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Ecoli is right. Different analgesics work by different mechanisms. Aspirin belongs to a general group called "NSAIDS" and work by inhibiting the enzyme cyclooxygenase (Cox). Cox is necessary to make prostaglandins, which work at the level of the nerve endings. Without prostaglandins, the nerve endings don't sense pain. Morphine and its derivatives work in the brain. They bind to the endorphin receptors, which trigger them and gives a sense of well-being, pleasure, and blocks pain perception. Runners do this by releasing endorphins as they run, which is why they have a "runner's high". Other analgesics work by other mechanisms. Sedatives render a patient unconscious.

If you read the entire article, you should have come across this paragraph, quoted from a paper: "The key findings of the present study are the differences in the disposition kinetics and demethylation rates of thimerosal and MeHg. Consequently, MeHg is not a suitable reference for risk assessment from exposure to thimerosal-derived Hg. Knowledge of the biotransformation of thimerosal, the chemical identity of the Hg-containing species in the blood and brain, and the neurotoxic potential of intact thimerosal and its various biotransformation products, including ethylmercury, is urgently needed to afford a meaningful interpretation of the potential developmental effects of immunization with thimerosal-containing vaccines in newborns and infants. This information is critical if we are to respond to public concerns regarding the safety of childhood immunizations." IOW, we don't know how dangerous thimersol in vaccines really is. It may not be dangerous at all, because the levels of thimersol are so low. Depending on your age and immune status, the risks from having the flu could be far higher than any possible risk of the flue vaccine. You need to find out what the actual data is, not just "I have heard not sure about how true this" You can check out anything medical on PubMed. Just enter your search terms separated by "AND" or just a comma. So, if you go to http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez and enter "thimerosal, Alzheimer" you get "no items found". This means that there are NO scientific studies on the rumor you heard. Therefore the statement "if you get three flu vacinnes in 3 years your Alzheimer's risk increases" has no basis in science. It's a rumor.

http://bob.nap.edu/html/evolution98/evol1.html "Fact: In science, an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed. Law: A descriptive generalization about how some aspect of the natural world behaves under stated circumstances. Hypothesis: A testable statement about the natural world that can be used to build more complex inferences and explanations. Theory: In science, a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses." So, yes, science partly consists of "facts". And yes, "facts" can be wrong. For about 10 years it was considered that humans had 48 chromosomes: all the observations gave this number. Then an error was found and it was realized that humans have 46 chromosomes. Facts are used to test hypotheses, theories, and laws (which are really the same thing). Hypotheses/theories/laws are all statements about the physical universe. These statements, if true, have consequences that should be observed. Science then tests for these consequences by making the observations to see if the observations (facts) correspond or contradict the consequences. If they contradict, the hypothesis/theory/law is said to be refuted or falsified. If the observations are consistent with the hypothesis/theory/law, then it is supported. The situation gets more complicated for three reasons: 1. Well supported hypotheses/theories are then considered as (provisionally) true and treated as fact. Niles Eldredge did this very well in his book The Monkey Business: A Scientist Looks at Creationism. It the statement "the earth is round" a hypothesis, theory, or fact? At some point in history it has been considered all 3! Right now it's a fair guess that you consider the statement to be a "fact". However, it is really a well-supported theory. 2. William Whewell noted in the late 1800s that there is no such thing as a "pure" fact divorced entirely from theory. Take the "fact" "the year is 365 days long". That's an observation, right? BUT, the statement involves ideas of time, number, and recurrence! Therefore, according to Whewell, all “fact” is theory-laden." 3. This is similar to #1. Whewell defined "fact" as any piece of knowledge which is raw material for the formulation of laws and theories, Thus, Kepler's Laws of Planetary Orbits are "facts" in Newton's theories of gravity! Bottom line, science consists of observations and hypotheses/theories. Of the two, hypotheses/theories are far more important.

Religion and science are NOT two sides of a fence. Of course. Science does. Science is agnostic. Individual scientists can be theists, atheists, or agnostics. But science is agnostic: " To say it for all my colleageues and for the umpteenth millionth time (from college bull sessions to learned treatises): science simply cannot (by its legitimate methods) adjudicate the issue of God's possible superintendence of nature. We neither affirm nor deny it; we simply can't comment on it as scientists." SJ Gould, Impeaching a self-appointed judge. Scientific American, 267:79-80, July 1992. Too bad. Because science won't support atheism. See above. Argument from Personal Incredulity. We know how faulty that is. Also, have you considered that your viewpoint is completely irrelevant to the existence or non-existence of a supernatural being? Such a being either exists or does not exist irregardless of how "alien" that is to you. That "lacks belief" is a semantic dodge. You have the question: does deity exist? You've got 3 possible answers: 1. I believe deity exists. 2. I believe deity does not exist. 3. I do not know whether deity exists or not. Now, "lacks belief" cannot stand. It either reduces to 2 or 3. 1. There is support for ANY theory if you look only for it. And yes, theists do have supporting evidence. It's evidence YOU don't consider as valid, but that is a very different claim from saying the evidence isn't there. 2. A famous scientific principle is "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" Carl Sagan Demon Haunted World, pg 8. Don't you find it ironic that you cite science as backing when you are violating it? This is the danger of atheism to science: it wants scientific backing so has to misrepresent the basic principles of science. It makes you an atheist. Period. The concept of "strong" vs "weak" atheism was invented by atheists to try to disguise that atheism is a faith.

