Cap'n Refsmmat

Unless, of course, your dad shot the hen while the dog was very near the muzzle where it would be incredibly loud. Not that I can really speculate on what other influences there may be. All it takes is something to associate gun to bad (or anything else you were doing at the time to bad), and there are a lot of options.

Easiest to hardest: Physics, biology, chemistry. I'm a mathematical type, so physics was a breeze. Chemistry, on the other hand, involves remembering all sorts of rules and junk that I don't like.

My cat is afraid of flyswatters -- she runs away in terror. Does that mean she knows the flyswatter is used to kill things? No. She could be afraid of the noise it makes, she may have been hit by one in the past (we got her when she was a year old), it could be associated with something similar, etc. I also don't agree that the loud, sharp noise of a gun is comparable to other loud equipment. It depends on how close you were to the dog when you shot the gun the last time, and where the dog was standing. If you had other rifles (far louder than a 22), the dog might not have been able to tell the difference and got scared anyway. Nobody said the threshold of pain in dogs is the same as ours. Wikipedia says a gunshot is 140-170 dB, whereas the human threshold for pain is about 130. You won't find many competing loud noises that wouldn't get you to run away in fear of deafness. I wouldn't jump to conclusions so quickly when there are numerous other possible explanations.

I've used an analog Timex for years now. I never did like the digital watches I've owned (probably because they were cheap and crappy-looking), and I'm very fast at reading an analog watch, so the only reason for me to switch would be for the extra stopwatch features and all that jazz... and I don't need them.

Alternately, the dog was afraid of the large bang the gun made. He may have associated the gun with a painfully loud noise, the same way my cats associate a camera with a painfully bright flash.

I vote we institute a baseball-style draft to select parents.

Gun accuracy is often measured in minutes of arc (1/60th of a degree). It's the same idea. The angle represents the angle between imaginary lines drawn from the observer to both sides of the object being measured.

Today the SFN forum rules have been updated to include a new rule: This has been our policy for some time, but it has never been directly stated in the rules. The entire forum rules announcement can be read here: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/announcement.php?f=51&a=14

Sounds like an interesting study to do. Hand them a pill that would actually cure them but say "This is a placebo. We're just using it for comparison in the study." (You'd have to find subjects that wouldn't immediately attack you and demand to get real medication.)

Yes.

It's inertia if you look at it one way, but it's centrifugal force if you look at it from another frame. Who's to say which frame is the "right" one?

What is this? Relationship advice or math help?

And why does that mean that centrifugal force "doesn't exist"?

I suppose I could dig up the News forum from the archives and put it back in place somewhere. Perhaps "Current Events" would be an appropriate title?

Half of my problem is that you can't ensure that such changes are "harmless." We could certainly tell after a generation or two, but genetic engineering has far greater screwup potential than makeup and Botox.

If this becomes a hit, web designers will finally have a motivation to write clearly: it ups your search engine rankings!

Care to elaborate here? You won the challenge?

The point here is not that the device operates perpetually but that it produces more energy than it needs. I presume replacing some neodymium magnets is supposed to be cheaper than putting in fuel. One could then argue that it just extracts energy from the magnets, but I'm not entirely sure how the physics of that works.

Okay, look. I just spent twenty minutes trying to find a diagram for a nice ZPE device and found little. If you have a diagram, I'd appreciate it; I'll buy the parts and try to build the thing as soon as I have time. If I get a diagram and the parts, I will document the process, attach an ammeter to the thing, and see what happens.

Gladly. If you're not going to link me to the plans, allow me to find some myself.

I've got plenty of time and a soldering iron. Fire away. You're the one making the claims.

Care to cite any of these "unsolved disappearances"? My problem with your line of reasoning is that there are currently two options available: ZPE doesn't work. ZPE does, but it's suppressed by a massive conspiracy of oil companies who are afraid of it and scientists who don't want to be wrong. Unless you can provide evidence in support of the latter, I think the former choice is far more reasonable. Also, it would be easy enough to publish plans for a ZPE device anonymously on the Internet. Anyone afraid of being kidnapped by Exxon can just install Tor and upload away.

Fine. Send me one and I'll try it myself. If I'm convinced, I'm on your side.

It would make more sense if you only used it on currently-operating ones, so you could mark off spaces as time goes on. With a lot of the older ones you could probably dig through their posts and find every tactic on the list. A bit of etiquette: if you plan to declare Bingo in a thread, post a link to your card (the page should give one to you) and a description of how you won (e.g. "lower left to lower right").

Blast. I forgot about that. Added.