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To all women @SFN, and to all women in science: Happy Women's Day!! We value you, trust you, we love your work, and we wish you to keep going strong. Most importantly: We are inspired by you. You're better off without a Y chromosome, believe me. What's your favourite woman in science? Mine is Emmy Noether.

symptom378 is banned as a sockpuppet of Jalopy, who, as it turns out, is Adelbert_Einstein and Karen Brown and thequeenofhearts. Truth in advertising requires their next user name to be Dick

The Ukrainians are fighting a guerilla war; what do you expect? This is how any country under occupation tries to turn the tables back in their favor. It doesn't somehow give the invading country the right to indiscriminately massacre civilians.

"I've been kicked out of every bar in the city for being too charming, witty and respectful."

When you mature enough to consider thinking about the comments of others, rather than launching into an automatic, angst ridden, agenda driven, logic free, outburst, you might be able to identify the flaws in your thinking. You might also be a lot happier. I wish you well in that respect. In the meantime I am heading for a sensible thread.

Good topic +1 I vote for some of those whose work was (originally) stolen ( in no particular order ) Rosalind Franklin Lise Meitner Jocelyn Bell Eunice Foote Katherine Johnson and if I am allowed to include a Russian Sofia Kovalevskaia

She must have been a great teacher! Edit: I'll never forget Mercedes Serra, she taught me maths and physics. I wonder what became of her.

My favorite woman in science is Rosalia Arshakovna, my math teacher in school, many eons ago. I don't even know her last name

Mine is Tiera Guinn: https://www.engineergirl.org/40724/Tiera-Fletcher-Guinn (after hypervalent_iodine, of course!) Sounds like "All lives matter". The title is "Women in Science".

😁

To all people in science, we're better off together...

Hi Jalopy, Non of what you wrote is correct, other than - "The speed of gravity = the speed of light", the effect of gravity does propagate at the speed of light. Some friendly advice, If you are serious about learning science then please take some time to read/study the basic principles.

We answered. It can't-, or, at best, it can't usefully- replace lead. Consider yourself better informed. The s orbitals have a non zero electron density at the nucleus. With some isotopes, they sometimes "fall in". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_capture Have you got to grips with the fact that metals are chemicals yet?

I'd say it is adjacent but looks at something else. The RNA world hypothesis (and its many problems) mostly concerns itself with the steps towards the current DNA-protein paradigm. There are relative few concerns about metabolism, as anything remotely complex likely would not have been present. Catalytic properties of RNA are very limited, and require fairly complex RNAs, so folks have looked at other potential precursors of metabolism.

Every human population has some form of religion extending back to the paleolithic and Neanderthals - which is an absurd level of coincidental convergence if there is no evolutionary explanation. So several hypotheses with varying levels of evidence exist. Most of them stem from the field of evolutionary psychology, which is... not my favorite field of evolutionary biology, to put it politely. In my opinion, the explanations provided tend to be high on the assumption that correlation indicates causation and light on direct hypothesis tests. That said, there is some meat on the bone in the sense that religion is a byproduct of adaptive cognitive systems (e.g. animacy detection, social cognition, precautionary reasoning) and there is some evidence that religious behavior correlates with evolutionary fitness via inclusive selection. In lay terms, being a member of a group can increase evolutionary fitness, leading to positive selection for group norms, even if those specific norms are not selectively advantageous in of themselves - e.g. participation in a religious ceremony allows access to the collective resources of the group, refusal leads to excommunication, and in many environments, death of self and/or one's offspring. Thus, positive selection for religious participation occurs. Why is this useful? Well, if done properly (see previous caveat) it allows for the generation of hypotheses and predictions of traits and evolutionary trajectories. Given that religious participation is less critical for fitness in modern societies, how labile are the psychological traits associated with religious participation? Are there specific genetic/epigenetic markers that predict propensity for religious belief - and is their presence/absence linked with other traits, such as risk of depression? etc. If you were to dismiss the entire body of evolutionary evidence as "irrational" or "a cult" for.... well... reasons I guess... you'd be rather myopically and ignorantly dismissing a body of potentially useful evolutionary anthropology and neurobiology.

Assuming you actually locked yourself out. I mean, it is a cat, after all.

Actually it depends. There are two competing theories regarding the origin of life. What I have mentioned falls under the autotrophic origin of life, which makes a lot of intuitive sense. However, there is also the heterotrophic theory, which argues that prebiotic activities can result in organic compounds such as simple amino acids could have been consumed by early cell-like organisms. This theory has been buoyed by the discovery of new biosynthetic pathways that might have existed in primordial times.

