Phi for All

Perhaps part of the appeal that is garnering support from many varied groups is the very fact that Occupy Wall Street is so far leaderless and unfocused. That actually may be a good thing since it can still be an unspecified identity focus for the vast majority that feel the US is simply "headed in the wrong direction". If it solidifies too quickly behind a certain approach or leadership message, it could lose groups that might otherwise be drawn to its nebulous goals. I meant to comment on this earlier. I think it's very important right now, especially for those who lean more left of center, to encourage dialogue about these issues which can start out unspecifically. And I think it is absolutely mandatory to acknowledge the patriotism involved in protest, and the efforts to which these people have gone to make sure their voices are heard. I do not agree with "STFU". Given the quote to which this is attached, I have no idea what you're saying here. It makes no sense to me. I hope you can forgive me, I've followed many of your posts and I've meant to comment on your style but I didn't wish to derail the threads. I have to make these comments now though before I go mental. You've used this reference a few times now and I don't get it at all. Usually stress makes blood pressure rise. If you could explain this too, I would appreciate it. Who seems "soothed" here to you? I understand the reference but not why you use it in this context. This could just be a straw man argument. I'm sorry, when I hear word salad like this it makes me think a computer is putting these sentences together. No offense meant, perhaps I'm too old to understand your style of writing. Do you mean financially or literally, as in dying? What?! Why would someone applaud when their children are failing or dying? Who is doing this? Obama is trying to get some money for infrastructure improvements, investing while interest rates are low, putting lots of people to work and strengthening our future. I don't see where anyone was disagreeing with you here about this. What is a "weird mouthpiece"? That sounds like something translated from another language to English. But isn't that what a single comic is, a "lucid picture"?

Boo! You sound like the type of person who thinks shoplifting doesn't hurt anybody.

You may consider Wikipedia to be unreliable in the conclusions it draws due to bias, but they do list several source material notes and references, which are usually excellent. You should check into the online ones at least, in addition to replies you get here, of course.

One of the best ways to make a vehicle go where you want it to go is to offer to drive. If you outright hijack it, there will be those who object. The Tea Party got their cash but what went wrong was their agenda got taken over by those who offered to drive. "No taxation without representation" got warped into "No change in the tax structure". They grew their grassroots by deceiving their members into thinking their own middle class taxes would be raised and spent liberally. Add Fox News into the mix and you have people who watch nothing else get misinformed about what's really going on. Don't get me wrong. I think the idea behind what they're doing is great and I admire their resolve. But they're vulnerable right now because the media is portraying them as uncoordinated. This does many things, but the three most dangerous are that 1) it makes them dismissible by the right (many of whom might actually have more common ground with OWS than with the Tea Party), 2) it slows grassroots growth, and 3) it makes them ripe for takeover by a leader (or group) who may share one or two of their goals but ultimately is much more self-serving. Read the What is the Tea Party? and you'll see it's basic Republican platform. Do you want OWS to end up as basic Democrat platform so we're just back to square one again, shouting across a fence? OWS needs to show what makes them different while also showing how much common ground it shares with the vast majority of Americans. That's what they aren't doing well, imo.

nik01, A Tripolation inserted the link in his sentence, "Go crazy". Just click on that. Go crazy means you can use that to find the book happily, wildly and with abandon. It's an English expression not meant to be taken literally.

If they can't get their message straight soon, they will get flooded by people who do have a message, and backing, and organization. And it will seem glorious until they realize their original intent just got shanghaied. It's what happened to the original Tea Party.

Since you found the books at Amazon and didn't buy them, what exactly are you asking? Are you looking for someone who has a copy that will lend it to you?

You can't find it online?

This is an extraordinary statement that requires evidence. How can a human have no ego? This is demonstrably untrue. People who have read your posts find your math lacking. Are you talking about established math or some kind of wizard math? For a "pack mind construct", you seem to be the only person using the term. What does that say about your mind?

Is the above a good example of this: ... or is it a bad example? And do I believe the above statement or this: ... because they seem to say different things. One interpretation, or can it be read many different ways?

