md65536

It's in order, but it's not so mathematical.

It's also not perpetual: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_energy#Renewability_and_Sustainability "Even though geothermal power is globally sustainable, extraction must still be monitored to avoid local depletion.[40] Over the course of decades, individual wells draw down local temperatures and water levels until a new equilibrium is reached with natural flows. The three oldest sites, at Larderello, Wairakei, and the Geysers have experienced reduced output because of local depletion. Heat and water, in uncertain proportions, were extracted faster than they were replenished. If production is reduced and water is reinjected, these wells could theoretically recover their full potential." ... In Iceland I think, there is some relatively easy natural access to uh... lava I guess that naturally heats water and is used for geothermal energy production. It would surely be possible to have man-made projects that do the same thing, but the effort involved would be monumental. Just to dig all the way through the Earth's crust is a major project... I think it's been planned but not yet succeeded? So to do so and have a major energy plant on top of that is probably not yet economically or perhaps technologically feasible. However, natural sources of geothermal energy are often tapped, I think.

You're making a common crackpot-like mistake of criticising the scientific understanding of something (time), while demonstrating that you don't understand it. Who treats time almost as if it has mass??? What does that even mean? Who treats it as an object with existence besides its measurement? You're also making a common philosopher mistake of coming up with a way to think about a concept that ignores all of the functionality of the existing definition. You dismissed the analogy to distance, but time is treated very much like distance in science. It involves the ordering of events, but it is also a metric where the time between events has consistent measurements. So yes, if you remove the "measurement" aspect of time, which is what gives it its definition in science, then you can say what you want about it (it only exists in the present or whatever) but you must realize that you've ignored everything that is useful about the concept of time in science, and replaced it with some vague philosophical thoughts that might be interesting to think about or lead to new ideas, but are not useful like the scientific definition of time is. Sure, but everything can act as a recorder of events. The tree remains on the forest floor, as an effect of it falling. There are atoms in a rock that only exist because they were made in a star that exploded. You can say "That star only exists in the past" but its existence is still indicated by the rock's present existence. Now you'll have to define what it means to be "real" in the past. Since this star, or this sound, no longer exists, can you meaningfully say that whether it happened or not doesn't matter? And if so, what does it mean that the rock, or the memory, is there now, if the events that caused it are dismissed? Or if not, in what sense is the past event not real?

I have no clue about freezing point (except that the fresher the water the higher the freezing point, and melting of freshwater glaciers can lead to a negative feedback effect... I think... but I don't know how much). I assume that salt content is the only significant factor, and I've never heard anyone else propose otherwise before, but it's an interesting hypothesis that could be investigated. Soot and pollutants can lower ice albedo and change melting. Here's one project that is researching it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Snow_Project http://darksnowproject.org/

If you simulate matter with some simple assumptions (initial speed, distribution etc) and known astronomical mechanics, you can end up with common galaxy shapes. I don't think fractal algorithms are necessary, though fractals show up in nature a lot for natural reasons. How would you propose that a spherical galaxy could form, and would the shape be stable? I personally cannot imagine what simple initial conditions could lead to one.

I don't get how it could be used. Do you have a specific example with values for all the variables/functions?

http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/animalkingdom/ss/Giant-Snake-In-Delray-Fla.htm "there are no obvious signs of image tampering. According to one anecdotal report, the object in the photo is actually a roadside sculpture located in Alstonville, NSW (approximately eight hours south of Branxton). It appears the mystery of the long, long snake may have finally been solved on January 27, 2012 by a Reddit.com member who claims to have visited Alstonville and photographed the object from a different angle." Pic: http://urbanlegends.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=urbanlegends&cdn=newsissues&tm=27&f=00&su=p284.13.342.ip_p504.6.342.ip_&tt=29&bt=3&bts=7&zu=http%3A//p.twimg.com/AkJFG-lCAAAJHZ6.jpg%3Alarge Not at all. Edit: http://fotoforensics.com/analysis.php?id=3595bd21ebf1d68c02e802f6e3065a467e2ca51a.50789 The error level around the head/raised section appears different than the rest of the snake. It's possible that the head was raised with image manipulation

I agree, I think it would only work if it was implemented in a lax and painless-for-all way. If it's already true that long posts are mostly ignored, it might suffice to simply point out that it happens and that writing an abstract (among other things) would help get more interested readers. Perhaps even a thread like the "So, you've got a new theory..." one, titled in some way to encourage people to follow it, so that it is more of a helpful tip than a rule, might work. "How to get more people to consider your idea" or something... Of course, effective communication benefits the readers too, but it wouldn't hurt if the writer felt the encouragement was for their sake, and not "yet another rule of the scientific dogma" etc. It could also be pointed out that a post might be replied to or critiqued on the abstract alone. But then people should be encouraged to fix their abstracts, and after a few replies it might be out of date. That could cause problems. I see abstracts as something that "sells" a paper to those that might be interested, something that a large audience would read, with the goal of letting the few readers who might read a paper know if they should bother reading it. That's what would be particularly useful for the Speculations posts. While it should be expected that most people won't bother reading past the abstract of a bad post, at least if there are interesting posts they might not get lost among the bad. It's very hard to simply discuss a speculative idea, because it's so vague and everyone can go in completely different directions with it. Amateur theoretical scientists seem to like figuring out our own ideas as much as we can, and unfortunately the average quality is not very good, but I think it's still good to have a place like Speculations where we can try to voice our ideas. It might encourage cargo-cult science, but if the purpose of an abstract is made explicit, to the point that "faking" an abstract is difficult, it still might be a good thing. Hm... I suppose it could become commonplace to try to write an interesting abstract with conclusions that aren't supported by the rest of the text.

