John Cuthber

Well done for the strawman. My point is that someone who gets into the habit of believing incredible stuff is likely to carry on doing so. In the case of a mechanic it might mean that he believes in some "new" engine additive that the maker says will improve efficiency. I'd prefer a mechanic who was in the habit of looking at the information and making a decision rather than showing blind faith. I think that's a reasonable preference and I think (all things being equal) that an atheist mechanic is more likely to do the job I want. "Whether a person is an evolutionist or a creationist has no bearing on how they view their local councils efforts in garbage removal." Would you like to bet on that? There is good evidence of political belief correlating with religious belief. www8.stat.umu.se/kursweb/vt011/stagkvantv11/?download...pdf

Oh good, we seem to be back at the topic. Unless we grow enough food we can not feed the people. If you look at figures like these http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/agr_cer_yie_kg_per_hec-cereal-yield-kg-per-hectare you can see that intensive farming (with all it's problems) generates a lot of food. There are exceptions of course, Canada doesn't look good on this scale. If all production yields were as low as some of those then we would starve. I agree that there are massive problems with distribution and other issues (they are probably a large part of why Zimbabwe is at the bottom of the list.) However you cannot simply dismiss yield as important. If you think that organic farming raises yields why do you think farmers generally don't adopt it (especially as "organic" food now sells at a premium) and why did they drop it in the first place? In effect you are arguing against the farmers and their understanding of their work. I read the bit about the effect of large scale conventional farming on small scale organic farming somewhere, most probably New Scientist. I will try to track down the article.

For those who think that description is outdated, may I remind you that we still talk about the bride's father "giving her away". Marriage has been a property transfer agreement for a long time. Ownership of the bride was formally transferred from the father to the husband. Not very PC, but that was the way it was.

There was ( I think) probably a ceremony of some sort before there was a law or a religion. Birds do it Bees do it. I'm afraid I couldn't find a video of educated fleas doing it.

Smallpox. Anyway, can someone remind me what on earth this has to do with the topic? As far as I can see it was sparked off again by someone misunderstanding FMD. FMD was with us before we had any sort of farming but organic, and it's still here now. It has been kicked out of the UK by slaughter and quarantine. I'm not sure if that counts as "organic" or not.

When I wrote "For a start, if GJB thinks that BSE is caused by a bacterium or That that there's a vaccine for it, then he's mistaken. At best, he has it muddled up with foot and mouth (which is actually a viral infection but...)" I expected people to understand that 1 BSE is not cause by a bacterium and that 2 there is no vaccine for it and that 3 he might be muddling it with FMD. There is strictly speaking not any guarantee that there is no BSE in beef but we buy it anyway. I'm not sure if they even test for it. Anyway, since there is no vaccine for BSE the rest of the discussion about it and vaccination is a bit odd, but, just for the record, there's a reservoir of the infectious agent in sheep so the possibility of transfer across the species barrier again still exists. Herd immunity does not mean that the whole herd is immune. It means that the number of susceptible individuals within the herd is small enough that any infection will die out, rather than spreading.