1. Matter congregating thru gravity to start fusion (making stars) is not the growth of the universe. When we speak of the universe gaining in size, we mean that space itself is expanding. 2. Way, way, back, the universe was nearly uniform in density of matter. This occurred at the end of inflation about 10^-30 seconds after the Big Bang. At that point, the universe was a meter in diameter. There were quantum fluctuations that created points of higher density that started the condensation to stars and galaxies. http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/21st_century_science/lectures/lec25.html So you can see that the expansion after that carried these condensations out to the "edges" of the universe. There is no "fringe" the way you are thinking of it. So there is the explanation of your "paradox". "Flat" is a cosmological term. It refers to the 4D shape of the universe in Riemann geometry: http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/21st_century_science/lectures/lec21.html (halfway down the page) There is a "closed" universe whose 3D analogy is a sphere. There is an "open" universe whose 3D analogy looks like a saddle. A "flat" universe has a 3D analogy of a plane. This also refers to the amount of matter in the universe. A high mass universe is "closed" or has "positive curvature". Right now it looks like the universe is "open" or "negative curvature". There is NOTHING "outside" the universe. When we speak of expansion, we are usually thinking of matter expanding into space. But you have to remember that the expansion of the universe is spacetime expanding. So space is expanding. By the logic of the BB, there must be an "edge" to the universe in that there must be a place where "space" ends and there is nothing "beyond". However, when cosmologists speak of "finite" or "infinite", they are speaking whether the universe is "open" or "closed". You must remember to use the words the way cosmologists are, not put your own definition to them. I think you would benefit by reading this article in Scientific American. You can purchase the digital version online: 7. Lineweaver CH and Davis TM Misconceptions about the Big Bang, Scientific American 36-45 March 2005. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=1&articleID=0009F0CA-C523-1213-852383414B7F0147

No, it's not. The structure of the universe is not at all like the structure of cells. Since your premise is wrong, your conclusion: is not tenable. Yes, we are part of something extremely huge, but there is no indication that the universe as a whole is a "being". No, we can't. We know what the molecules are within cells, and they do not permit complete creatures like us. We occasionally do get intercellular parasites -- such as tuberculosis -- but the effect of those is to disrupt the cellular processes. I can understand your amazement at the size of the universe. Keep that. But please discard the ideas relating to the universe as an organism or that there are smaller organisms within our cells. Those ideas are refuted by the data.

And you commonly make misstatements of fact. You did so when you tried to denigrate the reviewer by saying an Associate Professor was not a "real" professor. It's a logical fallacy. Translation: you still won't provide us with any evidence. Since you stated it as a belief and not science, fine. You can believe what you like. Data will tell us whether your belief corresponds to reality, as it always does in science.

It's not just international law, bombus. Kuwait had been a functioning independent state for longer than Iraq! Irrelevant. Your point was that Germany had not withdrawn from any occupied territory in WWI. The data shows that claim to be wrong. And just how many does it take for the action to be wrong? Obviously enough invaded to defeat Kuwait's military force and occupy the country. Does it have to be more than that? The articles were talking about a possible threat to Saudi Arabia. You seem to be trying to use the alledged small number of Iraqi troops in Kuwait to say the invasion was OK. That position is simply not going to be valid by this argument. No, they weren't. Someone has told you a whopper here. Remember the Marines fighting on the southern border of Kuwait? Just use some elementary logic here, bombus. IF most of the Iraqi troops were dug in along the border with Iraq, the flanking movement would not have worked! We would never have captured as many Iraqi prisoners as we did. I don't know about the intention to invade Saudi Arabia. I talked about capability,but you seem to have ignored the point. As to "willing to leave without a shot being fired", you are re-writing history. Remember the Iraqi attack against Khafji? Before the ground war started: "At Khafji, the deserted, oil-soaked Saudi coastal town, and at two other points west of there, Saddam Hussein again coldly miscalculated. The Iraqi army made probing attacks that were geared toward drawing the Coalition ground forces prematurely into battle—inflict heavy casualties and the anti-war movement would increase the pressure, leading to a U.S. withdrawal. The Marines and their Arab allies received their baptism of fire, and came out of the experience with more confidence than they had when they went in. It took 36 hours of fighting to push the Iraqis out." http://www.qrmapps.com/gw1/khafji.htm No, it's not. You may not like attacking retreating troops, but it is well within international law. Unless the troops surrender, they are still combatants. And again, you misstate the facts when you say these were "surrendered soldiers". They weren't. You can argue that it would have been humane to stop the air attacks on the Iraqis fleeing Kuwait City earlier, but you can't argue that it was either against international law or that the toops had surrendered. You provided the evidence. From your post "The implication is obvious: Iraqi troops who were eventually deployed along the Kuwait-Saudi Arabian border were sent there as a response to U.S. build up and were not a provocation for Bush's military action. " 1. That contradicts your statement above "They were dug in mostly on the border in Iraq" Nope. They were dug in on the southern border of Kuwait! 2. As I noted before, you can't have it both ways. If Hussein intended to give up Kuwait without a shot, then why move troops IN? He would only do that if he intended to fight. 3. Hussein launched offensives at 3 places into Saudi Arabia Jan. 29 - Feb 3. The refutes the idea that he was going to leave without a shot being fired. I did. In fact, I quoted it. The material YOU posted 1) refutes your position and 2) makes your position internally inconsistent. Bombus, you don't like war. I don't like war. But the sad fact is that some wars just have to be fought. For the simple reason that wars can be profitable for one side, and sometimes you just have to defend yourself and others. If you don't, the end result is a massacre. I obviously don't think that every war the US has fought was justified; I opposed the second Iraq war from the start. But you seem to go whole hog and think NO war the US has ever fought was justified. The problem I'm having, on a science forum, is that you are misstating the facts to support your belief. Why can't you take the attitude of science over to other subjects and try to divorce your personal feelings from the data?

