TheVat

Great typo. Yes, the Maidan uprising, or Euromaidan, was an outstanding movement against corruption and for democracy. I watched a couple episodes of the Ukraine political satire, Servant of the People, that made Zelenskii famous, in which he plays the history teacher who runs for president on an anti-corruption platform. Funny stuff. Putin is trying to break the will of Ukrainian people by destroying their power plants now. I do not think Ukrainians are easily broken.

Hi. My name is Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus Lamar III. Your science appears to be word salad. What is "foreign gas"? What is the diamagnetic shell - bismuth? graphite? Why? What is an artificial gravitational field? And why would a plasma discharge generate it?

This is such a common mistake. All missiles were removed from South Dakota, 1992-1994. They were Minuteman II missiles and my wife and I saw one being carted off down a highway. The adjacent states of ND and WY still have some, and I agree with your pointed question there. One of the silos was two miles from her family land, and we drove past a couple times. A rancher bought the property and used the surface blockhouse for a residence.

Seagrass has commercial value in maintaining fisheries and generally helping keep intact ecosystems that coastal economies depend on. And they can also stabilize coastal sediment, mitigate wave action, and thereby protect shorelines. So I think it might pay its own way, especially in the fisheries aspect. Here's a site that summarizes the benefits: https://www.seagrasswatch.org/seagrassimportance/

I've heard a bit about seagrass, which is that it forms stable communities and root systems that can trap and hold carbon longterm, just as climax communities do on land. I remain skeptical about carbon credits where the worst emitters can keep doing so but greenwash their polluting business-as-usual. We likely need both seagrass communities and the cessation of emissions.

Dis, I was speaking broadly of the enlightened consciousness that can end human suffering, AKA the "Buddha nature." My reference would be mainly to Chan Buddhism (and the Japanese sect that also derived from that, Zen), where there is the practice of avoiding conceptual thought and the awakening of mind which transcends, as it recognizes the illusions of the mundane world. Here's a clip from the Stanford encyclopedia again...

This thread is hobbled a bit by the incoherence of the OP question. It's not only a leading question (presuming an inability that isn't established in the OP) but it doesn't define "sense" or "god." Which is understandable given how vague those words are. Plenty of people report sensing god, in either a western guise (a personal presence) or a more Buddhist way (transcendence of personal ego, loss of boundaries between self and universe, cessation of ordinary passage of time ). These are experiences that, by their very nature, cannot be objectively verified or induced in someone else (like, say, showing them a bowling ball or a cordless drill). Some, as others note, are powerfully influenced by culture and folk tales and aspects of our personality, some not so much. Guess I'd trust the latter more, if I were experiencing such a state.

First, please read the link on global v local atheism. Second, please understand no one is saying you reject theism with other gods but rather you reject the definition of theism used by other religions. This is a significant distinction. For example, I am not a metaphysical atheist (universe is just matter and energy, plus physical laws) but am open to a Buddhist notion of a consciousness that transcends individual brains. So, with respect to a western definition of theism (omnipotent omniscient personal being), I'm atheistic. I.e. local atheism. But with respect to a Buddhist definition of divinity (transcendent consciousness permeating all spacetime and perhaps beyond, with some possible karmic mechanism) I'm agnostic and open to epiphanies, aha! moments, or whatever might present itself. So I don't embrace global atheism. Local v global, this is key to defining any position on the nature of the divine.

Very helpful SEP entry, thanks. That's section 3, if anyone wants to delve in there. And if we allow this distinction into this chat, then the dispute goes away. And it does seem a fair point that most who call themselves atheist are local atheists, i.e. they deem a specific framing of deity as wrong rather than make a sweeping rejection of any and all overarching consciousness. On this matter, we could say that Buddhists espouse a local atheism - they reject an omnipotent personal being (the traditional western definition) but not the notion of a consciousness that has a transcendent aspect that permeates all of nature. To a Lutheran, they are atheists. But that is because the Buddhist definition of divinity seems incoherent to a Lutheran, not because Buddhists are scientific materialists.

Not that I think anyone is achieving clarity in this swamp of a chat, but I would have to lean towards @Dis n Dat on the definitional argument here. An atheist is, by definition, atheist with regards to any form of divine entity. I agree with you that in common parlance people can loosely say "when it comes to ancient pantheons I'm atheistic," but that's a casual and imprecise usage. Where philosophic rigor is needed to get off "square one," we would have to define anyone who believes in at least one divine personage as a theist. When such a believer says "Xmucane and Mbutu and Ben-Adrill are silly fantasies, but Jehovah lives!" they are simply saying those beings are not the real supreme being, not that they reject theism in its essential postulate. I didn't therefore feel "forced" to accept DisnDats definition. Because he's looking for precise definitions here, a perfectly legitimate quest in a philosophic chat.

If you punched it hard enough to fling it into a parabolic trajectory, say upwards about 50 miles, then that would impart sufficient velocity to cook it thoroughly, wouldn't it? Or are we allowed to use a small tactical nuke to deliver the punch? I hope I'm giving this the seriousness it deserves.

