In case you didn't know, Ghandi obtained some of his goals by breaking laws in a non-violent manner. The laws themselves were bad, like the salt tax in India forbidding Indians to harvest salt, activities they've done for centuries or a "registration" bill. He was arrested many times. Are you arguing that the left wing should imitate Gandhi? Because he not only picketed, used the law as appropriate, and also violated laws he felt were wrong. He just violated them in a non-violent manner, such as gathering salt and advocating that people not pay taxes (revenues), organizing huge crowds to violate the laws (not pay taxes, gather/trade salt, etc. See http://www.mkgandhi.org/intro_autobio.htm (no obligatory wikipedia reference!)
TiVo series 2 works like series I but with more options. You can fastforward through whatever you want. Tivo did put in the capability to block certain programs from being recorded, but there was I hope enough outcry that most broadcasters won't use that feature. I know if they prevented CSI from being TiVo'd, I'd start missing a lot of CSI because I'm not gonna alter my viewing habits. There's always something else to watch (24, PrisonBreak, Lost, Daily Show, Earl, HBO, etc.).
Me, I plan on staying with TiVo. The lifetime subscription loss for me doesn't mean much. I'm on my 4th TiVo, two series 1 that are retired and given away, two series 2 machines, and I'm tentatively planning on replacing them with series 3. TiVo is more than just a DVR to me, as I have it hooked up to my server (Windows 2003 Enterprise server), with access to all my mp3's. With Galleon (an opensource TiVo hack), I can view local movies, get traffic reports, sort my mp3's by artist, record, and song, get lyrics (via lyrictracker), etc. With the new TiVo upgrade, I also get Live365 streaming audio, a few games, buy movie tickets.
My entire family loves TiVo, we haven't had a problem at all with our Series 2 machines, it's user interface is simple. I haven't tried MythTV, I thought about playing with it, but frankly, I'd rather be playing games than in the guts of a PC (been there, done that, nothing too challenging, it's more an uninteresting chore).
To me, having a lifetime subscription for a TiVO box is the same as having a lifetime warranty for a cell phone. 2 or 3 years down the road, I'm not gonna want that old technology, I'm buying the newer better toys.
Given that this is Florida, and there is some basis for voting irregularities, there may be some merit. This wouldn't be an issue if there were no irregularities found.
As for dumping, one can find evidence of it if the ballots have some unique marking on them (10,000 voters voted at polling place x, 10,000 ballots were used, and only 9000 were counted and are physically present. Do the math!
Pre-filled ballots? If there were again, 10,000 voters who signed in as voting at that location, and 11,000 ballots are physically there?
Granted, voting fraud has probably been around since voting was discovered, but so has techniques for detecting them. But that's all based on paper balloting...
Like Sonic Youth?? Daydream Nation is, in my mind, a great cd (not that I'm an expert musician nor songwriter, cause I most definitely am not!). Yet when Teenage Riot was playing on a jukebox at a college bar, a friend of mine was wondering who selected that "crap noise". And many of Sonic Youth's songs sound kinda chaotic, with weirdly tuned guitars, different arrangements, noises, sung by not-that-great vocalists, etc. Yet they can make a song work in spite of all this, and it's a great song too. Yet I think most people would hear it and hear only the chaotic noise, weird arrangements, weird lyrics sung by not-that-great vocalists, and think "What crap!"
Have you seen what's being classified as non-fiction? I wish we can sue the garbage that's passed as non-fiction from both extremes. I'm sure the right-wing can spout stuff about Michael Moore's books, and Ann Coulter? Rush Limbaugh? John Gibson's War on Christmas??? Half lies (or half truths, it's the same thing!) to straight up lies. It's all fiction. Check out http://www.mediamatters.org/ and search for ann coulter or rush.
By your logic, only ice from the Arctic melts. What about all the ice that's busy melting in glaciers, the Antarctic, permafrost, etc.? But I guess that ice doesn't count eh?
So you don't care that as the ocean levels rise, huge areas of land will have to be vacated due to flooding (including major cities)? That so many of our goods like the computer you are using to read this post arrived at seaports in those cities that would be underwater, plus the immediate transportation infrastructure that would also be underwater (roads, rail, airports) without extensive levees (see hurricane Katrina and New Orleans). Plus the displacement of millions of people not just in Asia/Africa, but also in North America. But I forgot, ice anchored on land don't count.
It's nice to not let logic/science/facts get in the way of your beliefs, right?
Paraphrasing your definition of a theory 'as defined as a set of statements, some true and some false'??? So, here's the Chili God theory:
You cooked a good chili dinner
Your kid farted because of your chili
He created a fart
You are God because you caused him to fart
Your kid is the fart God
That's a set of statements, some true, some false. Is that a theory?
I for one, would rather that my descendents actually survive and continue to thrive/propagate! While JohanAA is partially right, in that ice ages come and go, but it sure seems that most scientists studying weather, climatology, etc., pretty much all are worried that the stuff we belch into the atmosphere is having a major effect on the earth's weather. It's not a diddlysquat quantity of greenhouse gas that we emit via our cars, factories, foodsupplies, on top of our massive deforestation we are conducting. If JohanAA wants to darwin his genes, then please don't propagate! Of course, he is a slashdotter, so there that goes without saying...