What specifically do you disagree with? 1. That morality is NOT irrelevant as to deciding what science will continue? I gave examples where morality did influence what science does. 2. That cloning efficiency needs to be improved before it can become routine? The debates in the USA have had NO effect on animal cloning. That debate is all about whether to clone humans! When you talk about "plant cloning", you are talking about making cuttings. Apples and oranges compared to animal cloning. Research continues trying to find why animal cloning is so inefficient. And so far has hit a stone wall. This work has been going on for 20 years or more. I'm touched by your blind faith in scientific progress, but you might want to read some of the papers on the subject. Scientists are baffled. But they can already get heart treatments with adult stem cells. There are at least 2 companies out there that will inject adult stem cells into your heart. There are several clinical trials underway using adult stem cells to repair hearts following heart attacks. So are you sure people are going to need embryonic stem cells for regenerative therapy? Right now it doesn't look that way to me. The problem is in controlling the differentiation of embryonic stem cells. Are you aware that when you implant ES cells as a mass --like you must if you want a new liver or heart -- all you get is a teratoma? Adult stem cells don't have that problem. The concern over cloning is not confined to those. I have ethical concern with cloning. For instance, when you talk about "cloned body parts", are those just the individual organs or are you talking about an whole clone from which you harvest parts? I have severe ethical objections to the latter. If you clone an entire human being, the question becomes: is that a human in the ethical/legal sense, or is it a piece of property? If you know anything about history, you know how people have been treated as property, from indentured servitude to Roman slavery to serfdom to American enslavement of Indians and blacks. Do you really think people will have no objection to making a new group of slaves?

Animal testing is often no more harmful that Phase I and II clinical trials. No one gets arrested for that. No one arrests sugeons for trying modifications of procedures on their human patients. Research on animals MUST be done with the appropriate pain medication. The testing doesn't kill the animal. Instead, research animals are painlessly euthanized at the end of the experiment. There are only a few methods of euthansia allowed, and all of them are painless, unlike the hypobaric chambers used to kill unwanted pets. I'm afraid you have done what is called 'synedoche" -- taken a part for the whole. Yes, some chemicals are tested on animals. Would you rather they were tested on humans? However, a lot of what we are talking about in this thread is medical research done on animals. Now, I have used rabbits as experimental animals to test a new treatment for osteoarthritis. This treatment would completely cure arthritic knees and prevent people from having total hips or knees done because of the pain and crippling of arthritis. Would you have me stop? If I do, then you and any of your loved ones will never get that cure. Even at a 1,000 animals a day -- the number YOU quoted -- that is only 365,000 animals a year! You need to get your own facts straight. Someone seems to have given you some really faulty information. Both the FDA and USDA set minimum cage sizes, and those cage sizes vary from species to species. Mice have cages about 2 feet long and 1 foot wide. Rabbits have cages that are 4 feet x 4 feet. I've seen them. Do you know what an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee is?

Take a look at the OP: "Many of my conservative friends are turned off by Ron because he sees no moral obligation to protect Israel, or come to the defense of Taiwan. But, and this is one of the reasons why I really like Dr. Paul, he spends more time making the point that you shouldn't be looking to your president to wage war in the first place. " So, if Ron Paul sees no moral obligation to come to the defense of Taiwan, and insists Congress has to declare war "in the first place", would he authorize troops BEFORE Congress can convene and declare war? That's the context of my reply. Nuclear weapons weren't around when the Founders were alive. Wars didn't have the potential to escalate and destroy civilization and perhaps all human life on the planet. As I said, a declaration of war invokes some rules. If you support a nation at war with materiel, you automatically become a "belligerent" -- at war with the enemies of the people you are helping. FDR did some tricky things to get around this problem in his "short of war" policy of helping Britain. If we had declared war against North Vietnam, then the presence of Soviet and Chinese military people operating SAM sites and piloting fighters would have made them belligerents. We would have been required to declare war on the Soviet Union and China. Any doubts about how that would have ended? Since it wasn't a declared war, we could were not required to take official notice of Soviet military personnel and materiel in North Vietnam. It kept the war limited. So yes, on that level having undeclared wars has served us well. It served everyone well in Korea, Grenada, Panama, Zaire, and when Clinton used American planes in Kosovo and the no-fly zones over Iraq. It didn't work out so well in Vietnam and Iraq. That's because the people in charge screwed up. Yes, it does. But we need to look at the misuse by the individuals and punish them rather than perhaps change the system. I don't know. We haven't. Instead we have a "War on Terror", which is not the same thing as declaring war against al-Qaeda. OTOH, in a sense, we are acting sometimes as if it is a declared war. After all, that is Bush's justification for treating al-Qaeda prisoners as "enemy combatants" and keeping them locked up without trial. Also, we are using the military in Iraq and Afghanistan and not the police. We don't try to arrest al-Qaeda members but just kill them -- like killing enemy soldiers. This whole situation is very confused because we are also treating al-Qaeda as criminals, not as combatants. We view what they are doing as going against criminal law, not waging war. So launching a "terrorist" attack is breaking the law, not engaging in a military operation. But bin Laudin declared war on us. I think this goes back to what we did in the "John Edwards" thread: confused tactics with goals. We are against them not so much because of their goals to destroy us (maybe because they can't), but because of their tactics. We view "terrorist" attacks as morally and legally wrong. And we don't view al-Qaeda as legal! So maybe you have the reason we didn't declare war: that ambivalence toward al-Qaeda I mentioned. But this isn't a reason it became as it is today. In 1950, Congress was used to declaring war. But Truman didn't go that route because he invoked the United Nations Charter and the commitment of US troops that way -- without a declaration of war. Bush senior did the same thing in 1991. Who decides "truly lost"? In a declaration of war, Congress would have the power to force the President to a negotiated peace or surrender. Why can't Congress do the same thing here? Two problems: 1. Much of the "information" to decide to go to war was either mistaken or deliberate lies. So that negates "The decisions were properly made" In any contract law, if one side misrepresents the situation, the contract (decision) is no longer binding. 2. Congress authorized the overthrow of Hussein. It did not specifically authorize a 5 year occupation of Iraq. IOW, you can argue that Bush has exceeded the authorization Congress and the American people gave him. (BTW, I NEVER agreed to this war. I knew from the beginning that the Bush administration was lying. It was easy to see in their shifting rationalizations for going to war and that we already had data contradicting 2 of their reasons Well, aren't we supposed to change our minds when presented with new data? And who was it who changed the goal? The administration! First it was overthrow Hussein, then it was help the Iraqis establish their own government, and now it seems to be "defeat the insurgents". Whatever "defeat" means. Also, most of the reasons for opposition is based on the perception that the mission has failed and it is impossible to accomplish "the goal".

