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The real problem I see with the whole secondhand smoking argument is the utter lack of focus on why cigarettes cause cancer. The idea is simply accepted as an inevitability. Cigarettes presently contain emitters of ionizing alpha radiation (polonium-210 and lead-210) and are cured in a process which results in nitrosamine, a known carcinogen. Legislation surrounding cigarette smoking has never focused on producing safer cigarettes. Instead it focuses on banning the activity entirely.

These guys are Internet superstars! http://www.freedomsphoenix.com/Feature-Article.htm?InfoNo=018197&From=News http://neomeme.net/2007/04/29/mike-gravel-2008-presidential-campaign-given-new-life-by-the-internet/ What makes them different? Well, for one, both have clearly broken from mainstream partisan politics. They're willing to call BS where they see it. They have very different politics, but both appeal to be greatly. I guess Mike Gravel appeals to my liberal side and Ron Paul appeals to my libertarian side. Personally I think there would be no better presidential race this election than Mike Gravel vs. Ron Paul, but of course that will never happen. What do you think?

In a perfect world, yes. There's been several news reports recently about how some of these programs are something of a swindle: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/29/weekinreview/revkinsidebarinnwr4820.html Here's some important questions:

Possible conclusions: 1) Scientists are full of shit 2) Something has changed recently Hmm, which of these am I going to go with... So I take it you have absolutely no respect for the peer review process... Suspicion confirmed! Where your experiences directly translate to climate science... No, it depends on the quality of the peer review process. In the case of IPCC Assessment Reports, they are arguably the most peer reviewed scientific papers on earth. So comparing them to some piddly electrical engineering journal isn't exactly apt

Have I mentioned yet: Bros before hoes?

http://scienceblogs.com/islandofdoubt/2007/05/be_afraid_be_very_very_afraid_1.php?utm_source=mostemailed&utm_medium=link New estimates show that arctic ice may almost completely melted by 2020

How's this? http://www.truthera.com/2007/05/02/quantum-cryptography-is-cracked-no-longer-100-secure/ I think all of these are going to be boiled down for the general public. I can't find the paper on it yet either (if it's been published)

Carbon offsets piss me off, and are definitely one of the reasons I dislike Al Gore. Rather than just trying to lower his energy consumption, he pays someone else to do it for him, with little or no guarantee of lowering his carbon footprint. He flies all over the world in a private jet and lives in an enormous, energy hungry mansion. But hey, carbon offsets make it ok, right? In order for carbon offsets to be truly effective, they must lead directly to a carbon reduction somewhere else that wouldn't have happened unless you gave them money. That's rarely the case. In my home town of Boulder, which is a hotbed of climate science research, TerraPass, a carbon offset program for automobiles, has grown quite popular. I see cars with TerraPass all over the place. And it really makes me wonder: what are these people thinking? There's a great way to reduce your carbon footprint: ride a bike. I ride one to work as often as possible (weather permitting). It's better for the environment, healthier, and thanks to our awesome system of bike paths which run underneath our streets and let cyclists avoid traffic lights ends up being faster than driving. Rather than paying someone else to do it for you, I'd highly suggest finding simple and effective ways to reduce your carbon footprint. One of the most effective that I can recommend is: stop driving so much.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=2cpNjyVvqK0 Watching this video I see a number of arguments lodged against evolution which I've also seen lodged against global warming. For example: - mainly advocated by the media - other scientists disagree and are being suppressed by the media - it's being pushed by a minority with an agenda - part of a larger push towards a particular ideology - no evidence - not a theory, just a model - early advocates were highly uncertain - examples have been put forward in the past which were incorrect - need to be skeptical and examine both sides of the argument (teach the controversy!) What do you think?

Consciousness is a computational reflection of the universe

I'm a Scientist!

Have you looked at Dijkstra's minimal spanning tree algorithm? There are others as well. You don't need to design an algorithm. This problem has been solved many times before.

Generally, changes in the connections between neurons

As I understand it quantum cryptography presently depends on polarization. More specifically: However, recently, a method for snooping on the key without disturbing the polarization has been devised: http://www.emergentchaos.com/archives/2007/04/quantum_cryptography_crac.html My question is could something like a Bell test experiment be used to generate a shared random pad. Specifically, what if you had a central generator of entangled photons equidistant from two receiving stations, such that when either side measured a property, the property would be the same on both sides but random. Wouldn't this be a more secure approach? In effect, wouldn't the random pad not even EXIST until the waveform of the entangled photons was collapsed?

