Phi for All

! Moderator Note You were asked NOT to "follow-up" on this unless you had some extraordinary evidence to offset your extraordinary claims. More videos isn't going to cut it. So no, there will be no "sticking" with this footage. You failed last time with this type of footage, and there is no reason to suspect you will be any more successful this time, especially since you continue to claim things like "self-luminosity" and unnatural morphing abilities. Provide some evidence to match your claims, we're not going to let this thread go into multiple pages this time without it.

QFT. And this shows me that it's really a strawman argument that SO many people make here. Everyone has ideas, but cranks persist in arguing for them in spite of counter evidence.

... and did NOT follow a proper protocol for dealing with those infected. I'm still reeling from the incredibly ignorant approach taken in Texas. You have one major preventative method available, avoid contact with ANY fluids from a victim, but you let your nurses work without completely covering their skin?! Unbelievable for a modern hospital, but a big part of the reason I don't think healthcare should be using a for-profit business model. It fosters cheapness that can cost lives in the long run.

Let me clarify a few things, hopefully without being too off-topic. I promise to bring them around to the OP. I needed to moderate this thread pretty heavily to begin with, and I took an approach that didn't sit well with Lance_Granger. I apologize, it happens, we don't mean to chase anyone away, but the majority of members prefer a well-regulated discussion, so we have our rules. When Lance_Granger ignored my modnotes repeatedly, I recused myself, not for impartiality but because I wanted another staff member to take over in hopes of a better match. So I'm just a member in this discussion, but we still don't want a Wild West brawl going on. We discuss science here, and that means criticism of ideas. If you're not willing to entertain the possibility you may be wrong, then all you're doing is preaching at us, or soapboxing. That's not how science works, and it's not how discussion works. This is a far cry from formal peer review, but then it's also a far cry from formal presentation of a scientific hypothesis. It's what we've got and it seems to be interesting enough to put us in the top five science discussion sites worldwide. We don't attack people here, we attack ideas, with the hopes of making the ideas stronger or showing them to be wrong. Again, a big part of the scientific method. Leave your ego at home, it has no place here, that's what everyone likes to see. We don't know you, but we know your idea, so that's what we're talking about. It's essential that we don't tie ourselves to our ideas. We've all had dumb/bad/wrong ideas, but that doesn't make US dumb/bad/wrong. It makes us human. I've tried very hard to show where your concept is weak, Lance_Granger, and needs some work. These are the parts that are trivially falsified, like your misconceptions about evolution. You can't ignore the cracks in the foundation of your idea, calling them nitpicky, and expect to build anything substantial on top of it. Experience tells me it's pointless to continue to discuss this without fixing what's wrong. I hope you can see that. Thank you so much, arc, this is good solid evidence, and I know Lance_Granger really means it when he compliments the info you've given. I'm curious to know, however, if what you've said has given him any new insights on his idea. This is really the true test of a scientific mind, the ability to look at real evidence and judge its merit with regard to an hypothesis. So I'll ask directly. Lance_Granger, do you still stick by your hypothesis 100%, or have you begun to modify it? If so, how so? This also ties back to before the Earth had any water or life on it. Are there any other living organisms that start out dead, slowly gain life, and then cycle back and forth between practically frozen/dead and abundantly living?

Is this all you're going to do, make assertions with nothing to support them? This is a science discussion site, not your personal soapbox. You need to start providing some evidence beyond your opinions. I'm guessing you didn't read any of the rules that help us make these discussions productive.

So now you sink to Argument from Ridicule and ad hominem. Good luck with that.

Yet you told us all to think about it before we answered. You didn't tell us it wasn't to be taken seriously. What other parts of your idea aren't to be taken seriously? So, in other words, your answer is fairly poor and you'd rather we didn't dwell on it? It seems like you want to distance yourself from the whole mountain = baby Earth proposal. I get that, but you seem to be implying that your answer actually helped your idea. I don't think it did.

Whereas I know exactly where to begin to educate you in evolutionary theory. In fact, I've already begun. But since you don't seem to accept my attempts, I'll just steer you to the best site on the net for unlearning what you think you know about it: http://www.talkorigins.org/ No. No! I'm saying that science uses theory, not proof. Despite what you've been told, scientists don't WANT to "prove" things. They want the best current explanations for natural phenomena, the ones supported by the most evidence. This distinction is a big part of the scientific methodology. It keeps us searching rather than assuming we know some kind of "truth". Does that make sense to you? OK. How about explaining your position again on how the planet reproduces itself by throwing mountains into space. Yet you claim I'm wrong about evolution. Where did you get the science education that tells you humans are the pinnacle of social animals? Because they're not. A hive of bees gets along better than a similar number of humans. Or is that just being nitpicky?

