Sayonara

I would have thought that matter within space that was expanding or contracting would expand/contract with it. Temporal disturbances I am not so sure about As far as the ship shaking in ST:FC goes, I think that was probably supposed to be due to the engines.

I take it then, that you have no intention of presenting one bit of evidence to back up any of the claims you have variously made?

I haven't read any really good ones myself but if you read one book on the subject, make it this one, because it's accessible and looks into most of the major theories: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0195130960/102-4940012-4495352?v=glance

Correlation != causation. You know that. What would be funny is if they went uber-capitalist all the way, and fell flat on their faces. Well, I say "funny"... I actually mean "interesting", of course.

Unless of course the candidate has problems remembering long sentences and stacks of [if...then] style instructions, in which case the debate would normally make this visible as a shortcoming of the candidate.

The trend there is that an increase in oxygen concentration correlates with an increase in the rate of absorbtion of potassium ions. Since oxygen is used in respiration by plant cells, that suggests that some active mechanism is transporting the potassium into cells.

The way I read 1veedo's post, that is what he would attribute China's success to. Communist philosophy + open market = teh win.

Yup, it's moved where it belongs.

We don't really know what goes on inside them, but we're pretty sure that physics does some colourful things. And they're in the universe.

Well I just started my new course so I don't have any complaints... yet. I'll get back to you in a couple of weeks

I sometimes wonder if there are any virus writers who would want to write viruses for Linux, let alone put them in the wild.

Singularities. I was quite shocked you left them out to be honest.

There are plenty of sets of submerged candidate ruins. The problems getting positive identification arise because (a) it may not even exist and (b) there are different interpretations of the historical accounts.

http://www.vbulletin.com/ There may be a mod for it already on the vb site.

Hopefully. No, they certainly do not.

You don't understand. Saying "I am a Professor" (even though you can't actually spell the word) means sweet FA if you are unable to present arguments at a level that others of an academic leaning are accustomed to hear coming from such people. Since you are connecting via NTL|Harts it won't be difficult to verify whether or not you actually do work for an academic institute, should anyone care enough to check.

Really? When you post something that I can and wish to refute in a public forum, it seems to me that it is very much called for. Perhaps you misinterpret the function of this platform. Do not take criticisms of your reasoning as attacks on yourself. I do have a habit of being more scathing than I need to be, but I understand it helps if you picture me doing the Snoopy dance in my underwear while you read my replies. If you intend to communicate sarcasm in a plain text medium, why not use the handy sarcasm smiley, instead of assuming everyone knows what is going on in your head? It will prevent similar confusion from arising in future. Yes, you are wrong I am afraid. My backgrounds are biology, computing, analysis, and business, with a large dollop of languages and literature. Like many people with a disposition for learning and a well-rounded education, I am also proficient enough in maths, physics, chemistry (although I'll be the first to admit I have forgotten a lot of that, so if you see an opportunity there I say take it), politics, religion, law, and the social sciences to have a reasonably well-informed opinion on just about anything, for which I make no apologies. Or it could be because I actually do know an awful lot about an awful lot, and you are just not particularly good at dealing with it. Everything I say could be wrong, but frankly if it is then most of what humanity knows also has to be wrong due to the knowledge pyramid, so I am hardly likely to see it as a personal failure, nor am I going to go off and cry because you intimated I'm not as clever as I think I am (or some such childish nonsense). (By now you must be realising that I am well-versed in the rebuttal of all forms of troll and flamer. Onwards:) Don't confuse "well I thought it was funny" with being witty. Oscar Wilde was witty, you are not. And you know what they say about presumption. I am sure you realise that providing reasoning with a proven rationale behind it is key to establishing a tenable position. When we want to discuss "what ifs" and so forth without the constraints of current models we do it in the pseudoscience forum, because that's what it is. Cast your eye around the evolution and morphology forum a bit further than your own interests dictate and you will see plenty of people being admonished for trying to involve god in discussions that don't require that level of entity multiplication. Which university, if I may ask? You may want to consider changing your forum time offset to GMT by the way, instead of USA Pacific time. I have not refuted that god created anything. If you were not so defensive and determined to defend one ideology to the last (ironic that you should acuse scientists of doing this), you would realise that I have only criticised your reasoning. Look around in the religion and philosophy forum and you will see that I have often pojnted out that god and evolution do not preclude each other.

Do you mean "that depends if you consider 3 billion years to be a future"? Subtle difference I know, but it's there. As has been mentioned a few times, we don't have that long. Period.

All someone new to science has to do is look around here, and they will see thread after thread where people like Philbo have made the same claims and been devastated by the responses. Rather than "why should we reply at all", which my question rather replied, I suppose I should have written "why should we reply over and over to the same tired rubbish?"

Unless it is, in which case it will be. lol

Or, to put it another way, the point of migrating off Earth is because we can't secure a future here.

Philbo is talking about the usual panscientific conspiracy to use scientific evidence as a means of "protecting" some non-existent pre-made conclusion from creationist rebuttal. "Scientists are too scared to consider all the evidence in case the god of science gives them some wrath" is complete nonsense, and doesn't cut the mustard as an alternative explanation as to why the so-called evidence is so awful. Okay I could have been a bit more eloquent, but if the creationist contingent can't even be bothered to raise proper issues (and won't listen to us anyway) why should we bother refuting what they say?

What? That vaguely-related question of your own is not a reply to the question I asked you.

No it isn't.

I don't have ANY of the crayons. It must still be up your nose.