Royston

Well I had some great news this morning (first day of my christmas hols to) that I've been accepted to study towards a diploma in physics, afterwhich I'll move on to a degree in theoretical physics or cosmology...I'll decide whilst studying. Probably doesn't mean a great deal to anybody here (apart from anyone who has had a daft question from myself) but I'm ecstatic that I have so much to focus on, and that I'm studying a subject I have a passion for. I'll be taking a couple of preliminary courses, to get me up to speed on the maths, and a general science course which covers a number of fields. Just a few hours later I found out our landlord wants to sell his house...which from our point of view is tragic, because we love living where we are so much. Why do things like that happen..why WHY WHY !!!!

A good friend sent me this article...it sets out to explain Penrose's argument on a low entropy state of the current universe, and so tackles the phase transition of black holes by approaching temperature fluctuations of gravitons... http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/hep-th/pdf/0512/0512033.pdf

Nice work Bascule ! Although I'm not a true 'die hard' singularitarian (I'm still open to suggestion on a number of theories) I joined today. I'm looking forward to some future musings.

Exactly, shyness can be overcome by just 'getting out there'. I think a good tip for shy SFN'ers is that there is a good chance you're a lot more intelligent than most of the population, bear that in mind and the world will be your oyster ! I think my confidence regresses sometimes because I can't stand obnoxious people, and there's quite a thin line between being extrovert and plain arrogant (this is in no way in regards to anyone on SFN...I wouldn't still be on here if that was the case) but I find myself being quite opinionated when I talk to people, and sometimes it comes across as being rude and a little arrogant. This is when I start to recede back into my shell and indulge in a little introspection.

Precisely...some people project (what's percieved as) confidence as a defense mechanism to an insecurity.

Amazing there were no fatalities. Is there anyone on SFN who can see the 'huge plume of smoke' from where they are ? Please see latest BBC article below.... http://newswww.bbc.net.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4520430.stm "This is the largest fire of this kind that we in the UK and Europe have dealt with. We are not even sure how the thermal currents will affect the foam; it may just vaporise it."

Agreed. I see introspection as a time-out to think about who you are, I think it's perfectly healthy as long as it's moderate. I'm happy with being both confident but having the humility to step back and see how I'm acting towards people and how they're acting towards me. You can learn from introspection as long as you don't spend all your time doing it.

This may interest you, though doesn't really work along the lines of your question... http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/03/29/1048653907088.html

I had that problem at work for a while until my colleagues figured out that it had nothing to do with them. My shyness seems to dip for no reason...some days I'm full of beans and confident, the next I'm all to aware of myself and just want to hide away on a couch...though this could be attributed to my lifestyle 'ahem' I've been like this my entire life and I can only attribute it to my general outlook and what I'm doing at the time. When I came back from travelling I was almost over-confident and actually found myself annoying, so started sinking back into myself a bit. It was also alot to do with my outlook...somedays you shrug everything off and see everything as just going through the motions, and somedays all you notice is the stupidity of people, corrupt governments and the sorry state that everything seems to be in. It's days like that, that I just want to shout at people or hide away so seperating myself and making myself shy. I think the more you go out, the more people you meet et.c is bound to make you more confident and more comfortable with people et.c It's keeping that up though that will sustain that confidence, my current job mainly involves listening to music, and using a pc so I'm pretty shut off...and I've noticed it effects my confidence. It's like staying in your bedroom for several days and when you go out you feel agoraphobic, and you just want to go inside again. Shyness seems to be almost hereditry...but as you can overcome it quite easily by changing your environment I think it's something that parents may project and can effect the child. I also think over mothering can play a part in this, by making the child too dependant on the elder.

So were talking about a Euclidian universe...which can be defined as a 'flat' universe. Just double checking you weren't talking solely about dimensions et.c As you well know the three scenarios so far are all plausible...whats more interesting is that a 'flat' universe agrees with cosmic inflation, and yes it holds infinites. Basically if the universe is 'flat' it will yield enough mass to stop expansion after an infinite amount of time. You may be interested in 'phase transition' which explains the early repelling force that kick started inflation. That's all I know...so far, an infinite universe has no need to start again by exploding into another infinite, because it is infinite...is that right ? Feel free to rip this apart, I'm under the weather today so not thinking to clearly. I think the problem is there shouldn't be infinites, and why there is a lot of concentration on implementing curvature, and why there's all these mysterious goings-on in black holes, and everything agreeing with thermal dynamics and so and so on. Maybe someone with more knowledge could tell you if it's plausible or not...I think this is one of those 'what if' questions though, which (probably eat my words now) that I'm not sure anybody can answer.

