Phi for All

He looks like he's having a ball! Or a recipe: "Take a half glass of root beer, add one scoop of ice cream and one famous physicist....

The Ben Franklin solution? Somehow induce a lightning strike? Not very covert but spectacular, natural and quite entertaining. You could even "charge" admission....

Thanks for the explanation. I hope you can see why it would be unwise for us to talk about killing trees without knowing your motivation. AFAIK, anything you could do to poison a tree would poison the rest of the surrounding area as well. Water tables in the area would have to be considered too. Also, a poisoned tree might weaken to the point where you never know when it might break and fall. I don't know much more than, "the tree is on [your] property", but if this tree was near anything it could harm as it fell I would think you would want more control in how it... died. Are you still looking for answers to this "test" with your friend?

Has there been any mention to the other side of this particularly nasty coin? One side is omerta (silence) and the other is vendetta (vengeance). Is the idea to keep the police out of it so you can hunt down the perpetrator yourself and make him pay? Is this a national vigilante movement?

Excellent! I just bought the water-wings concession on Long Wharf east of Boston. I shall be rich in no time!

Let's put it bluntly: is this tree on your property? Does it belong to you or are you trying to poison someone else's tree?

Very nice. It's always refreshing when education gets the spotlight and both houses can stop bickering and get something done about it. Then the wheels of congress find some purchase and stop spinning so much.

Why do you want a "less noticeable" method?

Does gun control have to mean gun banning? I favor background checks, registration and waiting periods. What's so unreasonable about knowing who has the guns and keeping them out of the hands of those who've proven they're unstable?

I see this as an attempt by unorganized crime to get organized. Face it, anyone who doesn't want you to help the police has a vested interest. This is extortion and should be viewed as such, particularly for those who are plugging it in the media and entertainment venues. They are trying to coerce certain behavior through implied threat of violence.

Past experience. People take offense at one post and start giving negative rep whenever that poster says anything. We want to keep this a positive thang.

They had to graft skin from my testicles, you chili-munching menace! Do you realize how 70s this afro looks?!? When I rub the burn cream in, my *nose* gets bigger, ffs!

It may only be set up for Staff atm. You will have access when the kinks are worked out (I know, some of you *like* a little kink). The Admins often use us Mods as guinea pigs for their nefarious schemes. For instance, someone from the Staff recently set my hair on fire by using my internet connection. When I find out who it was, I'm going to... um... er... well, I'm not going to give them reputation points, that's for sure!

Try F5 or Refresh the current page. It may be a rendering glitch so even closing your browser and reopening may be necessary. Can everyone else see the scales at the upper right corner of everyone's posts?

And since Snail was so observant and bright, I gave him some reputation for it!

It's 18 in Vermont. And if the sale is private there's no background check. And no permit is required, ever. No waiting period either. Even if you want to carry it concealed.

I think it's fantastic that some people have worked through their personal philosophy and spirituality and are at peace with it. Mine is, like a lot of things in my life, ongoing and adapting. I don't think I'll ever get tired of talking to other "seekers". It's the people who are convinced they have the "truth" of it that tend to rant and rave about how dumb the rest of us are. I think these are the closed-minded spammers YT is talking about. There is a civil way to discuss issues between science and religion if people don't allow themselves to be polarized.

And it seems as though one can't put all Muslims in one basket. The 9000 denominations of Christianity wouldn't all fit in one either. But we should be careful here. Discussion of specific religions isn't what we want, even here in General Discussion. Let me ask, would you like to see the Philosophy / Religion sub-forum return to SFN? Theology Forums is not as popular as we thought it would be. If it returned it would be a sub-forum you wouldn't even see unless you joined it specifically and agreed to it's parameters of discussion. It wouldn't be available to anyone who didn't have a good posting record in the main sub-forums. All the normal rules would still apply and fallacious arguments would be more closely scrutinized, but otherwise it would be much like Theology Forums. I don't mean to hijack this thread but it seems like a perfect topic to bring this up. I'll split the thread if pharmacol feels his intent has been thwarted.

Zen Chemistry isn't for everyone. Or is it Wichemistry?

I think science could get along well with religion (ignoring it mostly) if it weren't for the literal 6-day creation many religions insist on. Science could remain skeptical (admitting there is a slight possibility) about a higher power who uses It's own physical laws to start the universe and with the awe-inspiring patience to wait billions of years for It's creation to reach the present stage of development. Science has no way of measuring a higher power that can create the universe with It's will in six 24-hour days, complete with fabricated evidence which measures as millions of years old. Many creationists think evolution is trying to displace their god as the Creator and it's difficult to dissuade them. Evolution has nothing to do with how the world was created but that's not what most creation "scientists" tell the faithful. So it seems like a combination of misinterpretation and misinformation may keep science and religion feuding. I've often thought I should try to write a television show where the two main characters were a scientist and a creationist. It would have to be mostly fluff and titters but I could have some nice heated debates nestled nicely in between so I could at least clean the slate of all the false bits on both sides. Call it, "Let There Be Laughs!" or something cute to make it popular.

Since you're now a member here, you can also use the Search functions and see what's already been discussed about black holes.

Well said. You can't use one to disprove the other. They are at opposite ends of the knowledge spectrum.

There's no reason why they have to be, for the same reason you don't use a hammer to paint your fence. Scientific method is used only for observable phenomena in the natural universe, and religious and spiritual matters are, by definition, unobservable and supernatural. Science is the wrong tool to use with religion.

For me, the idea of having any nation that may not see nuclear bombs as a deterrent-only option is very bad. The US and the USSR survived the Cold War and understand the futility of mutually assured destruction. We feel very secure that none of the established nuclear nations is foolish enough to actually use them strategically. But nations with traditional rivals, like India and Pakistan, may not realize how close the human race has been to destruction in the past. And we also fear religious fervor coupled with nuclear armament; if a nation with nukes feels that Heaven awaits those who would cleanse the earth with fire, doesn't that remove the fear of mutually assured destruction? Is it racist to worry that a nation who may not fear the effects of a nuclear bomb wants one so badly? Really glad to hear that. There are also many Americans who feel Bush didn't understand the extent of his actions. I personally feel he had good people and bad people as advisers and he listened to the wrong ones.

Why is that? I've always wondered why we write blank checks to our covert agencies and then hear (after a big failure) that our intelligence was faulty, that the agency wasn't prepared and that our training and procedures were outdated.