There are 50 pages on that starting here http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/65651-people-who-believe-in-god-are-broken/ " if someone doesn't want to eat pork for religious reasons, that's their prerogative," No, if someone chooses not to eat pork because they don't like it, that's their prerogative. If the don't eat it for religious reasons then the decision is made by someone else who is abusing power gained under false pretences. "I am pretty sure that's the only way a plurality of religions (including the lack thereof) can exist in a single society, is there something I missed?" Yes, what you have missed is that the idea simply doesn't work: 9/11, the crusades, the holocaust: take your pick of examples. " Isaac Newton managed to be rational 6 days a week, go to church on Sundays, and still do more to advance every disciple of modern science on Sunday afternoons than most people (atheists alike) will contribute in a lifetime." Dangerously close to the banned logical fallacy of appeal to authority. At any rate it's not relevant. I can still ask how much more he could have achieved if he hadn't been distracted by counting the colours in the rainbow and deciding there were 7 'cos it's a lucky number (seriously you thought "indigo" was for real?) "You can be religious with no other belief than "this universe was intelligently created" and that doesn't have to be based on anything other than a feeling - fundamentally, that belief is as reasonable as any other." Nope, that's another logical fallacy. It's not reasonable unless you can explain how it came to pass that, while it was created "intelligently" it's so full of cock ups. (The best documented are things like the design of the human eye). "So why can't we skip blaming the root of "religion" for all the irrational evils of the world and address the actual blatantly sick mentalities that are disturbing to most religious and non religious people alike? " I wasn't aware anyone had. Though I do believe (and there's evidence if you need it) that most people are really reluctant, even in wartime, to kill other humans. You need to convince them that the others "deserve to die" or that they are "sub human". Religion helps enormously with both of those. "A real nice feature is anyone can make a rational reasonable secular argument regardless of their religion. " Not really: no. For example, a gay couple can't generally marry. The "reason" given for that is religion. My opinion is that religion should butt out of people's lives.

Exactly where did you get the idea that I said that you can't vaccinate against a disease of non-bacterial origin? They use the rabies vaccine retrospectively- so it does afford a cure (if you are lucky) even after the infection. Oh, incidentally, I don't think the smallpox vaccine works any more. As far as I'm aware it hasn't prevented a single infection since about 1980. It's not actually derived from cattle (have a look at WIKI which says " During the 19th century, the cowpox virus used for smallpox vaccination was replaced by vaccinia virus. Vaccinia is in the same family as cowpox and variola but is genetically distinct from both. " and, like rabies, it's active after an infection (agin, from WIKI, "Treatment Smallpox vaccination within three days of exposure will prevent or significantly lessen the severity of smallpox symptoms in the vast majority of people. Vaccination four to seven days after exposure can offer some protection from disease or may modify the severity of disease.") BTW, people suffering from viral diseases are fit to east as long as you cook them properly. There are other issues, but viral transmission might not be one of them.

I think the issue runs rather deeper. I don't see evidence for this assertion. "Historically marriage has been a religious institution. " I strongly suspect that marriage (or at least some sort of pair bonding) predates any religion. I think it's only relatively recently that religion got involved. Also, re "Marriage is not a law." That's news to the UK statutes. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo6/12-13-14/76/contents OK, so plenty of people want to marry in church. Fine I have no problem with that as long as the church is still a public place (in order that anyone who actually does "know of any just impediment..." can "speak now") But religion should realise that it has no historical or legal claim to a monopoly on marriage. Once they realise that, the "problem" of gay marriage goes away (along with "problems" of atheist marriage, mixed religion marriage and any other types that the men in dresses get upset about).

Enthalpy, You are missing the point. "People who want a Cpu cooler than the heat dissipator " are very rare. Not many people want to chill the CPU below ambient temperature. People actually use Peltier coolers because they work quite well. If they were as poor as has been suggested then to run a decent spec CPU chip you would need to feed more power into the cooler than I use to run my entire central heating system. Why do you think people use Peltier coolers on CPUs?

The numbers on that graph indicate that the effect of bullet drop is of the order of a few inches up to 50 metres or so. That's probably still close enough to kill you at a range where they can be sure to recognise you.* It's probably not wise to tell someone who is pointing a gun at you that they are doing it wrongly. The worst thing that would happen would be that they took your advice. *OK, they might not care who you are.

On an almost entirely unrelated topic, the EU will not accept imports of livestock which have been vaccinated against foot and mouth disease because they use a test for the presence of antibodies in the animal's blood as evidence of infection. This is bloody stupid. A bit late in the day, during the last outbreak they decided to undertake "ring vaccination" round cases of inaction. This actually contained then eradicated the problem. There's lots about it here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_United_Kingdom_foot-and-mouth_outbreak and the last couple of big outbreak was in 1967 when, lets face it, most farms were a lot more organic than they are now, or were in 2001. There was an outbreak in 2007 due to poor management at a research lab: again, nothing to do with organic vs non organic farming.