'Who do we believe? The physician or the author? I don't think either are adequately qualified to make the call.'
Uh, they are both authors, one happens to also be a (ex-?) physicisn, the other a scientist. At least Lovelock writes about stuff that he not only got his degree in, but continues to study. Chrichton, on the other hand, may or may not have been a good physician, but generally has been a bad writer. I liked Andromeda Strain, although I read back when I was in high school. Jurassic Park was a better movie than book. Prey? Jeez,he got the physics all wrong. And the story sucked too.
If he had some thoughts on medicine, human physiology, anything "doctor"y, I'd respect his opinions, I'm not a doctor. But if he had opinions on microprocessor design, then I'd probably believe a scientist who not only has degrees in physics and/or electrical engineering, etc. but also who still works in that field over an middling-to-average writer who writes pop books.
local channels behave under different rules than cable channels. You got right-wing nutzo's who write the FCC about silly things like wardrobe malfunctions, foul language, etc. You would not get a Soprano's on CBS.
"Free" channels are regulated by the FCC because they are free. We pay for cable, even though most channels are bundled together in some kinda package.
Besides, there are only so many hours in a week you can broadcast a show across 4 channels. Would South Park even air because of some blue towel with bloodshot eyes asking "Wanna get high?" or some Howdy-Ho saying Chrismas poo with a Santa hat on? No way would the FCC let such high quality programs like South Park air on regular TV!!
My point was, you heat something up hot enough, it's likely to react. Why does a meteor striking the atmosphere look like a glowing comet? Ditto for rockets/spacecraft re-entering the atmosphere? Is it just flecks of the meteor/spacecraft burning up? Or is some of the various molecules that make up air reacting as well? Under the right conditions, you don't need purify stuff to get stuff to burn. If you heat and compress air in the right conditions, would it's constituents start reacting with each other? What about sand or dirt or concrete? Would it be unaffected by extreme pressures and temperatures that a nuclear explosion would generate?
And my point about deuterium still stands (it doesn't get more stable just cause it survived multiple energetic environments)...
Whoops! I meant that a proton or neutron doesn't get more stable regardless of whether it survived multiple supernovae/nuke bombs compared to a proton/neutron floating in the cold vacuum of space for the same length of time (or any time at all).
Actually, non-organic stuff can burn. Ever seen sodium metal in water or air? Or ignite magnesium strips? Some pure materials like plutonium are pyrophoric, meaning it can burn spontaneously in a reaction with oxygen. You heat things up hot enough, it can start breaking down into it's constituent parts. If it's a self-sustaining reaction (breaking apart or reacting with something else that it wouldn't normally react with) releasing more energy to cause other parts to break apart/react), what have you got?
As for your ideas about uranium ore, you are mostly right. There will probably be some of the uranium in the ore that will also decay from the capture of a stray neutron, but it won't make any real appreciable difference in bomb yield, as most of it will be blown away by the explosion.
As for the deuterium in the oceans? You are right that they won't combine to form helium, but it's not because they ignited too many times already. Deuterium doesn't get more stable the older it gets or the more supernovaes and nuclear bombs it survives. Deuterium is simply a proton plus a neutron for a nucleus. A proton nor neutron gets more stable just because it's been heated up more often than a proton/neutron that's just been floating in the cold vacuum of space.
And you don't need big-bang type energies to fuse earth-masses. The sun does that on a regular basis. Fusing elements heavier than Hydrogen? Many large starts do that, fusing not only H to He, but to Li, C, O, etc. Right down to Fe. Up till then, the fusing liberates more energy than it takes to fuse, but iron is where it all stops, taking more energy to fuse than it liberates after fusing. After that point, boom, supernova as the star no longer can sustain the intense gravitational pressures that keep it from collapsing on itself.
THe problem is, enough people don't get their own damn healthcare/retirement. They gamble on things working out. And when they don't, guess who pays for it? Everyone. The gambler can't afford to make regular checkups, so they get treatment when their condition worsens to the point they end up in the emergency room, and that ain't cheap, and we all pay for that in the form if higher fees and higher insurance rates. Unless you want the hospitals to turn away folks who can't pay for treatment, which basically means disability/death for not only the person, but also negatively impacts the family. And it's not likely they'll quietly accept their fates, but will likely figure out ways to either get money to buy the drug or obtain the drug illegally, which jacks up our insurance.
Why should an employer provide healthcare? To help ensure that their employees continue to be productive employees. An employee in the hospital is a non-working one. If they aren't working (or working at a dimished capacity), you run the risk of missing your deadlines, force other workers to pick up the slack. And the rest of us pay for it anyway in the form of jackedup rates, higher charges, etc. As more people buy in, the risks/costs are spread. And it's easier to do it via employer, since all money paid to employees stems from the employers.
Ditto for retiree's with no money. There aren't enough Walmarts out there to employ old folks, unless you don't care about our elders facing decisions on heat vs. food vs. medicine vs. rent. And we all know you don't get rich working at Walmart!
