Base infinity is inconvenient for human mathematicians, but a transfinite superintelligence should be able to grok *every* number uniquely, in all its pure numbery essence, without needing a symbolic system to break it down into "easier to understand" components.
That's an after-the-fact re-interpretation on his part to explain away embarrassing wrongs.
Augustine didn't have to "explain away embarrassing wrongs" because in the 4th-5th century there was nothing at all "embarrassing" about the Biblical creation account --- no generally known contradictions with the (significantly more limited) scientific knowledge of the time. Unless you think Augustine could see 1300 years into the future, his choice to treat the creation accounts figuratively had absolutely no motivation in hiding from scientific scrutiny. Instead, such a choice indicates that major sectors of Christianity have been using scriptural texts in a nuanced, non-directly-opposed-to-scientific-fact manner for a lot longer than such issue would even be at stake --- figurative/literary ("mythological") interpretations are *not* a post-hoc response to scientific "debunking," but a long-standing hermeneutic principle within the Christian faith.
Augustine basically *is* treating the creation story as mythology here (with "man-made" beside the point in his analysis). Instead of "rationalizing" the story into a chronicle of historical factoids, Augustine treats the contents as symbolic devices indicating a relationship between man and his world --- that's what "mythology" does. You seem to use "mythology" simply as an insult --- betraying a pretty shallow understanding of human culture and literature. Do you consider Shakespeare's plays worthless because they're (a) historically inaccurate, and (b) man-made? The fanciful, exaggerated, surrealistic contents of a mythology are not ends in themselves, but methods for conveying complex social and personal values and aspirations.
Point (1) doesn't seem especially "good" or well through out; just a shallow propagandistic attack. If God exists (in any form vaguely like that proposed by major monotheistic religions), why would one expect that "billions of galaxies, each with billions of stars" would pose the tiniest managerial difficulty? Almost by definition, an omnipotent/omniscient being that speaks universes into being wouldn't be flummoxed by mere billions of billions of billions. Such an argument only contradicts particularly small and feeble-minded gods --- which are rarely the actual subject of theological debate.
St. Augustine's "Confessions" contains a large segment towards the end based around the Biblical creation account. In this, Augustine doesn't care the least bit about using the account as "a loose framework for what actually happened in the creation of where we are now." Instead, the creation story is re-worked into an extended metaphor using baptismal symbolism to describe a believer's "new creation" in Christ --- a personal/allegorical/spiritual interpretation that doesn't depend on, or care about, the paleontological accuracy of the creation story. Hard-headed insistence on the "scientific accuracy" of Biblical accounts is a much later heresy in the Western church, which only really arose alongside and in response to the development of scientific thought in the 18th century.
Jefferson opposed slavery so deeply that he remained a slave-owner (and slave-raper) for his whole life, while hammering out compromises to make sure others could do the same (including "sunset clauses to certain parts of slavery", aside from the "total ownership of another human being" parts). Obviously a fundamental commitment to the core of human freedom!
Which shows just how ideologically blind many libertarians are, given how intimately the "original design" of this country depended on the labor of certain "3/5 people".
You're making the mistake that a lot of modern Capitalist political/economic rubbish relies on: assuming that the words used to describe economic organization (in this case, "owned by"), have a universal and absolute meaning identical with their present usage.
Yes, land just about everywhere has historically been "owned" by someone. But "ownership" is a particular bundle of de jure and de facto practices that changes with time and place --- for large segments of history, land being "owned" by some lord/king was not at all exclusive with use as "commons." Only later was the definition and practical exercise of "ownership" shifted towards our contemporary notion of "private property." But I suppose paying historical attention to the actual conditions of production "on the ground," instead of tossing around terms like "ownership" as though they were handed down immutable from God, would be too "Marxist" for you.
