Sisyphus

I can't imagine it would be that unsuspecting. An incoming neutron star would cause all sorts of gravitational havoc long before any actual collisions.

A fair amount of googling only revealed a bunch of other people wondering the same thing. You might be able to make an educated guess based on less extreme cross-breeds like the "saint berdoodle" (crosses between a saint bernard and a poodle), which seems to be closer in size to the saint bernard, which of course is neither the arithmetic nor geometric mean, so apparently its not that simple (I don't know what the mechanism is). Looks like we'll just have to perform the experiment ourselves.

Now, I don't know much about psychology, but it seems like that "dark triad" is especially pseudoscientific. Narcisissm and psychopathy are two different points on the same spectrum, for example, and Machiavellianism is a political philosophy, not a personality trait.

But what does "moving at 1/35 C" actually mean? Relative to what? I don't disagree that it wouldn't work, I'm just thinking that the reasons are a bit more complicated (and more fundamental). So you might show up in the same reference frame, but what does that even mean? Is there some traceable continuity between my reference frame (and my position in it) now and at some point in the future? I don't know.

Privatizing all roads is a tempting idea, but ultimately untenable, I think. It's just not something that can support an effective market, since consumer choice is necessarily insufficient, and local monopolies would be way too easy. If somebody buys up the main roads in your area, it's not like you can choose to use the roads in a different area. And entrepreneurs can't come in and build their own roads to compete, since there's just no place for them. Of course, it might make things so miserable for drivers that it reverses suburban sprawl, so it might actually be a good thing, anyway...

You can't do much without dealing with parallels, though, directly or indirectly. And per the OP, that might be more or less true, but I wouldn't describe it that way. A geometry is Euclidian when parallel lines neither converge nor diverge. Non-Euclidian is when they do. Talking about "curved" and "flat" space and whatnot is just shorthand for describing it in terms our Euclidian minds find easy to grasp, and models on the surface of spheres are just models, as a sphere (including its surface) is a Euclidian object.

Seems like a very good pick based on the few bios I've read, though I've actually never heard of him before this announcement, dashing celebrity though he may be. I'd like to see a poll on what other doctors think of him.

Not necessarily. No amount of knowledge allows you to violate physical laws. There might simply not be any way to do it, and everything we know now indicates that is the case. I hope there's a way, but there doesn't have to be. The universe isn't obliged to provide us a path.

So in addition to denying any justification for any military actions (by Israel), you also deny the possibility that they'll accomplish anything? Makes you wonder why Israel even has a military!

Since the molecular clouds from which stars eventually condense are so large, and stars don't maintain their relative positions over time (especially over several billion years, which is what we're talking about), would it be fair to say that the sources of the heavy elements in our own sun could be pretty much be anywhere and everywhere in the galaxy?

Women don't like men who make sweeping generalizations about them. In all seriousness, though, I think the response you got is pretty much dead on. Women do like nice guys. They also like masculine guys (and classically attractive guys, and funny guys, and smart guys, and rich and powerful guys). Sometimes those go together (the most desirable), but often they don't, since testosterone, among its many other effects, often makes people jerks. So in conclusion, if you think the reason women aren't attracted to you is because you're a "nice guy," in reality it's probably just because you're a wimp.

So are you just going to come into and start bitterly mocking every thread that mentions the word "evolution" in any context?

Yaaaaaaaaaawn.

Yeah, you really have to a agree on rules. If you go by Romero rules, after Z-Day, anyone who dies for any reason becomes a zombie within a few hours of death. And any fluid exchange is deadly within a few days at most, sometimes within a few minutes, and it's a "gradual" zombification. They don't seem to decay much, and have vague memories from life, so it's clear that some bodily functions are working. They apparently need very little nourishment, although their craving for human flesh is their primary motivator. They don't seem to swim, although they can walk along the bottom of bodies of water, as they don't need to breathe (they don't float). They also seem to be quite a bit stronger than humans (they'll rip you apart barehanded without too much effort), but also a lot slower, and obviously quite stupid. That said, a large boat of any kind is probably a good refuge. Also, there's been a lot of talk of weapons, but nobody has mentioned armor. To avoid contamination in a zombie fight you'd want a hazmat suit under full kevlar armor, plus probably a riot shield or something.