THis is not an easy issue, which is why this keeps rearing it's ugly head around election time. But it's an issue that we can't wish away or assume everyone will behave like I do. Unless you want America to look like a third-world nation with respect to it's poor and elderly. You don't like that? Then figure out a solution other than "everyone should be just like me".
This seems to unfairly punish your workers. Let's say you win a contract to deliver something in three months. Does that mean your developers are not only sweating to deliver the code on time, but also sweating to not only pay rent/mortgages/car payments/insurance/daycare/credit card (and electricity, gas, garbage, water, etc.) and also food/clothes/gas until they finally get their bonus (which will not only get eaten by taxes but also may come weeks after you deliver? After all, you may not get paid due to however the accounting systems for paying vendors for completed work, for signatures and time to cut the check, and if they have to verify that what you delivered is a good product, that can delay things too. And since it's up to the developer to set up and pay for health/retirement, that doesn't sound like a good working environment to me. It sounds pretty stressful to everyone but dada. It's not like the bill collectors' are going to say, okay, we'll wait till you get paid next month or the month after, we won't damage your credit rating with late payment reports, charge late payment fees, jack up your interest rates, repo your car, evict you from your home, etc.
Maybe dada doesn't believe in health care for his workers, or providing for a way for his workers to survive once they retire, but we all grow old. We all will need health care for ourselves and our families. His workers seem to be one step from financial destruction if something bad happens that may require an extended stay at a hospital, or expensive treatments. And if one of them happens to be unable to return to work (disability/death)? What happens to the family, who's stuck with bills and a huge chunk of income gone?
And when a company's done with them, a fate that will happen to us all, they are tossed out to fend for themselves. For his workers, when the bonus gravy train is gone, and they are too old to be employable developers anymore (why pay for an old developer when you can pay peanuts for a young one?), they'd have better saved up enough money to survive, cause he's not going to provide any retirement benefits.
This work environment sounds like it would work for a young single person who's looking out only for him/herself, and living only for today. But once you buy a house, get married, have kids, and start thinking about where you'll be 30 years down the road, then you might rethink about working for such a setup.
What about snowflakes? Why do snowflakes have a regular pattern and don't fall as chunks of ice (hail)? The water molecules, under certain conditions, self-organize into regular patterns? Why do iron filings form loopy patterns around a magnet? Other patterns which may seem random aren't, like bird/bug flight (each bird/bug self-organizes in continually changing relationship with its fellow neighbors to flock/swarm. There are rules that exist that cause an individual something to behave in a non-random way. It may be difficult to fully understand things (bonds between atoms, ElectroMagnetic theory, etc.), but to kinda understand in a layman's way shouldn't be too hard. Swarming? If i fall behind, speed up. If I get too close, slow down. Avoid hitting something. There might be another rule or two I'm missing, but you get the general idea. There are several books written for the laymen (rather than that college level text) that are out there, stuff on chaos and complexity.
But without further investigation, how would Ripley fight the alien queen??
Seriously though, can you imagine being able to carry larger weapons farther and faster than ever possible? With the right armor, future revisions can in a sense make each soldier a "tank", carrying enough firepower to destroy a real tank. Yeah, having one fail would suck, but how's that any different than getting shot (or your rifle jammed or damaged)?
infantry training would definitely change, to learn to strap these puppies on quickly, do field repairs, let alone how to use these devices to their max capabilities.
Yeah, in a insurgency environment, it probably won't help that much when the enemy is too smart to engage us in a standup fight, but who knows, wearing a fully armored set of these might increase the odds a soldier will survive (or minimize the damage) a bomb attack. Remember, this is not even an alpha product, not ready for primetime. It sounds like the future versions will be cool! And commercial versions? You can strap one of these on and work in warehouses (woohoo!!;-) ) or do other things that require lifting heavy stuff.
Uh, I'd bet you have eaten animal! Have you seen how crops are harvested? Fast-moving blades, spikes, etc. that chop grains from the stalk for your breads. And it's not like there aren't animals who also like hanging out in fields, like skunks, snakes, mice, gophers oh my! And sometimes animals even die in fields (gasp!).
Mr Farmer riding in his combine or tractor just follows the furrows , chopping grains with the blades and directing stalks with spikes around a rotating drum, and voila!, some animal gets added to the the mix! Then, once the grains are stored in the silos, birds and mice also like to eat the grains, and may accidently go along for the ride where the grains are crushed to make our flour... It may not be as obvious as a drumstick or a steak, but it's there all the same!
Unless you have grown/processed 100% of your own food your whole life, never eaten at nearly all restaurants (there might be some that handprocess everything (or buy from suppliers who may make this claim), then I'd bet you have eaten animal! And that's not including fried vegetables fried in lard that you may not know about in some restaurants, pots/pans that may have cooked meat, were quickly drained and used to cook your veggie food...