I'm not Mormon, and I think the Mormon scriptures are not just generally goofy, but often in direct contradiction to the canonical Bible. However, I think you're stretching this quote from Revelations too far --- this passage was written to apply to the Book of Revelations alone, not the whole Bible. Indeed, at the time Revelations was written, there was no Bible --- not until a century or two later were several separate influential early Christian texts collected together to form the "official" New Testament. Paul has strong words against preachers who distort the core Christian message (which I think the Mormons often fall afoul of), but there is no specific Bible passage on the scope/editing of the New Testament portion of the Bible itself; such a self-reference would be obviously anachronistic.
Not quite true. At least the Lutheran sector of "Mainline Protestants" believe that the communion elements are indeed the "true body and blood of Christ." The difference with Roman Catholics is that Lutherans do not specify/explain what this phrase means using Aristotelian metaphysics about "substance"/"essence". Lutherans insist that the bread and wine are not "transubstantiated," not because they are not Body and Blood of Christ, but because Aristotle's metaphysics are irrelevant (and not biblically supported) for describing communion.
So, why did you pick randomly 3 significant digits from my math example? Hm? The pi indicated 5 but you picked 3...
I would guess that Lord_Naikon picked 3 digits because he actually knows what he is doing. The "-1.02" is the limiting precision in the expression; there's no point to adding more decimals to the result when the precision here is specified no better. I usually stick to complaining about education in the good old U.S. of A., but apparently even Germany has a few school districts that would do Texas proud.
Like I mentioned above, your education seems to have failed you in understanding this important concept.
The extra zeros in 1.00000000 inch versus 1.00 inch are absolutely "significant": they tell the machinist making the part how accurate the result needs to be. If I ask for a "1.00 inch" part, that indicates that I won't mind if the actual result is really 1.003 inches or 0.998 inches; the measurement and fabrication can be carried out with a pair of calipers and a saw. However, if I ask for a "1.00000000 inch" part, this means I won't be happy with a 1.003 inch result --- or even a 1.0000002 inch result; making something to this accuracy would strain the limits of available technology. This convention of using the number of digits written (even when they are "redundant" zeros) to indicate the necessary accuracy of the number is very important in engineering/manufacturing specifications.
Likewise in the sciences, results are quoted with a number of figures indicating the accuracy of a measurement.
The concept of significant figures long pre-dates computers and floating point numbers. Calculations done on a slide rule have the same limitations on numerical accuracy, as do calculations by pen-and-paper involving approximations.
The use of significant figures is critical throughout all the sciences, engineering, and manufacturing. The figures in a number convey important information about how well a quantity is known/measured, or how precisely a specification needs to be met. Go to a machinist and ask for a 1.00 inch cut of bar stock, and he'll say "no problem" and slice you off a piece on the band saw. Tell the machinist you need a 1.00000000 inch segment, and he'll either give you a seven-figure price quote with a six month lead time, or possibly just break out in laughter.
If you didn't learn about this in school, it's a reflection on the sorry state of the education system rather than the actual importance of the topic.
Oh, and it shows how much Amazon/ Dell price gouges, but that shouldn't really shock anyone. Except the amount. A petabyte for three years is $94,000 with Backblaze, and $2,466,000 with Amazon.
With services like Amazon S3, you aren't paying for just the storage space but also for the (considerably more complicated and expensive) access/availability to the data. Backblaze offers an entirely different type of service: bulk backup space, that will mostly be "write once, read never" --- the data is stored reliably, but certainly not available for random access by thousands of simultaneous connections. If you're using Amazon S3 for bulk backup, then yes, you are stupid and paying way too much. But if you need hosting for data for "live" web use, available over massive amounts of globally distributed bandwidth, then S3 is a rather competitively priced product.
My rather modest "poor student's" bookshelf contains a few volumes that are ~100 years old. However, even the world-class library of antiquities in my city only houses a few 500 to 1000 year-old books, and little or nothing from 2000+ years ago. You seem to be overly zealous in your insinuation that an eccentric rabbi in a backwater Roman colony two millenia ago should be easier (if he existed) to find contemporaneous records of than your recent "moderately well known" ancestors. While this is certainly not positive proof of Jesus' existence (much less his purported miraculous doings), you only make a fool of yourself by making smug and flippant "observations" that aspire no higher in logic than the lowest grade of wacky Christian apologists.
