Your dead right. I can't remember the exact figures, but the number of people who speak English as a second language is ~700 million, including 100 million in China ( I know this is true, I saw it on TV). It has to be the only major language where native speakers are outnumbered by non-natives, by nearly 2:1 at that. AFAIK go-ahead Chinese carreer types are desperate to learn English, and are willing to pay large sums to do so.
It seems to me that English is the worlds first truely global language, and if other, more populous countries get rich in the future, so what? The reason English is #1 is the British Empire, which spread it about all over the shop and made it the common medium of communication. Unless China, S. America or whatever physically take over the world I don't see how their languages will make much of an impact, and seems to me that if they want to get rich in the first place a lot of them will have to learn English anyway, just like everybody else.
If there is intelligent life on this planet, the overwhelming probability is that it is much much more advanced than we are. After all, if you randomly select a Human Being, what are the chance that that Human Being will be less that 1 hour old? Very small. The same probably holds true for ET civilisations, unless there is some sort of ceiling, or they all blow themselves up.
We could always use those light sails (like in "The Mote in Gods eye"). The thing is, Epsilon Eridani is only 10 l.y. away:P If we abolished the education system, the military, stopped paying aid, & ransacked and robbed neighbouring countries & funnelled all the money into space, I think it would be achievable. And worth it:)
I saw some interesting research in Sweden (or some damned Scandinavian place) that could be used as a space drive. These physicists got a large massive disk, put it parrallel with the floor and rotated it at extremely high RPMs. They then measured the wieght of a kilogram mass above the disk, and found to their surprise that the mass had got lighter! Another strange thing was that it did so only when the disk was rotating in a clockwise direction.Anyway, the physics community has been highly sceptical about this, but it was replicated in a lab in Edinburgh, I believe, and some other places. Problem is, it seems to violate several laws of physics. It would be just the thing to use as an antigravity machine, to get into space cheaply. Sorry I don't have any links or refs, i'm away from home. Has anybody else heard of this?
I don't know- it's fairly basic physics, so there should be millions. The same is true of the Earth and the moon, the centre of mass of the the two bodies combined is a couple of hundred miles (or something - can't be bothered to look it up) out from the centre of the Earth, but is still inside the Earth. Therefore the Earth wobbles around this point every time the moon goes round it. I was actually being a bit pedantic, but technically it's true:-)
Yes, of course. I agree with this totally, you can't enforce the rational point of view, because in doing so, you would become as intolerant as those you oppose.The thing I find annoying about the creationists though, is that they don't fight their corner honestly. I saw an interesting interview in New Scientist a while ago with an American biologist who has been opposing the events in Kansas. He had been teaching scientists 'PR' skills to help them cope with the creationists they had to oppose in the studios. He said the problem was that the creationists would very often argue without reference to logic, but were very good at political-style debating and scoring of cheap points. An example he gave was when he appeared on a program in Kansas, in a two minute slot, to debate with one of the leading creationists. The creationist, towards the end of the debate, said that evolution was in doubt even in scientific circles, by bringing up the argument about punctured equilibrium.Unfortunately, this caught the scientist off-guard, & he only had ten seconds to reply. The result was that the viewers of that program got the impression that Evolution is in doubt even amongst scientists, when all he needed to say was that the debate was about the rate at which evolution occurs, not about whether it does occur.The thing is, the creationist knew this perfectly well, but then it just shows that they are not interested in getting the truth at all, only in promoting their fundamentalist religion.I think scientist have a hard time arguing with creationists for this reason, they have wildly different aims and even morals, it seems sometimes. Thats why I got angry when I read your original post, it seemed to be advocating that relativist attitude of "theres no such thing as right or wrong (only appropriate or inappropriate:-))". I suppose I should have read it more closely.
God I hate this post-modern relativism. There is only one type of knowledge : scientific knowledge. Knowledge is about certainty, & science is the best & only way to get it, because it is the only one that is self critical, shuns assumption, and is rational. If you disagree with this, you are saying that there are valid irrational methods of attaining knowledge, which is bunkum.
You are totally wrong. The theory of evolution is not a fact, it is just very likely to be true. You are confusing the mathematical, deductive reasoning of Number 'theory' with the inductive reasoning of science. (Event A has always been observed to occur under these conditions, B. Therefore it will always continue to occur under those conditions, regardless when or where those conditions occur. This is the central assumption of science) Go and read Karl Popper. BTW, the Copernican theory is wrong - the Earth does not revolve around the Sun, they both revolve around their common centre of mass.
It's just the difference between inductive and deductive reasoning. The theory of gravity will never be conclusively proved, because there is always the chance that the next time, the apple will levitate in the air.
Why do you do this? Don't you realise that nobody is fooled by your ridiculous goatsecx link? You make me sick. Moderate this down please (mine as well, if you want, for being stupid enough to reply and give the lonely bastard the reaction he was looking for).