You do understand what science is, right? ID is not science. Science is verifiable. You have a hypothesis, test it, see if your hypothesis is right, and that someone else can verify it. Every test of evolution has proven that evolution exists. Evidence of it exists in many sciences, from the various disciplinces of biology, botany, zoology, etc. Proof that the earth's been around for billions of years is found in again, biology, geology, planetary science, etc. ID? It's basic idea is that "I cannot figure out how this system became the way it is, therefore some intelligent designer created it". Just because one lacks the the intellect to figure something out is no basis for science. ID does NOT belong in science classrooms. Is it science to say "Wow, that rock looks like a camel. I cannot see how that happened, God (oops, an ID) willed it into that shape"? Can you prove that an ID did it? No. If someone like a geologist comes up with an alternate theory that wind and water erosion eroded what was a hill into a pile of rocks and dirt that has a vague camel shape, do we dismiss the geologist? Especially when he/she can show how water/wind can erode a hill?
You do understand that the US consists of many different peoples with varying beliefs, right? Not everyone is a Christian, right? Now you may wish everyone follows your beliefs, but it is NOT in your right to impose your beliefs on everyone else. That is called a theocracy or at worst, a dictatorship.
To me, school is a place where we go to learn stuff that makes us better and more productive American citizens. Math and science to understand physically how the world works. English/grammar/spelling to communicate with my fellow Americans. PE to learn to keep healthy. History to learn what happened before, to understand other peoples whom I may meet, and to learn about mistakes made, lessons learned so that hopefully, one can apply this knowledge to future decisions. With all that, hopefully a student will grow up and help contribute to make America stay strong and competitive.
Today's schools, kids are taught stuff at a faster pace just so we can compete with other nations. Personally, I am very happy that kids today know more things at a certain age than I did when I was that age. Is this something you don't like?
The 1st amendment, with respect to religion, has two pieces.
1) Congress can make no law respecting the establishment of religion, and 2) they cannot prohibit the free exercise of it. You and your kids can pray to whomever entity you wish. But you cannot make it a law to say a prayer. It infringes on the rights of students who either don't practice religion, or follow a different one. You can teach your religion at home, or in a Church, but you cannot do this in a government funded institution like a school.
Let's say you want the best education for your kid. But the best school happens to be in a Muslim part of town. Your kid is the only non-Muslim kid in class. Every day at a certain time, all the kids get their prayer mats, and say a prayer (bowing in the direction of Mecca). Now, while your kid may be raised Christian, he/she would feel very uncomfortable. Your kid may be given the option of saying a prayer during this time, but kids being kids, they don't want to draw negative attention to themselves for fear of teasing or at least of not fitting in. Remember, in this hypothetical situation, this is the best school in town, where many of it's students graduate and go on to ivy league schools. How would you feel? Especially if you don't have the financial means to move to a different town?
You need to start looking at things from other people's perspectives, because not everyone believes in your beliefs. Just because the government has mandated that there is no formal time in school for prayer or forbidding ID in science class doesn't mean the government is performing religious persecution. You are free to practice whatever religion you want as long as it doesn't violate the rights of other people (sacrifying virgins to your gods is not a good idea!!). The government didn't say you can't practice your Christian beliefs at all, it's saying it can't mandate that everyone must practice a religious belief.
So you think Intelligent design is science? I would hope that in a science class, the students would, you know, maybe actually learn science... Perhaps you think in science class, kids can learn how to cook on the bunsen burners, mix up meth in chemistry, or learn the differences between Biblical creationism vs. Flying Spaghetti Monsterism.
ID is Religion, not science.
And pretty much all four main tenents have been proven wrong. The earth is a few billion years old based on scientific results. Life has been on this earth for millions of years, that most species today are relatively new (sharks/coelacanth being the few exceptions), but there were species before them. There have been many floods, but nothing that covered the earth within the last 6000 years. All the many billions of people of different skin colors, hair types, head shapes, statures, etc. can all be traced to one couple who was alive 6000 years ago? You just choose to not believe the facts, and it's your right to be ignore it.
America was founded on liberty for all people, of all religions and beliefs. Liberty does not mean liberty only for Christians.
Remember that the 1st amendment to the constitution is that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion... SInce there is no law to respect ID as a science (nor can there be), the judges must adhere to the law, and hence, must throw this out.
The judge did not forbid ID itself, you are free to believe in this, teach it to your children at home or in Church, just not in science class. Your rights are not infringed. Teaching ID in science does infringe on my rights as a parent with kids in science class not learning science, but a religious belief that I disagree with. I don't think you'd like it if a school board passed a ruling that all classes (science, PE, math, English etc.) should teach that Adam/Eve weren't the first humans on earth, but that His Noodly Appendage created the trees and mountains, and that a midgit (sic) was the first human?
Perhaps you should check out books like The Blind Watchmaker (Richard Dawkins), or stuff from Steven Gould, maybe learn something about complexity. Some things aren't really random, but have a tendency to self-organize. Why does a water molecule tend to form at a specific angle with respect to the two H's and 1 O? Is it some magical rule, or something that can be derived from known behavior? Why can't a water molecule of one big atom and two identical smaller atoms be found in a H----O-H (180 degrees) pattern instead of almost always
O
/ \
H H
(It's hard to make this look like a triangle with ~105 degrees!).
While this is an extreme example of self-organization (like iron filings near a magnet), others have a lesser tendency to self-organize, but they do over millions of years of constant mixing.
