MigL

Not just conservatives, Phi, although sane voices, advocating for gun control, are mostly left. When we last discussed the problem of guns in the US, some very liberal thinking members of this very Forum, objected to gun control. It is one subject which is not as politically polarized in the general population. There are roughly 400 million guns among the US' 340 million people, and only about a million are registered. It is an American problem, not a right or left wing issue. ( seems to me, an 'amendment' is already a change; why the big resistance against another change ? )

Holy cr*p ! 6.2 % ? Well, that makes my raise meaningless. ( thank God I don't have a mortgage, once they start trying to control inflation )

Have a friend who recently got a Legionella infection. Not pleasant; His kidneys shut down and he underwent dialysis several times, before treatment rid the infection and kidney function returned. But he does have other underlying health issues, which could have contributed. The facility where I work, being European owned, has to test safety showers/eyewashes for Legionella contamination ( mandatory in Europe ), and one of our buildings tested positive. When we did our weekly checks on them, we had to run them for a minute or two, to clear out the bacteria, until they tested negative. ( that's the tie in to rinsing )

Would you say that this is the reason why gravity is modelled in 2 ways - spacetime warping and/or particle exchange? No, but it is the reason gravity is not renormalizable and can't be easily persuaded to play well with Quantum Field theory.

Gravity wells are spherically symmetric, and don't impart any particular orientation to orbits. Conservation of angular momentum is what determines orbits and planes. That being said, multiple gravity wells, depending on configuration of course, will affect orbits and their planes.

Well, for one, people tended to believe their Government. There were no anti-vaxxers then. That's one better aspect, at least.

Error bars apply to the 'experiment', not the 'experimenter', Stringy. But I understand your analogy 😄 .

I am not making the claim; we are examining JP's claim. I did read your response in the other thread about serotonin and anger, and I agree with your assessment, as it seems to re-enforce something I previously said ...

While I apprecate the amount of work involved in posting/typing all that crap, I have to remind you, this is not a mental exercise. The Earth has been measured and observed to be approx. spherical. IOW, NOT FLAT !

I don't think you really know how theoretical Physics works. Someone doesn't just pull equations out of their a*s. Maxwell |( and Einstein ) based their work on years, if not centuries, of observational and experimental evidence. You would have someone tell J C Maxwell, and A Einstein, "Your equations might describe the workings of reality, but they don't make sense to me, so they must be wrong." ??? I will, however, admit that in the latter half of the previous century theoretical Physics has, in some areas, far outpaced the abilities of experimental Physics to verify. Areas such as string theory, LQG, GUTs, Cosmology etc.

Sttill not an expert in biology, but Phi's quote in the spun-off thread indicates that it is an area of ongoing research. Maybe 'certainly' is too strong a word to use until further research clarifies the matter. I did, however, learn ( relating to Studiot's comment ) that lobsters may never have evolved the ability to feel pain; as they are usually swallowed whole by their predators, the ability to feel pain in a particular area so as to protect it, has no selective advantage.

That would be why I put lobster "brain' in quotations. Arthropods don't have a brain as we know it, rather a bunch of nerve endings ( ganglions ). Neurotransmitters such as dopamine, adrenaline and serotonin are common to arthropods and primates ( us ), and serotonin is highly connected to dominance and aggressive social behavior. ( that last bolded part is what JP claims, but I don't know enough Biology to know whether it's true )

I stand by my 'cruel' assessment of Psychology. It is not quite a science. At best, what JP sells is opinion, not facts. You, as a biologist, would know that what we consider the 'brain' of a lobster, is actually still incorporated into a part of our brains. This purely instinctive, hard wired, response mechanism is controlled and kept in check by the rest of our brain ( which allows for thought and social behaviour ). The Psychologist's job is to determine when a 'thinking' individual loses control to the base, instinctive part of their brain, and engages in anti-social and physically aggressive behaviour. JP is entitled to his opinion as to when that happens, as are other Psychologists you may actually agree with. The 'error bars' around these opinions are huge.