I see. I'm nitpicky but you're not, and you don't want to talk about that anymore. That was a few questions ago. I wanted to know if you thought all planets were living organisms. Water wasn't part of the parameters of that question. I think I have my answer though. It looks like you think Earth is a living organism because of all the life on it, which seems to you to behave like our own biological systems. Is this right? Evolution is a process, with many mechanisms. It's the change in allele frequency within a population over time. There is no "natural selection evolution". There is no "social evolution". There are no "forms of evolution". Not being nitpicky saying this either. I'm attempting to correct a misunderstanding that may be keeping you from fully understanding what it is. Please don't fall into the trap of thinking that our tools and technology, products of our high intelligence, opposable thumbs, communication skills and cooperative nature, are unnatural. They're what we've developed to allow our adaptive capabilities to flourish. But I agree, that's a topic for a different thread. I'll be happy to discuss why everything humans do is just as natural as what every other animal does. In a different thread. Science doesn't try to "prove" anything (proof is for maths), and I'm not even trying to say your "thoughts are completely wrong". Again, that's a strawman of my position, I've been very specific about where your idea falls down and needs some support. At this point, I'm just trying to show where you've misunderstood some science. You're a bit defensive, and I guess that's understandable since you've obviously thought about this a lot. But make no mistake, parts of what you've said ARE a right or wrong situation. You're wrong about the science I've specifically mentioned, or at the very least you're disagreeing with mainstream science. You can't rewrite evolutionary theory without some extraordinary evidence to support you. I'm willing to drop the anthropomorphism angle since you seem to take such exception to it. I'll ignore the dictionary definition in this regard and just agree that what you meant is not what I read. So if I have the opinion that the sky is colored in black and white squares like a chess board, that opinion is neither right nor wrong? How about my opinion that my thumb is bigger than Cleveland, Ohio, because it completely covers that city on the map?

This is an example of the Strawman logical fallacy. Nobody argued that you were claiming the Earth walks upright, or that it has human personalities, or that it was a sentient being, but you're defending your arguments as if I did. In other words, you're choosing to ignore my real argument and attacking a strawman argument because it's easier. Anthropomorphism is attributing human characteristics to anything that isn't a human, and that's exactly what you're doing by saying: Also, you show some misunderstandings about evolution when you say: As I mentioned before, Earth as a planet isn't dependent at all on water (was that one of my "great points?"). Many planets don't have any, but still are planets. Also, humans aren't the "most evolved species on the planet". That's not how evolution works. There's no pinnacle of species development that everything is striving towards, no linear path to a certain goal. We're certainly not the most stable species, nor the most specialized. Sharks and crocs are more stable, while an anteater is more highly specialized. I also disagree that we can't survive in water. We don't have gills, but we have high intelligence, advanced tool use, really advanced cooperative skills, and incredible communication capabilities. Put those together and we can survive in water when we need to. Finally, it's disappointing that you consider so many of my arguments to be "nitpicky". Imo, this shows that you're not really interested in getting this right, just that you want to BE right. I had hoped that you came to a science discussion forum to hone your idea among peers, which includes looking rationally at the possibility your idea may be wrong (like the vast majority of ideas are).

fiveworlds has been suspended for another week, this time for hijacking mainstream threads with speculative ideas. Apologies to any students who trusted those posts to be accepted science.

We can if you're willing to take all comments on board, and not just the ones that agree with you. That becomes preaching or soapboxing, and discussion ends right there. The most obvious criticism here is that you start with a "perhaps", an observation that Earth's processes "seem similar" to those of a living body, and then you move to other examples that also "seem similar", and you end up concluding that Earth is indeed a living organism. All that "seeming" is NOT evidence, it's just a loosely similar pattern, something humans are exceedingly good at spotting, even when they're essentially meaningless, like animal shapes in the clouds. At this point, you haven't gone into the weeds yet. You're still skeptical about the Star Core concept. But then you make an unacceptable leap of faulty logic by saying, "Yes, the Earth is living and here is why". The proceeding list you give is just more "seeming similar". The Earth doesn't need air to breathe. Before cyanobacteria evolved on the planet, there was no oxygen and all life survived anaerobically. The Earth was just fine, but would have been dead according to your criteria. Same thing with water. Earth didn't start out with water, so if it needs water to live, how did it survive for millions of years without it? Except it's extremely different. It just seems similar. You make too many assertions that are incorrect, like "as a result the dinosaurs died as well". Not all the dinosaurs died out, we still have plenty of living creatures that share a common ancestry with them, like all the birds you see around. Anthropomorphic comparisons are easy to make, and appear to help us find common ground with various elements of our environment. It can be beneficial if you don't take it to the extremes you have here. A whole bunch of "seems similar" isn't the same as "they're identical". I'm curious, do you feel the same way about the other planets we know?