That simply keeps us in the meatgrinder. What you need to ask is: Will keeping foreign troops on Iraqi soil lead to a stable, peaceful Iraqi democratic government that views the West as a friend? After all, wasn't that the goal to begin with? The point I'm trying to make is that we are in a conflict that we can't win. Any solution that involves some political cover to keeping troops in Iraq has as its premise that the presence of those troops will cause the defeat of the people fighting against us and the Iraqi government. I'm saying that premise is wrong. No matter how long we stay in Iraq, the political and military situation is such that we can't provide a secure democratic secular government there. I think the best we can hope for is Iraq to break up into 3 states and perhaps the Kurdish state can be stable and friendly with us. You need to read some history. At several times in history one side or both have really wanted to fight a war. Look at the enthusiasm for the American Civil War on both sides. They get sick of it after a while, but only after LOTS of people are dead. Yes, Iraq will "work it out". It's not going to be pretty. I disagree. I think the victims are starving, but not the fighters. I disagree. I think the Iranians really want to become a nuclear power. All they have to do is look at the different ways the West dealt with Iraq and N. Korea. Iraq got invaded because they did NOT have nuclear weapons. N. Korea gets economic aid because it DOES have nuclear weapons. Iran views nuclear weapons as essential to its defense. They are probably correct. That's a foolish generalization. "Anyone who judges by the group is a peawit". Sergeant Kilrain in The Killer Angels. I think you need to read history to see just how worldly and rational Muslims can be. I suggest you start with Saladim. Where did you get such nonsense? Have you ever heard of what happened in 1948 when Israel was established? Of the forceful eviction of Palestinians in order to have a Jewish state? How about 1967, where Israel conqueored land belonging to other countries and has stayed as an occupying power? And no, Islam was NOT altered after the Crusades. Islam has always accepted the Torah and viewed Jesus as a prophet. The Quran is available online. Perhaps you should try reading it. Say what? Since when has Hamas recognized the state of Israel? And when exactly did Hezbollah lose? Right now they are working to replace Lebanon's government. Tell that to the troops in Iraq who are fighting al-Qaeda. Haven't you read the latest National Intelligence Estimate? It's at http://www.npr.org. This is like listening to Rush Limbaugh.

This is still the wrong thing. Again you are having the journalists look at people. This is what journalists do all the time, but they have to put both people on when they are on opposite sides of an issue. It's apparent that, even on a science forum, our educational system has failed to teach people what is science. In science, it's not about the people, it's about the DATA. Telling a "quack" from a "serious scientist" is about people! At some time or another, most of the great scientists were looked upon aas "quacks". I disagree. The Dems at least used critical thinking. What you have said is that conservative Republicans deliberately misused critical thinking. That is, gave people what looked like it but was not. If the Dems were guilty of faulty reasoning, surely the corrective action was not to give a different form of faulty reasoning. We might have to agree to disagree on this, but I respect where you're coming from with it. While I absolutely agree with your point about scientific fact, much of what happens in science today isn't fact at all, it's statistical approximation and presumption (especially in the areas of medicine and the environment). Actually, that's the ethics OF science! Therefore to be taught IN science. While science is not an ethical system, science does have a set of ethics scientists are supposed to abide by: 1. Don't fabricate or falsify data. 2. Don't warp data to fit theories. 3. Don't warp data for financial gain or to fit personal beliefs. 4. Admit when theories are falsified. This comes from failing to look at what science really does: falsifies theories. What you are doing is looking at "evidence for" and thinking you can distinguish valid from invalid theories based on that. Again, our educational system has failed if someone on a science forum has this poor a view of what science is and how it works. The distortion we are talking about comes from theories that are conclusively falsified but people want them to be considered as valid. In the environment, the theories that are falsified are: 1. The environment is not getting warmer. 2. The change is not caused at all by human activity. Now, climatologists can argue about exactly how much the climate is warming and how much of the change is due to human activity. They can also argue about the consequences. But NONE of them disagree that those 2 theories are falsified. The same thing happens in medicine. Also, saying scientific conclusions are based on "presumption" is exactly one of the arguments used by the people you are posting against! That's one of the main ways to try to deny data you don't like. Don't call it data or observations, but call it "presumptions" or "assumptions" or "prejudice". Congrats, you fell into the same trap you are inveighing against! Please document the suppression or interferring with health and medical related publications in the peer-reviewed literature. The point I was making is that this is acceptable. I don't agree with Bush, but not because I think he "interferred with science". I disagree because I have a different moral position. After all, we could pursue science to make a more lethal and infectious strain of smallpox or ebola. SHOULD WE?. I would veto funding for such research. Because of my moral obligations. How about you? Again, they are presenting "both sides". The point is, by the DATA, there isn't both sides. I claim that they portray two sides because that is what they are trained to do as part of "fairness". In the case of politics or pre-trial criminal proceedings, that is the case. The problem is that it doesn't apply to science. The physical universe only has one side. Once science finds out that a side is just plain wrong, that's the end of it. That's a different issue and it has ALWAYS been done that way. Read a bit of history of elections in the 19th century. Start with the 1800 presidential race between Jefferson and Adams. Also, don't forget the races Andrew Jackson ran. He definitely viewed it as a fight. A duel more than a wrestling match. Politics tends to get personal and political elections have ALWAYS been referred to as a "race" between candidates. The idea that what we have are people with different ideas to deal with the issues and people should pick the candidate whose position on the issues most closely resembles theirs always gets lost. And always has. Instead, the "race" simile causes journalists (and everyone else) to treat elections like sporting events. Every time I've listened to Rush and checked his "facts", I find that those facts are always lies. So yes, he "validated" ideas of yours, but he did so with lies. Does that really count as "validation"? Didn't have to. Cronkite and company had the integrity to check their facts. When Rather didn't, he was fired. So you might not have liked what was being told to you, but you weren't being out and out lied to with a straight face like Rush does. There's a difference between extrapolating beyond what the data says -- doomsday scenarios -- and denying data. And there's also the thing in science that you change your mind when you have new data. BUT, in the meantime you make decisions based on what the data is as you know it. This isn't "ignoring conclusions". We can take that. After all, science tells you what the physcial universe IS, not what you OUGHT to do about it. Science tells you what the effects of cutting down the entire Amazonian rainforest are going to be. That doesn't, by itself, tell you not to do it. What is happening now is 1) denying the data, 2) misrepresenting the data, 3) personally attacking scientists (which is what you are doing), and 4) attacking science as a reliable way to know about the physical universe (also what you are doing). And there is the problem. SHOULD their eyes glaze over? After all, if they are going to argue that the data is wrong, then it is recumbent on them to listen to the data analysis. I never believed this anyway. And yet ... people keep voting for tax cuts, don't they? They ignore that the economy had the longest period of growth under Clinton and what did the majority vote for? Tax cuts. So, on the empirical evidence, it appears that you are wrong about this. Most people will go on believing. Maybe because the Repubs never used those long studies but simply told the Big Lie long enough that most people believed it? Or because they couched it in terms of general tax cuts and people are basically selfish and greedy and never looked to see how much their own taxes would be cut?