Look at panning for gold. The odds of finding a gold flake or two in river sediment isn't very good. Taking a small sample of the sediment in a pan, adding water, and slowly swirling the pan so the water/dirt mixture spills out, the odds are, it's gonna fail too. Why? You haven't run enough samples. Maybe your panning technique sucks. You may never find a gold flake, after a months of panning. The self-organization hypothesis there? Gold, being heavier and denser, tends to sinks to the bottom of the pan. But you may never scoop up any gold to sink. You conclude that panning doesn't work, or that the stream has no gold. Later you may read that someone got lucky and found gold in the very stream you were in, panning for gold there. Did God place the gold in the stream after you left? Or was that person just lucky or panned more sediment than you? The point isn't getting rich, the point is that given enough time, with enough different experiments (sediment samples from different parts of the river, different depths, lots of people panning, etc.), one might hit upon the right reaction that results in a different result (found gold) than expected (found nothing).
about how long a computer takes to simulate the folding of a protein? A protein has many atoms, all of which interact in some way with each other. Heck, it's difficult to solve a three-body problem (like a planet with two moons), let alone something with 100's and 1000's of moving parts. Think about how long it takes to calculate the right angles and velocities, determining forces, and deriving the equation from known physical laws and theories to describe the motion of the ball from which you can plug in the numbers to obtain the angles/velocity, to throw a baseball into a mitt, compared to just throwing the ball into the mitt.
Did the chicken come before the egg? Let's pose a different but similar question. Did the dog come before its parent's sperm/egg? We all know that dogs were bred from wolves. So are you saying dogs sprang up from nothing? They arose out of no-where, replacing the wolf embryo with itself? Or through a gradual breeding program, that the spawn of spawn of spawn of many generations of wolves with particular characteristics eventually became what we now call dog?
The answer to which came first, the chicken or the egg? The egg.
Looking at how dna came to be surrounded by a cell wall, powered by mitochondria? Learn some cellular biology, and learn about some of simpler creatures, single-celled and simple multicelled. Eyes? Learn about light-sensitive cells and some of the creatures in the sea with crude eyes. Learn about sexual and asexual reproduction, genetic algorithms, etc.
Does science have all the anwers? No. I don't mean to bash you, but statements like not being able to figure things out are kinda copouts which don't really contribute to learning new knowledge, but can be used as a roadblock to prevent others from learning new knowledge (let alone yourself). It's a Luddite viewpoint, and enough people buy into it, laws can get enacted to prevent people from exploring and investigating it. And there are other cultures who do not have such reservations, w
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In case you didn't know, Ghandi obtained some of his goals by breaking laws in a non-violent manner. The laws themselves were bad, like the salt tax in India forbidding Indians to harvest salt, activities they've done for centuries or a "registration" bill. He was arrested many times. Are you arguing that the left wing should imitate Gandhi? Because he not only picketed, used the law as appropriate, and also violated laws he felt were wrong. He just violated them in a non-violent manner, such as gathering salt and advocating that people not pay taxes (revenues), organizing huge crowds to violate the laws (not pay taxes, gather/trade salt, etc. See http://www.mkgandhi.org/intro_autobio.htm (no obligatory wikipedia reference!)
TiVo series 2 works like series I but with more options. You can fastforward through whatever you want. Tivo did put in the capability to block certain programs from being recorded, but there was I hope enough outcry that most broadcasters won't use that feature. I know if they prevented CSI from being TiVo'd, I'd start missing a lot of CSI because I'm not gonna alter my viewing habits. There's always something else to watch (24, PrisonBreak, Lost, Daily Show, Earl, HBO, etc.). Me, I plan on staying with TiVo. The lifetime subscription loss for me doesn't mean much. I'm on my 4th TiVo, two series 1 that are retired and given away, two series 2 machines, and I'm tentatively planning on replacing them with series 3. TiVo is more than just a DVR to me, as I have it hooked up to my server (Windows 2003 Enterprise server), with access to all my mp3's. With Galleon (an opensource TiVo hack), I can view local movies, get traffic reports, sort my mp3's by artist, record, and song, get lyrics (via lyrictracker), etc. With the new TiVo upgrade, I also get Live365 streaming audio, a few games, buy movie tickets. My entire family loves TiVo, we haven't had a problem at all with our Series 2 machines, it's user interface is simple. I haven't tried MythTV, I thought about playing with it, but frankly, I'd rather be playing games than in the guts of a PC (been there, done that, nothing too challenging, it's more an uninteresting chore). To me, having a lifetime subscription for a TiVO box is the same as having a lifetime warranty for a cell phone. 2 or 3 years down the road, I'm not gonna want that old technology, I'm buying the newer better toys.
As for dumping, one can find evidence of it if the ballots have some unique marking on them (10,000 voters voted at polling place x, 10,000 ballots were used, and only 9000 were counted and are physically present. Do the math!
Pre-filled ballots? If there were again, 10,000 voters who signed in as voting at that location, and 11,000 ballots are physically there?
Granted, voting fraud has probably been around since voting was discovered, but so has techniques for detecting them. But that's all based on paper balloting...
