Reaper

I'll join you in this quest. *arms quack-busting missiles * Just tell me what I'm allowed to contribute,

It's amazing just how malleable the mind of the typical person really is. It's amazing how a skilled politician can what they consider friends into the worst enemies, and at the same time turn the worst enemies into the best friends. What's even more intriguing is the relative ease they do it with, the consistency they do that, and how every single time the masses fall for the same thing over and over again. I think the situation will improve once people learn to actually pay attention to the issues, rather than the superficial things. But, I don't see any evidence that this will happen anytime soon. *sigh*

I'm not sure of your level, but judging by the info on your post, I would say that you should start with The Road to Reality by Roger Penrose. He gives a very detailed view of string theory. The book is a little critical of it, but you can learn what it is all about. The book is difficult, but he devotes the first half of it to mathematics, so it shouldn't be that bad.

I've just installed Tor on my computer to use as a proxy, but I'm wondering if its any good. I also want to know if it contains any malicious programs or spyware or something so that I can delete it before it does harm. I checked my virus scanner and so far it checks out. Does anybody here have it, know what it is, knows if it is any good. It's free if you want to download it by the way.

You have to be more specific. What field of science are you interested enough in to really want to pursue it. As 1veedo said, science is a very big field. In the mean time, start off with mathematics, you'll need it if you want to go into science. And read up on anything that interests you.

No need to be a cranky old man geoguy. Sure, America has its fair share of dumbasses but its the same for any other nation, if only not as bad. The other nations aren't as smart as they say they are, you know.

And its something that K-12 teachers consistently ignore, or don't want to inconvenience themselves with. There is nothing like coming into college and learning that most of the things you learned in high school physics is wrong.

I googled this guy, and apparently he's been doing the same thing to other science boards as well. Haha! We will show him what happens when he f**ks around with the big boys in town won't we.

Oh, ok. I think I got plank scale and plank energy mixed up or something (Not even in correct units or numbers either whoops!) . I guess the question should be then, how do they know that they can only be directly observed at plank length?

May have already been mentioned in this thread, too lazy to look through it now... But anyways, in most string theory literature that I've read, it is predicted that it will take a stupendous amount of energy to actually observe a string directly, or indirectly (something like on the order of 1x10^32 J ?). How did string theorists come to predict such a large amount of energy like that, and why? Another thing that I've been wondering is, is there any relationship whatsoever with cosmic strings (or can they even be applied to cosmic strings)?

It's already a hot topic among my college dorm mates up here in Mass.

I find that quite interesting

You know something, I don't know why the general public views Einstein as some sort of god-like character. While I do consider him a great scientist, he is, after all, only human, and at various times in his life made some pretty big mistakes and was wrong about many things (such as refusing to believe in some aspects of quantum mechanics). There are quite a few scientists that are just as good as he was, some even better. And yet, the general public continues to regard him as a synonym for "smart" or "genius" or something similar. It isn't restricted to the general public, in many academic circles he is also perceived as a god-like entity. For example, Temple Grandin, who is an associate professor (and an architect who designs slaughterhouses...) for those of you who never heard of her, makes a bunch ridiculous claims about him (e.g. autism, etc.), based entirely on anecdotes and opinions, and then portrays her claims as truth.

Well, first of all, non-deterministic does not necessarily mean random. Third, we have experiment upon experiment confirming that particles do exhibit wave-particle duality. The double-slit experiment and the photoelectric effect are some examples. <edit> wasn't wearing my glasses, thought it said was Bohr, not Bohm. I read the wiki article and it does not say that particles have no wave-particle duality characteristics. Also, look at the criticisms against the Bohm interpretation as listed on wikipedia.

http://www.cheapcooking.com/ This site might help you here. And ramen noodles and anything microwavable are always cheap enough.

and I most certainly disagree and will say that this has a lot to do with ethics. The whole point of medicine and other forms of medical sciences is to help sick people get better. Since it involves the treatment of people' date=' proper ethics are a must. Since you are trying to improve people's health, you want to make sure that it is done correctly and safely. Money, of course, is always an going issue, but making sure that people get proper treatment is essential and in my opinion is top priority. But then you have to ask yourself if giving up on patients and forcing them to seek some crackpot, pseudo-scientific "medical" practice is ethical. First off, when (real) doctors say that they can't do anything more, what they really mean is that can't do anything more without risking serious harm to the patient. Second, most good doctors will not make any promises because they might be misleading. They never tell you that such and such treatment will work 100% of the time. And if there are any problems with the treatment, that is why they tell you to either notify the doctor or, if you really want to, go see another one. The placebo effect does not necessarily mean that their chronic medical conditions (disease or otherwise) just simply goes away. While the use of the placebo effect may be helpful in some cases, standard treatments should not instantly cease. Of course, if the placebo effect is used in conjunction with standard treatments, then it's ok, which might be what you mean.

Simple answer: Because it is a field of science, and therefore experimental procedures are a must. Case studies and surveys can be used, but they must follow standard scientific methods and procedures.

Dude.......sweet...

Interesting. I like the blog it has a very good explanation. So, basically what happens is that when you shoot more atoms in a particular energy field, the data collected on the graph will converge toward a particular axis or a single value, and that is its current quantum state, if I'm understanding this correctly, right?

This was something that popped into my head today as I was reading something on modern medicine in my local library. I know virtually nothing about modern medicine so as I was reading these books I was fascinated at how much scientific work was put into proving that what the medical practitioners use actually worked (or explain why such and such doesn't work)! But as I was thinking about it, you hear a lot of stuff in pop media and other various sources promoting various "alternative" medicine such as prayer, acupuncture, homeopathy, etc. And in many countries, including here in the U.S., there is a wide acceptance of it by the general public. But what I'm wondering though is if the use of alternative medicine even ethical, never mind whether it should be accepted into mainstream. First of all, the various "alternatives" out there are not proven, haven't been tested (or refuse to be tested), and their effectiveness is questionable at best (acupuncture, though, does at least have some scientific backing). For one, many "successes" can be explained by the placebo effect. Another thing is that despite the image that the general public has about the unconventional and alternative, there have been many cases in which people have actually died or gotten seriously hurt. And then on many levels, many of the so-called alternatives out there refuse to be brought under scientific scrutiny, while some are based on principles that are just downright physically impossible (e.g. homeopathy). And yet, people use them and believe in them. A 2002 study showed that more than half (about 62%) of the U.S. population use them. Here is the link to the study: http://nccam.nih.gov/news/report.pdf. And look on at the figure 1 graph on page 4. So this leads back to whether or not their use is ethical as a form of medical treatment. Given that they aren't tested, proven, or in some cases based on pseudo-scientific principles, I would have to say no, their use is not ethical, and I will go as far as saying that promoting these alternatives when there is no scientific backing is very irresponsible and a hazard to human health. Now that I think about this, I wonder why I even gave credence to them years before, but then I didn't know better at the time. Of course, I'm not a professional in any field of science, so I want to hear your opinions or viewpoints on them.

The tone of this article suggests that they actually believed the 9/11 conspiracy theorists at one point or another. Regardless, this is one more nail in the coffin; the idea that it is a controlled demolition, that is.

He's quite right, Blike. This is the updated map:

I do it all the time too, its not that hard.

Only on this site does a perfectly normal topic turn into a spam fest

Stormwarrior, you need to calm down. If you don't like this thread, then post elsewhere. It's just a youtube video. Everyone at one point or another has been laughed at for being stupid or behaving in a rather unintelligent manner, and sooner or they all recover from it and get on with life (well, except the ones who get a Darwin Award ).