Sisyphus

Yes, it is the shape of the wave, called timbre. It's partly harmonics (composite waves), but not totally.

This doesn't sound like there's anything to it, but I'm sure there are people out there who would like to assassinate Obama. It's pretty much a given if you're a militant white supremacist, and there still are a fair number of such people. I don't know how much of a threat they actually pose, though. Such people are generally losers in every sense, and probably not capable of carrying out a real "plot." On the other hand, it only takes one crazy person to get lucky, and it's not like that's impossible - it's happened before!

In 2007, total U.S. military spending was actually about $626 billion*, about 23% of total federal spending, or 4.6% of GDP. That's about average considering the size of the U.S. economy. For example, France spends 2.6% of its GDP on its military, and Israel 9.4%. China's military budget is officially 4.3% of GDP, but it's probably quite a bit higher. The historic high for the United States was 1944, when 37.8% of GDP went to the military. I suppose you could, of course, argue that given our relative wealth, a lower percentage would be appropriate, but still, it's not as if we're a military state. *This figure is a little bit tricky, and there are a lot of conflicting sources. The official U.S. military budget was $439 billion, but that didn't include funding the Iraq and Afghanistan wars ($170 billion), maintenance of the nuclear arsenal, "black ops" projects not listed on public documents, Veterans Affairs, etc. Depending on how it's calculated, it could be significantly higher or lower.

"Fat" is still bad, AFAIK. "Phat," which is pronounced the same, is a backronym for "pretty hot and tempting" or variations thereof, and is primarily an adjective for attractive women, with a secondary meaning of generalized approval. The term originated in 1960s African American slang, and its mainstream usage peaked in the late 1990s, and is now used primarily ironically. *Cue "The More You Know" music.*

I think Biden is definitely the right choice. He's intelligent, moderate, experienced, and well-known. He is popular among blue collar types ("Clinton Democrats") and policy wonks alike, but not "flashy," and doesn't seem to inspire the kind of animosity (or devotion, for that matter) that other "larger than life" figures (like Obama or Clinton) do. He is also a very safe choice, which is good for a running mate, since I think they generally have more capacity to hurt a campaign than help it. His only real drawbacks are that he's "boring" and that he doesn't censor himself well. As for the former, that might actually be a plus for a campaign that is constantly accused of being more style than substance. As for the latter, I am thinking primarily of his infamous comments about Obama's "articulateness," which I honestly don't think will really be a problem. It makes good Daily Show fodder and makes us ask "what could he have been thinking," but ultimately I think most people, almost definitely including Obama himself, understood what he was trying to say, namely that Obama is the first serious black candidate who isn't running as "the black candidate," i.e. that he's "post-racial." It might offend Jesse Jackson, but the very fact that Obama picked him inherently gives him some absolution from charges of racism.

I don't think you realistically make any prediction about what will ultimately happen to our species. We really have nothing to go on, since we are so different from anything else that has ever happened on Earth. In just a few dozen generations - basically an instant in geological time - we've spread to every ecosystem on Earth, multiplied our population a millionfold, altered our environment a hugely greater scale and variety than any other living thing, developed numerous ways to potentially destroy ourselves completely, created artificial intelligence, and learned the ability to intentionally alter the genetic code itself. And the rate of all this just keeps accelerating. Making hundred year predictions at this point is foolish. Making hundred million year predictions is beyond laughable.

Well, no, since he wouldn't be first. Unless you just mean Colorado's first openly gay Congressman?

Depends on what you mean by "viable source." Wikipedia is extremely useful. It will give you a good overview on a huge range of topics, and is an excellent starting point. However, it has no value as a citable source, and it was never intended to. You shouldn't cite Wikipedia as a source any more than you should the answer someone gives you on this forum. Wikipedia is much more likely to be accurate because a given article likely been looked over, corrected, and tweaked by dozens of people, all of whom are asked to back up what they're saying with reliable sources. However, it's still ultimately just asking a group of largely unaccountable strangers. That said, Wikipedia is a good source for sources. Every article on Wikipedia is supposed to be extensively referenced from reliable sources. These sources are listed at the bottom of each article. So if you have a fact which you want to cite, don't cite Wikipedia, go to what Wikipedia cites and cite that.

Yeah. Maybe 100 million years from now, paleontologists from an intelligent species descended from today's cockroaches will be debating what killed off the mammals so suddenly...

Well, the star traditionally known as Alpha Centauri is actually two stars closely orbiting one another, Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B. Proxima Centauri is generally considered part of this same system, although it's much farther away than the other two. Hence it would be called "Alpha Centauri C" and just be part of the same trinary "star," Alpha Centauri. Proxima is currently the closest of the three, but since they all orbit one another, this changes periodically.

Why?

The law prohibits cleaner coal? Are you sure have that right?

