Phi for All

I requested it from the library. I'll let you know, thanks for the recommendation.

Our attraction to what we fear is definitely part of it, but I think it's mainly what is being exploited and then justified as "reporting the news in depth". To me it seems more akin to creating computer viruses so you can sell programs that fix them, or any other protection racket where you charge someone to protect them from damage you'll do if they don't. If you don't pay attention to the news of mass killings, you won't be able to spot the next mass killer copycatting the last mass killing they saw on the news.

The brain requires the correct balance of water to minerals, and it will maintain this ratio (robbing water from other parts of the body) for quite a while even if the rest of the body is dehydrated. You would have plenty of symptoms to warn you that you're dehydrated long before brain dehydration could occur. You'd get dry mouth and eye sockets well before you'd get seizures and brain damage. On the other hand, you do feel lethargic when dehydrated. How much of that is due to the brain telling the body to stop exerting itself to conserve water is up for debate, I guess. At what point can it be said to be affecting your brain to remain stationary as opposed to going out to search for some water?

Personally, I can't fathom why more people aren't up in arms about some of the actions we're condoning in this country. The media should inform only, and anyone who thinks they aren't being influenced by the for-profit foundation of modern media is fooling themselves. FOX News won a court battle to allow them to lie and call it news. By reporting in the sensationalistic way they do, the media is sowing the seeds for their next sensationalistic story. If we found out that someone was starting exaggerated rumors of home burglaries in the area to help promote their home security business, we'd want their heads on a platter. Why don't we feel the same about the media? I feel the same way when Congress stands in the way of something the country needs based on partisan bickering, like the 2011 snafu on the debt ceiling that resulted in the US credit rating being downgraded (which cost us billions extra in future borrowing). Why shouldn't they be tried as traitors for such a willful act against this country?

Great to have you back, Lance! Remember when CNN introduced the 24/7 news cycle? One case I remember in particular was when Susan Smith killed her two boys back in 1991. Within a week of her admission of guilt CNN was reporting on two other cases where mothers had killed their children, making it seem like an epidemic. The truth was, those other cases were geographically and chronologically separated by quite a bit. There was no real journalistic reason to tie them together. But CNN's ratings went off the charts. They had discovered the power of databasing stories from all over the country, all over the world. They could imply correlations without actually stating them, and that made viewers reluctant to switch channels, the ultimate goal of any televised media program. They had discovered a business reason to tie disparate stories together and journalism has died a bit more every year since. So I think this is mostly why we care about these mass shootings. We've been conditioned that an abundance of concern and short-term reaction will possibly help us prevent something similar from occurring in our locale. Politicians know they'll get lots of air time and be seen as reactive and concerned. And the media tacitly promises a lucrative stage for anyone who decides to grab their 15 minutes of fame and get rid of some of their stockpiled ammo at the same time.

! Moderator Note immortal, as John Cuthber said, you need to either back up your assertions or accept that you don't have any evidence and STOP MAKING STATEMENTS AS IF THEY ARE ESTABLISHED FACT. Your account is currently under staff review. You have failed to provide adequate support for your claims on multiple occasions, which is against the rules you agreed to when you joined.

Alternately, any battery source that can heat a single strand of steel wool red-hot (wrapped around wire leads) will work. I've ignited black powder remotely that way before.

I think it was badly worded. Washing your hands isn't OC, washing them repeatedly is. Praying isn't OC unless you're praying all the time about every perceived sin or wish. And maybe not even then, although I think it would be OC if you couldn't NOT pray if you did something you'd normally pray about.

! Moderator Note Personal attacks are against the rules you agreed to when you joined. As this is your first post here, I don't like to assume you joined only to troll, so you have a second chance. We attack the idea here, NOT the person with the idea.

! Moderator Note We need to separate speculative concepts from mainstream science so students don't fail mainstream tests. I'm going to move this thread to Speculations and leave a re-direct so everyone can find it. Thanks for understanding.

! Moderator Note DON'T PANIC! You seem to have a lot of emotion about this so I'm not sure anything I can say will help. It might have been better if you had quoted the part of the OP you were responding to instead of my modnote in that post you mention. That made it seem like you were contesting me and not the thread. As far as michel123456 urging the OP to return to back up his assertions, most participants agree that would be optimal, not nonsensical. No one likes a drive-by thread starter making claims they won't support. And perhaps the two people who gave you negative rep disagreed with your math=logic premise. In any case, condemning the whole site based on this thread in our Speculations section isn't very... logical.

It's doubtful we'd try to build massive ships here on Earth whether we're evacuating or just exploring. The bigger the payload the more fuel required to break atmosphere, and at a certain point you'd exceed the ability of our present materials to handle the stress. I think when spacecraft go beyond the realm of government-financed missions, it will be because some future Henry Ford-type develops an inexpensive, mass-produced vehicle that carries a decent blend of people and materiel. Sort of a Model-Star-T (and before swansont beats me to it, yes, there will probably be a few Model-Star-T wrecks). I also think we'll end up building these craft off-planet. That's what we should be working towards, imo, a moon or space based facility that acts as a base for mining missions to find ore so we can build more spacecraft and other facilities that don't require resources from Earth.

