Sisyphus

Watches are basically just jewelry, nowadays. Any preference for a circular clock face has to be aesthetic. If people see them as somehow more fundamental or more trustworthy, I certainly haven't noticed it.

If you don't know exactly what categories you fall under, how are you going to know which generalizations to find insulting?

Perhaps. But I don't see how a national ID would be much of an improvement. There are already nationally accessible databases for drivers' licenses used by law enforcement, so really you can't forge one that will stand up to more than a casual inspection.

Even if you could make a coherent statement about religion as a whole, you'd get a dozen people flaming you for using a different definition of "religion" than they use. Discussions like this are hopeless unless you drastically narrow your focus.

Do you have a reason for doing this besides "it would be cool?"

The idea of a national ID isn't that offensive to me, but it does seem like a waste of effort. We already have social security numbers, drivers licenses, etc. What is this going to add?

I don't think there's any one moment you can point to and say that that is where life begins, because it's a continuous process. The assembly line analogy doesn't really work for me, because the parts aren't exactly added one by one, the beginnings of them are there all along, and all gradually become working parts at the same time. That makes me want to go back to conception, but that's not satisfying either, because all you have at conception is one cell, with far more in common with an amoeba than a living, breathing human. As far as I'm concerned, the beginning of life is one huge gray area. At first glance, the end of life seems more straightforward, but it really isn't, either. Is a brain dead person dead, even though it's a living body made of living tissue? Or what happens when people come back from being "clinically dead?" We say they "weren't really dead." We don't start handing out inheritances when this happens, for instance. Yet it is possible (indeed, inevitable) to become undeniably dead. Mozart is DEAD. Gray areas!

Obviously you think I'm a crank and/or I've somehow insulted you, but I'm not going to get in an Internet Pissing Contest about something so trivial. Look it up yourself, or ask your teacher.

Aliens! Ahem, that is to say, that's actually totally normal. Most people experience it at some time or another. The "you can't move" type of nightmare has the same cause, becoming aware of REM paralysis. It's more likely to happen if you have irregular sleeping habits, are overstressed, or overtired.

I can't edit post #31 anymore, but, aside from fixing that formatting, I'd also like to add: Like any trait, intelligence has to be continuously useful through the evolutionary process in order for it to develop. The question is not, would a rabbit with human intelligence have an advantage over a regular rabbit. It is, would a slightly above average intelligence rabbit with a slightly longer period of helplessness and broader and more specific dietary needs have an advantage over a regular rabbit. The answer is "almost certainly not." And so the evolution of intelligence in rabbits is in equilibrium, where its value becomes equal to its cost. When the equilibrium is disrupted by a change in environment, there might be evolution in either direction. The same may well be happening to humans, as those with lower intelligence and higher rate of offspring suddenly have a significant advantage.

I'm not denying it's a useful shorthand, but the one is most definitely derived solely from the other. Don't they demonstrate that in physics classes anymore? My computer disk as a whole has no linear momentum, but it's parts all have linear momentum perpendicular to its radius. Since there are forces holding it together, the result is a spinning, with "angular momentum." True enough. But that's quite a bit different than what mooeypoo is asking about, no? Any torque we actually experience is going to stay in the realm of classical physics.

Yes, it's worked out very well for us. As for why not all species evolve toward greater intelligence, I couldn't honestly say. Obviously, the "price" of our big brains is easily paid back hundreds of times with the advantages it gives us to produce food, defend against predators, work together in very large groups (up to nations), make tools, and so on. So, the price of intelligence cannot be the only reason other species do not evolve toward it. Do you have any suggestions? That is flawed reasoning. Our intelligence has been very beneficial to us, but only because several other factors happened to coincide for us to be able to take advantage of it. WE can make tools, communicate easily, etc. But we have opposable thumbs and vocal chords and diverse diets. A lion wouldn't benefit a fraction of what we do, and it would still suffer all the disadvantages.

The Saudi government isn't involved though, right? So we don't exactly have a situation where our allies are backstabbing us. Just that our popularity is even worse there then it is in the "enemy" nations. And that the economies we've been busy propping up are funding the people trying to kill us, which I guess makes economic sanctions on Iran seem kind of silly.

The problem with torque is that it's not a "real" thing, at least not in the same way that force is a "real" thing. There is no "torque force." There is just regular old Newtonian force. But very often those forces sum up in such a way that something ends up spinning, and because it generally sums the same way and that way can be represented with simple equations, we give it a name, "torque." Since it's so common, it's also somewhat intuitive, in that we can "have a feel for it" in everyday experience. Torque is simply the force with which something turns. If you look more deeply than that, you won't find anything, because there is nothing deeper than that, because it's really just Newtonian forces adding up in a particular way. "Where is the torque?" Nowhere, really. The same can be said for angular momentum. There is no "spinning momentum." There is just straight-line momentum. However, when different parts of one, connected object have momentum in different directions, the combination of that momentum and the forces holding the object together result in the object spinning, and behaving as if the spin, itself, had momentum. Or another example: "centrifugal force." No such thing, and yet we've all felt it!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bright_green_environmentalism I came across this term which accurately describes my opinions on environmentalism, and which I think also probably describes the "scientifically minded" perspective. It seems like an important distinction among within the broader category of "environmentalists," and it seems to be very much on the rise in public opinion. Maybe you've heard it before, but I hadn't, and I thought I'd share.

