Sisyphus

Or maybe, just maybe, they're telling you what you need to know, rather than 100% medically accurate information. Especially inasmuch as there apparently isn't even a technical definition of "food" vs. "drink." You should remember to drink water in a survival situation, because it's easy to get dehydrated before you realize it. But "you can't survive on just food" is not just inaccurate, it's technically meaningless.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_aircraft_carrier May as well move on to actual examples. It's pretty clear that if you want something that could conceivably be in the air on a semi-permanent basis, it has to be lighter than air. There is one exception I can think of: the NASA Helios, but that couldn't really carry anything but itself, let alone act as an aircraft carrier. Nothing in the air has an actual "runway," because obviously runways are huge, heavy, awkward, and relatively immobile: not feasible. So, the "carrier" itself either has to be able to match speeds with the docking aircraft (probably not feasible for a lighter than air craft, so it would just be an airplane), or the docking craft has to have hovering capability to match speeds with the mothership. For the former possibility, that's pretty much what they do already. For the latter, hovering capability takes extra weight, so it's unlikely to be practical for a space ship. The question remains of why not just piggyback up on a mothership aircraft, like they do already. What does an in-air rendezvous add to the mission?

Although the exoplanets we'd be most interested in(small, rocky planets in the habitable zone) would also have very little tidal influence on the star.

I think we just havent' had any craft big enough to spin. The ISS is pretty big, but it was built (and is still being built) in a modular way over many years, each stage being functioning in itself. So a spinning ring isn't practical. But I agree, except for getting everything into orbit, there aren't really any technological hurdles. As an aside, one other idea that doesn't involve a whole ring is a habitat connected by a tether to a counterweight. They could spin around one another, creating a "down" that is outwards.

What goes on inside cells is mostly a giant soupy mystery to me. Certainly there are tons of processes on the molecular scale, but are they so precise that futzing around with uncertainty can lead to noticeably different outcomes? Obviously the best way to find out is to start teleporting rabbits.

But surely the grass' original form is dirt? But... the dirt's original form is dead plant matter, minerals, feces, etc. But then, their original forms are living things also. But <i>their</i> original forms are whatever their diets and nutrient sources were, but, but, but.... <i>IT'S THE CIIIIIIRCLE, THE CIIIIRCLE OF LIIIIIIIIFE</i> For what it's worth, I agree with you that you can't survive only on the matter that existed immediately after the Big Bang. You'd be vaporized!

So now it's only food if it's unaltered from something you can find in nature? Well: 1) That isn't anyone else's definition of food. 2) You're changing your terms every post. 3) You're still wrong! Watery fruits and milk ftw.

So you're making that assertion under a completely arbitrary and weird definition of "the food itself." Ok. Well, you're still wrong, if you're allowing real fruit juice.

What does "prepared with water" mean? I still don't understand the rules of this bet...

I see. So a flying aircraft carrier for model planes. That's the core of the idea, right? Is there any particular reason you need toothpicks? Or that particular, wildly impractical fuel source?

So by "floating" you mean flying? So you want to build a flying nuclear reactor out of toothpicks? That you can land model planes on? I'm just trying to understand the project, here.

"Dying of old age" is just the phenomenon that something is more and more likely to kill you the older you get. However, it's not like there's a set time limit. You could live to 200, it's just ridiculously unlikely. But if every possible universe exists, then there are universes (a tiny, tiny, tiny minority) in which you do. However, I've never understood how this equates to "I cannot die." Most of the "yous" do die. The "you can't experience it" argument doesn't make sense to me. I guess you can't experience oblivion by definition, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. I lose consciousness every single night. ...and we should be glad of that. Because the way I see it, of all the ways you could manage to still be alive and conscious despite overwhelming odds, most of them will leave you horribly disfigured or something. That is, unless the quantum immortality people also think it's impossible to experience your own suffering...

That situation is identical to two balls connected by a spring, just with one of the balls a lot bigger and wall-shaped. It stops for the same reason.

The terrorists hate our fatness.