Voter fraud is always a possibility, and some degree of deliberate disenfranchisement is pretty much inevitable in large elections. And in extremely close elections like this one it actually can make a difference. The changing totals are not evidence of that, however. The wikipedia entry on the recount explains the process in detail, and its clear that everything is at least out in the open and available for challenge. In that respect it's at least much better run than the cluster**** in Florida in 2000. I'm not shilling for Franken, btw. I find the idea of Senator Franken kind of hilarious, but not especially good for the country.

Again, though, scrutiny is only that. It's not inherently damaging. And if somebody paid him off to seat Burris, they also paid him off to try to seat a bunch of other people. Burris was, as Pangloss says, "pretty far down the totem pole."

In response to specific objections about speed/fossil fuel use. First off, I absolutely stand by the "approaching 300mph" claim. France's TGV recently broke it's own record and hit a top speed of 357mph. The maglev train in Shanghai that runs from the airport to the downtown area (about 20 miles) hits a top speed of about 270mph on every run. As for "still using fossil fuels," it's far easier to make trains electric (many actually are, including some of the fastest and most used) than it is for cars. Their range is unlimited, they don't have to carry their fuel with them, and the infrastructure is built in.

This is incorrect, although it seems to be a common misconception. You can orbit a black hole in the same way you orbit any other massive body. (If the sun collapsed into a black hole, the orbits of the planets wouldn't change.) Your path is a conic section, not a spiral.

But he's not preventing anyone from being appointed, since there's nothing stopping the next governor from picking the same person. It conceivably be a way of focusing scrutiny on the pick, but if there's nothing shady that that scrutiny uncovers (and so far with Burris, there isn't), then nothing has been accomplished. And, of course, the appointee doesn't have to accept. We don't even know that Burris is the first person Blago asked.

Which is exactly the problem, of course. But still, with Christians and Muslims, it's "just" a matter of holy sites that they want to protect (or at least it is with Christians - I've never read the Quran). With Jews it's more explicit. They think of themselves as the Israelites, who they believe God has specifically granted absolute domain over that particular plot of land, complete with license to kill whoever happens to be living there who isn't them. God actually even promises they can return there and reclaim it after a long dispersion, and Zionism is the modern movement to hold Him to that promise. Now, obviously, in practice the state of Israel has practiced a great deal more restraint than many believe the Jewish religion demands, to the point where even people like me, who have nothing but utter contempt for ancient prophecies (especially those that dictate genocide), tend to side with Israel in particular incidents like the one happening now, especially compared with the ridiculous psychopaths trying to do them in. But neither that restraint nor the fact that others are just as bad means that the fundamental mission is any less flawed, or deserves any more respect.

Well yeah, that is the goal, and I think you certainly can. The only hitch is that some doubts that seem very unreasonable when first proposed end up being confirmed by reason and observation. It's a common pattern that mainstream but counterintuitive scientific theories are unknowingly predicted (sometimes centuries in advance) by what are at the time considered to be purely academic exercises in philosophy or mathematics.

Yup, eternal uncertainty. Ultimately almost every statement is conditional, and traceable back to unprovable axioms. From a practical standpoint, all you can really do is reduce those axioms to the point where you're satisfied they can't really be denied. This is one of the central ideas of Cartesian philosopy, which goes back to the famous proclamation, "Cognito, ergo sum." That is, "I think, therefore I am." The supposedly undoubtable and irreducible axioms being that there is thought, and that in order to do something (think), something has to exist (you). Sadly, later philosophers ably demonstrated that there is quite a bit of assumption going on even in those statements, but such is life.

You certainly can't afford to let the terrorists win on their own terms, and Israel obviously needs to defend itself militarily. But if Palestinians on the whole have different ideas of what would be a "winning" situation, then maybe they can be obliged. Which is why this conflict, like any other, ultimately comes down to a culture war. And yeah, that's not simple. Bitterness over humiliation and defeat seems to me (from my armchair halfway around the world) to be a big part of Palestinian anger, and that sort of thing often doesn't respond to rationality. So treating them fairly and even generously is necessary but probably not sufficient. What would be sufficient, I don't know, but whatever the magic recipe is, I'm sure a lot of time is a key ingredient.

I agree, this would have been better.

Where the hell are you living that burning and pillaging is such a regular occurence? The 10th century?