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Bingo

What about James Burke?

Consciousness is a self-organizing universal pattern analyzer which constructs an internal model of reality which gives way to most of the morally relevant properties of human beings. A similar process takes place in many highly intelligent mammals... pigs and chimpanzees, for example. Many are quick to jump to the defense of a baby-under-construction who has never been conscious, yet few care for a fully grown adult pig, one of the smartest mammals, and instead just continue to cram their mouths full of ham, bacon, and pork. Why?

This represents a feedback loop: Drought -> dead forest -> more CO2 -> more drought -> more dead forest -> more CO2 It's sort of like global warming -> melted sea ice -> surface albedo changes from highly reflective to highly absorbant -> increased global warming -> more melted sea ice There are tipping points in any of these feedback loops where they begin to form self-perpetuating cycles which feed the general warming trend

Saw this in Time: (har har on the pun Time) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1226142,00.html So, can anyone provide a take on this? I really liked Brian Greene's books but have certainly been more drawn to Smolin/LQG lately, namely because of the fecund universes hypothesis.

Are you talking about this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclic_model This describes the "colliding branes" model, at least how I heard it described

I think when it comes to politics, everyone spends most of their time whining or answering other people's whining, usually with angry denouncement. I certainly agree about Republicans whining about the Democrats though... Democrats control nothing, yet in the Republicans eyes are somehow to blame for everything that goes wrong (Tom Tomorrow did a This Modern World about that very idea a year or two ago). Of course, you'd likely see similar behavior if the situation were reversed.

Cellulose = undigestable fiber = helps with digestion/forming stool

The only way to win is not to play

The "hair gel terrorists" hadn't even purchased plane tickets yet and were arrested after the British were pressed to by the US, after being under surveillance for over a year

We still compute choice in a deterministic manner Strawman. I recognize freedom as an evolved in characteristic. If you're trying to group my views in with someone else's, try Daniel Dennett's, as expressed in Freedom Evolves. Again, strawman. You act as if determinism vs. non-determinism somehow has an effect upon responsibility. However, you can just as easily try to eschew responsibility if consciousness is non-deterministic by saying: "It wasn't me, it was randomness!" vs. "It wasn't me, my actions have been predestined since the dawn of time!"

Despite the majority of our population remaining scientifically ignorant, we still remain one of the most scientifically progressive nations in the world.

We do let them, and it isn't funny, it's depressing

Oh, he gets a few knocks in on Peter Singer as well, for suggesting that newborns have fewer morally relevant properties than a fully grown pig, and calls that a "direct consequence of atheistic evolution" Yup Then he goes on to call him a Nazi. Godwin's Law anyone? Oh jesus, then he goes on to rip on him for not being a "strong-looking man", not being a former Marine, and having skinny arms. WTF!

Clearly polyploidy was invented by the "evolutionists" to patch up this basic hole in their "theory", and all that "evidence" has been fabricated

He describes the possibility of a first cause and an infinite regression, then says that there's "no scientific evidence for either of these" Yup. However, he seems to be glossing over the fact that God as the creator of the universe implies a first cause.

There's also MPlayer and VideoLAN Client (VLC)

If there are free energy conspiracies, they certainly are doing a good job of spreading misinformation throughout the international physics community regarding the laws of thermodynamics

So how does everyone feel about the recent TSA guidelines forbidding people from carrying on liquids/gels? How much safer are these rules actually making us, and is that added safety worth the freedom you have to sacrifice? I would say the most notible thing is that the terrorist attack which was allegedly foiled in Britain demonstrates a working system. Why then are the additional measures of confiscating all liquids/gels necessary? How far will they continue to regulate, and when should they stop?

You can use the moon as a passive reflector with a form of weak signal communication known as Earth-Moon-Earth (EME) or "moonbounce"... good for CW

All that aside: concept wins. We can spend countless time and resources securing ourselves against every possible scenario we can forsee, but can we really defend against human creativity? It is impossible to anticipate every possible terrorist attack, and no matter how much we try, the truly destructive and pathological individual will find a way to hurt us. In the end, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed saw a vulnerability, he came up with a concept to exploit it, and he found the resources (via Bin Laden) to make the attack happen. It really doesn't matter what his motives were, he masterminded an attack which required minimal resources to exert maximum damage against the most powerful country in the world.

Here are the results of a poll of several nations which asked if humans share a common ancestor with all other life on earth: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,207858,00.html Does the US seem disproportionately low?

There may be a common ancestry among certain groups of serrated leaf plants. However, there are also those where serrated and smooth edges appear within the same species, such as aspen.

When it comes right down to it, the 9/11 attack was really the brainchild of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who did it because he hated America for backing Israel militarily, financially, and diplomatically. Bin Laden was really just the financier/manager.