The general problem is that the carbon offsets market is doing what markets are good at... initiating a "race to the bottom" to extract the most money for the least work (even when this means not actually reducing overall emissions). The "emissions reduction" market is rife with scams, much like agricultural subsidies that pay farmers to NOT plant crops. Corporations get to claim CO2 reductions on all sorts of projects that they were going to do anyway, whether decommissioning old factories or switching to newer, more efficient production techniques. Logging/tree farm companies get credits just for doing what they've always done. Speculators are buying up existing forest land (often in third-world countries) so they can claim CO2 reductions just for letting the forest sit there (as if the forest would have stopped absorbing CO2 reductions if not owned by the right investors). The end result is that the eco-conscious but naive jet flier releases 10 tons of CO2, then pays for 10tons of CO2 credits that are "fulfilled" by someone else getting bonus cash to do "business as usual". The most effective way for the original person to really reduce CO2 would be to not fly the inefficient private jet in the first place, cutting off the emissions right at the source, instead of handing off the responsibility to the markets which are efficient at weaseling out of actually sequestering more CO2.
I think the technical term you are looking for is "transmutation" or "transubstantiation" rather than "transfiguration." In the Christian context, "transfiguration" refers to an event where Jesus ascended a mountain with his disciples, shone with a bright light, conversed with (famous, deceased) prophets Moses and Elijah, and was declared to be God's son by a voice from the heavens.
While I do not believe in transubstantiation, and consider it to be a silly idea, it is not silly for the reason that you (and many ill-informed Christian-bashers) appear to believe. The language and understanding of transubstantiation is based on the technical language of Aristotle's philosophy and metaphysics. The "substance" that is purportedly changed when bread and wine are "converted" to the body and blood of Christ does not refer to the outward material form of the foodstuffs, but rather to inner "true" properties (a technical distinction in Aristotle's terminology that does not make sense in the context of other, more common modern metaphysical views). The outward form remains bread-y and wine-y; the Christian receiving the sacraments does not expect the bread to taste any more meaty or the wine any more bloody than regular. The reason that transubstantiation was rejected by Luther in the Protestant Reformation was precisely because of this reliance on finicky Aristotelian metaphysics (which was not biblically supported, nor self-evidently sensible), rather than due to the ridiculousness of bread materially transforming into human flesh, which no Christians (Roman Catholic or Protestant) actually believed in.
Neutrons can interact with other matter through more than electromagnetic forces. In the case of very slow moving neutrons like the ones used here, the typical interaction used to repel/attract neutrons from a material surface is the "Fermi potential," a quantum mechanical scattering potential between the free neutrons and the nuclei in the bulk of the material (which can be either attractive or repulsive depending on the material, typically in the range between +/-300neV). The neutrons don't fall through the plates for nearly the same reason that you don't fall through the seat below you (which, contrary to "popular knowledge," is not due to electrostatic forces between you and the chair, but rather due to electron degeneracy pressure).
You don't need to know what the mass of light is, you only need to treat it as a classical particle traveling at 3e8 m/s. From classical mechanics, objects follow the same trajectory in a gravitational field regardless of mass (different orbits depend only on different initial positions/velocities); a beam of light can be treated just like a very fast moving comet. The mass of the light would only be important if you were trying to calculate the reverse effect of how much a passing light beam would move a planet/star as it passed. The fact that light travels at a finite speed has been known for a long time.
The way that the lower/upper plates "repel/attract" the neutrons is not to be due to familiar forces (e.g. electromagnetic, gravitational, weak, strong), but rather due to quantum scattering effects from the bulk of nuclei in the plate material (which can be either attractive or repulsive, depending on material composition) based on the Fermi exclusion principle (identical fermions, such as neutrons, cannot occupy the same quantum state, resulting in effective forces between them not caused by any other forces). While the statement (as is often true of science journalism for the general public) is unclear and confusing, it is somewhat true in the sense that the neutrons are not interacting through a mechanism that would show up on a list of "forces of nature".