We were not originally talking about theory evaluation. We were discussing assumptions that are necessary in order to do science. To recap: In any search for truth, whether scientific, philosophical, religious, etc, you must assume 2 things that you cannot "prove": 1. I exist. 2. I am sane. Some people have suggested a third assumption: 3. My senses are not being deliberately deceived by an outside agent. In addition, science has 5 assumptions about the nature of the universe. (Judeo-Christianity has these same 5 items, but they are conclusions based on the assumption of the existence of God and His nature): 1. The universe is rational. 2. The univeres is accessible. 3. The universe is objective. 4. The universe is contingent. 5. The universe is unified. In addition, someguy has been arguing that there is no such thing as "reality". He claims that reality is a construct of human senses and does not exist outside the human brain. You and I, OTOH, have a separate "vibe" going in discussing the existence of deity and what is, and isn't, evidence. We got on that because I (mistakenly) interpreted JHAQ's post as questioning deity. Looking back on it, I think JHAQ was refuting Someguy's position that our senses did not reflect reality. As JHAQ pointed out, natural selection would not have done that. Only by accurately sensing reality could an individual survive. Thus, natural selection made our senses be accurate detectors of what is "really" out there.

1. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. 2. Your statement isn't true. The OP lists the evidence: personal experience for which "ghost" is the hypothesis. What happens is that the evidence is not part of science because it is not intersubjective. 3. Do you have evidence falsifying ghosts? The appropriate answer is "I don't know. The suppoprting evidence is not sufficient to accept the hypothesis of ghosts as (provisionally) true but neither is the idea falsified."

1. You can't defend any idea on either "a priori" or Ockhams' Razor. Ideas must be defended on the data. Does your idea give us the universe we observe? 2 Why do you have "Brahmin" in it at all? That's one reason Phi for All moved this. 3. If you really think this works, then write it up for arXiv.org and submit it. Otherwise, you are really wasting your time here. We aren't going to certify an idea involving physics unless the physics community looks at it.

The two slit experiment was done with electrons. Electrons are also both particles and waves. You seem to be restricting yourself to photons. You and I are both particles and waves. It's just that the wavelength is much less than the diameter of an atom due to our size. Doesn't quanta = photon? Can you give us the mathematical treatment of how the quanta moves from one atom to another? The physicists who do wave-particle duality do. Also, have you done a google search on Bose-Einstein condensates? You might also want to read these webites http://web.phys.ksu.edu/vqmorig/tutorials/online/wave_part/ http://theory.uwinnipeg.ca/mod_tech/node154.html In particular, please explain the photoelectric effect as particles. No, it's not. What science does is use existing evidence to falsify theories. And the evidence from numerous 2-slit experiments and the photoelectric effect falsified that light or particles were only waves or particles. The particles have wave properties and the waves have particle properties. In the classic two slit experiment, the electrons were not in orbit, but were directed, one-by-one, by the electromagnetic fields in a cathode ray tube. Remember, electons have discrete negative charges. The pattern that emerged, as electrons, one by one, were shot thru one of two slits, was that of an interference pattern of waves. Particles could not have done this. And waves cannot hold discrete electrical charges, can they? What you are trying to do is not "reinterpret", but simply deny the data that falsified the wave alone and particle alone theories. First, you are using the Shifting the Burden of Proof fallacy. What we are showing you are the experiments that falsified that particles are particles alone and waves are waves along. How about electrons that are NOT in orbitals? These electrons alone were what was shot down the cathode ray tubes thru the two slits. Each was shot only thru one or the other slit. Each electron gave a single dot on the detector. Exactly what you would expect from a particle. It is the overall effect of the dots that gives an interference pattern. That's a personal objection and has no place in science. The universe doesn't have to be as we would like it to be. The universe is what it is. As it turns out, that is not the case. As has been discussed in several threads, recent data has shown that the "indeterminant" state (superposition) collapses on its own without observation. What's more, the time an object can stay in superposition is inversely related to size. The cat can't stay in an indeterminant state long. It essentially collapses instantaneously whether anyone looks or not. Now, if you really want something that is indeterminant but real, consider that scientists took an atom that was in the superposition of spin up and spin down and separated the two forms. The atom existed in 2 places at the same time. The distance was equivalent to you standing over 10 feet away from you.

