Phi for All

I don't like to elevate celebrities to "hero" status personally unless they are good role models for children, which I don't think Jackson was. I excused much of his early eccentricities until the child sexual abuse charges came out in the early 90s. I stopped listening to his music then, but I can't tell you how many times I listened/danced to his early songs. They were really enjoyable. He was a musical genius for his genre. I always thought his life would have been completely different if he hadn't had his nose broken and badly repaired in the late 70s. I think this made him fascinated with plastic surgery, and the idea of looking completely different. This escapism seemed to be at the root of his purchase of Neverland, which isolated him further from reality. If it turns out he's really dead, I'll mourn the early Michael. I'm glad I Got To Be There.

Click on the word "ballooning" in post #2. GDG was kind enough to hyperlink to a Wikipedia description.

These gun threads can get rather lengthy rather quickly. Let's stay focused and on-topic. And remember, the OP asked if guns should be *completely* outlawed, so your general stances on control have not been requested.

Interesting, so, something that does not conform to your independent view of reality is labeled as pathetic, boring and unintelligent?

Under my Rule #1, if you do something to help them, you stand to make 23 million new friends, so you could be the new Bill Gates.

Evolution isn't concerned with individuals; evolution is the change in allele frequency in a population over time.

This is also why religion and science are different in their "theories". Science won't accept a theory that can't be proven incorrect; falsifiability is a cornerstone of the scientific method. Religion relies on the sacred ideas that can't, by their very nature, be either proved or disproved. Well, you're on a science forum here, so you'll have to use the science definition of "theory", which would never include the concepts you've mentioned.

You are going to make me rich, doc.

Congratulations, you've just unleashed 23 million refugees on the Asian Pacific Rim. Due to the fact that many have the same name, you have just created a target-ripe environment for enemy catapults ("Hi, My Name Is KIM". "Take THAT, Kim!").

This is the Strawman fallacy, and I won a $5 bet that you would use it next. No disrespect intended, but you're just not thorough enough at this. Read back a few posts and you'll find that it's mostly your definitions, fallacious logic and generalizations we're having trouble with, not so much your "truths". And science isn't really an "independent view of reality", that's what makes it more reliable. Science has skeptics galore waiting to disprove any hypothesis or standing theory out there. It can be argued that Einstein is just as famous for disproving Newton's laws of motion as he is for his other theories, and Newton's work had stood for centuries. Nothing is sacred in science; skeptical scrutiny keeps it that way.

Nice boatload of Red Herrings, but that bait doesn't work here. No one here said a scientific theory was 100%, but a theory is backed up by tons of evidence, research and tests. That's why science is more open-minded than religion, it always assumes there can be a better answer.

We like to use citations here. Next time, please.

Absolutely, unequivocally false. "Beyond a reasonable doubt" is completely different from "with no doubt whatsoever". Let's be intellectually honest here, please. No, you are committing a logical fallacy called False Dilemma. Entering the realm of philosophy is hardly the only choice here. In the sense that a NASA physicist lecturing about his astrophysics experiment is no more valid regarding astronomy than a street corner crackpot preaching alien conspiracies, yes. I basically read your statement as, "Science is the same as religion, except that it's testable, makes valid predictions, reflects reality and is more open to correction as new knowledge emerges".

Happy birthday! Thanks for sharing a slice of your cake.

Nah, if you can kill him after talking to him and using his name, I don't want you talking to his family. Well, only if they're ALL named Bob (note to military: avoid grouping soldiers of the same name). In most cases, you have to call out each individual name (which should give them enough time to move out of the way of your catapult). It gives a name to every face, with the idea in mind that much injustice is done because it's anonymous. And with Rule #1 in place, you're richer if you make friends with someone than if you rip them off. Good, but you'd better find a way to like 2 and 4 also. Break the Rules, meet the aliens ("Hi, My Name Is VOGZPLAT").

Four New Rules: 1. We're now on the "Friend Standard" economy. Your wealth depends on how many people like you. 2. Everyone has to wear a name tag ("Hi, My Name Is BOB"). 3. No weapons allowed that are more sophisticated than were available in the 13th century. 4. War is allowed, but before you kill an enemy soldier, you have to call him by name ("Take THAT, Bob!").

I really didn't mean to be so negative in my observation. Knee-jerk reaction to someone laughing in a friend's face (me and physics, we're tight). I do thank you for the links. I hadn't seen the aerogel one before. That stuff is amazing! I need a small rectangle of it for under my laptop (which I actually have in my lap) since it can get quite hot. The aerogel they have for lining clothing is only about $4-5/s.f., very affordable.

ORIFIEL, due to your unwillingness to answer questions put to you by the membership, we have adopted a Patience Rationing System. Unfortunately, for this particular subject, your PRatS card is punched completely. Thread locked, do not open another on this same subject.

I think some people just want to be able to take any set of hard and fast "rules" and then point to something outside of them and say, "HA! So much for your rules! I am now laughing in your face!" But I hate it when they make it sound like physicists are sitting around, scratching their heads without a clue to how ferrofluids or aerogels work. Don't most people realize that Newton had his limits? I guess not.

Why do people like to think these things "laugh in the face of physics"? Every one of these substances has a physical nature understood by science. Shouldn't it be "7 Man-Made Substances that Laugh in the Face of Those Who Don't Understand Physics And Are Jealous"?

If you were a healthy, happy 25-year-old who suddenly found themselves in an unhealthy, rickety 65-year-old body, I could see your point, GutZ, but that's not the way it works. As you age, you lose some of your youthful abilities but you gain others, like perspective, knowledge and experience. There is something for you at every age, as long as you make it so. I always hate hearing about people of any age who can let themselves be bored. I feel bored for like a minute, and then I do something... not boring. People who complain about being bored make my foot twitch, since kicking them in the ass would be fun and... not boring.

It's not really as vivid as you make it sound. Agreed, and this is what I attribute to our pattern recognition ability, rather than some separate duration measurement ability. It seems to me that we learn to measure seconds, minutes, hours, etc, as patterns just as we learn any other familiar pattern, and that's why they don't seem tied to heartbeat or other functions that can be altered by varying our activity level. Then I see where we diverged. The OP mentioned beeps on a microwave and putting clocks in robots, so I naturally assumed he meant time measured in seconds and minutes. It seems our patterns didn't converge well this time.

I don't think the concept of counting down seconds (for fish sticks or food pellets or what have you) is natural because "seconds" are artificial, a pattern humans have made up to measure time. Time itself is naturally occurring, but I think the measurement of it is a learned response. The first posts were all talking about counting seconds, and then jumped from that being natural to a sense of time being innate. I think I got strawmanned and didn't realize it. My bad.

Then all I can say is, I'll bet you US$10M you'll feel different 40 years from now.

I just don't think it's a natural sense of *time* as much as part of an overall pattern recognition system. iNow, did the studies you referred to use any kind of sensory input, like a flashing light or sound indicator to count down the 12 seconds, or was the food only available after the proscribed waiting period?