Phi for All

The water habitat can include all the dietary requirements for the squids in a sustainable system. Coupled with the fact that reef squids are typically about 20cm long, the water habitat was deemed more efficient.

And of those, I think a majority claim some sort of intuitive thought allows them to leap over tedious math and method. Would those bother to read a primer on the importance of using scientific method as a whole and not trying to short cut the bits they don't like? I wouldn't mind their laziness as much if they didn't constantly criticize science while not using it properly. It's like cursing the inefficiency of public transportation while refusing to actually get on the bus.

I recently read Stephen Baxter's Manifold: Time, a nice piece of hard science fiction where reef squids were trained to operate the robot waldoes and other controls of machinery aboard a space ship, with technology only slightly in advance of the present day. In the story, Baxter asserts that squid are probably better suited to space travel than humans are (adapted to weightlessness, better in 3 dimensional operation, more limbs, less weight, etc) and would be invaluable in the future if they could be properly trained to operate remote robotics. Do you think squids could be trained for off-planet operations such as asteroid mining and exploration? How difficult would this type of communication with squids be?

Make a rating system so I can save up my suspension time for the really good ones. If we could cure laziness it would solve this problem too. Few bother to Search for answers, some assume they are the first person to ever have the thought, and quite a few who bother to Search can't be bothered to read an old thread. Don't even think about leaving. I have video from that last physics conference you attended. If we build some threads with some basic scientific methodology and terminology and at least recommended (if not required) new members to read them, do you think it would help? Would they be used? I share the feelings on this. I'm tired of the misuse of the word "theory" here, of all places.

I don't think that interview came off the way Beck would've wanted it to. I don't think his argument that smoking pot isn't a victimless crime was meant to solicit a rationale that legalizing it, regulating it and taxing it is the smart thing to do. The interview excerpt also ends without Beck having the final word. This doesn't seem like a normal Beck segment.

That's a switch! Normally, wetness makes it shrink, but you're saying the shrinks make the wetness?!

I can hardly believe that's what gop.com looks like. There's like one little arrow at the bottom to take you to the rest of what the GOP is all about. I think they got FOX to design it.

You know how a good discussion goes. Can you imagine having to wait a whole day to rebut a comment made on what you just posted? I think it would disrupt the overall flow of a thread a great deal.

But there's a bell that rings every time you post there.

It would be great if we do as much as we can towards explaining why something speculatory isn't viable; just calling it utter nonsense hasn't worked as well as we thought it would. The ivory trade is illegal so we should stop building towers out of it. And we also need to come up with a way to make people understand that mocking the scientific method (or any specific discipline, like maths) is unacceptable if you refuse to even try to use it. One should only be able to say it's not needed if one can successfully show why, after having used it correctly.

The rest of your observations are quite rational, but you should learn not to lead with an ad hominem. Besides being a weak logical argument, it almost automatically removes any chance of your opponent taking you seriously. It also leads the discussion astray since jeff Mitchel may now feel obligated to spend time defending himself as well as his hypothesis. Please aim your comments at the ideas, not those who propose them.

Definitely regeneration of limbs and digits like a salamander, including teeth.

But the description on the Community page still reads, "Pseudoscientific or speculatory threads belong here." Pseudoscience is still the leading concept and it's very common for people to stop reading when they see a word they don't think applies to them. I say let's put a decent description of what we want Speculations to be about and move it under Sciences. We let everyone know that if a speculatory idea requires a significant departure from normal scientific methodology, it will be considered pseudoscience and will be moved to an appropriate section. If people still wish to discuss the idea in that regard, then let them. The pseudoscience section would not be under Sciences (it could go under Other Topics, where Speculations is now).

If they made just one that powered one building, raising money wouldn't be the most time consuming thing Kender does.

I think this is a reasonable request, to move Speculations to the bottom of the Science section, after Other Sciences. It still looks like the ugly sister and still bears a description that puts it on a par with pseudoscience. The people who object most to their posts being moved to speculations might think they are being taken more seriously, and it was never our intention to stuff anyone's ideas in a trunk. It's just that so many people who end up there do so because they reject many of the principles of physics in favor of intuition, and that's not fair to the many members who have taken the time to study those principles. We need those who seek, those who have sought, and those continue to do both. I think this is reasonable, as long as Cap'n doesn't mind taking the time to do it, or can let you design something that can be made available to those who don't like the standard. Is this doable, Oh Captain my Captain, or would this be more along the line of, "ZOMG, this will cost me a couple of points on my GPA!!!"