Yes, we obviously need to be worried that the large team of scientists and engineers who designed and built this experiment have overlooked the most basic principles of freshman physics and mechanical design. Good thing we have the keen intelligence of Slashdot science critics to catch all these subtle flaws that would otherwise slip by the reviewers at Nature un-noticed. Should we also worry that the scientists are all part of the government conspiracy to cover up the true Time Cube four-side harmony perfection of gravity symmetry?
Sodom DIDN'T "have a damned thing to do with homosexuality."
There's one key account in the Bible used to convey the "character" of Sodom and its inhabitants. Here's a quick paraphrase: Lot, a good and god-fearing man in Sodom, is visited by two out-of-town strangers (who later turn out to be angels in disguise). Being the very model of hospitality, Lot invites them in for the night and has a meal prepared for them. Lot's Sodomite neighbors see he has company, and a crowd comes knocking on his door because they want to RAPE his visitors (not very hospitable of them!).
Do you think this story would reflect any better on Sodom if Lot's angelic visitors had come in the form of hot ladies? If you look at this story and think Sodom's problem is homosexuality (rather than an inclination to forcibly gang-rape strangers, in contrast to Lot's welcoming hospitality), then you have a sick and hate-twisted mind. We probably read the same bible --- you ought to try reading it to see God's love rather than to magnify your own hate.
Disclaimers: I am a Christian, and a physicist, and consider "creationists" to be full of shit (both scientifically and theologically).
While there are certainly large (and vocal, and insidious) sects of Christianity that cling to the necessity of a shallow "literalist" reading of the biblical creation accounts (and others), this is by no means representative of the whole of Christianity. Nor are more nuanced understandings that do not hang entirely on literal historical inerrancy merely a modern invention in response to increased scientific understanding. Hashing out the details of how to understand "original sin" is a very rich and complex topic that has been under discussion (and sometimes violent argument) in the Christian church since its foundation. Here is my attempt at some (crude) pointers to understanding original sin beyond a simplistic historical context:
1) The Adam of the biblical account is connected through genealogical accounts to the "present" times at the founding of Christianity, which typically form the basis of "young earth" chronologies. However, the accuracy of the genealogical details really doesn't matter for the underlying story of sin --- the presence of historical gaps, errors, omissions, etc. that push the timeframe of the beginning of humanity much further back have little bearing on the meaning of the account. Nor does the fact that the first human may not have called himself 'Adam' --- that is merely a convenient label that far later generations used to refer to the idea of a "first human".
2) Adam is often referred to in New Testament texts, especially the letters of Paul, as a way of explaining who Jesus was and what he had done. However, the historical person of Adam is no more important to these passages than the fact that Jesus wasn't literally a shepherd, a lamb, a vine, a bronze snake, or any of the dozens of other metaphors and images employed in the biblical accounts to explain the Messiah's role. All that matters in many of these texts is that the *stories* about Adam existed and were commonly known, providing a useful reference for 1st century AD Christian expositors.
3) The existence of a historical Adam becomes necessary IF the sin for which Christ's death was necessary is understood to be merely the historical event of Adam's rebellion against God. However, "original sin" has long been understood by much of the Church not merely as a distant historical point, but as an ongoing condition of humanity --- that all people all born as sinners, i.e. without fear, love, or trust of God, and because of this commit sins against God and neighbor. The "originality" of "original sin" refers to the fact that all people are born with this condition of sin rather than having to repeat an Adamic fall from sinlessness for themselves. In this context, the exact historical details of the first sin recede in importance, as Jesus' death addresses an "original sin" which is seen as a present reality for all people, rather than one distant historical point.
In summary, Christian theology, both historical and contemporary, does not depend on the necessity of a historical Adam.
Neutrons are neutral, but they have a magnetic moment and thus respond to magnetic field gradients. Unfortunately, it takes ~5T magnetic fields to push around "ultra cold" neutrons with only ~100neV of kinetic energy. For neutrons with MeV-scale kinetic energies typical of nuclear reactions, even focused EM fields driven by a large nuclear explosion may not be quite sufficient.
