, a scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland. "The chains of interactions between molecules are so long that computers just aren't powerful enough to do it."

Only the real thing can help scientists to chart this unknown territory in the physics of fluids. This high-tech research may be a little bit too late, though, to save your ketchup-soaked dinner.

http://www.433eros.com/headlines/y2002/4review_fluids.html

[RGF]

'He always deliberates, even if only for a second.'

Duh, I think that's called making a decision. Even making no decision is making a decision not to act. Are these folks paid by the word or simply in love with big words that don't mean anything? OK, rhetorical.

[Calvin Locke]

I have to Google it myself!?

Here's a twofer:

http://www.nationalreview.com/geraghty/geraghty200402050908.asp

[RGF]

Great idea Dawn. I'm another non-artist.

[Spotsy]

"inhabits their nuances"

How do you inhabit a nuance?

GraceCoolidge, all I know is, all of us are going to need some nuance to inhabit after Kerry and the Dems get done with this country.

Tell me, Senator Kerry, about the nuance of hanging outside a building one hundred stories above the sidewalk with fire at your back. To jump or not jump, that is the question.

REMEMBER 9/11, SENATOR KERRY, AND DON'T TEAR THIS COUNTRY APART!