This thread is offensive to me. I actually am the lawyer of a Nigerian prince seeking a partner in transferring funds, and it's people like all of you who are the reason I can't find one.

I think he's calling Swansont a sadomasochist.

Then you're wrong. What is favored under natural selection is what correlates with higher numbers of viable offspring. That's it. Sometimes higher intelligence is favored, and sometimes it isn't. If it always was, every single species would steadily and rapidly get smarter and smarter. This doesn't happen. For some idea of why this is so, think about what humans pay for their intelligence: our big brains are huge nutrient sponges, and they take incredibly long to develop, resulting in by far the longest period of childhood dependency, among other things. If being dumber means we can have kids sooner and more often, and the lack of intelligence doesn't hurt their survival chances much, then THAT is favored by natural selection.

To break this down as simply as possible: To see where a species is evolving, look at what traits correlate to a greater likelihood of producing more surviving offspring. Those traits, no matter what they are, are "positive" from an evolutionary standpoint and in that species' particular environment. This includes humans. It STILL includes humans, and humans are still evolving. We as a society have come to deem certain traits, like high intelligence, as "positive." Note that societally-deemed "positive" and evolutionarily "positive" need not be the same. The argument can be made that the current course of evolution, driven by a recently radically altered environment (technology, etc,), has shifted such that evolutionarily positive traits and perceived positive traits are now very often in opposition, when previously, in a "natural" environment, they corresponded very closely. As a result, most us probably wouldn't like where the human species is currently headed. Can we all agree on those statements, at least?

Whether you want to call it plasma or gas is not really relevant to the OP. It's still going to behave just like a very hot gas. Since the density of gases is inversely proportional to temperature, the matter in the flame will be very light, lighter than the air that surrounds it. Yes. That flame would not make the stick any harder to pick up. Just like the 10km of air over ANY stick doesn't make it any harder to pick up.

Right, that is a low possibility, because it doesn't happen that way. We don't just randomly sprout bumps. We do, however, have arms. Some of us have arms that make us slightly better swimmers. If our environment changed such that swimming well became very important to survival, those people would have a slightly better chance of surviving to produce offspring. But what makes an arm better or worse? Thousands and thousands of different genes, all working together. Some of those genes will mutate. Most of those mutations will be neutral. Some will be harmful. Even less will be beneficial, but in all those thousands, eventually, there will be some. Most likely you won't notice its effect in one generation (no magical bump!). But that new set of genes is a new starting point, from which new mutations can be neutral, harmful, or beneficial. If (using your example, for argument's sake), you have a race with stubby little fin-like things, what would be a beneficial mutation? Whatever makes them more fin-like. So it's not just a coincidence that those particular mutations are passed on, it's selected for, and not unlikely in the least.

Basically, yes. It could happen that way, but it generally doesn't. It happens much more often that existing features gradually morph than entirely new features spring out of nowhere. Skeletally, a whale still has four "limbs" and a tail, still has a spine, lungs, a digestive tract more or less like ours. Is that the best possible configuration for living in the ocean? No, not by a long shot, but it's what they have, because any features they have had to develop gradually from what their ancestors already had. No, not all. Some. And not the same mutation (a mutation that's passed on is no longer a mutation, it's just your genes). Remember that any given visible trait is likely the result of the subtle interactions of thousands of different genes, not just one "on or off" switch. Some of those genes will mutate, and if that mutation is positive, it'll be more likely to be passed on. Seeing as how that's completely hypothetical, that can't really be answered, but I would imagine the same genes would affect the right and left sides of X equally. Yes, that happens all the time, and it's called sexual selection. The traits that make a member of the opposite sex more likely to mate with you are almost as important as the traits that help you survive. Sometimes the two factors work against one another. Just look at male birds with colorful plumage. It proves to the females that they are healthy and desirable mates, but it also makes them easier prey. In your example, though, that probably wouldn't happen. If I suddenly sprouted fully formed fins, I might have trouble finding a date, but if I'm just naturally a slightly better swimmer due to a slightly different body shape, it probably wouldn't matter. Or it might matter, but if it matters less than the increased likelihood that I'll even be alive for the female to consider me, then it's still a positive trait, evolution-wise.

The idea is doing away with the brackets in favor of a function. For example, instead of paying 20% at X dollars and 30% at X+1, there is a single function of X that determines percentage. So a graph of income vs. percentage income tax would look like a continuous slope instead of a series of plateaus.

I was trying to build one of those in my shop for weeks before I realized I could just buy many pairs of identical socks, so they don't have to match. It doesn't matter if you lose them, either, because eventually your home will reach the equilibrium of full sock saturation, at which point the rate of socks turning up unexpectedly equals the rate of socks mysteriously disappearing.

What the hell. No, that's not the topic at all. Did anyone read more than the title and first sentence of the OP?