Sisyphus

Rummy offered his resignation during the Abu Ghraib stuff, but he hasn't recently. I certainly hope that's sarcasm. Even if that were true (which it doesn't appear to be), then should we just screw the troops because you dislike the person giving advice?

How about if you combine that with the fact that one of the main complaints is that the Administration values loyalty far above any other consideration?

No, that wouldn't work.

Burning fat produces energy. If you don't use energy, you don't burn fat. Drugs could increase your metabolism, which would make your body expend more energy just to survive, but obviously this can only be done to a limited degree, and it's much more effective to actually use energy for real, through exercise. Drugs can also reduce appetite, or hinder digestion, both of which take the approach of denying the body new energy sources, forcing it to burn its reserves (fat). Surgical approaches like gastric bipasses are also along these lines.

It's really only a problem if you stick with the maxim that every event must have a cause. However, there's nothing that actually logically necessitates that, it's just what we've always observed. Thus, I put forward that the primordial atom had no cause, and did not need one. Obviously, I can't say for sure, but if you say that everything has to have a cause, you won't get anywhere. You just need a cause for whatever the cause was, ad infinitum. Therefore you have to abandon the idea somewhere, so it may as well be the point at which you can't possibly see beyond, i.e. the Big Bang. Even an endlessly cyclical universe doesn't escape this, because you would still have to ask why there is existence instead of nonexistence.

What do you guys think of all the criticism and calls for resignation Donald Rumsfeld has been getting recently from retired generals and the like? Should he resign?

Any animal will destroy itself if given the chance. You really think deer intentionally conserve resources to preserve the environment? No, they eat and breed as much as they can. Humans are just better at it. Luckily, we are also the only animal smart enough to foresee the consequences of our expansion, and thus are the only animal capable of restraining ourselves. The very fact that you, as a human, see our growth as a problem proves that humans are far more intelligent than anything else.

Tell him what? That I'm smarter than a fish? I think that would be self-evident.

We're the smarter.

Urban living is far more energy efficient than anything else. Apartments suffer no loss from non-exterior walls, and the larger the apartment building, the greater the ratio of volume to surface area. Additionally, it is much easier for residents to walk to where they need to go (since everything is so much closer together), and, when the destination is too far, there is public transportation, the efficiency of which increases dramatically with increased population density. To put this in perspective, Manhattenites have 1/8 the per capita energy consumption (that's electricity, gasoline, everything) as the national average. But yeah, I guess insulation and stuff works too...

What's smarter than a human?

As was said earlier, the nervous system having a response to stimuli is not the same as the experience of suffering. The question is hardly pedantic.

The planets are sherical because any other shape would collapse under its own weight once a certain threshhold of mass is reached. A sphere, however, is fully collapsed, with no part of it able to get closer to the center of gravity without pushing something else farther away. Hence, gravity tries to form every object into a sphere. For the same reason, the bulk of the denser materials is always in the center of the larger sphere, because it is pulled with greater force towards the center than the less dense materials, which it naturally displaces. EDIT: The earth bulges slightly at the equator because of the inertia of rotation, not the magnetic field, which is far, far, too weak.

Do you mean why are they everywhere? Or why are they circular?

I'll definitely watch that when I have the time. On a related note, has anyone seen the NY Times sponsored documentary series, China Rises? If so, is it worth it?

Ah, but who knows what extra-dimensional physiology was required for that.

Copper and silver are not gold. In fact, our bodies actually require us to ingest small amounts of copper on a regular basis.

Algae must be the smartest of all, then. They've survived many, many times longer than the dinosaurs did!

Yes, it takes all of those things in conjunction to generate the property than none of them have on their own. Just like it takes an entire functioning brain, made of cells and molecules and atoms and subatomic particles, to have thought. That's why brain damage changes the way you think, why it changes who you are.

Wait, no. They never stopped evolving, but their evolution didn't involve becoming that much smarter, at least in the sense of the OP.

Intelligence doesn't automatically evolve. A species only becomes more intelligent if the increase in intelligence, every step of the way, is more valuable than the added resources needed to support that intelligence. For example, humans are very intelligent, but our brains are huge nutrient sponges and we have a longer period of parental dependancy than any other animal, because our minds take so long to develop. For these reasons, it's sometimes advantageous to be less intelligent, and evolution moves in that direction. By "advantageous" I mean only that it tends to result in more surviving offspring, which is the only criterion that evolution "uses."

Ok, so I was at a bar last night where, on the tables, there were little "lamps" that consisted of a plastic jar of oil with a cloth wick and flame, inside a glass vase. I noticed that when I tapped the table anywhere, the flame would flare for a split second (so quick its not even noticable unless you're paying attention), practically doubling in size. It wasn't a gust of air, since waving my hand at it, changing the place where I tap the table, or taking the jar out of the vase had not effect. I tried the same thing with a butane lighter and a propped up match, and nothing happened in either case. This leads me to believe that it had something to do with the wick, but I can't figure it out. The way I see it, the transverse wave from the impact with the table hits the vase and converts to a compressive wave which somehow travels through the oil in the wick to erupt at the top. What I can't figure out is why it didn't work with the lighter. Is it that fluids saturating a solid have greater elasticity than fluids on their own? Your thoughts would be appreciated.

Yes, the sun moves, because of Newton's third law. The sun can't exert gravitational pull on the planets without them exerting just as much pull on the sun. Determining its motion is not terribly difficult. You just have to find the center of gravity of all the other bodies in the system, excluding the sun, and observe its motion relative to the sun. You can treat this center of gravity as one body, at the center and with mass equal to their total mass. Then, all you have is a two body system. Two bodies orbit one another in similar orbits about their common center, with radii inversely proportional to their masses. Thus, if you have the motion of the C.O.G. for the rest of the system relative to the sun, you just divide the line between the two centers inversely proportional to their masses, and the point of division is the immobile center of gravity about which they both orbit in identical shapes. However, none of this really matters. You can just assume a reference frame in which the sun is stationary (which, of course, is the easy and sensible thing to do), and it doesn't really change anything important. m4rc, just so you know, the site you linked to is ridiculous. The cause for energy production in the sun? Physics "didn't know" about this? Crank!