I think the source of your confusion is that there are different kinds of waves. In a sound wave, amplitude is usually measured in pressure. But with waves in water or something, it's going to be the maximum displacement of a particle. This is NOT wavelength. The wave moves across the surface, but any individual particle only moves up and down. Or another example: flick the end of a rope. You can see the wave traveling down its length, but clearly any point on the rope is only moving up and down. To help you visualize the "expanding in all directions part," just imagine dropping a stone in a pool of water. Waves move outward in all directions in straight lines, forming patterns of expanding circles. A sound wave is similar, but in three dimensions, so it's going to make patterns of expanding spheres, where the spheres are "made of" regions of higher and lower pressure.

Here's a link: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jRR9_pyEtgHI26tHSsFK_upDc6UAD92LJ6EG0 This is all very amusing, since Toby Keith in recent years has become known as a pop culture conservative hero and liberal villain, to the point where his name has almost become shorthand for a certain stereotype of conservative redneck. In fact, the other current story linking Keith and Obama is this one.

I'll tell you the answer if you give a convincing story of how you came across it somewhere other than homework. That way, even if you're lying, at least you worked for it.

I'm going to have to disagree with you on that. It seems to me that most people change a great deal in those three years.

It's saying the exact same thing, but the way your textbook has it is still preferable, because it's simpler. Your way requires parentheses and a second solidus. In order of increasing simplicity: (m/s)/s = m/(s*s) = m/s^2 = ms^-2 Similarly, (km/s)/h = km/(s*h)

What happened when the drinking age was raised to 21? Let's see some statistics about underage (but over 18) drinking-related problems in the United States vs. other countries where it's legal. Just from my own experience, though, I'm inclined to favor lowering the legal age. First of all, alcohol was ridiculously easy to come by at college for an "illegal substance." The law did not prevent drinking. It did, however, force a pretense of secrecy, so people drank only in private. It also encouraged "stocking up" when it was available. Both of these things definitely encouraged binge drinking. Every serious alcohol-related incident that I was aware of happened with underage, inexperienced drinkers, usually freshman experimenting for the first few times among themselves. By the time kids were actually legal they were a lot more moderate and smarter in their drinking, because they learned the hard way while they were underage.

Why would clean coal be off the table? If they really are forced to use coal, I should think they would require it to be as absolutely clean as possible. And why would natural gas? If they're artificially raising energy prices with this initiative, wouldn't that make more options competitive?

Even if the universe is finite, there's still nothing "outside" it, by definition. Anything there is part of the universe. The way it can still be finite is not by having "edges" and an "outside," but by having interesting geometries. For example, it could "fold back" on it itself, such that traveling in any direction would eventually bring you back to where you started. It's more complicated than that, obviously, but that's the general idea.

I'm not sure I follow. By your reasoning, anything that isn't renewable is going to be coal. I very much doubt that, but I'll go with it for now. So you should be comparing 20% renewable/80% coal vs. 100% coal, not vs. status quo.

That's nothing. I saw a movie once where a guy levitated a starfighter out of a swamp - without even touching it! He was trained by a muppet, IIRC.

We are. The "homo sapiens bomb" is causing all kinds of havoc in pretty much every ecosystem. But a "sharp change" is relative, when you consider the timeline of evolution. The dinosaurs wouldn't have noticed any change in their individual lifespans, either, and we are in the middle of a mass extinction event, comparable in many ways to the one 65mya. It's called the Holocene Extinction Event.

I don't know the answer to your main question. However, I'm sure, for example, gorillas could eat meat. They're not adapted to hunt, and it probably would be a pretty unhealthy diet for them, they'd have digestive problems, etc. But in a life or death situation, yeah. It's just calories and nutrients. Also, just because we are primates doesn't mean our ancestors were ever strict herbivores. That seems to be the exception rather than the rule.

I'm not sure about this. In this case it apparently didn't really make any difference, because there was another doctor willing to do it. But I'd be wary of making a blanket decision about this kind of thing because there are so many different circumstances that can change things. What if there wasn't another one available? I mean, I guess there's always other doctors somewhere, but it's a practicality issue, and it's easy to come up with nightmare scenarios. Does the only doctor on the tropical island get to refuse care on moral grounds if he gives you the address of the hospital in Honolulu? That's extreme, but pretty much any medical procedure is time sensitive, right? Having to find someone else is pretty obviously an inherent disadvantage, even if 90% of the time it's a very minor one. Maybe they should be able to refuse care if they can foist it off on someone else with little trouble. (Then what have they actually accomplished with their refusal?) As for the oath, it's hard to say. Maybe they think they're "doing harm" by inseminating a lesbian? That seems like a dangerous road to go down, though, and I'm sure those kinds of "freer" interpretations are discouraged. Since no one else has mentioned this yet, I should point out that this closely parallels the controversy of pro-life pharmacists refusing to dispense the morning after pill. If I'm not mistaken, laws about that are all over the place, state by state.