Phi for All

This should tell you something. If you can't explain this concept to the satisfaction of five discussion forums, a wise person might start to wonder if the problem lies with concept. Since the title of this thread is "I don't understand Zero or Negative Numbers - Teach Me the Basics", yet the OP has shown no intent to learn, this thread is closed. Kaplunk, feel free to open another thread with the title, "I don't understand Zero or Negative Numbers And Have No Wish To Learn - But I Have An Idea About Them That I Want To Lecture You On". Then anyone show wishes to respond does so at their own risk.

I never understood why people specifically object to gay sex in situations where sex of any kind is fairly inappropriate.

This discussion is going nowhere quickly, yet for all its speed it's completely unexciting. Its like a game of cold potato, with neither side wanting any substance to get in the way of the denials. Why wouldn't some clarification and depth help this thread continue to exist? Perhaps some explanations that go past single sentences would generate some spice.

You can use the Search function in the upper right to find subjects here that interest you. A lot of people have asked questions you may want to ask and you can find out how they were answered.

Perhaps the chicken was viewed as a higher quality food source? There was certainly room for more ants on the crackers so it wasn't an excess of labor or lack of resources issue.

The solutions here, imo, are mostly political rather than medical. 1. Stop pursuing the War on Drugs since it has failed consistently for the last 40 years while eating up hundreds of billions of dollars and ruining countless lives. We don't even necessarily need to legalize drugs as long as we can stop filling the prisons with users possessing small quantities. 2. Use the money saved for social and educational programs aimed at keeping people from forming a dependence and for government sponsored research into alternative treatments and cures which the pharmaceutical companies don't pursue due to smaller market returns on the investment. There are other diseases that would benefit and diabetes is a prime example of keeping a part of the population hooked on legal drugs rather than pursuing a cure.

So how would you go about attracting people like yourself who are fascinated by science and would like to learn more?

This is a discussion forum, not a chat room, so you sometimes have to be patient for a response. This thread is in General Discussion as well, so many people who only read for the science discussions won't see this. And this is also summertime, so many students are off on vacation or working summer jobs. The staff here has long been talking about how best to raise membership and much of that is presenting science to the public in a way that is informative yet entertaining. The majority of the members have a lot of scientific knowledge but aren't necessarily professional scientists. We'd love to attract more members who like not only science itself but the scientific approach to observing the world around them. Does that make sense?

The shortest complete sentence in the English language is, "I am". The longest sentence is, "I do".

Sorry, I didn't have a copy of Genesis handy, so I was reading The Butterfly Effect when I started drawing my cube.

Do you have any level B gear? Just kidding, take along a coffee can to scoop out the leftovers from the ashes the next morning, and chuck the can in the trash. Keep an eye on the immediate area, it looks like the reaction can spit out some hot material bits. Not a big deal.

. Notice they use a ventilation hood, but if you're outdoors you should be fine.

If you can get outside and get some fresh air where THEY can't see you, you should do it. Seriously.

But is a chemist the same as a "local walk-in store"? I don't think anything you can purchase from a grocery store or pharmacy that ignites when mixed would violate our HazMat policy. Here's something that might work. If you could dip a test tube (or a dowel, a pencil or something else long but thin) in melted candle wax several times about halfway up its sides, then remove the tube, you would have a mold you could put a small amount of gasoline in. Add a candle wick to the bottom, fill it to the top with gasoline, position it in your kindling so the wick has some air and then light the wick. When the flame melts through the wax, it should release the gasoline. Assuming the gasoline doesn't douse the wick before it can ignite the fumes, it should start quite a nice fire in a very short time.

... and got it all over your zapatos. Sorry about that; we'll get something to clean those up for you.

It's always best to focus on one idea at a time. This keeps people on topic and the discussions sharp and well-defined. You're covering too many concepts here with one broad opening post. I'd suggest you pick one of these concepts (the ideal world would be a good one) and leave the others for a later time. Once you have 30 posts you'll be eligible for our Religion and our Politics sub-forums and you can bring those topics up. I can edit this thread for you if you like. I just think you're going to get a lot of muddled effort with so many different things to talk about in one thread. In science, the best experiments focus on testing one idea so your results aren't tarnished with extraneous input.

Here's a fairly safe but not very chemical idea. Using some masking tape and either wooden or book matches, you could set up an interesting kind of fuse effect where each match is close enough to light the next one in line, held together by the masking tape. If you use enough of them, it could run all the way around your kindling and really be fun to watch. The key here is to figure out how to light the first match in an interesting way. Possibly a magnifying glass (if the sun will be out at the time), or some mechanical way of having the striker light the first match (mousetrap set off by dominoes?).

As Cap'n said, this thread is fine. We had 5 other pages that diverged from the original topic, so to be fair to you, we split them off into their own thread. I just forgot to put a hyperlink in where I said, "this thread". Fixed now, so sorry, carry on, how about those Mayans?

The off-topic posts regarding earth's hemispheres and the human body's satanic symmetry have been split off to this thread. Be advised that the thread is closed temporarily pending moderator action (not by moderators involved in the thread, by the way). Please feel free to continue discussing the Mayan Calendar, but for no more than two and a half years.

We can't really let you promote your Satanic fellatio cult here on our science forum. I'll split this tangent off from the rest of the 2012 thread and put it in it's own thread, but then I'm going to have to close it. There are kids who come here to learn, you know. People have been reporting you for the same thing. But again, we can't let you spread your Satanic poison and talk about your pretty familiar.

Are you trying to say that all the essential stuff is on the bottom half (even though you earlier stated, "Pectorils [sic], Gives us structure, I doubt we can live without them" but now state that they're "not essential")? "Enjoy hell"?! Is this some kind of religious metaphor you're pushing? Because if you're saying that the two objects in the top half are non-essential and the single object in the bottom half is, what does that say about heaven and hell? I understand now. God and Jesus, in the top half, are non-essential. Satan, located in the bottom half, you can't live without. I get it.

At first it seemed like your point was that only the most important parts of our body were singular, but then you mention that we probably couldn't live without the structure that our pectoral muscles give us. I guess I'm still not understanding why such symmetry is important to the outside of the body, and why it ties into the rest of what you're discussing. Why is our body symmetry similar to the halves you claim the earth has?

Science may take the passion out of things in order to explain them rationally, but we can put the passion back in when we have an explanation that works. Our universe is truly a miracle, in and of itself. Life after death, in the sense you mean here, is unobservable so science can't really measure it. We can measure that the body dies, but "spirits" and "souls" are inherently outside of any physical reality we can test. Does that make sense? Science treats life as an ecosystem that is evolving. Life, even human life, is not a dying flower. We may be dropping a few petals, but new ones grow to take their place. Question #3 answers the other two. See question #3. I thought we were part of nature. We got off on a corrections tangent with this earlier. What was your point about the two halves that are connected by one thing? Why is it important that my two eyes and ears and nostrils are connected by my mouth? Why is it important that my two body halves are connected by a single penis for reproduction?

The heart is NOT in the center of the body. It is most commonly found just to the left of center. You can test this by feeling where your heartbeat is strongest, if you don't trust the millions of autopsies that prove this. Personal attacks are against the rules here. Why do you feel the need to lower yourself to this level?

What about people born without a hand or a foot? What about the heart, the liver, the spleen and other organs you have only one of, that are located on a specific side of the body? You say you can't live without eating but you also can't live without a heart, so your observation is flawed.