True, but the main questions left to research can still be summarized. If someone simply introduces a topic and wants to discuss it, an abstract wouldn't be necessary. If the topic is just introduced the post would be short? It's when we write paragraphs worth of ideas/reasoning/conclusions and want to discuss that, where it would be useful.

Abstract: Posting a new idea or speculation with an included abstract might encourage members to write more effectively, while getting more readers to bother checking out their idea. However, might it just be a waste of time? --- Would it be useful to require an abstract at the top of topics that discuss some new idea, or introduce a pet theory? I'm especially thinking of Speculations forum, where most(?) posts seem to be walls of text long, and may or may not ramble to the point. I don't have the concentration to bother reading through any of the posts to see if any are good. Does anyone? I assume there are a lot of good posts lost in the sea of words. Are there many people who bother reading speculative topics? I think many more people would check out a writer's ideas if there was a small summary of it at the top of their topic, so it would benefit both reader and writer. A requirement for abstracts might include the following: - An explanation of what an abstract is, in the most lax form, requiring maybe simply that they summarize the key conclusions or main idea they want to discuss. - Recommended max word length. - Explanation that their post is not expected to be read unless the abstract sells it. - Links to help in writing one. Or would this just be another hoop for writers to jump through? Would the readers end up having to critique the abstracts, while writers who may not be able to express their ideas well may also not be able to write an effective abstract, wasting everyone's time while the writer doesn't even get around to having their idea discussed? Also perhaps it is fine to leave it as is and let posts be evaluated by people who have better reading comprehension than me.

Upvotes are encouraging. I didn't say that was the motive, let alone only motive, for the upvote. By the way, ad hominem is an informal logical fallacy. I think I used it correctly, arguably. I suggest you drop this now, as you encouraged me to do. I will drop it too, but it's unfair to tell me to drop it and then continue arguing against me. I have never seen such strong defence of making fun of someone. I think it's sad, but as others disagree with me I'll leave it alone. Edit: Sorry for once again being a dick. I've gotten frustrated by not getting my point across and strayed off course. My point wasn't that there was any malice here (I don't think there was), just that I think that the types of arguments that wouldn't be permitted against mainstream science (like appeal to ridicule or authority) should not be used against speculations. I think that getting used to using bad arguments in defence of science weakens our ability to do science properly.

OP didn't post as a joke, the "light-hearted banter" is at OP's expense and not shared. I'm not defending the paper, I know it's wrong (because it's been refuted, not because it's not published in Official Journal of Science or because OP obviously lacks Nobel prize-worthy respectability and rigour). I'm calling out the use of ad hominems that are attempting to further "humorously" discredit the work when it doesn't even need to be discredited. Rule 4 is "The use of logical fallacies to prove a point is prohibited." This doesn't just apply to one side of the argument. This bugs me because I see it A LOT on this site (that bad arguments in support of the "right" side are just fine) and often the "fairly accurate inferences" used to discredit people, are wrong.

Oh, I didn't know that making fun of contributors by association was acceptable here. But I guess one shouldn't expect anything better from replies on scienceforums.net (ha ha). It's still a logical fallacy. I am trying to discourage it. All the upvotes suggest that it is encouraged here.

These replies are worthless because they're posted on an internet forum site that ignorant people can post on. Or... we could judge writing by its contents and not where it's posted. These are similar to ad hominem attacks, and are irrelevant. The original argument doesn't make any claim of peer review or meeting high standards, so there's no reason to refute it.

It's not completely sensible to imagine wildly speculative ideas (like describing time travel without even suggesting a mechanism or scientific principle of how it would be done), and then draw conclusions from them. You're basically assuming so much, that the conclusions are all assumption. Conservation laws don't cover what you're describing. There's little point in saying "if time worked completely different from what we know, conservation must still work completely like what we know." In quantum mechanics, the behavior of subatomic particles can include stuff that is backward in time. Some scientists, I forget who, imagined the idea that every electron in the universe, for example, is the same single electron, basically going forward and back (as a positron) through time effectively infinitely many times. It's a far-fetched speculative idea, but it is not inconsistent with conservation laws.

