A Tripolation

I just may have to steal that and make it my signature on every paper and problem I turn into my professors. That's awesome.

You're feeling awfully self-important, aren't you?

Manipulating the symbols is one of the most important aspects of working in the field of Physics, and it is the reason most people are not able to do so. I can describe much of the concepts of upper level physics courses I haven't taken, but could I work out a solution, or critique the math used in QED? Goodness, no. Proving ideas in physics isn't really about logic based arguments. You use logic to do certain things, yes, but more importantly, it's seeing if your theory and its math holds true when comparing it to tests and data.

You're interested in Cosmology and Theoretical Physics. It would be very hard to find an online university that offered such a degree. Also, these paths will require you to be very skilled with mathematical analysis, on many levels.

The Big Bang theory is a lie! AN EXPLOSION IN A PRINT SHOP WOULD NOT CREATE A DICTIONARY!!!!! MISSING TRANSISTOR FOSSILS. EVOLUTION IS SATAN'S LIES. www.infowars.net

...You realize that to believe in ANY omnipotent deity, you pretty much have to suspend your logic about such things, correct? I thought you were discussing the implications of that verse, which comes from a Holy Book, which is chock full of miracles and magic. Do you not see the irony in this?

Does this mean that for one day, I'm allowed to post my YEC-gay-communinazi ramblings in the physics section? Sweeet!!!!

I can't help with the math, but I can direct you to the LaTeX guide. This forum is nice in that it allows us to make our math pretty.

I, along with many other Christians, think verses like this support Christ's existence as equal in duration as God's.

Well said, Blahah. This is precisely what I'm trying to convey. We want such and such bushels or pounds per ACRE. We only have 200 acres. We have to manage that area wisely. Using "organic" fertilizer will not produce the yields we need to run a sustainable operation. I really can't see how he claims to be "rebuilding" top soil. Top soil takes a long time to naturally occur. He is preserving it, but then again, pretty much all rotation methods do by not allowing the cows to chew all the way down to the roots, thus preventing erosion. This is a very insightful point, lemur. I've been asked by vegans, "Why not just raise corn everywhere instead of cattle? Surely that would feed more people." Yes, if it were all flat plains. The farmers in the Midwest do exactly this. But where I live, there are a LOT of hills and forests. We can't plant crops on a steep slope. We don't want to cut the trees down. That would be terrible for the environment and biodiversity of our farm. But we CAN let cattle graze in those places. They can keep the invasive vegetation chewed down in the forest, and they can eat the grass that grows on the hills. And we can feed people with the cattle.

They're wrong. Holstein (dairy) cows continuously have milk. They MUST be milked twice a day. They were selectively bred this way. You do have to separate the cow from her calf though, as the baby will drain the mother of milk. Typically, the females are kept and fed and raised into heifers, increasing your number of cattle. The males are either (a.) sent off for slaughter as veal, (b.) raised until they are adolescents, and then sent to the slaughterhouse, or (c.) they get to live their life out as breeding bulls. Those are the lucky ones.

From what we know about supernovae, our sun will never be part of a supernova explosion in any way. And no, the center of our planet is not a white dwarf star.

Actually, corn that is modified to be resistant to things or to have one more ear AREN'T more expensive than old-fashioned corn, whenever you take yields into account. The bushels per acre that we would receive without enhanced corn/fertilizer are so pathetically low that it would not be profitable to do so. Organic farmers get away with this by selling to specialty organic stores, at absurdly high prices. If all farmers did that, it wouldn't be good. Kreaken, listen to what Blahah says about GMed crops. He is absolutely right on many levels. Organic farming is focused on preserving the Earth. But then, so is modern farming. The only real advantage I see to organic farming is that refined methods WILL help people in poorer countries grow their own food. However, with modern farming, we seek to feed the world. We maximize yield. And we HAVE to take care of the land, because it's extremely hard to recover fields that have eroded topsoil. We do not overuse fertilizer or pesticides because land that is over-saturated with such things will actually harm your crops. No. The grains the factory farms use are actually very nutritional. Why would they deprive what makes them money? So no, I don't think there is any benefit to eating "organic" steak as opposed to regular steak. That being side, I am actually ethically against factory farms. It really bothers me to see animals treated in such a way. The cattle we raise live a better life than some humans. And they are raised with proper food, like sileage, pasture, salt blocks, ect, BEFORE being sent to the slaughterhouse where they are fed grain to gain a few hundred pounds. A LOT of beef is like this. It's not all factory farms, though it soon may be. Just read his link. What me and my father do (and my dad's father did) is exactly what Salatin is proposing. He is not on to anything new or wise. Only the more inexperienced farmers just let their cattle in on a piece of land, and then just leave them there. Our farm is set up to where we can achieve a systematic rotation of once every two months (this changes with summer weather, amount of rain, ect). You can't let them continuously chew down the same area of grass, because it will effectively kill it. And cows are very habit-centric animals. They do like eating in the same spots over and over. So we use temporary fences, looped fences, and other things to where we can easily move them from one patch to the next. It would be insensible to not do this. Hope that helped.