Slashdot Mirror
Base infinity is inconvenient for human mathematicians, but a transfinite superintelligence should be able to grok *every* number uniquely, in all its pure numbery essence, without needing a symbolic system to break it down into "easier to understand" components.
Augustine didn't have to "explain away embarrassing wrongs" because in the 4th-5th century there was nothing at all "embarrassing" about the Biblical creation account --- no generally known contradictions with the (significantly more limited) scientific knowledge of the time. Unless you think Augustine could see 1300 years into the future, his choice to treat the creation accounts figuratively had absolutely no motivation in hiding from scientific scrutiny. Instead, such a choice indicates that major sectors of Christianity have been using scriptural texts in a nuanced, non-directly-opposed-to-scientific-fact manner for a lot longer than such issue would even be at stake --- figurative/literary ("mythological") interpretations are *not* a post-hoc response to scientific "debunking," but a long-standing hermeneutic principle within the Christian faith.
Augustine basically *is* treating the creation story as mythology here (with "man-made" beside the point in his analysis). Instead of "rationalizing" the story into a chronicle of historical factoids, Augustine treats the contents as symbolic devices indicating a relationship between man and his world --- that's what "mythology" does. You seem to use "mythology" simply as an insult --- betraying a pretty shallow understanding of human culture and literature. Do you consider Shakespeare's plays worthless because they're (a) historically inaccurate, and (b) man-made? The fanciful, exaggerated, surrealistic contents of a mythology are not ends in themselves, but methods for conveying complex social and personal values and aspirations.
Point (1) doesn't seem especially "good" or well through out; just a shallow propagandistic attack. If God exists (in any form vaguely like that proposed by major monotheistic religions), why would one expect that "billions of galaxies, each with billions of stars" would pose the tiniest managerial difficulty? Almost by definition, an omnipotent/omniscient being that speaks universes into being wouldn't be flummoxed by mere billions of billions of billions. Such an argument only contradicts particularly small and feeble-minded gods --- which are rarely the actual subject of theological debate.
St. Augustine's "Confessions" contains a large segment towards the end based around the Biblical creation account. In this, Augustine doesn't care the least bit about using the account as "a loose framework for what actually happened in the creation of where we are now." Instead, the creation story is re-worked into an extended metaphor using baptismal symbolism to describe a believer's "new creation" in Christ --- a personal/allegorical/spiritual interpretation that doesn't depend on, or care about, the paleontological accuracy of the creation story. Hard-headed insistence on the "scientific accuracy" of Biblical accounts is a much later heresy in the Western church, which only really arose alongside and in response to the development of scientific thought in the 18th century.
Jefferson opposed slavery so deeply that he remained a slave-owner (and slave-raper) for his whole life, while hammering out compromises to make sure others could do the same (including "sunset clauses to certain parts of slavery", aside from the "total ownership of another human being" parts). Obviously a fundamental commitment to the core of human freedom!
Which shows just how ideologically blind many libertarians are, given how intimately the "original design" of this country depended on the labor of certain "3/5 people".
You're making the mistake that a lot of modern Capitalist political/economic rubbish relies on: assuming that the words used to describe economic organization (in this case, "owned by"), have a universal and absolute meaning identical with their present usage.
Yes, land just about everywhere has historically been "owned" by someone. But "ownership" is a particular bundle of de jure and de facto practices that changes with time and place --- for large segments of history, land being "owned" by some lord/king was not at all exclusive with use as "commons." Only later was the definition and practical exercise of "ownership" shifted towards our contemporary notion of "private property." But I suppose paying historical attention to the actual conditions of production "on the ground," instead of tossing around terms like "ownership" as though they were handed down immutable from God, would be too "Marxist" for you.
I'm not Mormon, and I think the Mormon scriptures are not just generally goofy, but often in direct contradiction to the canonical Bible. However, I think you're stretching this quote from Revelations too far --- this passage was written to apply to the Book of Revelations alone, not the whole Bible. Indeed, at the time Revelations was written, there was no Bible --- not until a century or two later were several separate influential early Christian texts collected together to form the "official" New Testament. Paul has strong words against preachers who distort the core Christian message (which I think the Mormons often fall afoul of), but there is no specific Bible passage on the scope/editing of the New Testament portion of the Bible itself; such a self-reference would be obviously anachronistic.