When it comes to alcohol, tobacco, drugs or any other poison (in that the body reacts similarly with regard to potency, quantity and tolerance), people are vastly different, and not just body mass. Put simply, everybody has neurotransmitters that are affected differently by enzymes that break them down. This makes some people feel ill after more than a drink or two while others can drink until they are "totally out of it". Same with smoking. You have people who turn green if they smoke two cigarettes in a row and others who can chain smoke all day. You should be very careful if you have a high tolerance. If your body doesn't tell you when to stop, then you're relying on your mind to tell you. How reliable is your mind when it's heavily altered? Being a lightweight is NOT a bad thing. It's easier to decide you don't want to puke than it is to decide you're drunk enough.

Very good point.

Very disappointing. I was hoping an uber-friendly country like Oz would make the initial push towards space-based solar so the US would be motivated in a productive way, rather than the motivation we'd have if China or Russia were to do it. Perhaps I'm overconfident, but SBS seems like it would remove most of the "resource by conquest" motives that seem to be a hallmark of fossil fuels. I'm sure there will be concerns over who has tight beam microwave transmitters deployed in space, but I think a country would be unlikely to risk having a major source of energy shot down because they used it in a hostile fashion. I'm sure one of the first requirements would be a way to tell if someone had re-targeted their transmitter away from its appointed receiver. Well, I hope you don't go too far the other way. It sounds like your green left has a real problem with unrealistic expectations, but you don't need a Tea Party either. This is not a time for any country to be misguided, near-sighted and uninformed. It doesn't sound like an efficient alternative, but at least a particle accelerator could never be used as a weapon.

Pixie dust is renewable, if you have faith and trust. Politicians are unfathomable at times. At least in the US it seems obvious they are representing the oil interests that really want the profits associated with high demand and low supply (especially when they are selling oil produced back when the prices were much lower). I don't know what to think about your pols, JohnB. Are they going to come up with something new? Why don't you guys start the space-based solar race?

No way. Paul Erdős' Wikipedia entry starts off saying, "Erdős published more papers than any other mathematician in history, working with hundreds of collaborators;" That doesn't sound like what ScotttheSculptor is talking about.

Except for the observable fact that everything we have today we got from pooling our minds and talents and working together towards something more than just our individual ideas. As communication and travel advanced, so did our knowledge base. We grew as we communicated with each other, in common languages like math. Look at what we accomplished when we were just isolated tribes as opposed to now when we're an interconnected worldwide society. You're looking at it all wrong. We're still individuals, with our individual thoughts. We're just smart enough to realize we have a vast well of knowledge we can tap into at will if we can just pull our heads out of our basements long enough to realize we need to speak the same language to be understood. I think you've just come up with a different language and you're pissed that people don't want to speak it with you. You call us a "pack" and claim we're snubbing you, but it's really just that we've all spent a lot of time learning things in a way that works just great, and you come along with a new way that seems to be flawed and ask us to switch.

But loyalty is not something you're born with, or that gets bestowed upon you at a certain point. You need to prove your loyalty every day of your life. That part never sat well with me. Adam chose to sin, so God punishes everyone. Maybe it's just an ingrained aversion to prejudice, but that seems so monumentally cruel for a loving god. "You're automatically a sinner the day you're born, I'm not even going to give you a chance to prove your loyalty." And I'm sorry, but it seems like Christianity gets to have it both ways when it comes to omnipotence and perfection. God can do anything, even thwart His own physical laws, creating any kind of paradox He wants. And He's perfect even though He created imperfection.

What are the odds that you and the OP are working for the same company that's trying to reassure Canadians that their reactors are safe? Sci_Guy used that same link in one of his other threads. And your IP address is one digit off of his. This is the problem when you try to use smart people for deception. I doubt this thread went the way you wanted it to. If you want to use a discussion forum, just stick around and discuss. No need for scammy sockpuppet responses that guarantee (lol) the outcome you want. It makes you look afraid of the truth. Believe me, you'll find a lot of support for nuclear energy among scientists, but not if you tamper with the data.

Well good luck. From what I understand, you can't get seeds through the mail because they haven't figured out a container that won't melt. Even when they do, the USPS thinks it's bad PR to have postal workers running around in level A suits. Your only hope is to travel to where someone is growing them, but not by plane. If TSA won't let you carry scissors, you think they'd let you on board with a WMD like a naga viper? You could disable every passenger on a 707 with one of those.

