Sisyphus

Politicians go on shows like SNL or the Daily Show to show that they have a sense of humor about themselves and to attract the youth vote. More importantly, though, it has a way of "diffusing" the mockery. If SNL makes fun of me and I seem offended, it gives weight to it. If, however, I then show up and participate in it, it becomes more like joking among friends, and there's more of a "just kidding" feeling, at least in theory. For example, John McCain tried to take the sting out of mockery about his age by going on SNL and declaring that "most importantly, America needs a President who is incredibly old." In Sarah Palin's case, I get the impression the writers really do think she's kind of an idiot, so successfully getting "in on the joke" could be very beneficial for her. Of course, just because you go on the show doesn't make it convincing, and there have been plenty of very painful to watch political hosts.

I haven't heard of those people particularly, but every "alien origin" story I have heard has been more than a little nutty. Without specifics, I can't say whether it's "plausible" or not, but since the traditional narrative of human origins seems entirely plausible already, and there's no real evidence of aliens, I would wonder why anyone would go down that road at all.

That still wouldn't help you unless you already knew where you were in the same coordinate system. If I understand the problem correctly, it's how how to find Earth if you're teleported somewhere unfamiliar. (I've never seen the show.)

Huh? So spiders and octopi have "8-D wiring?" Seriously, are you just high right now?

So, you've never heard of insects, huh?

The first has more weight, sure. Theory vs. hypothesis. Of course, a plausible contrary hypothesis casts doubt on established theory, but hopefully also suggests an experiment to falsify at least one of them. (And if there's no way to falsify one or the other, we've gone terribly wrong somewhere.) They both agree with all 20 experiments. Read again.

If that's an accurate narrative, then what it tells us is that massive spending (the New Deal) doesn't work, but even more massive spending (WW2) does.

That's not entirely true: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_and_health

Definitely not. Surely if that were possible it would become the primary means of infection. I seem to recall that only specific pathogens can be transmitted by specific hosts that are compatible with them, like malaria with mosquitos, Lyme disease with ticks, various mammals with rabies, etc.

Well, somebody throw the Earth into the sun at 0.99C, and let us know what happens. Remember your safety goggles!

Ha. Would work, but you couldn't get very far...

Hydroelectric power is not using water as fuel, it's harnessing the flow of water downhill, as with a river.

What do you consider a "common man?" Are there plenty of jobs where you don't need calculus? Of course. Probably even most. I find it hard to imagine getting by without even basic algebra, but yeah, you could do that, too. So I'd say not necessary, but certainly useful.

I don't really want to have a religious argument, because they're inherently pointless and against forum rules besides. What I was actually trying to do with post #118 was diffuse the argument already under way by (I thought) non-confrontationally explaining my point of view in such a way that different sides could at least understand. As I'm at least satisfied that anyone who wants to understand what I was talking about would be able to, I'm just going to drop it, and I strongly suggest you (iNow, lucaspa, etc.) do the same. Don't worry about getting the last word.

The Axis of Ambiguous Evil?

Yeah, questions are unusual, and not really in a good way. That said, they both seem to be repeating the same things from the last debate. Yaaaawn.

Wow. Well, I haven't even heard of half those "stereotypes." Are these your own observations or what? Anyway, putting aside for a moment the issue of whether any have some real-world statistical basis and supposing that they do, most of these things seem primarily cultural. There really isn't any genetic basis for, for example, being Swiss. Populations are too much in flux, and there is continuous interbreeding, so distinct traits in that small and integrated a group can't possibly rise over the "background noise" to be measurably significant. There barely is even for the major traditional distinctions, like "black" and "white." Another example is recent evidence that there is essentially zero genetic difference between English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish. Yet certainly stereotypes of those different groups are quite different, so whatever basis they have is cultural.

Averaging a range feels like cheating. You'd have a mole of molecules, maybe, but you wouldn't have a mole of any particular chemical. Figure out how to separate them, and I'll be on board.

