Sayonara

We know in fact that plenty of them did. The most obvious extants would be sharks and crocodiles. It's not so much that we are sure they are all dead, but that there is no reason to assume they aren't if we don't see evidence of any given species once its fossil record stops or dwindles. That's why coelocanth was such a surprise - the animals were there but we lacked any evidence of their history over a significant window. The reasons people are unwilling to believe that there is an island somewhere that has sheltered a sustainable population of dinos for millions of years run as follows: - Due to continental drift and volcanic activity forcing migration or extinction, there are few islands that would be both good candidates for sustaining the requisite ecosystem, and also geographically containing the species. - Since virtually every square meter of the planet has been observed and recorded via satellite, such a concentration of large animals and their waste products would be blindingly obvious, particularly since islands with the properties above would be of special interest to a lot of scientists. Just these two little hitches make it exceedingly unlikely that there is any Skull Island type habitat out there. Which is a shame, because it would be ace. It's certainly possible there's all sorts of monstery fun going on in the ocean though.

Way too much to do what? The hypercube concept was conceived, explored, and found to be useful a long time before either Cube film was written. Nobody is disputing that (well, nobody who knows what they're talking a about - a few crackpots were active in this thread as you can probably tell). Be careful not to confuse the issue by introducing the latent but misleading similarity between a piece of paper, and a plane (which we consider mathematically to be of infinitely small depth). We can interpret it after a fashion (see above, or hit Wikipedia for speedy results), and it does have uses.

That seems a somewhat inappropriate and irrelevant reply. I was responding specifically to Transdecimal's question "Why don't lightsabers have an infinite length?" in post 16. One does not have to travel in time to find such information - one only needs to visit the Star Wars Databank.

I did say "mythological" and "fictional".

I don't think that was ever explained.

lolz

http://www.josephnewman.com/ So VERY funny

Argh, not another "who is more racist" thread. You don't become racist by making generalisations or comments - you become racist by discriminating because of them. And being black doesn't mean you can't be racist about other blacks.

Look! Look! It's the first ever post on Death to Creationism! A catchy name that piques people's interest should never be taken as one's entire philosophy. Anyone who presumes that it is, is then a victim of their own shortcomings.

And SFN does nothing of the sort. The phrase "Death to Creationism" is a reaction to the approach taken by some creationists that relies on recruitment by misleading rationale.

Sony

It's not fair to condemn Spielberg based on how you think people might interpret his film.

What I mean is that we don't call, say, a Portuguese Man-of-war "non-living" for not being a single organism, because our definition of life doesn't specify that it should be.

http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/showthread.php?t=2124 Unfortunately the link that is posted several times and explains the whole thing no longer works.

It's the way it was manufactured. We've been over this before in an old thread - I'll try dig it up.

By definition, supernatural phenomena are events or entities which cannot be studied scientifically, so Psinetics would not be considered a scientific field. It's the physics equivalent of Intelligent Design.

All of them, except for movement or reproduction in some cases, and sense in most (but that depends how the sense requirement is specified).

Yes, let's get back on topic (i.e. why should anyone object to being videoed in public, and why is that any different to being watched by a policeman whose word is classified as A11 - tested source, information believed to be true, distribute to any office or external law enforcement agency.)

Classified as what?

I've just noticed something - you said "it would be hard to classify sea-sponges as a single living organism". This is not what the definition of life is trying to do, which is why in post #43 I refered to "sensory processes in a living system" rather than in an organism. Remember the definition is for life, not for "a living organism". It doesn't specify any particular structure or system of sub-unit relationships. Overlooking this detail could easily lead to misapplication of the term

The fact that the sponge is carbon-based has nothing to do with it. The definition has to be used in a way that is tolerant to organisms that don't totally comply with it because it's a poor definition. True, but life is so diverse that capturing a cross-sectional set of identifying criteria rapidly becomes problematic. The problem is one of familiarity - we "know" what sort of things we consider to be alive, and we will have to encounter something that is utterly alien yet recognisable to us as "living" before we can calibrate our views.

This thread may help. Or it might not, but the topic reminded me of it.

In fact, one would think the camera would be preferable, since the tapes are only reviewed when it is known that a crime was carried out within its field of view.