Astronomicommedian.

Just buy some habaneros and give them a good two second spritz of law enforcement grade pepper spray. You won't know the difference. Not after the third one, anyway.

Where's YT2095? Probably on another mission in Her Majesty's Secret Service. Actually, his name is 00-2095 and he's one of MI-6's cheapest agents. Most of the best spy gadgets are taken since he's fairly far down the list of 00 operatives, so he's known as The Resourceful One. He doesn't drive an Aston Martin with a tricked out engine, he's got a Mini-Cooper with a hyperglycemic weasel on a hamster wheel. Back in 1995, he infiltrated Qadhafi's palace in Libya, garrotted the guards using his own hair and replaced the terrorist leader with a kinder, gentler, robotic version he cobbled together using a GameBoy, 2 packs of gum and a pair of toenail clippers. Using an old hatbox as a hat almost gave the whole thing away, but now it's Moammar's trademark. It was the robot that was overthrown recently, which explains a few things. YT2095, cheers to you, mate, we all toast you with a vodka martini, super-sized, not shaken.

We'll never change each other's minds, ScottTheSculptor. This is one of those areas that people like you can't comprehend, because you have convinced yourself that your way is best and that your way is the only one that promotes "free thinking". But you come into a place we've set up to share ideas with our peers (you're probably calling it "the den"). We have witnessed how profound and powerful this sharing is, and how it requires us all to speak the same language in order to be more than individuals. We're trying to add to the mountain of amassed human knowledge here by building on what has been built before and you're trying to tell us to ignore all that, tear it down and listen to a bunch of individuals who all have different plans in different languages, few of which can stand a little constructive criticism. It seems to you like your ideas are rejected outright, but that's not the way it is, not really. If an architect came to me and wanted to show me a design that was based on a flawed foundation, I would point out the foundational flaws and tell him to fix them before I look at another page. He may scream that I rejected his design outright (like you have), but it would waste both of our time to look further than that. If there is even a slight chance that building will fall over because of the foundation, no matter how elegant the rest of the design is, I am not going to bother. Does that sound callous? If I continued to waste both our time and look the whole plan over, wouldn't I still come back to the beginning and say, "Gee ScotttheArchitect, it's a really elegant design and you sure have some untrapped wizard ideas, but I just can't trust it because of these flaws in the foundation. Fix those and then see if your ideas will still work and then bring it back to me!" Please, please, PLEASE tell me that makes sense to you.

To answer the title, yes. When you share ideas with your peers, they're going to want to see how you arrived at your conclusions. If you haven't been rigorous about this, your work will come into question. If you've followed all the steps, then your methodology is sound and your peers can go about testing on their own and trying to recreate your work. The Big Bang has had many experiments done on countless observations. As an example, Einstein's general relativity work formed the basis for equations done by Alexander Friedmann, which led Georges Lemaître to propose that the distance a galaxy was away from us should be proportional to its redshift. When Edwin Hubble observed just that, it led Lemaître to conclude that the farther away a galaxy or cluster was, the higher its apparent velocity. If things are farther away today they must have been closer in the past. I hope I have this chain of events correctly, but the point is that this idea not only works on it's own, it solves some other issues as well, like why spiral galaxies seem to be moving away from us. Ideas that tend to fit like puzzle pieces to bring other ideas together are what eventually get called theories. I'm oversimplifying here, but it sounds like you want to use the scientific method to see if the Big Bang theory is "real". Your observation, that "many believe in [it]", is flawed. It's not "belief". Science is not about having faith that something is true. It's not about being "pretty sure". It's about taking small steps in a very careful way and asking questions that can only be answered by actual observation and confirming evidence. We're not just "pretty sure" the earth is round. We don't just "believe" that. We made observations and drew inescapable conclusions about the way it seemed to rotate and about the shape of other planets long before we were ever able to orbit around the earth for eyewitness proof. if you still want to use the scientific method to determine if the Big Bang theory is "real", then you're going to have to read all about it. No guesses as to what it means, no skipping over the math involved, and if you find a term you don't understand, you have to learn about that too. No shortcuts. Science didn't take shortcuts to arrive at this theory, so you shouldn't if you want to say it's wrong.