Cap'n Refsmmat

I think it's very dependent on the area you're in. For example, here at the University of Texas there's a huge number of students who have bikes, since the campus is very well suited to bicycling (or just walking) around. There are thousands of bicycles on campus, and a bike-sharing program would certainly get plenty of takers. On the other hand, there are already so many bikes that the bike racks are completely full nearly all the time. We've hit bicycle saturation, basically, and a rack that holds 100 bikes for rental would be completely cleaned out in a morning. You'd have to invest in thousands of bikes and dozens of racks. So it could work, but with special consideration given to the community and how bikes fit in.

As I usually do in discussions on this topic, I recommend the book The Science of Good and Evil to anyone who wonders how people can be moral without religion. It even answers forufes' question from an evolutionary perspective.

This may be important: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afroyim_v._Rusk You can find the full decision online here to see their reasoning: http://supreme.justia.com/us/387/253/case.html

Hard to believe it's been almost eight years.

I recently finished reading Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America, by Robert Whitaker, on my Kindle, and I figured I might as well review it for the SFN audience. The premise of the book is simple. The number of Americans disabled by mental illness has skyrocketed in the past half-century, yet the general public believes that psychiatry and its medications have successfully conquered many mental illnesses. What's going on? Whitaker tries to find out. The book is well-written and well-researched. It seems like each page cites a new scientific paper, and you only rarely catch yourself wondering "how'd he arrive at that conclusion?" The explanation is careful, the examples convincing, and the case studies compelling. Although Whitaker uses examples from real psychiatric patients, you don't get the feeling that he's using the anecdotes to emotionally manipulate you, as you often do in other books. Instead, Whitaker uses the examples to illustrate his points, rather than backing up points solely with anecdotes. On the other hand, Anatomy of an Epidemic takes a very unpopular position. Not only does Whitaker believe that mental illness is on the rise, he believes the rise is due to the very same drugs thought to treat it. Patients treated with medication for one disorder end up with a multitude of other disorders, according to Whitaker, and often end up mentally disabled for life. It's a position that requires a lot of evidence, and Whitaker delivers. With the magnitude of his claims, there's no doubt you'll leave the book with doubts about some of the points -- "did the studies account for this factor? What about this other medication?" But when you're done, you'll also leave with some major doubts about psychiatry.

Seeing as the first line of his post was "If UFO reports are at least sometimes real nuts and bolts space craft from another civilization where do they come from?", I think the definition he wanted to use was quite clear.

I thought the point of this thread was to assume that they are[/i] real objects, rather than weird natural phenomena or hallucinations, and then speculate on what they'd be if that were the case.

There are solar power systems that work that way. They use mirrors to focus light on a central steam tower.

Yup. 28 grams in an ounce.

That's fluid ounces.

That's what he said he wanted to do. See bascule's link: In another article I saw he questioned the fact that military insurance premiums haven't gone up a bit in a decade or two.

I'm told that persuasiveness is much enhanced by being coherent.

There's many kinds of infections. It would take a long time to test for every different kind. You have to narrow it down by other signs and symptoms.

I think I've had quite enough of this.

I think you'll find that this thread is one for you, then: thread 51734 "Fine tuning" is basically what you're talking about. I, on the other hand, have the position that if the universe were completely and utterly different, with completely different physical constants and laws that make absolutely no sense to us now, there'd still be intelligent life sitting on a corner going "gee, nothing like us could ever exist if you changed the slightest variable!"

Here's the Wikipedia definition, which is rather good: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_%28Internet%29

I think you're looking for this: Cappuccio FP, D’Elia L, Strazzullo P & Miller MA. Sleep duration and all-cause mortality: a systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective studies. Sleep 2010; 33(5): 585-92 Here's the PDF off the author's website: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/med/staff/cappuccio/publications/sleep_2010_mortality_meta.pdf

Hey, that's a long-standing tradition!

Indeed. Quasars are formed by the black hole in the center of a galaxy and the region around it. To make one, you'd need an incredibly large black hole and a cloud of gas to swirl around it, as well as some stars to feed it.

Although watch out, because the sexual freedom in Brave New World may coincide quite nicely with his teenage ideals... Brave New World is basically 1984, but achieved via drugs and mental conditioning, rather than suffering, so everyone's happy but oppressed. But they do get lots of sex. Are they truly happy? Not when they see how people used to live.

He should read Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley. His teenage independence should clash with the utopian lack of suffering in Brave New World. You can only get one at the cost of the other...

When you quote without including that sentence, it sounds as though Jesus is just saying that slavery and obedience is good. When you add the preceding sentence, you can see that Jesus is saying that you should be like a good slave. He's saying you should be prepared as a slave would be. Without context, the meaning is very different.

If we lived forever, without sadness or pain, what'd be the point? Or, more directly, I think we need a bit of suffering to be able to enjoy things. Remove the common sources of suffering and people invent new things to be upset about. A few hundred years ago we were worried about dying from dysentery, and now we get annoyed when the cable TV guy shows up two hours late. Invent a world where TV repairmen always show up on time and we'll find a way to complain about how they left dirty fingerprint marks on our new plasma TV. People aren't capable of living without suffering.

If you're dead, you're not going to be around to appreciate the lack of suffering.

You should at least be kind enough to include the two preceding verses: Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning, like men waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks they can immediately open the door for him.