TBH, there seem to be over fifty posts in the last few hours, and my time is limited. Is there any chance you could briefly state your basic point, then, regarding belief and gods? I will have to leave now and will check in later, so don't take a nonresponse as ignoring.

The burden of evidence lies with the extraordinary claim. We don't have to waste time trying to disprove a hypothesis that is not falsifiable in the Popperian sense - it can be ignored, pending actual evidence. If I take a swallow of milk from a gallon jug, and the first sip is sour, I can assume the whole jug is spoiled. I don't really need to dive into the epistemology of all possible scenarios, say, a hidden compartment in the lower half which contains fresh milk, or a small rubber sphere floating in the middle which will break and give fresh milk when the rest is poured out. While I can't disprove such an extraordinary state of affairs, I don't really need to, and can comfortably pour out the rest of the milk and not bother myself further with it. I make it a firm policy not to believe in deities that I can neither spell NOR pronounce. As for "Xmucane," that sounds like a pharmaceutical product that clears nasal passages. That might deserve worship.

I have seen God, beyond the confines of my anthropomorphism, and she looks like a toaster. And all you heretics who doubt the great toaster will be as moldy bread burnt to a charred and inedible crisp in the final breakfast to come. Not even marmalade will save you. Repent!

Remember, kids: don't eat the ants.

I think of silicon as mostly used in silicates, which is the natural state of most silicon as it likes to form oxides. Purification sounds expensive if one is going for oven or sink surfaces (but worth doing to make computer chips). Seems like an alloy with aluminum or iron would be more practical, maybe? Pure silicon would quickly form an oxide surface, so if you didn't want that you'd need some sort of sealant treatment.

Given the tone of that sentence, I'm guessing you are very masculine. Anyway, let's maybe consider a precise definition of masculine before we categorize it as a form of hysteria. And a precise definition would call for some sort of metric to measure traits that are agreed upon masculine traits. If we can even agree on what traits might be specific to men (aside from the obvious physical ones, like external genitalia, facial hair and heavier bone structure).

I think the Munich argument has merit here. Authoritarian aggressors will take whatever they can. But I think Ukraine and allies would lose whatever moral authority and standing they now have if they okayed an attack on a large urban civilian population. I'd say nyet to a Moscow attack. Shelling a Russian power plant or fuel depot or military base, however, would be a legitimate dose of their own medicine. Though I'd have reservations about hitting infrastructure that leaves innocent Russian citizens shivering in the dark. Russia has done that, and shown themselves as monsters on the world stage.

Jill Tarter and pals went looking for another incidence of the WOW signal a couple years ago. Nada. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/aba58f If you find the jargon fairly bruising, skip down to section five, their conclusions. If you're curious what the strength is of signals encountered in radio astronomy, that Jy unit they mention is a Jansky, which is 10-26 Watts Metre-2 Hertz-1. It's common use is for point sources, so it's the metric of choice in SETI. (it's obtained by integrating over the source solid angle, so things are simpler with a point)

There was no evidence of any amplitude modulation. The change in intensity resulted from the Earth's rotation. Try to keep up. It's like having a fixed metal detector and a person with keys in their pocket strolls slowly by. For 72 seconds, they're in the detector's range and the "mmrreeep!" sound peaks as they are directly in front of it right in the middle of those 72 seconds. The Q and the U which represent the highest intensities are in the middle of the string.

There is still some radioactive fallout from a small tac nuke, and therefore lingering radiation in the area for years afterward, so one hopes that awareness would make any nuke an unpalatable option. I would guess that any detonation would be the equivalent of a serious reactor accident with all the costs and wasted land that goes with one. With a conventional high powered explosive shell or missile, you can fill in the crater and plant a crop or put up apartments or reconnect a highway the following year. Also, more smaller devices means more to keep track of as they sit around for years and more chances for one to go missing. Really, for most types of attack I don't see the advantage in using a more expensive bomb (plutonium and the machining of critical mass components ain't cheap) when a conventional one, or maybe a well-aimed barrage of a dozen, would do. And if your country wants that spot of land afterwards you'd be really glad you didn't nuke it. Guess I'm missing something here.

How do you know the gravitation holding you in your chair is a real force? Perhaps it's what Albert called a fictitious force, and really it's just electrostatic forces in the chair molecules and the Earth's crust beneath the chair which are opposing your natural path of following a spacetime geodesic?

I would suggest reading up on what an observable is, and how its meaning changes between classical and quantum mechanics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable This is heavy with technical jargon but I think you can glean the basic idea.

Scientific realism is a philosophic position that statements (mathematical or otherwise) correspond to an objective state of affairs in the world. But that doesn't mean the statement is ontologically complete (that it provides a full account of what something IS in its inmost essence), it only means it corresponds to a measurement (perception) in a consistent way. A field is a mathematical map of how an area of space contains energy, and how forces are directed and with what strength at a given point - it's no more real than those isobar lines or wind vectors on a weather map. If it shows high wind that doesn't mean the map will blow all the papers off your desk.