Like Sonic Youth?? Daydream Nation is, in my mind, a great cd (not that I'm an expert musician nor songwriter, cause I most definitely am not!). Yet when Teenage Riot was playing on a jukebox at a college bar, a friend of mine was wondering who selected that "crap noise". And many of Sonic Youth's songs sound kinda chaotic, with weirdly tuned guitars, different arrangements, noises, sung by not-that-great vocalists, etc. Yet they can make a song work in spite of all this, and it's a great song too. Yet I think most people would hear it and hear only the chaotic noise, weird arrangements, weird lyrics sung by not-that-great vocalists, and think "What crap!"
Have you seen what's being classified as non-fiction? I wish we can sue the garbage that's passed as non-fiction from both extremes. I'm sure the right-wing can spout stuff about Michael Moore's books, and Ann Coulter? Rush Limbaugh? John Gibson's War on Christmas??? Half lies (or half truths, it's the same thing!) to straight up lies. It's all fiction. Check out http://www.mediamatters.org/ and search for ann coulter or rush.
By your logic, only ice from the Arctic melts. What about all the ice that's busy melting in glaciers, the Antarctic, permafrost, etc.? But I guess that ice doesn't count eh?
So you don't care that as the ocean levels rise, huge areas of land will have to be vacated due to flooding (including major cities)? That so many of our goods like the computer you are using to read this post arrived at seaports in those cities that would be underwater, plus the immediate transportation infrastructure that would also be underwater (roads, rail, airports) without extensive levees (see hurricane Katrina and New Orleans). Plus the displacement of millions of people not just in Asia/Africa, but also in North America. But I forgot, ice anchored on land don't count.
It's nice to not let logic/science/facts get in the way of your beliefs, right?
Your kid farted because of your chili
He created a fart
You are God because you caused him to fart
Your kid is the fart God
That's a set of statements, some true, some false. Is that a theory?
I for one, would rather that my descendents actually survive and continue to thrive/propagate! While JohanAA is partially right, in that ice ages come and go, but it sure seems that most scientists studying weather, climatology, etc., pretty much all are worried that the stuff we belch into the atmosphere is having a major effect on the earth's weather. It's not a diddlysquat quantity of greenhouse gas that we emit via our cars, factories, foodsupplies, on top of our massive deforestation we are conducting. If JohanAA wants to darwin his genes, then please don't propagate! Of course, he is a slashdotter, so there that goes without saying...
Uh, they are both authors, one happens to also be a (ex-?) physicisn, the other a scientist. At least Lovelock writes about stuff that he not only got his degree in, but continues to study. Chrichton, on the other hand, may or may not have been a good physician, but generally has been a bad writer. I liked Andromeda Strain, although I read back when I was in high school. Jurassic Park was a better movie than book. Prey? Jeez,he got the physics all wrong. And the story sucked too.
If he had some thoughts on medicine, human physiology, anything "doctor"y, I'd respect his opinions, I'm not a doctor. But if he had opinions on microprocessor design, then I'd probably believe a scientist who not only has degrees in physics and/or electrical engineering, etc. but also who still works in that field over an middling-to-average writer who writes pop books.
"Free" channels are regulated by the FCC because they are free. We pay for cable, even though most channels are bundled together in some kinda package.
Besides, there are only so many hours in a week you can broadcast a show across 4 channels. Would South Park even air because of some blue towel with bloodshot eyes asking "Wanna get high?" or some Howdy-Ho saying Chrismas poo with a Santa hat on? No way would the FCC let such high quality programs like South Park air on regular TV!!
And my point about deuterium still stands (it doesn't get more stable just cause it survived multiple energetic environments)...
Whoops! I meant that a proton or neutron doesn't get more stable regardless of whether it survived multiple supernovae/nuke bombs compared to a proton/neutron floating in the cold vacuum of space for the same length of time (or any time at all).
As for your ideas about uranium ore, you are mostly right. There will probably be some of the uranium in the ore that will also decay from the capture of a stray neutron, but it won't make any real appreciable difference in bomb yield, as most of it will be blown away by the explosion.
As for the deuterium in the oceans? You are right that they won't combine to form helium, but it's not because they ignited too many times already. Deuterium doesn't get more stable the older it gets or the more supernovaes and nuclear bombs it survives. Deuterium is simply a proton plus a neutron for a nucleus. A proton nor neutron gets more stable just because it's been heated up more often than a proton/neutron that's just been floating in the cold vacuum of space.
And you don't need big-bang type energies to fuse earth-masses. The sun does that on a regular basis. Fusing elements heavier than Hydrogen? Many large starts do that, fusing not only H to He, but to Li, C, O, etc. Right down to Fe. Up till then, the fusing liberates more energy than it takes to fuse, but iron is where it all stops, taking more energy to fuse than it liberates after fusing. After that point, boom, supernova as the star no longer can sustain the intense gravitational pressures that keep it from collapsing on itself.
Yeah, I think we are too "civilized" to allow Darwinism to weed out the unlucky/stupid!!
Why should an employer provide healthcare? To help ensure that their employees continue to be productive employees. An employee in the hospital is a non-working one. If they aren't working (or working at a dimished capacity), you run the risk of missing your deadlines, force other workers to pick up the slack. And the rest of us pay for it anyway in the form of jackedup rates, higher charges, etc. As more people buy in, the risks/costs are spread. And it's easier to do it via employer, since all money paid to employees stems from the employers.