While I don't work from home, I ride my bike to work, and anywhere where I don't have to transport anything decently heavy

Censorship has been a persistent problem with Digg. In this case their excuse was complying with a C/D, meaning they couldn't see the stupidity of it themselves and acted in their own senseless self-interest, all the time touting the virtues of an open community. http://reddit.com is a better digg

The fact we have the intelligence to do it in the first place And because of it we are more powerful than any other animal on the planet Being smart enough to be there in the first place Ever heard the phrase "Ignorance is bliss?"

If you really feel that way you should try to get ahold of this TV show: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_%28TV_series%29

Your description is an adequate summarization of man's impact carbon cycle and the effects of releasing sequestered carbon back into the atmosphere en masse.

Everything you wanted to know about Gliese 581c but were afraid to ask: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gliese_581_c Ooh, pretty pictures:

I'm still quite interested in the answer to this question. Do these experiments violate Bohm's interpretation of waveform collapse? (Bohm created a deterministic non-local hidden variable theory)

Okay, here's how it compares worldwide: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita We're #24. Our homicide rate per capita is 3 times the UK's and about 4 times that of New Zealand. However, those differences have not changed substantially since the UK and New Zealand imposed gun control laws. Even when gun control was much looser in the UK and NZ, the homicide rates were about the same. Well, I'm glad correlation implies causation. Oh wait, it doesn't. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_the_United_States Have you paused to consider that America's unique culture might be a potential factor in our homicide rate? Do things like gang violence and its cultural glorification ever enter into your thinking? How about the actual effects of gun control? How many of these countries had low murder rates before enacting gun control? Only 5% of violent crime committed with a firearm within the US which lead to a successful prosecution involved a legally obtained firearm. How is more stringent gun control supposed to stop crimes committed with illegally obtained firearms?

I think what this thread boils down to is does relativity actually rule out things like universal time or discrete time, or can its effects be explained in ways which fit into a universal/discrete time framework? My reaction is that scientifically this question is unanswerable but at present there is no evidence of universal time or discrete time Thus they remain things that can be unscientifically "believed in" (And things I unscientifically believe in) That's not to say that there aren't theories about spacetime which require discrete time or universal time (I'm using "universal time" here to imply a continuous albeit synchronously shared universal time), but these theories aren't predictive, or if they are, they haven't been tested.

Yeah, I would've chimed in on that point but I haven't been posting much lately. Some basic practical arguments for guns: - If a burglar knows law abiding citizens don't have guns in their homes, they'll be less wary about breaking and entering and more aggressive in their confrontations with occupants. If I were a burglar, I'd certainly be worried about pointing a gun at a shotgun-brandishing homeowner, especially knowing that they're within their right to shoot you dead (at least in America) - If a mugger knows law abiding citizens are unarmed, they will be less wary about mugging the average individual. If they whip out a knife and you whip out a gun, they're kind of screwed (provided you know how to operate the gun) - Know what America doesn't have? A happy slapping problem. The effect of gun ownership varies dramatically with the culture. Clearly in places like New York, LA, or Detroit, gun ownership has dramatic negative consequences. I live in a county whose yearly homicide rate bounces between 0 and 2. We have little violent crime. You may remember our most famous homicide: Jon Benet Ramsey, and how horribly our police department bungled the case. That's because homicides here are so infrequent that our cops have no idea what to do. One Texas city passed a resolution REQUIRING residents to own and maintain a firearm. Guess how many firearm-related fatalities it has had in the past 25 years since instituting the law? Zero. And its crime rate is lower than a neighboring city which passed anti-gun resolutions: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55288 Now granted, Texas was also home of two of the biggest mass shootings in US history... so it cuts both ways. Living in an area where I'm effectively shielded from inner city gang-related gun violence, perhaps I have a biased opinion. But I also question the ability for legislation to actually reduce gang-related gun violence, considering gangs aren't exactly big on the whole "legality" thing. Should suicides really count negatively against guns? If someone wants to commit suicide the problem doesn't lie in the tool they choose to off themselves with. Helium is arguably the best way to commit suicide. Should we ban helium? How about cars? I completely agree (as I stated earlier): VT happened because the background check system failed, and that's what needs to get corrected here.

http://www.openthefuture.com/2007/04/the_early_signs_of_the_long_to.html Currently running at 1/10th realtime on a cluster of IBM BlueGene supercomputers Whole-brain here we come!