I think the best unification of science and religion is humanism. Since there are so many gods worshiped around the world with nothing truly substantial to differentiate them from each other (at least regarding their existence), it seems logical to ignore them all until one or more of them decides to do something observable and testable and predictable. That way we can focus on what we can be sure of, our own existence within the universe we share with the life around us. If faith is a strong belief in something based solely on gut feelings, something we can't possibly know with a reasonable amount of certainty, I prefer not to use faith as part of my belief system. I want something I can trust.

You're right, of course. The last time we had similar restrictions, everyone's lawns withered. It's ugly, but they'll come back, unlike dead people. And a certain percentage of the people will hate the look so much they'll replace their greedy lawns with something more sustainable, and beautiful, imo. When you think about it, lawns are kind of dumb. You work so hard to make them grow so you can cut them down every week.If you don't have kids to play on them, lawns are pretty wasteful.

I think they're only that shape just before they fall off an eyelash. They round out when falling. I'm sure they'd assume true raindrop shape if they fell far enough. I hope this isn't off-topic for the discussion, since this is more about what happens when water hits rather than when it's falling, but I found this very interesting:

! Moderator Note We're pretty patient here... until we're not. I asked you not to respond to modnotes, since it takes the discussion off-topic. Your OP is no different from those who are pushing their own agenda. I hope you can see that I have no history with you that would allow me to assume the best. I also hope you can appreciate that the staff are all volunteers who've agreed to enforce rules designed by the Administrators and members over more than a decade. You did agree to follow those rules when you joined. Please take a deep breath. A little perspective may be needed to understand how your methodology is hurting your part in this discussion. AGAIN, please report this modnote and another member of the staff will discuss your grievances. Do not take your own thread off-topic again.

! Moderator Note We get a lot of people who show up only to push traffic to their blogs. That's not our function. I'll allow this link because you refer to its information, but many members are not going to click it. If you have a relevant citation from your blog, please paste it here as part of the discussion. But please don't use your own work to support itself. Also, it's not good science to redefine words you wish others to understand. As Strange pointed out, you seem to be using your own concept to support itself because you've distorted meanings to match what you're talking about. Fallacious, circular reasoning, not supportive at all. Don't respond to this modnote. If you object to it, please use the Report Post function.

! Moderator Note Rule violation trifecta! One thread per topic, please. Please don't use us to advertise other sites, especially those with even more advertising. Please don't post non-mainstream concepts in the mainstream sections. Thread moved to Speculations, please take the time to read the special rules that govern that section. Have a great day and welcome!

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Ah, that explains the enhanced forearm muscles.

Navy training. Swanson, T is how he had to fill out five years worth of forms..

Teardrops are the imagery I've always heard, not pears. I think lots of folks associate rain with sadness and melancholy. Rain makes me happy, like the tasty brioche bun whose shape they share.

Where would you find a GMO apple? Iirc, if the Arctic variety is forced to bear a GMO label, it will be because it's materially different from other varieties. I don't know for certain, but I would assume that means nutritionally different as well. Although it makes sense that any differences nutritionally would most likely be in the GMO apple's favor, like more antioxidants that get ingested. FWIW, there's no difference nutritionally between organic apples and non-GMO apples. Same amounts of potassium, carbs, fiber and sugars. The differences most people cite between them aren't reflected nutritionally.

I have my sprinkler system set up very efficiently, and I check the forecasts to see if I should poke the "Rain Delay" button that stops the system for 24 hours. I've sent complaint letters to the city where I live asking them to figure out how to stop their sprinklers on rainy days, to no avail. Sometimes citizens have a more conservation-oriented outlook than municipalities. That said, I was kind of shocked when I realized I was leaving the water on after wetting my toothbrush. Not a huge waste, but a stupid one. And I must have been doing it for years because I still have to force myself to remember to shut it off until I'm done and need to rinse. Also, in the summer when I shower (no baths!), I run the water just enough to get wet, then shut it off and soap up, turning it back on just to rinse off the soap. But in the winter the hot water just feels too good so I leave it on the whole time (still just 5-6 minutes either way). Since my house is usually the same temperature no matter the season, it must be a psychological thing.

! Moderator Note OK, 7 pages is more than enough time to provide adequate support for an idea, if such support exists. None has been forthcoming, so the thread will be closed per Speculation section rules. Don't open this topic again unless you can provide some tangible evidence for it.