Ditto for retiree's with no money. There aren't enough Walmarts out there to employ old folks, unless you don't care about our elders facing decisions on heat vs. food vs. medicine vs. rent. And we all know you don't get rich working at Walmart!
THis is not an easy issue, which is why this keeps rearing it's ugly head around election time. But it's an issue that we can't wish away or assume everyone will behave like I do. Unless you want America to look like a third-world nation with respect to it's poor and elderly. You don't like that? Then figure out a solution other than "everyone should be just like me".
Maybe dada doesn't believe in health care for his workers, or providing for a way for his workers to survive once they retire, but we all grow old. We all will need health care for ourselves and our families. His workers seem to be one step from financial destruction if something bad happens that may require an extended stay at a hospital, or expensive treatments. And if one of them happens to be unable to return to work (disability/death)? What happens to the family, who's stuck with bills and a huge chunk of income gone?
And when a company's done with them, a fate that will happen to us all, they are tossed out to fend for themselves. For his workers, when the bonus gravy train is gone, and they are too old to be employable developers anymore (why pay for an old developer when you can pay peanuts for a young one?), they'd have better saved up enough money to survive, cause he's not going to provide any retirement benefits.
This work environment sounds like it would work for a young single person who's looking out only for him/herself, and living only for today. But once you buy a house, get married, have kids, and start thinking about where you'll be 30 years down the road, then you might rethink about working for such a setup.
What about snowflakes? Why do snowflakes have a regular pattern and don't fall as chunks of ice (hail)? The water molecules, under certain conditions, self-organize into regular patterns? Why do iron filings form loopy patterns around a magnet? Other patterns which may seem random aren't, like bird/bug flight (each bird/bug self-organizes in continually changing relationship with its fellow neighbors to flock/swarm. There are rules that exist that cause an individual something to behave in a non-random way. It may be difficult to fully understand things (bonds between atoms, ElectroMagnetic theory, etc.), but to kinda understand in a layman's way shouldn't be too hard. Swarming? If i fall behind, speed up. If I get too close, slow down. Avoid hitting something. There might be another rule or two I'm missing, but you get the general idea. There are several books written for the laymen (rather than that college level text) that are out there, stuff on chaos and complexity.
It just makes it highly likely he's a conservative nut!
Stephen Hawking will save us!! (see the first post from the Onion)
Seriously though, can you imagine being able to carry larger weapons farther and faster than ever possible? With the right armor, future revisions can in a sense make each soldier a "tank", carrying enough firepower to destroy a real tank. Yeah, having one fail would suck, but how's that any different than getting shot (or your rifle jammed or damaged)?
infantry training would definitely change, to learn to strap these puppies on quickly, do field repairs, let alone how to use these devices to their max capabilities.
Yeah, in a insurgency environment, it probably won't help that much when the enemy is too smart to engage us in a standup fight, but who knows, wearing a fully armored set of these might increase the odds a soldier will survive (or minimize the damage) a bomb attack. Remember, this is not even an alpha product, not ready for primetime. It sounds like the future versions will be cool! And commercial versions? You can strap one of these on and work in warehouses (woohoo!! ;-) ) or do other things that require lifting heavy stuff.
Mr Farmer riding in his combine or tractor just follows the furrows , chopping grains with the blades and directing stalks with spikes around a rotating drum, and voila!, some animal gets added to the the mix! Then, once the grains are stored in the silos, birds and mice also like to eat the grains, and may accidently go along for the ride where the grains are crushed to make our flour... It may not be as obvious as a drumstick or a steak, but it's there all the same!
Unless you have grown/processed 100% of your own food your whole life, never eaten at nearly all restaurants (there might be some that handprocess everything (or buy from suppliers who may make this claim), then I'd bet you have eaten animal! And that's not including fried vegetables fried in lard that you may not know about in some restaurants, pots/pans that may have cooked meat, were quickly drained and used to cook your veggie food...
You do understand that the US consists of many different peoples with varying beliefs, right? Not everyone is a Christian, right? Now you may wish everyone follows your beliefs, but it is NOT in your right to impose your beliefs on everyone else. That is called a theocracy or at worst, a dictatorship.
To me, school is a place where we go to learn stuff that makes us better and more productive American citizens. Math and science to understand physically how the world works. English/grammar/spelling to communicate with my fellow Americans. PE to learn to keep healthy. History to learn what happened before, to understand other peoples whom I may meet, and to learn about mistakes made, lessons learned so that hopefully, one can apply this knowledge to future decisions. With all that, hopefully a student will grow up and help contribute to make America stay strong and competitive.
Today's schools, kids are taught stuff at a faster pace just so we can compete with other nations. Personally, I am very happy that kids today know more things at a certain age than I did when I was that age. Is this something you don't like?
The 1st amendment, with respect to religion, has two pieces. 1) Congress can make no law respecting the establishment of religion, and 2) they cannot prohibit the free exercise of it. You and your kids can pray to whomever entity you wish. But you cannot make it a law to say a prayer. It infringes on the rights of students who either don't practice religion, or follow a different one. You can teach your religion at home, or in a Church, but you cannot do this in a government funded institution like a school.