I essentially agree with this explanation, but I think you're actually agreeing with iNow more than you realize, or at least demonstrating his point (or the point he should be making, anyway) for him. Your description of falsifying the existence of leprechauns, rather than contrasting with religious arguments, to me seems entirely parallel. Some conceptions of "leprechaun" are falsifiable in the way you describe, and some others (like the invisible kind) are not. You attribute this to adding ad hoc hypotheses, which is partly true, but really it's just a pointless exercise from the beginning, due to poorly defined terms. The question, "do leprechauns exist," does not have meaning, because "leprechaun" is inadequately defined. You probably see where I'm going with this and perhaps you agree with me already, but I'll spell it out anyway. The question, "does God exist," is not just unfalsifiable, but almost completely without meaning. This is simply because the word "God," without further elaboration or specificity, is an empty term, to a far greater degree even than "leprechaun." You need to specify a particular, coherent concept, just as with leprechauns. And as with leprechauns, some "Gods" are falsifiable (of which a subset have been falsified), some are not (the "clockmaker", the "trickster") and some just cognitively empty words ("the essence of infinite perfection"). Some are even demonstrably true, as with those defining "God" as "an order to the universe" or some such. So saying "God is neither included nor excluded" is not saying anything whatsoever. However, the God described in the literal words of the Bible, the one the Creationists worship, is falsifiable, and I'm sure you'll agree has been falsified to as great a degree as the more falsifiable breeds of leprechaun. That particular God and ones similar to it were among the first worshiped, and up until relatively recently they were worshiped almost exclusively. And yet, though the falsifications have been largely accepted (with some exceptions, clearly), belief in "God" remains prevalent. Why? Because of the "ad hoc hypotheses." Essentially, to continue the analogy, instead of giving up on leprechauns when they can't be found around Irish rainbows, we've decided they must be invisible. And instead of giving up on the truth of the Bible when facts contrary to it are demonstrated, we decide it must be allegorical, merely "divinely inspired," and evolution is "the means by which He creates." Can it be proved wrong? No. But you have to understand that for someone who claims no such belief (be it an atheist, an agnostic, an ignostic, or simply an adherent of a different religion), this shifting seems no different than changing the definition of "leprechaun" such that it still might exist, and then - incredibly - still believing in it. It might not at any point become a logical absurdity, but it still seems contrary to the way reasonable humans approach all other questions. Luckily, this process doesn't really interfere with other questions, which is why brilliant scientists can be and often are also religious. As long as you keep twisting your religion to fit the facts instead of twisting the facts to fit into your religion, it shouldn't hamper significantly hamper any scientific inquiry.

Your ingredients would be limited to homogeneous substances for which you know the molecular weight. Basically, you've got water, sugar, and salt to work with. Yum!

Whew. Finally somebody figured out how to blame some nerds.

What would increasing the surface area do? It's weight is directly proportional to it's surface area (assuming we're talking about a cloth-like thing), and so is its drag. The only difference is, does it have enough "extra drag" to still fall slowly enough with the weight of a person added to it. But it seems doubtful that you could even get that far. You could make an ultrathin fabric that might drift gently to Earth, but it wouldn't be strong enough to support any payload. It needs to have a minimum tensile strength so as to not be ripped apart by the weight of a person, which means that it has a certain minimum weight per surface area (and hence per drag force), which means that no matter what it's going to have a minimum terminal velocity that's probably too high even before you add the weight of a person. And if that's the case, then it doesn't matter how big you make, it still won't work.

Wikipedia says the height of Olympus Mons is 27km above the mean surface level of Mars. So even if there were oceans covering most of the planet and it were measured from sea level, it would still be far taller than Everest, by any measure.

And yet it is. Math doesn't lie. You just have to extend it beyond geostationary orbit.

I'm not sure I understand the difference between the "traditional approach" and the suggested compromise.