The object is always in motion, and the distance is always increasing, but to say "the distance increases without bound" is incorrect. The distance never exceeds 6. It is clearly bound. At best this is just sloppy use of terminology. edit: or, it's recycled crap.

In a way, yes. But an opinion on a flavor is hardly a matter worthy of a cult label. Now if you want to bring up a topic besides religion, such as history, race, economics or politics, those are issues where the term "cult" can be applied. For a couple of those topics especially, in going into them I would be going up against the cult of forums. Which is to deny the basic human right of freedom of speech. And in my case, the freedom to speak the truth. It is pretty difficult to speak about a cult from within the rules of a cult.

You know how I can tell you are full of crap? By reading what you type. You brought up Aristotle by mentioning a quote of his. I told you what I thought of Aristotle. You didn't say you wanted an opinion on your quote by Aristotle directly. If you want an answer, ask a question. But I will now answer it as if you were seeking an opinion on his quote. It is a load of BS. Without having a rational mind, he can offer no opinion on what a rational mind is. So he was wrong. He may have tried to do the best he could, but there are aliens from other planets who would be dismayed by what the vast majority of people even today would view as rational. Let alone over 2000 years ago. Next, only a fool would "entertain" any sort of thought. You can think about any sort of point of view. Making a judgement based on all the pro's and con's of any topic. But to me that isn't the same as "entertaining" any point. To me, entertaining a thought is akin to putting yourself in the shoes of somebody who holds a certain point of view. That to me is getting too personally involved in it. Which isn't a good position to be in to make a dispassionate judgment from. Don't put words into my mouth. If somebody hits you on the toe with a hammer, it doesn't require any study to know if it hurts. Next, why start another thread about discussing religion. That's what this one was about. What you speak of has nothing to do with religion. Things like bees, ants and termites have had societies of sorts for over one hundred million years. No sort of religion is involved. And your opinion as to why religions exist is wrong. One of the reasons why they exist is that when the reality you live in can't produce hope, you are likely to seek help from the paranormal. Or in another word, fantasy. I also seem to recall telling somebody around here the main reason why religions exist. It is because if there is a way in which one human can control another, there are many who will try to do so. Especially when it is something that has been done successfully in the past. Which is the case of religion. Next, I say to hell with "leaders" and what they might inspire their people to do. Because most if not all leadership is corrupt and an ego trip for the leaders. You also speak of going in a direction that make societies strong. If such a direction has ever existed, I've never heard of it. Our society is weak and getting weaker. What most people would call strength I would call filth. In the past 20,000 years, humans have lost an amount of brain that is about equal to the size of a tennis ball. We aren't evolving. We are de-evolving. And it is highly unlikely that any humans will be around to see the year 2050 due to human caused global warming. Next, you are probably right that humans are incapable of beliefs that are based on rationality. I'm sure the concept has existed. But from what I have seen, most people want to be led. They have enough on their plate in just day to day existence. They would prefer somebody else take on the bigger problems. Also, most don't really give a damn what happens. As long as it happens to someone else. Religions are crap. The reason why they exist is basically meaningless. They are either crap or outright evil. Evil to the extent that the truth isn't even allowed to be spoken. I know of one forum where it can be done. But because it is a forum where truth can be spoken, it is practically a ghost town. Why? Because the vast majority of people want absolutely nothing to do with the truth. The REAL truth. Is that preaching? No. It's the TRUTH. So don't tell me what I know or don't know. For what I might say, you aren't allowed to hear it, you don't want to hear it and this forum wouldn't allow me to speak it. "Cult" isn't a crutch. Either something is right or it is wrong. For the vast majority of people, what they think is wrong. So they are cultists to me.

Be the fly (that ends up as lunch)! If a carnivorous plant could think, the orchid mantis would be its role model! A fun fact I shall try my best to remember. A knot on my handkerchief! The rafflesia, if you'll allow me to coin a word, is being "animalized". I recall reading that it smells like decomposing flesh! 😁 Roger! Lovely thought! To All (if interested) All this reminds me of Immanuel Kant's phenomenon-noumenon (appearance-reality) distinction. Nietzsche's übermensch would've seen right through the orchid mantis' ruse (superman/Clark Kent has X-ray vision, remember?). It's said that God can read our minds; does God do this using superman-like X-ray vision or something of that sort?