PhDP

It's not as user-friendly as Open Office, but there's also LaTeX, it's free and it's the best program if you are writting lots of equations.

While I think life outside our solar system is highly probable, I tend to believe many people have the tendency to overestimate "fi" in the Drake equation. Many seem to think we are so "evolved", so perfect that life MUST have lead to a similar form of life. IMO, saying "intelligence is such a survival advantage that it will certainly evolve" is extremely arrogant. My guestimate; 0.001

It was instantaneous in newtonian physics but in general relativity, the distortion of spacetime is moving at the speed of light. And yes, it must be hard to prove, gravity is a very weak force.

There's something that, I think, should be said more often. Creationists often claim evolution, "neo-Darwinism", is dogmatic. But there are several debates about evolution right as we speak. The neutralist v. selectionist (neo-Darwinist) debate isn't over, and in my opinion the neo-darwinist are being crushed in that debate. There's also a debate about the importance of horizontal gene transfer (genes transferred from a species to another) and their impact of the theory of evolution. Evolutionary biologists aren't holding neo-darwinism as a messiah and "Darwinism" is certainly not equal to "evolutionary biology". Also I think one of the best argument against teaching creationism is from the testimony of Fuller defending ID. He agree the scientific community doesn't accept intelligent design as science, but he say ID might be the next scientific revolution and that, while it's not recongnised as science, it might be science one day and it's the only real opposition to the modern synthesis (which is false, btw). He is quite embarrassed when the lawyer ask him if we have to teach potential revolution to high school student, it's absurd. You cannot teach to high school students about all the potential "scientific revolution", a fortiori when there's more religion than science in those so-called "revolution".

Dover Trial; http://www.aclupa.org/legal/legaldocket/intelligentdesigncase/dovertrialtranscripts.htm

About races, Maybe subdivisions of our species is possible. However, something is certain, the old classification "White/Black/Yellow" has no meaning from the evolutionary classification we are using now. About Neanderthal, Here's 3 interesting articles on the subject; http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3023685.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3346455.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3431609.stm

The fact is, there might not be "Expert" under her nickname, most people know she is one so why not make it official ?

Apparently, from a scientific and evolutionary point of view, there's not enough differences to justify a subdivision of our species into "races"; Templeton, A. 1999. Human Races: A Genetic and Evolutionary Perspective. American Anthropologist 100(3):632-650.

Yes, why not ? I doupt there's many articles in Nature proving estrogen is negatively correlated to political effectiveness. Seriously, I don't know how somebody can seriously think being a women is making someone a bad politician. Currently, my party is in a leadership election, we have the choice between two main candidates, a homosexual or a women and I'm quite happy to live in a society were the gender, sexual orientation or the religion doesn't matter. I have an article somewhere that show that, in Québec, most people don't care if the candidate is black, homosexual or if it's a women.

It's not really surprising, many people in Occident thinks Bush is an idiot or an incapable. The Nobel commitee doesn't need to search for "anti-Bush", most people already are, and if my memory is correct, several studies showed that intellectuals and scientists were generally more to the left than the average guy. It would probably be really hard even to have half the Nobel laureate favorable to Bush, in fact it would take the hell of a bias. Anyway, ElBaradei is more than just an "anti-Bush", it was his job to counter the lies made by the White House. Bush isn't the center of the universe, the Nobel committee recognized the problem of nuclear proliferation and they gave the award to an institution that's fighting nuclear proliferation. Bravo ! And if republicans aren't happy, it's probably a good sign.

I prefer algebra, it's more general by nature and it's useful nearly everywhere. You can't go far in mathematics or in theoretical sciences without a good understanding of algebra, geometry, while extremely useful, doesn't seems as necessary. The power and importance even of elementary algebra is really impressive...

By definition, individuals from distinct species cannot breed and have fertile offsprings, but distinct races/"breed" of the same species can.

Yes, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeds

That's selective or wishful thinking as best, even if I agree he is a good evolutionary geneticist, he is certainly not "the best". And evolution is so vast, it's hard to know who's the best. It's a ridiculously absurd statement. Is it a faith not to believe in the tooth fairy or in dragons ? It certainly doesn't require a lot of faith to discard the idea that some sort of human-like intelligent, conscious, emotional being is behind the universe.

[math]\frac{4!+\sqrt(4)}{.4}+4 = 69[/math] [math]\frac{4^4+4!}{4} = 70[/math] [math]\frac{4!+4.4}{.4} = 71[/math] [math]44+4!+4 = 72[/math] 73 seems a little harder...

edit: opps, wrong number...

[math]\frac{4!}{.4} + \frac{4}{4} = 61[/math] [math]\frac{4!}{.4} + \frac{4}{\sqrt{4}} = 62[/math]

Use the code from; http://amath.colorado.edu/documentation/LaTeX/Symbols.pdf And place your LaTeX code between [ math] and [ /math] without the space after the [ So, rewriting YT2095's solutions for 49 and 50; [math]!4+!4 + \frac{4}{4} = 49[/math] [ math]!4+!4 + \frac{4}{4} = 49[ /math] [math]!4+!4 + \frac{4}{\sqrt{4}} = 50[/math] [ math]!4+!4 + \frac{4}{\sqrt{4}} = 50[ /math]

You need to use four 4, even if our definition of "4" is quite... creative. [math]4!+4!+4-4 = 48[/math]

Normally, multiplications are made before additions and subtractions. So your equation would result in 24 - 4 - 2 = 18, with only a little correction; [math]\sqrt{4}(4!-\sqrt{4})-\sqrt{4} = 42[/math] [math]44-\frac{\sqrt{4}+\sqrt{4}}{4} = 43[/math] [math]4! + 4*4 +4 = 44[/math] [math]44+\frac{\sqrt{4}+\sqrt{4}}{4} = 45[/math] ...and copying YT2095; [math]\sqrt{4}(4!-\sqrt{4})+\sqrt{4} = 46[/math] [math]4!+4!-\frac{4}{4} = 47[/math] ... With [math]\sqrt{4}[/math] it's quite easy

Wow... an interesting little arthropod. How big it is ? You can go to the newsgroups "sci.bio.entomology.misc", people are often sending pictures for identification.

My plot with both Maple and Graphmatica show clearly that f(0) = 3/2.

I've got 33... [math]4!+\frac{4-.4}{.4} = 33[/math] 34...35 and 36 are easy, the next challenge is 37 and I'm too tired... [math]4! + \frac{4!}{4} +4 = 34[/math] [math]\frac{4.4}{.4} + 4! = 35[/math] [math]4!+4+4+4 = 36[/math]

We are still stuck at 30... Sure there's an easy answer; [math]4! + 4 + 4 - \sqrt{4} = 30[/math] But [math]\sqrt{4}[/math] is [math]4^{-2}[/math] and it's like using a 2.

Except that it's only worling for 4/4 + 4/4 = 2.