Related, slashdot has a recent story about things computer programmers ought to learn: http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/10/08/0210210/what-are-the-genuinely-useful-ideas-in-programming This doesn't tell you how to learn about them... but you can read books on the topics, or google them, or google which books are good. Often if you don't need to be an expert you can read a book on a topic and copy ideas out of the book without understanding them very well. If you're just starting out you might want to focus just on fundamental ideas of programming and practice making simple programs in a popular language. Then of course, depending on what you focus on, some languages and topics are more important than others. I'm more interested in computer graphics and physics, so I would add 3d math and numerical analysis (boring but useful) to the lists. Some of the worst code I've seen by professional colleagues involved trying to handle angles in 3d with 2d thinking and math, and another case not understanding the idea of linear interpolation and just hacking around the problem. Yet, the bad solutions worked good enough and these people continued working in the industry (though they weren't star programmers or anything). I myself wrote terrible code not understanding 3d math and also due to not understanding object-oriented programming/data structures, and only learned some of how to do it better after years of experience (was never a star either).

Often jobs require any degree because all degrees have things in common, like the ability to get things done and especially you learn how to learn. But if they don't require that they may not care. Often you can get a programming task done with a well-designed, elegant, beautiful solution, or you can do the same job with terrible, brittle, sloppy code. Again some employers won't care. Here are some things you would get in a comp sci degree that you might not get just learning the different languages: - Learning how to learn and how to figure out the things you'll need to implement something. - Problem solving, code design skills. - Algorithms (how to solve a computational problem the right way). - A lot of the boring details on how to do things right and rigorously (the "science" part of computing science), that you might not bother to learn on your own. Also on the other hand, getting into a job and actually working with a team and their code---at least as long as they're competent---will teach you other details too that you might not learn in school. No, some employers will just care that you can get a program to do what they want, and they don't care if it's quality code. Others want higher quality but care only about ability or experience, and there are a lot of self-taught computer geniuses. Many jobs will require a degree though.

This is a duplicate thread. I've moved my reply to the other thread.

Oops, you're right. Won't the answer come out the same though? In fact couldn't you rotate both by any same angle, and the displacement will come out the same? In my example I've mistakenly rotated the vectors 180 degrees, making them backwards with respect to x and y. If you name the coordinates (North, East, Height) instead of (x,y,z) then you could leave the angles as they are, and just do North = cos(theta)*magnitude East = sin(theta)*magnitude

How do you get access to the nodes in the lists?

Just find the locations of the vehicles as vectors, subtract one from the other, and find the magnitude of that vector. Eg. Step 1) I'd convert to typical angles (counter clockwise from x-axis) just to match your diagram, but you don't have to do this. angle = -theta - pi/2 x = cos( angle ) * magnitude_from_origin y = sin( angle ) * magnitude_from_origin z = elevation 2) displacement_vector = Loc2 - Loc1 or dx = x2 - x1, dy = y2 - y1, dz = z2 - z1 3) displacement = magnitude( displacement_vector ) = sqrt( dx^2 + dy^2 + dz^2 ) I've been sloppy with variable names, I hope the context is clear enough?

It's not that peer review is flawed, but that peer review wasn't even done with most of the journals that Bohannon tested. As other commenters have pointed out, it's not a problem specific to open access journals, even though they're the only ones tested. There is clearly a problem with journals not doing peer review; there is no data given on closed journals. It is probably safer to propose that open access journals make it easier to submit using fake credentials, than that problems with not doing peer review are specific to open access journals.

Why am I even assuming that God exists and said anything though? It's probably a good argument for people who (as you suggested) assume that God wrote the bible, and perhaps assume that the bible is true because God is an honest god. But to an inerrantist who believes a) God exists and wrote the bible, b) God has deceived people and admitted to it, and c) the bible is true, your argument probably won't sway them because even if you think those are an unbelievable set of beliefs, they're not logically inconsistent. Ultimately it comes down to what you're assuming to begin with, and there's no point in asking someone to assume something slightly different than their beliefs, to show that some modified set of beliefs doesn't make much sense. If someone starts out believing that the bible is true regardless of what other bad things God may have done, then saying "but God lied before!" doesn't change that. Would you doubt everything you ever learned, if you found out that every teacher told a lie at some point in their lives? And if one tries to think purely logically and avoid as much assumption as possible, and question the source of every purported fact, its hard to make sense of any mythology. Ultimately these beliefs start with assumptions and faith in those assumptions. But then again!, if you question all knowledge, you end up needing to assume *something* to believe anything. There must be several hidden implicit assumptions involved in simply believing that anything even exists at all! Edit: You were talking about "trust" and I ended up shifting focus to "belief". So I guess there's more to it than just belief. People believe they can trust whom they trust, but there's also submission to whom they consider a greater authority. As in, "God or my drill sergeant tells me who to listen to and their judgement supersedes my own so I will not question what I'm told." I think that for the same reason that a lot of people feel there is absolute right and wrong and don't question it, they would not question whether their god is right or wrong, or trustworthy or not. But it's a better question than my answer gives credit for. Too much thinking about questions like this I imagine would unravel beliefs, and I think believers and nonbelievers don't (or can't or won't?) think about these things the same way.

There's nothing inconsistent with believing all your statements together, and that "God has only good things planned for me". If you can assume that the bible is the word of God, with no evidence, you can also assume that the bible is the truth. I think those who are skeptical of a god (of its existence or of its honesty) would be interested in your argument, but people who have reason to believe or to teach the bible probably just prefer to accept it as absolute truth.