Phi for All

To paraphrase George Carlin, her thrust was to prick holes in the stiff front erected by the porn dealers.

I enjoy your flashes of inspiration as much as you enjoy flashing us.

It's an attack on publicly-funded programs by extreme capitalists. Reduce regulations, make the public options look skimpy or draconian, and offer private solutions for EVERYTHING, even when it doesn't make sense. At least you had a much better public health system to start with. It's far worse in the US, and it's 3x the cost. Do your media have a legal obligation to inform the public truthfully? Ours haven't since 1996, and the entertainment format (along with the fact that broadcasters can also own the companies they advertise for) adds to the problems. I think this is partly why we have these controversial, toxic personalities like Boris and Donald.

My understanding is not philosophical in the least. My explanation is the mainstream one, and yours sounds like a typical misinterpretation of the word "bang" to mean an explosion from a central point. You're wrong, we're miles apart, and any ideas you have based on anything other than expansion from a hot, dense state will be incorrect wrt Big Bang Theory.

See how much you have to torture that argument to get it to fit this situation? Is your/their freedom more important than my/our health? Are you fighting for your freedom to act like an idiot?

NineTwentyEight has been banned for abusive behavior and soapboxing. Nobody is interested in your blog, this is a science discussion forum.

! Moderator Note Wow, you went off the rails quick! I think you're just too sophisticated for us here. Have a great day and stay safe!

I was thinking Amazon....

Now if only these drones could insinuate themselves into some kind of distribution chain so they could get humans to actually BUY them and have them delivered straight to their unwitting victims....

You see it as stark? On one hand, we have tens of thousands of conflicting faith-based religions describing the supernatural phenomena they worship as deities, and on the other hand we have the possibility that none of them are right. I won't make the mistake of claiming the second is the default position, but I will say the lack of evidence for god(s) makes me automatically take a "wait and see" neutrality (not quite fence-sitting, or eternally skeptical, just measuring the evidence).

I don't see how one follows on the other. Why would their respiratory requirements affect whether or not we think they exist in the first place? The real issue is more about complexity. The lifeforms we know of that "breathe" other elements (sulphur, hydrogen) are pretty simple organisms, and not the kind of species you'd expect to develop space travel. The more complex organisms we know of use oxygen in some way. Also, aliens don't need to be exactly like us in order to manipulate oxygen. Many creatures on Earth use oxygen in different ways to get what they need.

! Moderator Note A bunch of misleading and subjective posts have been split off to the Trash here.

I believe you CAN, but I don't believe you SHOULD. Scientific beliefs need to be based on trust rather than faith. All opinion is biased, that's why science.

! Moderator Note Slurs or prejudice against any group of people (or person) are prohibited. You can do better than such generalizations.

John Henke has been banned for a foul meltdown via PM after his thread was closed.

! Moderator Note The problem is not from those reading. The problem is that you can't explain what makes so much sense in your head. This is mostly because a) you made up your own definitions for lots of mainstream terms, b) you've allowed a great deal of guesswork to fill the gaps in your knowledge, and c) you keep leaping to conclusions before making sure your last steps were sound. Please, try to understand why people are posting the things they are. NOBODY IS SKIMMING. They're stumbling on science snags, picking out the flaws, hopefully the very thing that made you post your idea here. They're finding misunderstanding and misinformation and vagueness in areas where clarity and trustworthy methodology are paramount, and they're trying to let you know about it. But you claim they aren't reading, which means you really aren't listening. Eight pages of this! Imagine if someone came to you with an idea for (picking something at random) cleaning residential carpets, and right away they start talking about taking them to a facility. You start shaking your head. You know that won't work because most people have wall-to-wall, it would cost a fortune to remove it for cleaning and then replace it. They accuse you of not hearing them out, of skimming over their idea, as they continue to tell you about how many people work at their facility, and show you pictures of tropical fish, and insist they don't need any of the special tools other carpet cleaners rely on. Is the problem with you, or with them? We see a great deal of this. When someone keeps preaching an idea without listening and incorporating input from others (IOW, discussion), it's called Soapboxing. Very frustrating in a discussion, so we made it against the rules. It works better for a blog, though, so I'm going to suggest you start one somewhere. THIS is a science discussion forum. Thread closed.

But it would make someone with access to a really accurate clock almost like a god themselves.

You could make it much more scientific and pick a day from the Mayan calendar for when it will end. Then each religion can draw a time of day from the hat (earliest religions get first pick?), and pray to their god to cure the pandemic at exactly that time (Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod = 3:16 pm). Then we'd know for sure who had their prayers answered.

! Moderator Note Well, then. It's clear someone isn't ready for science discussion. When you've exhausted your blogging elsewhere and find yourself ready to come back with questions rather than trying to rearrange modern physics to suit your incredulity, please come back. But only when you're ready to listen, the crucial second part to DISCUSSION. Don't open any more threads like this where you try to preach crap. It's against the rules.

You've based your entire life's work on some misconceptions? How could you work on this your whole life and not have some of those pointed out, like mixing the speeds of light and sound, or thinking the BB was an explosion into something rather than an expansion of everything?

Start by realizing that most behavior is classified along multiple spectrums. By arbitrarily picking one aspect where you think someone else has more natural talent than you do, you're ignoring all the other aspects of existence where you may keep pace or even excel. Since we're far beyond the point where any single person could know everything about just one scientific subject, your focus should be learning everything we know about something that really interests you. Don't worry about adding to that knowledge; I think that happens naturally as you learn more about the subject. Don't force insight to come; it grows out of necessity. Perhaps your jealousy is more about feeling a need to catch up rather than feeling others are smarter. We often look at those we think of as "naturally talented" and assume everything comes easier for them, that they got some kind of head start. But learning isn't really a race. You need to know what you need to know, without knowing what for, or how much time you'll have. All you can do is find trustworthy information and learn what you can at your own pace.

This is an interesting way of putting it, but I'm not sure it's a meaningful way. A farmer might say, "FALAIR, I have had a craving for food and a want to create more". An artist would pick art, and a police officer might choose order, but to me these are different. Knowledge is more fundamental, so I understand the craving, but creating more scientific knowledge seems like a focus on the goal that ignores the journey. In learning anything, I think we create the opportunity to apply knowledge in completely new ways. It happens because we understand better with more knowledge, rather than because we set out to learn something we didn't know. But that's not the way knowledge works. It's not just the "smarter than you" people who advance knowledge. Sometimes perspective can add to knowledge, and everyone has one of those. There was a guy not too long ago that devised a way to light the inside of a simple hut during the day by using recycled two liter plastic bottles and water. Solved a major problem cheaply, and he did it because he learned about refraction of sunlight and applied it to his own circumstances. Another great way of putting it. All those people before you, collecting the total sum of human knowledge so you can start your journey up the mountain with a healthy lead. You're in the best position to learn mainstream science, we've never known this much before. Pick an area and start making sure you know the basics.

The difference, perhaps, is that scientific information written to inform is easier to assess than the same information displayed to entertain. No matter who attempts to "get it", I think it's easier for modern humans to be critical when information is written out. And I think it's easier to miss some misinformation when it's part of a "story". A big part of the entertainment format is suspension of disbelief, sort of the opposite of healthy scientific skepticism.

! Moderator Note Hopefully it will do so in a way discussing it fell short of. Thread closed.

! Moderator Note We don't talk about groups of people like that here. Educate yourself, and don't do it again.