No, farming that is necessary to feed the world will always require machines that guzzle energy. You should see some of the tractors the farmers in the wheat region use. They are huge. I have a hard time seeing how any electric motor could create the same amount of low-end torque that a good diesel engine can. True, every farmer could grow things like they did hundreds of years ago. Then the world would starve. Farmers wouldn't, but people that have never touched a garden in their entire lives would. Farmers would be totally self sufficient, like they were hundreds of years ago. You're missing the point that people would starve. There ISN'T any refining of organic farming. It's a way that's stuck in the 1500's. People think it's healthier for some odd reason. They think we spray pesticides over everything, and ram vaccinations down our cows' throats. It's not like that. However, there are a plethora of things happening to refine modern farming, to produce more from smaller amounts of land, or land that isn't as good. Genetically engineered crops is one of these things. THAT'S what we need to be helping poor countries attain, not "organic" farming. I suggest subscribing more to Progressive Farmer magazine if this interests you. It keeps me pretty well updated on the current happenings. I'm acutally not sure. The seeds we use are 90 and 106. Strains of tobacco that are resistant to "blackshank", a virus that can wipe entire fields out. It's pervasive in this area, so we have to use it, even though the curing times for it do not match up with our climate all that well. I also don't know how well it would translate to a cigar. I'm sure you can find suppliers online though, that will sell you seeds that are specifically for cigars. Also, be warned, a tobacco seed is one of the smallest seeds known to man. And they are fairly hard to raise. It'll be quite a time-consuming task.

...Self-contained local process? What does that even mean with respect to countries like the US? Fertilizer prices have skyrocketed in the past few years. That does not suddenly make organic farming profitable. I think you're having a hard time understanding this because you don't see how much MORE yield is gained whenever you don't use fertilizer, as compared to when you do. We ran out of fertilizer this year in one of our tobacco patches. So it only had half of what it needed. The result was smaller tobacco, with smaller leaves, compared to its seven-foot, +27 leaf brothers. The result was a loss we had to claim on that field that didn't have the proper fertilizer. The same goes for food crop, like wheat, corn, and soy. Farming has always been about getting the most "bushels per acre" that you possibly can. That's why I use the labels. Farming moved to fertilizers, because fertilizers helped push yields beyond previously unimaginable levels. They still kept all the "old" techniques of rotations, no-till farming, ect ect. So no, I think those traits belong to modern farming, not organic. Organic farming is COMPLETELY different than what we do. Their yield is much lower. If a cow being raised on an organic farm develops an infection after birthing, guess what? The cow dies, because the evil penicillin and other antibiotics can't be used, because it taints the cow, and makes it "unnatural". So no, I stand by my statement that organic farming has nothing to offer modern farming.

A lot of cows that are sent to slaughter eat pasture (which does not only include grass) before they arrive at the places where they are fed grain to fatten them up. Grain allows them to gain weight quicker. I cannot fathom how it would decrease the nutritional value in any way. I'm speaking as someone who helps maintain a 100+ head of cattle operation. There is world hunger because these unstable regions that you speak of do not have consistent yields. Their crops are often destroyed. Organic farming DOES decrease the amount of product you are able to have. We DO rotate crops. Why are so many pro-organic production people under the assumption that we do not? We do not use the same fields more than three years in a row. We do not over-fertilize with unnecessary nitrogen of phosphorous. We DO rotate which pastures are cattle graze in, so as to give them a chance to recover. Nothing organic farming does can help us.

As a physics major with the intention to go into the fields of Cosmology/High Energy Physics, I can attest to the fact that there is a distinct difference between the two. I would love to study Type 1a Supernovae, for evidence of their positron creation. I would be an experimental astronomer/physicist. I WOULD NOT be a theoretical physicist. Those are the people that hypothesize on matters, based on what their equations/constructs are leading them to believe. True, in early classical physics, most of the physicists who created the math also tested out their observations in the real world. However, that's not how it is today. I would venture to say that most string theorists "research" very differently than the physicists at CERN.

I think that the experimental and theoretical physicists would disagree with you.

All human souls are considered tainted once they have sinned, and no longer deserving of a place in heaven, so yes, we are all weak in that sense. We have all "sinned". No. Infinite in this regard means being omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient. That is a defined being that has no limit. Everyone has their weakness. I've never drank, nor do I ever plan on drinking, but I would not be able to turn my cheek if someone killed my family. Jesus is against killing of any kind. I would be sinning, no matter how justified it might be viewed. All sins carry the same weight - eternal damnation. An alcoholic may not want to rape people, a rapist may not want to murder people, a thief may not want to rape people. Does that mean that any of them are stronger souls than any of the others? No.

Mooey, I would default to that stance seeing as how the Bible makes no statements about souls having differing power levels.

God is defined religiously. The Judeo-Christian deity has no greater, no superior. He is infinite.

James Joyce would be proud.

Getting a fire to start with timber is harder than it seems. It's not like in the movies, where you throw a match on a log, and it goes up in flames. And you couldn't burn most of the debris anyways. The smoke from it would be unbearable.

Or maybe it's because he's an insane psychopath that won't hesitate to use tanks and artillery against innocent civilians. Maybe that, lemur. Does everything have to have some underlying Marxian conflict theory going on?

The OP is claiming that everything was created by something. If his logic stops at his deity, it is unsound. That is the point I was trying to make. I do not think it is a false premise in this case. I'm a monotheist. Something must have created God. Why is he immune and different? And thanks imatfaal. I thought Mr S just suddenly started hating me.