The most recent issue of Scientific American has an article summarizing the data that led to the conclusion of global warming: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=1&articleID=B1182F51-E7F2-99DF-30CB2EAAC975FE93 You need to be a digital subscriber to read the entire issue, or you can go to your local bookstore and read/buy the issue.

That doesn't apply even there. In WWII civilians caught overseas on Wake and in the Phillipines suffered casualties. In the Atlantic, we sent merchant ships crewed by civilians to carry materiel to Europe. Many of them were sunk and thousands of crewmen killed. No military person suggested that those casualties weren't "acceptable". Instead, "acceptable" was couched in relation to the amount of materiel that got across. The French accepted civilian casualites caused by the Allies as "acceptable" if the end result was French Liberation. The British civilians and military accepted civilian casualites due to the bombing of London and other cities as "acceptable" if the military situation wasn't hurt. In fact, Churchill egged Hitler into bombing London as means of taking pressure of Fighter Command. Churchill even sacrificed the civilians of Coventry to protect the Enigma secret. I want the military to keep the mission of a free, secular democracy in sight. I'm willing to risk, and lose, my civilian life rather than see civil liberties lost so that there won't be any casualties. But I think that's how armygas used the argument of "no casualties": as justification for treading on our civil rights and the war in Iraq. And I object to that. Of course, at the time I thought he was also a civilian. We civilians should have the courage to risk our lives rather than wage an unnecessary war in Iraq or tread on our civil liberties. You can NEVER 100% protect us from asymmetric tactics without treading on our civil rights. That's that point, Paranoia. As long as you are in a war, the other side is going to score sometimes. The only way you can guarantee no casualties is to turn the USA into a police state so that no one has the freedom to plot or carry out such an attack. The question is: are they going to score enough to significantly threaten our way of life? No. They can kill a few of us but they can't destroy the USA that way. So I disagree. "Have a little courage" is part of policy. It's the part of policy we have to recognize we as civilians have to do in order to be free. We can't be perfectly safe and still be free. The answer is "yes". In any military organization there is going to be a small percentage who are actually criminal and will engage in rape and murder. Then there are those who kill innocents and torture people as part of keeping themselves alive. In a war like this, it is inevitable that even good troops are occasionally going to kill innocents or overstep the line of permissible interrogation. I don't hold that against the troops. In their situation, I could easily do the same. It's just the nature of war in general and this particular type of war in particular. Since propaganda is part of war, of course the other side is going to exploit any incident to make it appear as bad as possible. Again, "yes". Iran has an interest in inflaming and supporting the insurgents. OTOH, there are Iraqi nationals who will never stop fighting the occupier. Successes can't be undermined, because they exist independent of the journalism. What you are asking is whether the progress is being kept silent because journalists like reporting bad news. I don't have a full answer. I don't think anyone does. Several months ago I did hear an NPR story that looked into a government report. The report said that many projects were 80-99% complete. The problem was that the final delivery of services needed a 100% complete project. So, although progress had been made, for instance, on repairing sewer lines in Baghdad, the sections not repaired meant that most of the system was still out! I do know, from history, that the tactics being used by the insurgents can't be successfully countered militarily. The only times such insurgencies have failed in the past was when the vast majority of the populace turned against the insurgents. And that isn't happening here. I don't think it is "sheer choice". A choice is factual because some facts, both current and from history, are available. People can reasonably reach different positions because they place different emphasis on different facts. However, remember my claim of an unspoken contract between civilians and the military. As civilians we have a responsibility to keep raising questions and expecting reasonable answers. It is the responsibility of both critics and supporters of the war to give reasonable answers. If either side ever find themselves unable to do so, then their responsibility is to reassess their position. We owe that to the people at the sharp end.

But in the first few critical hours of an attack, there is no time to call in Congress. The President must send in the military under his authority as Commander-in-Chief. So what happens if Congress approves a mutual defense treaty but the President decides not to honor it? By the time Congress can get together and declare war, Taiwan might already be occupied by the mainland Chinese. Is Congress going to spend a LOT of American lives trying to reverse a fiat accompli? Partly because of nuclear weapons we have limited wars. Wars where there is no clear cut victory. When Congress declared war in the past, there was a very clear cut agenda: defeat a nation. In Korea we couldn't "defeat" China using conventional war. China was too large and our conventional military too small. We ended up fighting only to preserve the status quo and that war has never officially ended. We have an armistice, not a peace treaty. In the conflict over Quemoy and Matsu in the mid-1950s, it was a test of political will and no one wanted a full-scale war. In Vietnam it was partly an internal insurrection. Otherwise, if we were in a declared war and the Soviet Union started helping North Vietnam, under the rules of a declared war, we would have had to declare war on the Soviet Union. Back to nuclear war. Having an undeclared war allowed the politicians to keep it limited. Al-Queda isn't a nation. Neither is the insurecction in Iraq. If you declar war, how do you say the war has stopped? This is not to say that the current system is good, but to explain to you how we got in that situation. Going back to only Congress declaring war doesn't address the reasons why the current situation is in place.