For a start, if GJB thinks that BSE is caused by a bacterium or That that there's a vaccine for it, then he's mistaken. At best, he has it muddled up with foot and mouth (which is actually a viral infection but...) I still think that, for a start the Irish famine is a red herring here. They went from organic farming of wheat to organic farming of potatoes. Some bastards stole their crops. They suffered. This was in the days before mechanised farming, before most pesticides and when "fertiliser" still pretty much meant manure. While there are clearly problems with our current farming practice (in common with much of our other life) because it's unsustainable, there is no real evidence that organic farming would help. Mechanised industrial farming using fertilisers and pesticides was widely adopted by farmers because it raised net yield. The corollary of this is that organic farming has worse yields. There are studies that show that small organic farms are supported by adjacent non-organic ones. The surrounding farms kill the pests and provide nutrients. There are a whole lot of other problems too. Food subsidy is one, but it's political and has little directly to do with the organic/ non organic debate. I'm always amused when the US talks about free markets. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_subsidy#United_States

Well, I can help with the first two. The value of µ0 i.e. 4π×10−7 H·m−1 comes from the definition of the ampere "the constant current that will produce an attractive force of 2 × 10–7 newton per metre of length between two straight, parallel conductors of infinite length and negligible circular cross section placed one metre apart in a vacuum" It is almost impossible to calculate the magnetic field of a permanent magnet. People make magnets then measure the field.

The big reason carburettors are obsolete is that they give very poor control of the amount of fuel added. While the combustion of fuel is far from perfect and finer drop size will help, even my dad's clapped out old lawnmower could get the reaction so fast that it pinked. Of course it's an excellent idea to think of ways to improve efficiency- that six stroke system sounds fascinating. The original idea in this thread was to run an engine with oxygen rather than air. The energy requirement for extracting oxygen from air isn't that great but I don't know if the efficiently gain would be worth it, but it's probably worth looking into. It would require a substantially different engine design and it would be in trouble if the oxygen concentrator failed.

"There are a whole lot of things that much organized religion does in this country that is outright appalling, but does it have to be as simple as "religion vs. reason" or can their be middle ground?" What would the middle ground be? I'm rational during the week but let it slide on Sundays? Seriously, any credibility given to irrational beliefs like the sky fairy undermines the importance of being able and willing to think for yourself. That lack of clarity carries on into everything else you do. You can't switch it on and off at a whim.

Yes. But you need to remember that all sweeping generalisations are wrong.

Can we ask the cartoonist?

1 yes there is. The purpose of a poll is to find out what people think. If it doesn't answer that question it's invalid 2 Yes, but you just told us that you don't seem to understand what a poll is for. 3 For the same reason: if you don't know what a poll is for so your opinion on it is rather dubious. 4 Who cares? The point is that the American attitude provoked that response. I guess the best answer would be "whichever side is perceived as damaging their cause." They chose to attack while the government was run by a self proclaimed Christian which might suggest they don't care too much. If the original poll is right then roughly 3/4 of the people they killed would have been "believers". If they wanted to kill atheists they should have attacked Norway.

What do you think a carburettor does?

Wasn't it wonderful when mister Bin Laden pointed out that a lot of people don't like that attitude? I mean seriously, do you not understand that an attitude like that will get you into trouble?

You can get into the complications of producing oxygen; but there is another way, by turning the gasoline to gas, or to atomize it into the tiniest droplets. Do you mean use on of these? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carburetor#History_and_development

True, but if it were running in pure oxygen you could (in principle) run in 5 times as much fuel and get 5 times the power. Of course, the engine would melt, but that's another issue.

The other 95% of the world would like to remind you that you don't actually have a serious left wing party to vote for.

With the rather odd exception of fluorescence of rubies, can you actually cite an example of d block elements fluorescing in conditions outside of a lab?