100% efficient power transmission, for one thing. Generate electricity anywhere and use it anywhere with no losses. And just generally improve the efficiency of any electrical device you put it in. Plus, all the stuff that uses superconductors already would be a lot easier to build, since it wouldn't involve keeping components chilled to 30K or whatever.

The bet is you can't drink nothing but orange juice?

If only 100% pure distilled water counts as water, then I must be waaaaaaay dehydrated!

HFCS isn't pure fructose, either. It's generally either 55% or 42% fructose, the rest being glucose. What's the fructose/glucose ratio in, say, a banana? Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged But people aren't drinking pure high fructose corn syrup, are they? It's a ubiquitous ingredient, but just an ingredient, just like it is in fruit. (Granted, a lot of processed stuff is much sweeter than anything natural.) And isn't fructose sweeter than glucose? So you'd need less of it for the same sweetening effect, right?

i.e., 2 apples an 6 oranges is equal in what to 3 apples and 4 oranges, or to 1 apple and 12 oranges, or to 1/100th of an apple and 1200 oranges? There might be situations where that has some physical meaning, but not enough that it needs a word besides apples*oranges.

Again, metallic is irrelevant. Materials have ferromagnetic, paramagnetic, or diamagnetic properties. You can "levitate" water because water is slightly diamagnetic, which means it repels and is repelled by magnetic fields. Diamagnetism lends itself to stable "levitation" because a diamagnetic object will seek a point of minimum magnetic field strength, which can be in empty space (unlike a point of maximum field strength). The problem is that there aren't many strongly diamagnetic materials. And of course you can't just make things diamagnetic, so it's not terribly useful. Superconductors, however, are basically perfect diamagnets. However, we have not yet been able to create any materials that are superconducting at any but extremely cold temperatures. (And if we could, there would be much greater benefits than just a better maglev train.)

So it's a choice between teaching your children as little as possible in order to protect them, and teaching them as much as possible so they can protect themselves. It may be that leaning towards the latter is "liberal," but I'd rather just think of it as "good parenting." Of course, I say lean. Pangloss is right - you can't simply force enough maturity to be able to handle everything. But I think the idea is that you can't protect them forever, and you want them to be as well-armed as possible when they face things on their own (which, as a truism, tends to happen sooner than parents think). Plus you have to keep in mind that by the time they need to know a lot of things, there's a good chance they won't be taking your advice that seriously anymore... How that applies to "abstinence-only" education vs. actual education about real risk factors should, I think, be self-evident. And that's certainly a liberal/conservative divide, if you want to go there. I remember in the 2008 presidential elections in America, Mitt Romney made a big stink about Obama's advocacy of "age appropriate" sex ed for even very young children, trying to make him sound like a pervert ("I don't know about you, but I don't think any sex is appropriate for a 7 year old!"). Of course, in context, the "age appropriate" sex ed was things like how to avoid sexual abuse. "If an adult touches you this way, tell a teacher" etc. The horror!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_levitation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamagnetism#Diamagnetic_levitation

No, it's just magnetic fields we're talking about. Nothing special about them. Well, yes. Oh, but it was! Ok. "Metallic" is not the issue. There's ferromagnetic, paramagnetic, and diamagnetic. Ferromagnetic is things like iron (hence the name), which in the presence of magnetic fields form "permanent" magnets that retain a magnetic field of their own. Paramagnetic materials attract and concentrate magnetic fields they're in, and diamagnetic materials repel and disperse them. This results in real forces on these objects in the presence of magnetic fields. What this means is that almost anything is going to be attracted or repelled in the presence of a magnetic field, although for most things this attraction/repulsion will be very weak. As it happens, water is weakly diamagnetic, and hence, since living things are mostly water, so are we. And so in the presence of an extremely strong magnetic field, there will be repulsion. That's how the frog is "levitated." There is nothing special about the magnetic field, just that it's very very strong in order to be able to lift something like a frog with such an ordinarily weak effect.

What practical applications could there be for magnets? Lots...