Not quite true. At least the Lutheran sector of "Mainline Protestants" believe that the communion elements are indeed the "true body and blood of Christ." The difference with Roman Catholics is that Lutherans do not specify/explain what this phrase means using Aristotelian metaphysics about "substance"/"essence". Lutherans insist that the bread and wine are not "transubstantiated," not because they are not Body and Blood of Christ, but because Aristotle's metaphysics are irrelevant (and not biblically supported) for describing communion.
So, why did you pick randomly 3 significant digits from my math example? Hm? The pi indicated 5 but you picked 3 ...
I would guess that Lord_Naikon picked 3 digits because he actually knows what he is doing. The "-1.02" is the limiting precision in the expression; there's no point to adding more decimals to the result when the precision here is specified no better. I usually stick to complaining about education in the good old U.S. of A., but apparently even Germany has a few school districts that would do Texas proud.
Like I mentioned above, your education seems to have failed you in understanding this important concept.
The extra zeros in 1.00000000 inch versus 1.00 inch are absolutely "significant": they tell the machinist making the part how accurate the result needs to be. If I ask for a "1.00 inch" part, that indicates that I won't mind if the actual result is really 1.003 inches or 0.998 inches; the measurement and fabrication can be carried out with a pair of calipers and a saw. However, if I ask for a "1.00000000 inch" part, this means I won't be happy with a 1.003 inch result --- or even a 1.0000002 inch result; making something to this accuracy would strain the limits of available technology. This convention of using the number of digits written (even when they are "redundant" zeros) to indicate the necessary accuracy of the number is very important in engineering/manufacturing specifications.
Likewise in the sciences, results are quoted with a number of figures indicating the accuracy of a measurement.
The concept of significant figures long pre-dates computers and floating point numbers. Calculations done on a slide rule have the same limitations on numerical accuracy, as do calculations by pen-and-paper involving approximations.
Abso-fucking-lutely it does.
The use of significant figures is critical throughout all the sciences, engineering, and manufacturing. The figures in a number convey important information about how well a quantity is known/measured, or how precisely a specification needs to be met. Go to a machinist and ask for a 1.00 inch cut of bar stock, and he'll say "no problem" and slice you off a piece on the band saw. Tell the machinist you need a 1.00000000 inch segment, and he'll either give you a seven-figure price quote with a six month lead time, or possibly just break out in laughter.
If you didn't learn about this in school, it's a reflection on the sorry state of the education system rather than the actual importance of the topic.
Oh, and it shows how much Amazon/ Dell price gouges, but that shouldn't really shock anyone. Except the amount. A petabyte for three years is $94,000 with Backblaze, and $2,466,000 with Amazon.
With services like Amazon S3, you aren't paying for just the storage space but also for the (considerably more complicated and expensive) access/availability to the data. Backblaze offers an entirely different type of service: bulk backup space, that will mostly be "write once, read never" --- the data is stored reliably, but certainly not available for random access by thousands of simultaneous connections. If you're using Amazon S3 for bulk backup, then yes, you are stupid and paying way too much. But if you need hosting for data for "live" web use, available over massive amounts of globally distributed bandwidth, then S3 is a rather competitively priced product.
My rather modest "poor student's" bookshelf contains a few volumes that are ~100 years old. However, even the world-class library of antiquities in my city only houses a few 500 to 1000 year-old books, and little or nothing from 2000+ years ago. You seem to be overly zealous in your insinuation that an eccentric rabbi in a backwater Roman colony two millenia ago should be easier (if he existed) to find contemporaneous records of than your recent "moderately well known" ancestors. While this is certainly not positive proof of Jesus' existence (much less his purported miraculous doings), you only make a fool of yourself by making smug and flippant "observations" that aspire no higher in logic than the lowest grade of wacky Christian apologists.