That's the knee-jerk reaction, like we're going to be able to tell you something about them you hadn't considered. Or that you don't like them because you haven't had them The Way I Make Them.

The objections are because you were so lazy you left out the "k". Five times. Two of them after you'd been corrected. When analyzing why someone is questioning something as well documented as the speed of light, it's important to weed out any mistakes they might have made due to lack of rigor. On the other hand, you may want to check under the K on your keyboard to see if something is blocking it. I had to do that yesterday with my S key. Moving on....

It does make a more realistic-looking mustache than milk does.

That's got to be it, they started back in 1845. There will be more than one issue for July 1852 since it was a weekly publication back then.

I worked with a guy once who had a whole list of reasons why green bell peppers were an absurd thing to eat (they're not ripe, they're bitter, they're mostly water, etc). I found out about this when the company rented a house in Palm Springs so we could all attend a three-day conference. We stocked the shelves from the local grocery store but when it came time to make dinner that night we couldn't find the peppers we'd bought. This guy had hidden them and rattled off his whole list of reasons when we caught him out. He was like you, he could detect even the smallest amount in his food. When it comes to what we like or don't like to eat, it's pointless to try to change someone's mind when they feel that strongly.

Where the hell are we getting all these "prophets" from?! We've got at least four members now who joined a SCIENCE DISCUSSION FORUM to tell us we're all wrong, we have it backwards, they can PROVE it, they have the only true knowledge. Yet they make these awful blanket generalizations ("Egyptologists call these people backward, superstitious, stinky footed bumpkins") and assume their narrow interpretations of ancient texts are the only correct ones among thousands of other interpretations. And on top of that they claim that science is at fault for its ego, or its limitations, and we'd all be so much better off if we just thought about it. Science is like a jigsaw puzzle cut from the layers of an onion, interlocked, going all the way down to the core, many pieces still missing, but overarchingly successful and meticulously constructed with as little bias and ego as is humanly possible. What these "prophets" offer is nothing short of personal opinion wrapped up in a lack of rigor and covered with lazy mockery of literally millions of man-hours of scientific study. Science isn't trying to prove anything, it's just looking for the best supported explanations. I agree with this whole post... except the part where you generalize about "our society has only recently emerged we assume no one did so before us'. Please don't lump everyone together in this way. There are some people who have no respect for the early works of mankind, but science-minded people should realize that what we have today is based on what we learned yesterday.

! Moderator Note The title isn't the only non-mainstream speculation made in the OP, and I'm not going to argue with you regarding my moderation in this thread. If you have objections, please PM another moderator and discuss it elsewhere.

! Moderator Note Can this be brought back on topic or do these last few posts need to be split off to their own thread? If the answer is more derailment, perhaps some deletion would be more appropriate?

The biggest problem plaguing modern science-haters is their gullibility. I've never heard any person of science describe the Egyptians as "backward and even stupid". You've been only listening to people who try to tell us we couldn't build the pyramids today the way the Egyptians did. You know what? We could build them even better, and probably wouldn't need alien help. We could also build them using just the tools the Egyptians had, but it would be colossally expensive and there's no one who wants to spend that much to prove a point. Take a look at the Panama Canal project, or the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco if you don't believe me. And please realize that as impressive as they are, it takes nothing away from the ancient Egyptians and their monumental building capabilities for THEIR time.

How could we possibly know "what the cavemen really knew and how they came to know it?" I'm not a huge fan of hunter/gatherer history, where practically every waking moment was spent gathering the basics for your small tribe. There should be a name for this condition, where people assume that we were so much better off "in the olden days". That we were somehow closer to nature and our true path when we were isolated tribes of uncommunicative, warlike barbarians who thought that anything different or unexplainable was to be feared. I'm actually in awe that we've been breaking down our language barriers and communicating, cooperating and learning from each other on a global basis. Sure, there are some things that are best done in groups of less than two hundred of us, but learning isn't one of them.

Sorry about the canned oyster spleens I sent you for Christmas. I opened some today and they had this fuzz all over them.... What about the red, orange and yellow ones?

! Moderator Note This is also off-topic. Semjase, you've been warned about this before. Please read the rules you agreed to when you joined. Your posts are being reported on a weekly basis, and that won't last long. Your account is going to get suspended if this keeps up. And as SamBridge and others have noted before, PLEASE learn the difference between proof and supportive evidence. Here's a hint: proof is for mathematics.

iwasbitten has been permanently banned since there is really nothing we can do online for someone who desperately needs professional help but refuses to seek it despite the urgings of most of the respondents, and also because his/her posts were attracting too much ridicule. The Staff hopes iwasbitten can get the help he/she needs as soon as possible.