The astronaut actually 'grew' 3 inches, but the inch unit stayed the same; there was no dilation of length in lessened gravity. What actually happened is that, his body, exposed to a prolonged period of lessened gravity, de-compacted, and his joints moved apart. I myself am usually 1/2 inch taller in the morning ( after having slept horizontally )than in the evening ( after standing most of the day ). Sometimes the difference is enough that I have to adjust the rear-view mirror in my vehicle.

I, OTOH, see a difference. It seems as if most, if not all, of German society ( excluding of course, the persecuted and exterminated ) was ready to follow their leader's ideology, even sending their kids fo fight in the war. Italian Fashists, not so much; they simply went along for the ride until the tides of war changed, then they switched sides. Even the US, over the past 5 years, although heading in the wrong direction, it is still only a minority that support MAGA/Trump. If half the eligible voters ( 240 million ), voted in the 2016 election, and roughly half of those voted for D Trump, that gives roughly 1/6-1/5 of the total US population supporting D Trump; almost a fringe element ( although it increased slightly in the 2020 election ). You seem to think these kind of things ( totalitarian, auhoritanianism ) only happens in fashist/capitalist states. Tell me how equal were/are people under Communism ? Or do you want to compare the number of people that their ideologies have killed ? ( just Mao Zedong killed more people than the NAZIs in WW2, don't even need Stalin and Pol Pot's numbers ) Ideology can be a dangerous thing; all people who have one, are convinced it is right, and will do whatever it takes to acheive that end.

The science I'm familiar with tests for repeatability. A Psychologist can take any two subjects, and the same stimulus will produce differing results. The best outcome expected is a statistical correlation ( because it is almost impossible to isolate other variables ).

All of those elements existed in many countries in those times. Even in Canada, we had the Residential Shool System for native children at the time. The difference is, that in a lot of countries, these elements simmered under the surface of society; and in some cases, still do. In Germany ( and some other places ) these elements actually boiled over into mass exterminations and genocide, requiring a world war and millions of casualties to restore ordered societies. I find it beyond belief that so many people could have been so easily convinced that hese elements were/are a good thing. It would be interesting to hear the opinions of a 1930s era NAZI, understand their motivations, and see where we are in danger of repeating those mistakes.

Well, he is a psychologist. At the risk of offending some people, it is a fair stretch to call Psychology a science.

Who says discussion is overrated ? It only took 33 pages to realize we agree on more things than we disagree on. Maybe we're just too passionate ( about certain things ) for our own good ?

If light gives up energy due to universal expansion, only red shift is evident. If light gives up energy due to other interactions, many more effects are evident and can be observed. None have been. I was going to give you +1 for that statement, but then I would have had to give you -1 for the rest of your uneducated post. You're still even; which way you go is up to you.

If you feel strongly enough about it to compare the US to NAZI Germany, it may be time to move. Canada's nice this time of year; we just had our first snowfall in Southern Ontario, today ( didn't stick ).

One could take the cynical view that he has found how to make large amounts of money by being controversial. Or you might think that the Canadian Government is too controlling of people's lives. In Canada ( Ontario ) we are required to show a double ( approved ) vaccination passport to dine in restaurants, attend sporting events/concerts, or have a drink in a bar. If I cross into the US and stay longer than 72 hrs, I am required to get tested before entering the US, and again within 72 hrs of re-entry into Canada ( at my own expense for a PCR test ) even if doubly vaccinated, and having had Covid. Things like this would undoubtedly lead to gun shootouts in the US, wouldn't they ? I myself think the Government has every right to be controlling in public health matters, where your illness could affect many others who are unknowingly exposed to you. The Government has every right to control what you DO. They have no right to control what you THINK. And should control what you SAY, only in cases where it can directly affect public health/safety. In case I wasn't clear, I don't agree with his 'politics' on vaccinations/public health measures.

As you probably did for that reply ...

Not to belabor the point, CharonY, but the passages are clearly and accurately quoted, 5 posts back, and 15 hours ago.

I just substituted old people for people who demand others use preferred pronouns. I used similar arguments as have been used to defend the demanding of preferred pronoun use. There is such a thing as age discrimination, you know 😄 . And old people die in greater numbers than the general population 😁 .