Maybe it's the people at this conference waking up with hangovers and blaming it on linux, and deciding en masse to spam/. , the totem of the Linux community:)
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It seems to me that English is the worlds first truely global language, and if other, more populous countries get rich in the future, so what? The reason English is #1 is the British Empire, which spread it about all over the shop and made it the common medium of communication. Unless China, S. America or whatever physically take over the world I don't see how their languages will make much of an impact, and seems to me that if they want to get rich in the first place a lot of them will have to learn English anyway, just like everybody else.
If there is intelligent life on this planet, the overwhelming probability is that it is much much more advanced than we are. After all, if you randomly select a Human Being, what are the chance that that Human Being will be less that 1 hour old? Very small. The same probably holds true for ET civilisations, unless there is some sort of ceiling, or they all blow themselves up.
We could always use those light sails (like in "The Mote in Gods eye"). The thing is, Epsilon Eridani is only 10 l.y. away :P If we abolished the education system, the military, stopped paying aid, & ransacked and robbed neighbouring countries & funnelled all the money into space, I think it would be achievable. And worth it:)
I saw some interesting research in Sweden (or some damned Scandinavian place) that could be used as a space drive. These physicists got a large massive disk, put it parrallel with the floor and rotated it at extremely high RPMs. They then measured the wieght of a kilogram mass above the disk, and found to their surprise that the mass had got lighter! Another strange thing was that it did so only when the disk was rotating in a clockwise direction.Anyway, the physics community has been highly sceptical about this, but it was replicated in a lab in Edinburgh, I believe, and some other places. Problem is, it seems to violate several laws of physics. It would be just the thing to use as an antigravity machine, to get into space cheaply. Sorry I don't have any links or refs, i'm away from home. Has anybody else heard of this?
I don't know- it's fairly basic physics, so there should be millions. The same is true of the Earth and the moon, the centre of mass of the the two bodies combined is a couple of hundred miles (or something - can't be bothered to look it up) out from the centre of the Earth, but is still inside the Earth. Therefore the Earth wobbles around this point every time the moon goes round it. I was actually being a bit pedantic, but technically it's true :-)
Yes, of course. I agree with this totally, you can't enforce the rational point of view, because in doing so, you would become as intolerant as those you oppose.The thing I find annoying about the creationists though, is that they don't fight their corner honestly. I saw an interesting interview in New Scientist a while ago with an American biologist who has been opposing the events in Kansas. He had been teaching scientists 'PR' skills to help them cope with the creationists they had to oppose in the studios. He said the problem was that the creationists would very often argue without reference to logic, but were very good at political-style debating and scoring of cheap points. An example he gave was when he appeared on a program in Kansas, in a two minute slot, to debate with one of the leading creationists. The creationist, towards the end of the debate, said that evolution was in doubt even in scientific circles, by bringing up the argument about punctured equilibrium.Unfortunately, this caught the scientist off-guard, & he only had ten seconds to reply. The result was that the viewers of that program got the impression that Evolution is in doubt even amongst scientists, when all he needed to say was that the debate was about the rate at which evolution occurs, not about whether it does occur.The thing is, the creationist knew this perfectly well, but then it just shows that they are not interested in getting the truth at all, only in promoting their fundamentalist religion.I think scientist have a hard time arguing with creationists for this reason, they have wildly different aims and even morals, it seems sometimes. Thats why I got angry when I read your original post, it seemed to be advocating that relativist attitude of "theres no such thing as right or wrong (only appropriate or inappropriate:-))". I suppose I should have read it more closely.
God I hate this post-modern relativism. There is only one type of knowledge : scientific knowledge. Knowledge is about certainty, & science is the best & only way to get it, because it is the only one that is self critical, shuns assumption, and is rational. If you disagree with this, you are saying that there are valid irrational methods of attaining knowledge, which is bunkum.
You are totally wrong. The theory of evolution is not a fact, it is just very likely to be true. You are confusing the mathematical, deductive reasoning of Number 'theory' with the inductive reasoning of science. (Event A has always been observed to occur under these conditions, B. Therefore it will always continue to occur under those conditions, regardless when or where those conditions occur. This is the central assumption of science) Go and read Karl Popper. BTW, the Copernican theory is wrong - the Earth does not revolve around the Sun, they both revolve around their common centre of mass.
It's just the difference between inductive and deductive reasoning. The theory of gravity will never be conclusively proved, because there is always the chance that the next time, the apple will levitate in the air.
Why do you do this? Don't you realise that nobody is fooled by your ridiculous goatsecx link? You make me sick. Moderate this down please (mine as well, if you want, for being stupid enough to reply and give the lonely bastard the reaction he was looking for).
Maybe it's the people at this conference waking up with hangovers and blaming it on linux, and deciding en masse to spam /. , the totem of the Linux community :)