Just my two cents, but I've always considered consciousness as one of the last pieces of the jigsaw to fit in a model of our universe. To argue that consciousness is deterministic or indeterministic within a model that so far is both of these, seems a bit pointless...well not pointless, but a never ending debate. If it wasn't for consciousness we would obviously have no clue as to these factors of our physical world anyway...so I believe there is something intrinsic to this model that involves consciousness, what I mean is that consciousness itself could be the discrepancy between these two (wouldn't have the foggiest how this would be...but just an idea.) However to work out a model around the very thing that brought about these factors (nothing yet is conclusive otherwise everything would be certain) seems in my mind as jumping ahead too much. It's going back to the old saying 'we can't work out the equation, if we're part of that equation.' which maybe true, but if we're still not sure if the model that we're part of is deterministic or indeterministic how can we possibly work out if consciousness is, when it's consciousness that not only developed these ideas through observing but is actually part of that model, and arguably the pinnacle of that model. There's no need to reiterate what consciousness is but surely it's better to formulate a model that explains the evolution into conscious thought, rather than doing it the other way around. Sorry for a slightly garbled post...just getting my thoughts down quickly, feel free to pick holes in it.

I know they communicate on basic levels...warning of danger / aggression et.c however they're the most intelligent of all molluscs, and apparently as intelligent as dogs. So to have a more subtle form of communication using colour (which we're yet to decode) seems pretty plausible. Agreed, cuttlefish are also awesome.

It's a little hard to diagnose the problem if you can't differentiate between these two (to see if it's an internal or external problem.) It sounds like from your last post your soundcard isn't set up properly...are you using surround sound...5.1 / 7.1 et.c Have you always had this problem with changing from headphones to speakers ?

Or does it... http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/press/111605.html Not meaning to scaremonger, but thought you may be interested.

No, they both produce sperm and hormones...in this case testosterone (steroid hormone). Hence if you lose one it's not the end of the world.

Thanks for the the explanation Ashennell, it's provided a lot more clarity.

Thanks for the the explanation Ashennell, it's provided a bit more clarity. However I'm going to have to read up on the methods used to fully understand how they arrived at their conclusions.

I think Bascule means 'flat' as in definition not structure, before the advent of curvature that came with GR. However, there's no need for space to explode into anything, because space (space-time) is 'the anything'...if that makes sense, sorry it's poorly phrased.

Are you sure it's definitely static and not digital clipping ?

Please take a look at the link below... http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-11/uosc-scs112805.php "At the foundation of our model is a simple theory which describes a principled approach to computing surprise in data streams. While surprise is not a new concept it had lacked a formal definition, broad enough to capture the intuitive meaning of the term, yet quantitative and computable…. Beyond vision, computable surprise could guide the development of data mining, as it can in principle be applied to any type of data, including visual, auditory or text." I've read the article a couple of times, and although it doesn't go into considerable depth I'm still baffled by how something as subjective (or apparently not) as suprise can be modelled mathematically...if anyone would like to reiterate or elaborate on this article, I'd be very interested.

Well we're quite accustomed to warning each other in our household when we're about to 'cut the cheese' as it were...and warning or not, it's still very unpleasant...yet still funny, which I find more remarkable. I think it's solely your own odour you can abide. Whether there's familiarity within a group (including families), odour is still unpleasant (if you disagree hang around a toilet after your Dad's been in there, it still smells as repellent and alien as anyone else relieving themselves.)

That's just an urban myth, white widow is a 'hybrid' that can be bought in coffee shops in Amsterdam so certainly has nothing added to it. 'Dealers' have no reason to add something expensive to their wares when they have to sell it for the same price, they'd just lose out. They may 'say' something has been added, to up the price...but they're more likely to be lying. Following from a few points ashennell has raised, I'm not sure anyone has promoted cannabis use in this thread, but merely pointing out that so far there is no evidence supporting anything conclusive about the harm it could do (mentally). The media, I feel, are irresponsible in taking any stance until there is something conclusive, and when you hear sooooo many stories of people being violent et.c and they mention they use cannabis is daft, because the correlation between the two is unsubstantiated. It's clear that cannabis can cause motivation problems, ability to concentrate and short term memory loss (whilst using it)...but in the long term there is nothing concrete linking it to schizophrenia or any other mental illness...yet. So ashennell is dead right in saying that promoting or condoning it's use is pointless until we have evidence backing up either argument. However, the problem is that the information to the public could be smeared by propoganda, and going by some of the responses in this thread, that seems to be the case.

Well I found this recent article if that's any help. Apparently they may have to wait three years to send the craft back if the problem isn't rectified very soon. If it's not fixed they'll have to wait three years until the distance between Earth and the asteroid is suitable for a return flight. Due to the thruster problem they're having trouble aligning the craft to make the return trip, here's the link.... http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/dn8390-thruster-problem-may-scupper-hayabusas-return-to-earth.html