Sisyphus

If you're asking what the point of it is, I'm guessing it's the same reason they darken theaters. Less distraction from the movie, more discreet making out, etc.

You don't. You predict they exist, based on extrapolation from existing theories. And then you look for them. It's called a testable prediction. If they show up where they're predicted to, that's strong evidence for the theory. If they don't, that's evidence against, and you need to come up with a hypothesis that accounts for this new observational data in addition to all the data already collected. (That's how science works.)

To be clear then, the claim isn't that it was "used on civilians" as some kind of weapon, but rather that it was used in another role (as a smoke screen) in populated areas, that it tends to cause great damage to human life and property, and that safer (to bystanders) alternatives could have been used instead. Correct? (Further, I feel I should remind everyone to stay on topic. Yes, it's ironic that we're arguing about this when Hamas is firing rockets directly at civilians with unambiguously lethal intent, but we're not debating "who's worse." Hamas is not an ally of the United States, nor is it a buyer of American arms, and Bascule is raising the question of whether we should be holding Israel, which is both of those things, to a higher standard in order to continue that relationship.)

Ok, getting ahead of ourselves. In an ideal model, the energy used is exactly the same in both cases, because the same work is done. This has to be the case, otherwise energy would be created or destroyed, which never happens. The way a lever works is by allowing you to use less force over a longer distance, which adds up to the same amount of work done. (You pull the end of the jack handle up and down many times, and the jack slowly creeps upwards.) Thus you can accomplish tasks that would otherwise require more force than you can exert, but not more energy than you have available. (Like, for example, lifting a car.) While this is all true, in the non-ideal case (i.e., reality), it's a bit more complicated, which is what other people are talking about. No machine is perfect, so generally the more complicated you make it the more energy is lost. (Well, not lost. It becomes heat or noise or something similar, the point being it's not doing useful work.) So you'll probably end up using slightly more energy overall, but it'll still be easier because you're using less force. And as Mokele points out, muscles are very complicated and imperfect machines as well. They have different efficiency levels at different degrees of exertion. Straining yourself is much less efficient (more energy converted to non-useful forms) than exerting moderate force over a longer period. So you will burn less calories using a lever, because less of those calories become heat (or whatever, that stuff is foggy to me).

If only! Anyway, good deal for you, I guess...

Well, it can be directly overhead in the daytime, you just won't be able to see it with the naked eye because the sun is too bright. The point, to say it more explicitly, is that Mercury and Venus will always appear within a certain radius of the Sun. This is because they orbit the Sun closer than the Earth does, and so from the perspective of Earth every point on their orbits will be in roughly the same direction as the Sun. However, they're not bright enough to see when the Sun is fully up, and obviously you can't see them in the middle of the night, because the Sun is on the other side of the Earth. So you're only going to ever see either of them near the horizon, around dawn or dusk. And whether you see them at dawn or dusk depends on the relative positions of the Earth and Venus/Mercury in their respective orbits, i.e. whether they'll be in the sky east or west of the Sun.

But that's just it. Acknowledging that there isn't a clear answer makes one pro-choice by default, which is why both of us are (I assume). You can't both try to codify "life begins at conception, full stop" into law and consider it "a challenging question that warrants serious ethical, philosophical and biological considerations." Can you?

I'd say that life began a few billion years ago, and that it's a continuous process, and that pretending our various distinctions aren't arbitrary can only take us so far. Dunno. It's a gray area, which is pretty much the whole point. If your rationale for granting personhood to a zygote is to avoid arbitrary distinctions and ethical uncertainties, then I'm afraid you're out of luck. Want some unanswerable questions? Ok, what is it about a human life that is inherently valuable, if a single cell can be a human life? What is it that makes a zygote a person with the same moral status as you and me, while a few seconds before, when it was a separate egg and one of a pack of sperm, it was medical waste? You're seriously going to tell me that's not arbitrary? And that's one concrete, pragmatic argument in a wishy washy issue. My stance is the same as many: abortions should be safe, legal, and rare. (And yes, it goes without saying that this thread is on thin ice from the beginning.)

Alright, fair enough. I was just going brewing methods. Of course, the goal there is always not to kill the yeast, so I guess I don't really know what I'm talking about...

I'd say so, yeah. Bothering to make such a detailed case directly to the people in such an easily accessibly way is pretty unusual, no? What would you suggest they have instead?

I'd say 60 C is probably more than hot enough to kill all of them. You shouldn't need to boil it. Can I ask what you're doing? It might actually be inadvisable to boil whatever you're working with, depending on what it is and what your plans are. (If your goal is just to examine dead yeast, then I guess it doesn't matter.) I should also note that it's actually totally harmless to consume live yeast, if that's what you're worried about. I've imbibed "live beer" many a time.

Don't really have time right now to sort through all the different arguments, but I will pose the general question (that I don't have a real answer to) in response to Pangloss' distinction between dissatisfaction with political parties and with particular politicians. Could it not be the case, that many (or even most) of the things that frustrate us about so many individual politicians are able to happen only because of the structure and protection of their political parties? Could not the fact that there are specifically two, and therefore a necessary focus among politicians of defeating one specific adversary, also contribute?