I disagree that the morality is irrelevant as to whether cloning will become "routine". Just because it can be done doesn't mean it ought to be done or will be done. Many types of research on humans did not become routine because of the morality. Forced sterilization did not become routine because of the morality. Each country having nuclear weapons did not become routine. Slavery was once very routine. Now it isn't because of the morality. Also, looking on the science side, unless someone can increase the efficiency of cloning by 10^3, it won't be done routinely.

What was the reason I gave for doubting you? And remember, you were trying to use your credentials as being in the military to attack the ideas I was posting. Let me remind you here: Arnygas: "BTW I have been in the conflict twice (TWO deployments)... can you say the same???? " Armygas: "You said "yeah, a few people will die [in the US]", almost as if you wished for it. I for one certainly do not think thats acceptable. No death is acceptable however our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan don't have that option, they must kill or die (have you ever been in that situation?)" Again, asking me a personal questions as tho my military credentials determine the validity of the argument. Your site indicates that you are not in the combat arms, but in medical support. So can you answer the last question for yourself? Does the answer make any difference to the position you are arguing for? Armygas, what I'm seeing here is a classic debating tactic: distraction. When losing a debate, pick up on one area not related to the discussion -- preferably personal -- and devote all possible energies in directing the discussion to that. Examples of that in your latest post are: So, in an effort to get this discussion back on track I ask that you go back and read my posts. What got you started was this statement by me: Remember, if there is al-Qaeda attack in the USA, I, and my loved ones, are on the front line. Now do you disagree with either my assessment about the capability of al-Qaeda to destroy the US or that a primary military axiom is "keep calm"? Do you deny that a basic military principle is that casualties are acceptable in accomplishing the mission? Yes, it's a very good day when you can accomplish the mission without any casualties to your side. But the goal is to accomplish the mission. Sometimes the casualties must be 100% -- as in the Alamo to delay the Mexican Army to give Sam Houston time to form the Texan army. Do you agree? Or do you still insist that "no casualties are acceptable"? So, what is the mission here? I say the mission is to preserve the USA as a free, secular, democratic nation. Do you disagree? Can al-Queda, by itself, destroy the USA (or other Western democracies) by terrorist attacks? I say "No". The only way for al-Qaeda to succeed in destroying the USA is if we help them by making mistakes such as 1) destroying our own liberty by enacting laws that do so under the guise of "defending us" against al-Qaeda or 2) generalizing al-Qaeda to all Muslims and turning the entire Islamic world into our enemy. The latest National Intelligence Estimate (available to read at http://www.npr.org) says that, before the 2003 invasion, al-Qaeda had NO presence in Iraq! Now al-Qaeda has a strong presence in Iraq and has been able to use the Iraq War as a strong recruiting tool to convince Muslims that the USA is an enemy of all Muslims. So, my claim is that the Iraqi war was a defeat the moment we invaded. At that point, thanks to the NCA, we lost a battle against terrorism. Do you disagree? If so, why? I claim that staying in Iraq is not going to turn defeat into victory. The tactics being used by us and the insurgents in Iraq guarantee eventual victory for the insurgents. What we have in Iraq is a meatgrinder that chews up soldiers without producing victory. The only saving grace is that, thanks to improvements in our equipment and tactics, the meatgrinder is working a lot slower than it has in situations in the past: the Somme, Fredricksburg, Kursk, and Hurtgen Forest, for instance. But its still a meatgrinder. I claim the correct military course is to abandon this battle we can't win, pull out, and prepare for the consequences. All the while looking for opportunities to engage in battle where we can win. One option would be assisting Pakistan to drive al-Qaeda out of its new safe areas at the Pakistan tribal areas bordering Afghanistan (also in the latest NEI). I also made the claim that there is an unspoken contract between the military and civilians: it's the job and responsibility of civilians to question the legitimacy of any war and whether the tactics and strategy of the military is going to accomplish the stated political mission. Do you disagree? If so, why? Do you think it proper for personnel in the military to attempt to quash that questioning by simply saying "you are not military, so you must support every war"? Yes, you left several parts out: "The Los Angeles Times reported that in Sadiya, a nearby Sunni neighborhood, an Iraqi soldier searched a home for weapons, harassing a woman in her 70s. “What, grandma,” he said, “don’t you have any rocket-propelled grenades or roadside bombs?”" "The predominantly Sunni Dora neighborhood was also one of the first to be hit, with US troops targeting the Abu Disheer Shiite enclave. With Humvees and armored vehicles protected by aircraft, US troops set off stun grenades before smashing down doors and storming houses in search of insurgents." Now, how many of those houses (since they did each one) actually had insurgents and how many contained innocent civilians? How many innocents were affected by the stun grenades? Did the US troops offer to pay to have the doors repaired or replaced? "New checkpoints were set up around the city, with individuals frisked at gunpoint and cars and motorbikes searched from top to bottom. The US military announced on day two of the operation that it had cleared several areas of the capital in “intelligence-focused searches.” " Again, how many of those subjected to body searches actually were insurgents and how many were innocent? Now, imagine that happening in the USA with foreign troops frisking people at gunpoint, setting off stun grenades, and breaking down doors for room to room searches. Just how happy would YOU be? Would you be happy at having male soldiers frisking your girlfriend? Would you think they spent perhaps just a bit too long making sure there were no weapons around her breasts or in the area of her vagina? You deliberatly limited your search of the article for "atrocities". That apparently allowed you to overlook these paragraphs. The title said "terrorizes". I would say that the people in the neighborhoods felt terror at seeing all the military force and loaded guns pointed at them. You can "terrorize" people without setting off car bombs or killing them. "Terrorizing" is about scaring them. I'd say we did that fairly well. In fact, I'd say that was the whole point, because they wanted to scare any insurgents so that they did not start trouble. The point of the article is that, no matter how nice American soldiers are, the very nature of the tactics necessary to accomplish the mission is going to piss Iraqis off. We are acting like an oppressive occupying power. Don't get me wrong, the soldiers on the ground must be aggressive. Too careful and some kid pulls a grenade and drops it into their midst and they are dead. David Drake once made the emphatic comment that a soldier will, quite rightly, do whatever is necessary for his survival. What needs to be considered is whether we want him doing that before we send him into that situation. This is part of my argument that, using the tactics we're using, we can't win. The search and destroy might make Baghdad safer for a while. But in the long term all it can do is enlist recruits for the insurgency to fight against the oppressors. And we are the oppressors. "The US media has provided virtually no coverage of the actions of American soldiers in Operation Law and Order " I don't watch much TV news. Is this true? If so, can you think of a reason? Perhaps because Americans would not want to be treated the way we are treating the Iraqis.