Well, jeez, then please watch the video before saying, "No, it doesn't [make it look like he did it on purpose, Phi]". I commented because jryan said the video showed clearly it was an accident and not purposeful, so I watched it. And there's a man who has his hands cupped around his mouth to amplify his voice (so you can't see if it's intentional) booing and chanting "KILL THE BILL" at the reps walking into the building, and he probably accidentally spits on the passing Congressman Cleaver (I don't think it was purposeful, myself). My point is, when Cleaver stops and swings around, wiping his face and obviously asking the guy why he spat on him, the guy keeps right on chanting. If the guy doesn't set the record straight and tell Cleaver he didn't mean to spit, then why should anyone be surprised or dismissive when Cleaver thinks it was purposeful? If the spitter doesn't have the common courtesy to say, "Sorry, didn't mean to spit", maybe he was capable of the discourtesy of spitting on purpose.

How is it logical to replace thousands of hours of scientific research using sound methodology with formless suppositions and flawed analogies? How is Galaxy Spin a better explanation than the Big Bang?

And if you are walking on a sidewalk with other pedestrians there's a certain assumption of risk of... shall we say accidental trippage, but if you accidentally trip someone and they confront you about it, isn't it expected that you apologize and explain that it was accidental? Would you really just keep walking exactly the same and ignore the confrontation? Without a quick, "Sorry it happened, didn't do it on purpose", it sort of makes it look intentional, doesn't it?

What I saw was a man who probably accidentally spit in another man's face while screaming at him through cupped hands, and when confronted about it he continued to scream and offered no apology or explanation for spitting. To my sense of decency, that makes it no different than spitting intentionally.

I've come across 2 of your posts that were deleted. Both were smilies with no text at all. While some leeway is given in the General Discussion section on posts like this, they are usually not appreciated in the science sections. It often looks like someone is just trying to pad their post count with contributions like this. I'm sorry if that seems "uppity" to you. This is one of those "If everybody did this..." situations that I'm sure you can understand would degrade the experience for the majority. I find this gloomy and dark and difficult to read. If it could be your choice and not affect mine I wouldn't object. So many of these people are only trolls in the sense that they refuse to go out and study because they grasp everything intuitively, and only have problems with the parts of science that don't just jump out at them. They don't generally have a pattern outside that and we've just been handling them on a per case basis. Sticking them in a cage seems like it would activate their innate sense of martyrdom. They confined Gallileo to the Speculations forum, didn't they? Now might be the best time to reduce the post requirements for Religion to 50, and keep the Ethics, Philosophy and Politics at 30. This was discussed and it's been almost a month since the new sub-forums were opened.

Why aren't they using the engine to power their own facilities? If it was simple enough for everyone to understand, it wouldn't make a good scam. It's the combination of known and less understood technologies, some shouting and hand-waving to avoid the magic hurdles, all stirred with a big "wouldn't-it-be-great" spoon that will get investors to stop asking embarrassing questions and just sign the check. The Kender engine and the Mars Somnambulaporter have equal chances of being a scam? I can agree with that. The part about people who don't believe in electricity is a strawman argument, btw. It attempts to equate disbelief in electricity with a skeptical attitude towards the Kender engine, making it an easier argument to knock down like a man made of straw. It is a fallacious stance.

Oh, that was from me, wondering if those were your bell-bottom jeans hanging from the ceiling fan after the New Year's party. No one's claimed them if you still want them.

I would never excuse someone for being a bad person. They might have reasons for their behavior, including the inability to enjoy sexual release and tactile pleasure. I'm reasonably sure they could be a good person without these things, but their situation is no excuse for being a bad person. I'm just not sure I could be as good a person as I consider myself now without the pleasures of sex. I think it might erode my positive outlook on life and people in general.

Doubt with beetle double bungee hoops. Rarely couple molded cabbage dealer? JFK, PARMESAN TREE BLADDER POKING MARBLE SUNSCREENS!!!

I keep getting "We're experiencing unprecedented traffic, please try again later!" from that link. Obviously, republicans everywhere are flooding the site to confirm all the talk of hypocrisy they've been hearing lately.