Or maybe he's just keeping a lid on everything for the time being, until his own people can sort everything out and determine what actually is a legitimate state secret. Or maybe he doesn't think now is the best time to be having a witch hunt. No need to rush. You can always unclassify, but you can never re-classify.

Our system might have more than two parties, but it only has two parties with any national power, and that's a direct consequence of our electoral system, which makes the utter dominance of two roughly balanced parties the only stabile status quo. These two particular parties are, furthermore, informally entrenched to a pretty extreme degree. The entire Washington machine is built on Democrats and Republicans, to the point where it's accurate to say that practically speaking, they are the government. This isn't a conscious conspiracy between, them, mind you. (I'm sure most members of each party would like to completely dominate the other.) It's built into the institutions themselves. I do believe that more diverse representation in government would benefit all of us, for reasons which I don't have time to go into now, but which most of you probably already agree with. So, the question is, what to do about it? Well, actually, what needs to be done is pretty straightforward. Change the electoral system (and therefore the Constitution) to one that doesn't inevitably marginalize all but the two biggest parties. Many such systems exist. How to go about doing this is a lot harder, though, since it would have to be accomplished by the very people who have the most interest in preventing it, namely elected Democrats and Republicans...

I agree, actually. When you think about it, an ocean vent is actually kind of an ideal cradle for life: warm, nutrient-rich, muddy water well-protected from the interruptions of surface events. What more could a fragile self-replicating pattern ask for? Don't let the fact that it's so hostile to us trick us into thinking of it as hostile, period. Moving back in with your parents is usually pretty rough...

I thought neutronium, assuming it exists, is dependent on the ridiculously strong gravity found in neutron stars.

Sure, why not? Maybe not directly, but I could definitely see it as a natural - or maybe inevitable - offshoot of traits that are selected for. These would include the ones that help us live together, like agreement on societal norms and taboos, as well as our monkey curiosity wondering what caused the things we see around us. We see that we can affect the environment but there are lots of things we can't do, so "somebody greater than us did it" is a natural catch-all explanation. Merging the source of those societal rules with the "greater beings" makes sense and would be advantageous to those in power or anyone else with a particular interest in the status quo. From there, religions would "evolve" as memes, and various things would be selected for, like: better carrots, scarier sticks, more powerful beings (we'd better worship the new god since he can beat up the old one), more jealous gods (what is a jealous god besides a religion's evolved means of eliminating the competition), marching orders to convert nonbelievers (the religions that did this would have a huge and obvious advantage), and stuff like more and more abstract mystical elements (because it's harder to find something ridiculous if it's harder to understand). (BTW, this isn't based on any actual research, it's just my personal speculation.)

The best thing to do in cold like that is pretend it doesn't bother you in front of weak-blooded southerners who complain when it's 50 degrees (10C) out.

This one belongs in the FAUQ (frequently asked unanswerable questions). I remember being very annoyed, myself, when my kindergarten teacher couldn't give me a satisfactory answer. (Of course, I'm sure I was articulating the question very poorly, as well.)

iNow, I'm picturing you in some kind of Bond villain lair, with hundreds of computer screens monitoring newspapers all over the world for anti-science editorials.

To make it more confusing, "Earth" and "the Earth" are both correct and usually interchangable, although the meaning is slightly different. "Earth" is how you refer to it as just another planet. "The Earth" implies a special place, as differentiated from the other planets. Similarly, with "the Sun" and "the Moon," some people also use proper names for them, like "Sol" and "Luna," in which case the definite article would not be used. This is much less common, though, since we don't generally talk to people who have other suns and moons, and there's no confusion among Earthlings what you're talking about. Of course, like many conventions in the English language, the real reason is that "it just is," and you just have to learn them individually. For that, I apologize on behalf of all native Anglophones.

No. Here's a simple, informal proof: Any rational number can be written as A/B, where A and B are integers. Let the diameter equal A/B. The circumference, therefore, is A*pi/B. But since pi is irrational, there is no integer A that you can multiply it by to get an integer A*pi. (If you could, then you could just write pi as a fraction.) Therefore, (A*pi)/B cannot be rational. Similarly if you start with a rational circumference A/B, in which case the diameter would be A/(B*pi). Yatta yatta. EDIT: Oops, apparently already answered.

Actually, that's one thing that's not mysterious. An imperfect self-replicator + natural selection = evolution.

Really? That's not what I mean at all when I use the word "supernatural," and I'm pretty sure most people don't, either. A supernatural explanation is quite different from a naturalistic explanation that we don't yet understand. To me, anyway. I don't think anyone who actually knows what science is would claim that "science has all the answers." People who do might give that impression anyway, however, simply because science offers the best answers currently available. In other words, accepted science is not always right and is never really complete, but that doesn't make it not irrational to believe something directly contradictory to it.

You mean something like this?