If you get an early Mac OS, remember to check out the "secret about box" easter-egg
The general problem is that the carbon offsets market is doing what markets are good at... initiating a "race to the bottom" to extract the most money for the least work (even when this means not actually reducing overall emissions). The "emissions reduction" market is rife with scams, much like agricultural subsidies that pay farmers to NOT plant crops. Corporations get to claim CO2 reductions on all sorts of projects that they were going to do anyway, whether decommissioning old factories or switching to newer, more efficient production techniques. Logging/tree farm companies get credits just for doing what they've always done. Speculators are buying up existing forest land (often in third-world countries) so they can claim CO2 reductions just for letting the forest sit there (as if the forest would have stopped absorbing CO2 reductions if not owned by the right investors). The end result is that the eco-conscious but naive jet flier releases 10 tons of CO2, then pays for 10tons of CO2 credits that are "fulfilled" by someone else getting bonus cash to do "business as usual". The most effective way for the original person to really reduce CO2 would be to not fly the inefficient private jet in the first place, cutting off the emissions right at the source, instead of handing off the responsibility to the markets which are efficient at weaseling out of actually sequestering more CO2.
I think the technical term you are looking for is "transmutation" or "transubstantiation" rather than "transfiguration." In the Christian context, "transfiguration" refers to an event where Jesus ascended a mountain with his disciples, shone with a bright light, conversed with (famous, deceased) prophets Moses and Elijah, and was declared to be God's son by a voice from the heavens.
While I do not believe in transubstantiation, and consider it to be a silly idea, it is not silly for the reason that you (and many ill-informed Christian-bashers) appear to believe. The language and understanding of transubstantiation is based on the technical language of Aristotle's philosophy and metaphysics. The "substance" that is purportedly changed when bread and wine are "converted" to the body and blood of Christ does not refer to the outward material form of the foodstuffs, but rather to inner "true" properties (a technical distinction in Aristotle's terminology that does not make sense in the context of other, more common modern metaphysical views). The outward form remains bread-y and wine-y; the Christian receiving the sacraments does not expect the bread to taste any more meaty or the wine any more bloody than regular. The reason that transubstantiation was rejected by Luther in the Protestant Reformation was precisely because of this reliance on finicky Aristotelian metaphysics (which was not biblically supported, nor self-evidently sensible), rather than due to the ridiculousness of bread materially transforming into human flesh, which no Christians (Roman Catholic or Protestant) actually believed in.
Neutrons can interact with other matter through more than electromagnetic forces. In the case of very slow moving neutrons like the ones used here, the typical interaction used to repel/attract neutrons from a material surface is the "Fermi potential," a quantum mechanical scattering potential between the free neutrons and the nuclei in the bulk of the material (which can be either attractive or repulsive depending on the material, typically in the range between +/-300neV). The neutrons don't fall through the plates for nearly the same reason that you don't fall through the seat below you (which, contrary to "popular knowledge," is not due to electrostatic forces between you and the chair, but rather due to electron degeneracy pressure).
You don't need to know what the mass of light is, you only need to treat it as a classical particle traveling at 3e8 m/s. From classical mechanics, objects follow the same trajectory in a gravitational field regardless of mass (different orbits depend only on different initial positions/velocities); a beam of light can be treated just like a very fast moving comet. The mass of the light would only be important if you were trying to calculate the reverse effect of how much a passing light beam would move a planet/star as it passed. The fact that light travels at a finite speed has been known for a long time.
The way that the lower/upper plates "repel/attract" the neutrons is not to be due to familiar forces (e.g. electromagnetic, gravitational, weak, strong), but rather due to quantum scattering effects from the bulk of nuclei in the plate material (which can be either attractive or repulsive, depending on material composition) based on the Fermi exclusion principle (identical fermions, such as neutrons, cannot occupy the same quantum state, resulting in effective forces between them not caused by any other forces). While the statement (as is often true of science journalism for the general public) is unclear and confusing, it is somewhat true in the sense that the neutrons are not interacting through a mechanism that would show up on a list of "forces of nature".