Thank you. It's nice to know that someone can read a simple sentence. Og, with all respect, that wasn't the OP's question. The question was, if you read sufficiently in a field, can you gain the equivalent knowledge of the field as a Ph.D.? The answer is "yes" because Ph.D.s do the same thing all the time! I was trained as a biochemist and did my Ph.D. thesis on the effect of fluoride and vitamin A deficiency on glyscosaminoglycans in bone. During a postdoc I was tasked to come up with a delivery vehicle for a water soluble protein that induced bone in a non-skeletal site. I had to do extensive reading in the literature of controlled-release polymers. I gained equivalent knowledge in the field to my collaborator who was getting his M.D./Ph.D. in a lab that formulated and tested controlled-release vehicles. Right now I'm learning about intervertebral discs and the approaches to repairing them. Reading the literature will give me equivalent knowledge to someone already working in the field. Why is this so? Because the people working in the field write down everything they know in research papers and reviews! They have to, science is done in the public domain. You don't hide knowledge in science. So everything they know, you can know.

this is why you don't use Wiki as a definitive source. Momentum is mass x velocity. Photons don't have mass, so P = 0 x v = 0 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momentum (ironic, isn't it?) If you look thru the webpage I cited, they end up doing the same thing for momentum within the QM equations. As far as I can tell, not EVERY possible pair of properties is complementary. Therefore it is possible to know the exact velocity and position of a photon. Only some properties are complementary such that we cannot know the exact value of both properties simultaneously.

1. "Race" as in the 3 races is a meaningless term. What you want to talk about with any species is populations. "Race" can't be pinned down because the features we associate with the 3 races actually overlap among several populations around the world: 2. Scientific American article on race http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=1&articleID=00055DC8-3BAA-1FA8-BBAA83414B7F0000 2. H. sapiens evolved in Africa. As such, they had dark skin. This is to protect folic acid from UV radiation. As humans moved into higher latitude with less sunlight and UV, skin becomes lighter as protection from UV for folic acid becomes less important and UV for conversion of cholesterol to vitamin D becomes more important. Skin pigmentation is a yin-yang for these two requirements: protect folic acid so you don't have neural tube birth defects and allow cholesterol cleavage to get vitamin D so you have strong bones: 1 G Kirchwager, Black and white: the biology of skin color. Discover 22: 32-33, Feb. 2001. Nina Jablonski and George Chaplin have first comprehensive theory of skin color. Need sweat glands to cool skin and brain; then need less hair for sweat glands ot work better. Then need dark skin to protect from sun on hairless skin. An hour of intense sunlight cuts folate (vitamin B) in half). This results in neural tube defects in embryogenesis. Folate also necessary for sperm production. Skin color correlated to sunlight: the weaker the UV light, the lighter the skin. Wrong. Read above. Hominids lost their hair for better cooling -- probably at the H. habilis or H. erectus species. I don't know whether this has been researched or not. You could search PubMed to find out. Height also correlates to nutritional status. Over the last 100 years the average height and weight of all human populations has been increasing as nutritional status around the world has improved. Sorry, but no. mtDNA shows that there are NO neandertal sequences in H. sapiens. Neandertals were a separate species of Homo. Big Foot, of course, is a hoax and doesn't exist.. Experiments with the Y-chromosome backs up the mtDNA studies: 2. R Kunzig, Not our Mom. Discover, Jan. 1998: 32-33. Summarizes the DNA data on Neanderthals. 3. M. Krings et al., "Neandertal DNA sequences and the origin of modern humans," Cell, 90:19*30, 1997. Primary article on Neanderthal DNA. 8. C Zimmer, "After you, Eve". Natural History 110: 32-35, March 2001. Discusses Y chromosome patterns. Y "Adam" lived 59,000 years ago while "Eve" lived 170,000 years ago. 9. A Gibbons, Modern men trace ancestry to African migrants. Science 292:1051-1052, May 11, 2001. Y chromosome of EVERY person in the study could be traced to forefathers who lived in Africa 35,000 to 89,000 years ago. "one self-described 'dedicated multiregionalist,' Vince Sarich of the University of California, Berkeley, admitted: 'I have undergone a conversion -- a sort of epiphany. There are no old Y chromosomes lineages. There are no old mtDNA lineages. Period. It was a total replacement.' " In another study, Peter Underhill and colleagues analyzed 218 markers in 1062 men from 21 populations.Primary paper is Y Ke, B Su, D Lu, L Chen, H Li, C Qi, S Marzuki, R Deka, P Underhill, C Xiao, M Shriver, J Lell, D Wallace, RS Wells, M Selestad, P Oefner, D Zhu, W Huang, R Chakraborty, Z Chen, L Jin, African Origin of modern humans in east Asia: a tale of 12,000 Y chromosomes. Science 292: 1151-1153, May 11, 2001.