Cap'n Refsmmat

My point is that one single example of an invalid argument's conclusion being correct proves that it is at least possible. My example was a proof by contradiction. The conclusions are indeed implied, and true, but they are not implied by the arguments in post #1.

I probably shouldn't mention the pure gold embroidering then.

Just hang on a bit for us to finalize the logo and send one out. I'll PM you for details as soon as we're ready. (Dunno how long that'll take, so don't get too excited quite yet...)

Very well. Proof by contradiction: Let us suppose that an invalid argument's conclusion is necessarily incorrect. Thus, let us make this argument: If an animal is a reptile, it lays eggs. Lizards lay eggs. Therefore, lizards are reptiles. However, this commits the fallacy of affirming the consequent. (Platypuses lay eggs too, and they're mammals.) Therefore, the conclusion must be incorrect, and lizards are not reptiles. This is a contradiction, since lizards are, in fact, reptiles. Therefore an argument can be invalid while the conclusion is correct.

Yes.

(Yes, I just checked the IP and email on the above post and it checks out. Nicely done, Qwest.) If it shows DNS problems occasionally, you might try setting your router to use OpenDNS for a bit and see if it resolves the problems. Just keep the old settings handy in case it doesn't work...

The pin hole is small, so the off-axis rays don't go through it. If the pinhole's in the middle of a piece of metal, the off-axis rays strike the metal instead of going through the hole.

If an argument is invalid, the conclusion can still be true, but it does not follow from the premises.

Alternately, they will take less risks. Yes.

So disclosure is bad because it lets other people know the risks involved in making investments, and if they knew how risky it was, they wouldn't do it. I thought the point here was that derivatives let people take huge fiscal risks, which then blew up in their face.

The SFN Logo Contest voting period is now over, and the members have spoken? (Well, not "spoken," more like "pressed a button." But you know what I mean.) The winner is: Of course, that's not the final version -- we'll be tweaking and updating the design to make it as best as we can before we start using it. Now, since mooeypoo designed the logo and I contributed the idea, we're clearly not just awarding all the free shirts to ourselves. To keep in the spirit of things, toastywombel and tomgwyther will be awarded free SFN shirts, for their participation and effort in the logo contest! I'll be getting in contact with both once we have shirts designed and ready to go. For now, it's time to finish this logo and make the switch to IPB 3.1.

Well, it looks like we have a winner!

Yes, it's only limited by its power source and the strength of its radio signals. If I recall correctly, it'll collect so much data during its flyby that it'll have to spend several months after the flyby transmitting the data back. There's also the possibility it could fly by an object past Pluto, if there are any near its path.

XUL provides a lot of functionality to achieve that, as well as systems like wxWidgets and Qt. But inevitably there'll be some cross-platform differences. XUL lets you create separate CSS themes to adjust your user interface for each platform -- and it lets you write mort of your application in JavaScript.

Now that's a wind instrument to remember.

Poll closes this Friday, so get your votes in!

The force is also proportional to the distance -- or rather, it decreases with the distance squared. This means that when objects clump, they tend to start forming bigger clumps, rather than spreading out.

I wonder how different online communities might be if people chose usernames that sounded like ordinary names (not necessarily their own name, but definitely name-ish). That is, you could refer to people mentally as a real person with a real name, rather than thinking of them as "the dude with that weird avatar."

And as I pointed out, special relativity makes motional and transformer emf the same thing.

Take the turbine out of the turbocharger. Adjust a few screws so the engine doesn't know that the turbine is missing. Pull up in front of old granny on the highway. Floor it! The ultimate smoke-production recipe. Cummins did this with an engine when testing whether exhaust gases from a rear-facing exhaust pipe would enter a trailer towed behind the pickup truck, potentially poisoning its occupants. It's easier to tell when the exhaust gases are a giant dark cloud...

As D H said the last time you posted this, Unless you have some reason to dispute those experiments, simply saying that one postulate seems unreasonable to you (or that the results seem unreasonable) does not prove relativity wrong. Unless you have something else to add regarding those experiments, there isn't much point to this. The experiments agree with the postulates.

Indeterminate forms don't count. (Or, in other words, using infinity is cheating. )

I attend a seminar course from a professor whose lab works on biodiesel produced by algae. He's extremely optimistic about it -- he believes that an algae pool could produce several thousand times more biodiesel than a similarly-sized plot of land growing corn for ethanol, provided a few tricks are used: add fish to stir up the algae pool and provide algae fertilizer, pump in semi-treated sewage for similar purposes, and improve the processes to extract biodiesel from the algae. If done correctly, it'd be cheap and easy to run. (The trick is setting up the infrastructure -- for example, to pump in sewage.) He believes that algal biofuels will be the Next Big Thing, but I'm not sure how much he's biased by working directly in the field.

Wait. How can the flux decrease steadily without inducing a transformer emf? Since I do not have Feynman's book, I'm not privy to his examples. Relativity does unite motional and transformer emf as being the exact same phenomenon in different reference frames, so what's the problem?

How is the wire moving lengthwise when you unwind it? You cannot unwind it without rotating it around the core. Incidentally, Feynman said of Faraday's law: (Emphasis mine.) He hardly said it was wrong.