Cap'n Refsmmat

I thought gases boiled at low pressures, not high ones.

He never said anything about political parties.

I don't know. I tend to avoid the politics section most of the time. When I do read it, it's all circular arguments.

Indeed. From the few details that I can get from that article, it looks like they're banning free P2P software, but the article doesn't make anything clear.

While I do agree that we don't get all that much good, intellectual debate in this particular forum--many strawmans and debates that go on for pages without accomplishing anything, though--I don't think SFN could attract those you listed. Not without radically changing the politics forums and pruning circular threads.

What's all this about changes to the rules here?

Whatever made you think it did indicate his opinion? All he's doing is quoting an article and saying that it changed his opinion.

Read his signature. I think it means, "A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants" but I'm not quite sure.

Oh dear. Computer nerd vs. spam king. Sounds like fun.

The point is that mutations are simply failures of RNA to match the right pyrimidines and purines together during transcription. They're not programmable. That would be difficult to manage. And the point is that they can all mutate equally, but a lot of mutations result in the cell dying or not reproducing. The best thing to do would be to make a virus that exploits a part of a cell that changes slowly, such as something that is very difficult to change and get to work right. Certain parts of a cell, like receptors, can change, leaving the cell fully functional, but other parts would have to change in exactly the right way for them to still work. Target the latter, and it works.

There are a lot of dictators in Africa. Why not write one a letter?

You can't just stick some explosives around a pile of uranium and make a nuclear bomb. It takes quite a bit of knowledge to put them in the right place for it to reach critical density when the explosives go off.

The problem is that viruses don't understand mathematics. You'd have to find a way to make it beneficial to them to mutate in that way (and remember, they'd already have to be in a host cell for them to be reproducing). They mutate when they reproduce. With viruses, the proteins controlling their reproduction go bonkers. Erm. Once the virus gets inside of the host, it doesn't matter if the host mutates or anything--the virus is already inside. And you can't predict mutations. It's a matter of if the RNA screws up or doesn't screw up.

That's not what a dirty bomb is. A dirty bomb is a conventional explosion used to disperse radioactive material. AIDS has killed more people than house fires, so why have a fire department? The Japanese aren't a seperate species.

Of course they aren't random. The cancer cells that mutate so that the virus can't get into them survive. The virus has to wait until it mutates to that it can get into the cancer cell. There is no way for it to say "the cancer cell has mutated, I should mutate to counter that" except through several generations of mutations to see what works. edit: what ecoli said

If that was possible, I think it would be bloody useful. Unfortunately I don't think it is. You just can't make a virus that's "smart" enough to think "gee, I can't get in through that receptor, so why not try going through this one over here?"

It's pretty hard to make something mutate in the same way, unless it does the same things and has the same structures. Anyways, say the cancer cells mutate so that they lose the receptor that the virus uses to get in. The virus mutates in the same way. That doesn't mean it can get in now. It has mutated in the same way, but the original mutation still negated its effect. And it's viruses, not viri.

Janus made a valid point. Don't dismiss it, you're being hypocritical.

Hope you stick around longer this time. And don't give me the credit, you're the one with the money...

You're going to reboot, or reinstall? If you reboot, it should all be there when it comes back on. If you're going to reinstall, I have no idea what do do.

That's exactly what I said.

http://www.snopes.com/rumors/pentagon.htm It's called "research."

I think the best way would be to make a nice bonfire right next to it, let it get nice and hot, and then chuck as much cold water at it as you can. It should crack some from that, then you can do it again or use another method to break it apart from the cracks.

There was a pseudoscience thread a long time ago about TV making people blink more.

http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/showthread.php?t=16739