Let's say you want the best education for your kid. But the best school happens to be in a Muslim part of town. Your kid is the only non-Muslim kid in class. Every day at a certain time, all the kids get their prayer mats, and say a prayer (bowing in the direction of Mecca). Now, while your kid may be raised Christian, he/she would feel very uncomfortable. Your kid may be given the option of saying a prayer during this time, but kids being kids, they don't want to draw negative attention to themselves for fear of teasing or at least of not fitting in. Remember, in this hypothetical situation, this is the best school in town, where many of it's students graduate and go on to ivy league schools. How would you feel? Especially if you don't have the financial means to move to a different town?
You need to start looking at things from other people's perspectives, because not everyone believes in your beliefs. Just because the government has mandated that there is no formal time in school for prayer or forbidding ID in science class doesn't mean the government is performing religious persecution. You are free to practice whatever religion you want as long as it doesn't violate the rights of other people (sacrifying virgins to your gods is not a good idea!!). The government didn't say you can't practice your Christian beliefs at all, it's saying it can't mandate that everyone must practice a religious belief.
ID is Religion, not science.
And pretty much all four main tenents have been proven wrong. The earth is a few billion years old based on scientific results. Life has been on this earth for millions of years, that most species today are relatively new (sharks/coelacanth being the few exceptions), but there were species before them. There have been many floods, but nothing that covered the earth within the last 6000 years. All the many billions of people of different skin colors, hair types, head shapes, statures, etc. can all be traced to one couple who was alive 6000 years ago? You just choose to not believe the facts, and it's your right to be ignore it.
America was founded on liberty for all people, of all religions and beliefs. Liberty does not mean liberty only for Christians.
Remember that the 1st amendment to the constitution is that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion... SInce there is no law to respect ID as a science (nor can there be), the judges must adhere to the law, and hence, must throw this out.
The judge did not forbid ID itself, you are free to believe in this, teach it to your children at home or in Church, just not in science class. Your rights are not infringed. Teaching ID in science does infringe on my rights as a parent with kids in science class not learning science, but a religious belief that I disagree with. I don't think you'd like it if a school board passed a ruling that all classes (science, PE, math, English etc.) should teach that Adam/Eve weren't the first humans on earth, but that His Noodly Appendage created the trees and mountains, and that a midgit (sic) was the first human?
Arrrgh!
But don't we want to lop their heads off so we gain their power? WWCMD? (or for the tv crowd, WWDMD?)
O
/ \
H H
(It's hard to make this look like a triangle with ~105 degrees!).
While this is an extreme example of self-organization (like iron filings near a magnet), others have a lesser tendency to self-organize, but they do over millions of years of constant mixing.
Look at panning for gold. The odds of finding a gold flake or two in river sediment isn't very good. Taking a small sample of the sediment in a pan, adding water, and slowly swirling the pan so the water/dirt mixture spills out, the odds are, it's gonna fail too. Why? You haven't run enough samples. Maybe your panning technique sucks. You may never find a gold flake, after a months of panning. The self-organization hypothesis there? Gold, being heavier and denser, tends to sinks to the bottom of the pan. But you may never scoop up any gold to sink. You conclude that panning doesn't work, or that the stream has no gold. Later you may read that someone got lucky and found gold in the very stream you were in, panning for gold there. Did God place the gold in the stream after you left? Or was that person just lucky or panned more sediment than you? The point isn't getting rich, the point is that given enough time, with enough different experiments (sediment samples from different parts of the river, different depths, lots of people panning, etc.), one might hit upon the right reaction that results in a different result (found gold) than expected (found nothing).
about how long a computer takes to simulate the folding of a protein? A protein has many atoms, all of which interact in some way with each other. Heck, it's difficult to solve a three-body problem (like a planet with two moons), let alone something with 100's and 1000's of moving parts. Think about how long it takes to calculate the right angles and velocities, determining forces, and deriving the equation from known physical laws and theories to describe the motion of the ball from which you can plug in the numbers to obtain the angles/velocity, to throw a baseball into a mitt, compared to just throwing the ball into the mitt.
Did the chicken come before the egg? Let's pose a different but similar question. Did the dog come before its parent's sperm/egg? We all know that dogs were bred from wolves. So are you saying dogs sprang up from nothing? They arose out of no-where, replacing the wolf embryo with itself? Or through a gradual breeding program, that the spawn of spawn of spawn of many generations of wolves with particular characteristics eventually became what we now call dog?
The answer to which came first, the chicken or the egg? The egg.
Looking at how dna came to be surrounded by a cell wall, powered by mitochondria? Learn some cellular biology, and learn about some of simpler creatures, single-celled and simple multicelled. Eyes? Learn about light-sensitive cells and some of the creatures in the sea with crude eyes. Learn about sexual and asexual reproduction, genetic algorithms, etc.
Does science have all the anwers? No. I don't mean to bash you, but statements like not being able to figure things out are kinda copouts which don't really contribute to learning new knowledge, but can be used as a roadblock to prevent others from learning new knowledge (let alone yourself). It's a Luddite viewpoint, and enough people buy into it, laws can get enacted to prevent people from exploring and investigating it. And there are other cultures who do not have such reservations, w