Cap'n Refsmmat

Alternately, the unknown can provide a convenient way to get large amounts of grant money and graduate students to do research with.

I suppose you can use me as an example to study. I joined SFN when I was twelve, though I didn't admit my age to anyone for several years. But I was a special case; I thought I knew everything, so I just flung ideas out there with no "I'm only twelve, so..." When reprimanded I grew defensive and angry. This is why I hate reading threads with my posts from 2004.

The other big problem is fuel. It's hard to just "cruise" around the solar system without lots of fuel to change your course, and that fuel makes launching the spacecraft impractical. Look at New Horizons, the spacecraft currently en route to Pluto. Because of fuel limitations, you can't launch it at high speed toward Pluto and then have it slow down and enter orbit -- slowing down takes too much fuel. So the thing's just going to blast right past Pluto, taking as much data as it can as it does.

Our policy used to be to issue infractions and send PMs to members who broke the rules in threads. This was not so successful; anyone else reading the thread could report posts breaking the rules, but they'd never see anything being done about it (since it was via PM) and so they'd assume that the staff doesn't care. This was not good. So we switched to posting in-thread warnings. These are not "in the judgment of any particular moderator"; moderators are encouraged to report troublesome posts so other moderators can discuss a reasonable course of action. Only a minority of moderator actions are taken "alone", so to speak. No in-thread comment is ever intended to "humiliate" a particular member. Our goal is to keep discussions on-topic, not to shame members into compliance. If you believe a moderator has stepped over the line and humiliated or attacked you, you should always report their post or send a PM to an administrator like myself. I can guarantee you that every reported post is checked by at least one moderator -- we have made changes to ensure that. Also, to make this clear: moderators do not ever ban members on their own whim, or delete posts on their own whim. (Unless it is blatant "BUY VIAGRA" spam.) Bans of members only occur with the consensus of several moderators, and any post deletions are discussed by the staff. We are not a bunch of angry people using our power to do whatever we want. If you believe an abuse has occurred, and you have been humiliated or attacked, report the post or contact an administrator. If you have any suggestions on how we could run SFN better, I'd be glad to hear them.

Our pets probably aren't in regular enough contact with other pets to easily spread a disease. They spend most of their time bottled up in our homes rather than running around with other animals of their species. In any case, if my cat got the flu, I'm not sure I'd be able to tell the difference. She'd throw up and sleep a lot. Not too different from when she's well...

Fortunately for the planet, most strawmen will wither due to global warming. Really. Is anyone with the slightest doubts immediately a "denialist"?

What specifically do you mean by "click new posts"? When you click the New Posts dropdown in the navbar and the dropdown appears, when you actually click Get All New Posts, or something else? And does this remain persistent across several pages until you fix it? I find it hard to conceive of a CSS goof that'll change the page's font size unless there's also JavaScript involved. Or a Chrome bug.

This may be a good time to point out that resident experts can move threads within the forums of their expertise. CharonY, does vBulletin let you move posts into Speculations? You might have to be listed as a moderator in Speculations as well, I'm not sure...

Once a single spermatozoid enters, the egg cell wall changes to not allow any others through. So what you see is a large number trying to penetrate the cell wall.

Ah! No, you don't need to do anything with that. WordPress is the blogging software we use; you'd hit Download there if you wanted to download a copy of the software for yourself. But we already have it installed and set up here. Did you make sure to include the http:// part of the link when inserting it?

We apologize for the fault in using the inside joke. Those responsible for ruining this joke have now been sacked.

Digging back three references or so through the citation chain, I still cannot find the original data, or a detailed explanation of the statistics. But I suppose I should not judge the statistics, as my statistical knowledge is particularly weak.

Already did. It does not provide the original data, and it does not go into significant detail on the normalization, besides that it was done.

I'm interested in learning more about what that filtering and normalizing entails. Can we see the data from before that was done?

A truly good troll would not need to advertise himself as one.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Which way damns you more? Who knows?

Don't blame me. I think Snail came up with it last year...

The United States does not consist entirely of houses. There are also businesses and factories to consider, which will likely double your estimate. Then there's the question of what to do with the waste of one or two thousand nuclear power plants. Or how to even fuel them -- we don't even have enough uranium to feed our current reactors for long: http://arxiv.org/abs/0908.0627

Dunno. I still like lab-coat-snowman. (Hit Ctrl-F5 to force a refresh)

Read some Dave Barry. And use the word "weasel" a lot.

http://letsrollforums.com/spiral-light-t19861.html?t=19861

Oh, I do not dispute that if someone insists on using "momentum" incorrectly, they should be corrected or confusion will reign. But with a word like "theory," where it merely labels an idea rather than contributing to that idea's true meaning, it's less necessary. I speak out of frustration at seeing numerous threads in Speculations turn into "it's a hypothesis!" "no, it's a theory!" with no discussion of the actual hypothesis in question. If we can point correct incorrect use of words, fine, but let's avoid discussions of semantics instead of content.

I read in the Times that this was an experiment between NYT, the Post, and Google, and that it will be opened up to other media sources in the future if it works out. Could be rather nifty.

That's not how I read it. In any case, I guess whatever books you read don't teach tact. Topic please?

How many arcseconds the Sun travels from what reference frame?