Cap'n Refsmmat

Air resistance will very shortly lower your horizontal velocity component, since gravity isn't helping that out any. Vertical terminal velocity relies on gravity to oppose the air resistance, but that doesn't happen horizontally. Your horizontal component should decrease to 0 rapidly.

Why should these factors make them healthier?

Yeah, ozone behaves differently in light absorption and scattering -- hence its UV-blocking powers. There are charts you can find that give the absorption coefficients of a gas over a wide range of wavelengths.

In metric. Cups are around 240 mL in the US, but it varies a good bt.

Yes and yes. The sky is blue because the gases that make up the atmosphere tend to reflect blue wavelengths more strongly than others; when you look up at the sky, you're seeing this diffuse reflected blue light. At sunset, when the light has to pass through the atmosphere horizontally (and hence travels through a larger distance of air), everything is lit in orange and reds -- because the blue light has been scattered out. When light travels through a gas or transparent solid, it's often absorbed and re-emitted by individual atoms, and the properties of the electric field change with the property of the medium, altering the speed of the light. The speed is never greater than the speed of light in a vacuum.

The waves can be absorbed by atoms or reflected off of them. Light waves with the right amount of energy can be absorbed entirely by an atom, their energy used to bump an electron up to the next energy level. Light waves with the wrong amount of energy can bounce off. The "friction," then, is the fact that the light is being absorbed by atoms in its way. This is the same mechanism that makes light warm things up -- it is absorbed, transferring its energy, which is felt as heat.

The medium is the electric and magnetic fields. Electromagnetic waves are fluctuations in those fields. They're also particles called photons, simultaneously. This may help: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave-particle_duality

I have a Pentel Click 0.7mm mechanical pencil that I've managed to keep for the past year and a half that serves me well. As for pens, I actually have three fountain pens at the moment, although only two are properly functional. (I managed to damage one by dropping it nib-down on the hard floor in high school.) I found one in my classroom last semester and nobody claimed it. These two are the working ones: http://www.pensandleather.com/images/products/detail/LamyALStar029.jpg Fountain pens are incredibly nice to write with and if you've used a Bic all your life, you're missing out. As for keyboards, I don't think you can argue with Das Keyboard: http://www.daskeyboard.com/model-s-professional/ Mechanical key switches like the Model M, USB hub, and a model with no keycap labels to scare your friends with. No extra function keys or anything, but it's awesome anyway.

The Ethics boards were never closed. We originally had a Philosophy and Religion forum and a Biomedical Ethics forum. P&R was closed. Biomedical Ethics eventually morphed into the Ethics board you see now. P&R was closed because of anger and vitriol, not off-topicness.

http://en.wikipedia....nkel_set_theory http://en.wikipedia....eano_arithmetic Er. I'm a student physicist. swansont is a professional physicist. I should hope we know what we're talking about. Mathematics is a logical system, not a series of logical statements. Physics leverages that system to describe relationships in nature. For example: [math]KE = \frac{1}{2} mv^2[/math] Mathematics explains what the action of squaring a number means, what multiplication is and what its properties are, and how fractions work. Physics claims that this is an equation for kinetic energy. If it so happens that kinetic energy is not equal to [imath]\frac{1}{2} mv^2[/imath], fundamental mathematics will not have changed -- we have not changed the definition of multiplication or the nature of exponentiation. Hence you cannot construct a valid theory by discarding the rules of mathematics and making your own. That's like basing a theory on the idea that 2 + 2 must be 5.

I suppose the argument goes something like this: If I lose my high-paying job and get depressed over it and mope at home all day, the solution to the problem is to get me a new high-paying job, not medication. Also, hugs are cheaper than drugs.

I have an infinitely large hard drive I invented recently. Unfortunately it requires infinitely long block addresses to use, so I'll need an infinitely large computer to use it. Anyone up for a challenge?

I don't think all cases of clinical depression can be summed up as "bad thing happens to person, they get sad, we give them drugs." In fact, the DSM-IV diagnostic criteria specifically excludes cases where the symptoms are a result of bereavement. Also, one must remember that doctors don't go out aggressively finding people who are sad and giving them drugs. Patients present themselves because they can no longer handle the problem themselves. Of course, drug company advertising probably leads to patients expecting antidepressants in cases when they are not clinically warranted, but the aggressive psychiatrist model doesn't hold up.

You're conflating physics and mathematics. The system of mathematics used by physics has not been changed. The physics has. Mathematics is not magic.

Which mathematics is in direct conflict with observed science?

I don't think you can generalize the experiences of particular people to all of psychiatry; there are certainly parts of it that work, though perhaps not as well as we'd hope. That said, there's a lot of evidence that some psychiatric treatments don't work nearly as well as we originally thought, and possibly that they're more harm than good. I'd recommend Robert Whitaker's book for those who want to read more about it. There's also a lot of evidence for certain psychotherapy treatments. Don't throw everything out at once.

Actually, I think the best evidence you can give is a valid US patent granted for your invention. Perpetual motion machine patents require a working model to be submitted to the Patent and Trademark Office for testing. If they grant it, presumably your invention is real.

Indeed. One must research whether taking guns away just makes people use knives more often. Which is why it's unfortunate that there's no funding for this kind of research.

Here's the QuickTime video directly: http://www.silvermix.us/thepeacemakerevidence.mov

Your video is very grainy and poorly lit. I can't see anything of what you've pointed out. Could you take better pictures of the setup and attach them here?

Not entirely true. In the case of New Testament studies, portions of the New Testament, such as Paul's undisputed epistles and Acts, are considered to be useful historical tools. Paul's epistles were likely written by Paul himself, so they are useful as historical records of Paul's activities and beliefs. Acts is used to fill in the gaps. Now, if you want to ask about Jesus' life, the four Gospels will give you contradictory and incomplete information, so they're regarded as sort of a vague guide with frequent errors. The Old Testament, particularly the books on the history of the Israelites, is useful for other reasons. Archaeology and other ancient sources give us a decent picture of Israel's history, and the books of the Old Testament record the ideological and religious reaction to major events in that history. 1 Maccabees, for example, is a book in the Apocrypha (i.e. Catholic Bible but not Protestant Bible), and was written during the Maccabean kingdom after the Jewish revolt against the Seleucids. One can't trust it as a source of detailed information about the revolt, but it tells us a lot about Jewish religious reactions to their domination and freedom. (When your entire religion is based on your God protecting your people in the Chosen Land, being conquered by another empire leaves you with some important religious questions.) Belief in magic was incredibly common. I think the more popular reaction to someone turning water into wine would be questioning the source of their magical powers -- they claim to get this power from God, but surely they're a heretic inhabited by a demon!

With 99.99% efficiency you get 7,000 bounces. If the mirrors are on the Earth and Moon, that's just a few days, and that's ignoring atmospheric scattering and diffraction, which will spread your light beam out and make you lose most of it.

Sure. But if guns were not so immediately available, would angry or psychotic people be deterred? If it took longer and cost more to buy a gun, would the average pissed-off dude give up and calm down before being able to get the gun? If we ban guns, will gun crime decrease along with general gun ownership? These are all valid questions that decide how gun control should be approached, but there's not much research.

As I recall from my waves and optics course, you can get about 93% efficiency in a mirror -- that is, it'll reflect only 93% of the light hitting it. That can perhaps be improved a bit, but even with 95% efficiency, after fourteen bounces or so you've lost half your light.

It's not hard to find evidence that you're more likely to be shot in certain places. But that's not the point of the article. It's difficult to do research on whether owning a gun increases your survival rate in certain crimes, whether it makes you safer in home invasions, whether it helps prevent mass shootings, and so on.