Yes, we obviously need to be worried that the large team of scientists and engineers who designed and built this experiment have overlooked the most basic principles of freshman physics and mechanical design. Good thing we have the keen intelligence of Slashdot science critics to catch all these subtle flaws that would otherwise slip by the reviewers at Nature un-noticed. Should we also worry that the scientists are all part of the government conspiracy to cover up the true Time Cube four-side harmony perfection of gravity symmetry?
Sodom DIDN'T "have a damned thing to do with homosexuality."
There's one key account in the Bible used to convey the "character" of Sodom and its inhabitants. Here's a quick paraphrase:
Lot, a good and god-fearing man in Sodom, is visited by two out-of-town strangers (who later turn out to be angels in disguise). Being the very model of hospitality, Lot invites them in for the night and has a meal prepared for them. Lot's Sodomite neighbors see he has company, and a crowd comes knocking on his door because they want to RAPE his visitors (not very hospitable of them!).
Do you think this story would reflect any better on Sodom if Lot's angelic visitors had come in the form of hot ladies? If you look at this story and think Sodom's problem is homosexuality (rather than an inclination to forcibly gang-rape strangers, in contrast to Lot's welcoming hospitality), then you have a sick and hate-twisted mind. We probably read the same bible --- you ought to try reading it to see God's love rather than to magnify your own hate.
Disclaimers: I am a Christian, and a physicist, and consider "creationists" to be full of shit (both scientifically and theologically).
While there are certainly large (and vocal, and insidious) sects of Christianity that cling to the necessity of a shallow "literalist" reading of the biblical creation accounts (and others), this is by no means representative of the whole of Christianity. Nor are more nuanced understandings that do not hang entirely on literal historical inerrancy merely a modern invention in response to increased scientific understanding. Hashing out the details of how to understand "original sin" is a very rich and complex topic that has been under discussion (and sometimes violent argument) in the Christian church since its foundation. Here is my attempt at some (crude) pointers to understanding original sin beyond a simplistic historical context:
1) The Adam of the biblical account is connected through genealogical accounts to the "present" times at the founding of Christianity, which typically form the basis of "young earth" chronologies. However, the accuracy of the genealogical details really doesn't matter for the underlying story of sin --- the presence of historical gaps, errors, omissions, etc. that push the timeframe of the beginning of humanity much further back have little bearing on the meaning of the account. Nor does the fact that the first human may not have called himself 'Adam' --- that is merely a convenient label that far later generations used to refer to the idea of a "first human".
2) Adam is often referred to in New Testament texts, especially the letters of Paul, as a way of explaining who Jesus was and what he had done. However, the historical person of Adam is no more important to these passages than the fact that Jesus wasn't literally a shepherd, a lamb, a vine, a bronze snake, or any of the dozens of other metaphors and images employed in the biblical accounts to explain the Messiah's role. All that matters in many of these texts is that the *stories* about Adam existed and were commonly known, providing a useful reference for 1st century AD Christian expositors.
3) The existence of a historical Adam becomes necessary IF the sin for which Christ's death was necessary is understood to be merely the historical event of Adam's rebellion against God. However, "original sin" has long been understood by much of the Church not merely as a distant historical point, but as an ongoing condition of humanity --- that all people all born as sinners, i.e. without fear, love, or trust of God, and because of this commit sins against God and neighbor. The "originality" of "original sin" refers to the fact that all people are born with this condition of sin rather than having to repeat an Adamic fall from sinlessness for themselves. In this context, the exact historical details of the first sin recede in importance, as Jesus' death addresses an "original sin" which is seen as a present reality for all people, rather than one distant historical point.
In summary, Christian theology, both historical and contemporary, does not depend on the necessity of a historical Adam.
Neutrons are neutral, but they have a magnetic moment and thus respond to magnetic field gradients. Unfortunately, it takes ~5T magnetic fields to push around "ultra cold" neutrons with only ~100neV of kinetic energy. For neutrons with MeV-scale kinetic energies typical of nuclear reactions, even focused EM fields driven by a large nuclear explosion may not be quite sufficient.