Mr Skeptic

Well there's a simple solution for when people crash your party: kick them out, and disavow their actions.

I have no problem whatsoever with corporeal punishment. Like any other punishment, it has to be done properly, consistently, and neither too little to make a difference nor too excessive for the misdeed. It's perfectly possible to go overboard with non-corporal punishment, such as locking up a child in a dark basement for a few days. The trick is to distinguish punishment from abuse.

How about a particle-antiparticle pair, created from energy? Well we either have an infinite regression or uncaused effects. I'll take the infinite regression: we deal with infinity all the time in mathematics and don't have hangups with them like the ancient Greeks did.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states We're much, much smarter than you think, juice.

You mean this statement?: "The fact that no such effects are seen implies an upper bound on the photon mass of m < 3 × 10^-27 eV" Electron volts are a unit of mass-energy, the energy an electron gains moving across one volt of potential. 1 eV = 1.8 × 10^-36 kg. So according to that statement, the mass of a photon is less than 5 × 10^-63 kg. Compare to the mass of the milky way galaxy at 10^42 kg, or the mass of an electron at 9 × 10^-31 kg. And remember, that number is a maximum.

We know for sure that the mass of the photon is absurdly low, to the limits of our measurements. Everything we know theoretically points to their masses being zero, but that can never be proven since we can't ever measure zero.

We started off with a thread about elected officials riling up the masses, and we seem to be ending up with forum members riling up each other!

You forgot the 1/2. It's E = (1/2) MV^2 for kinetic energy at non-relativistic speeds. Nothing with mass can be accelerated to the speed of light, because it would require infinite energy to do so. Nothing without mass can travel slower than the speed of light, because otherwise its energy would be zero.

That's all well and good, but it also does not address what to myself (and ecoli) seems a more serious problem: he seemed to be ignorant of the Constitution. I mean, it's not like its a huge piece of paper, especially not as compared to the various other bits of legislation we have.

It would be easy enough to tell: did the proportion of people opting out increase with time?

Perhaps most of a legislator's job is representing his people, and writing laws and reaching agreements with other legislators, while representing his people. After all, if they do something unconstitutional its the Supreme Court that has to worry about that. Now if a Supreme Court judge were to say he doesn't worry about the constitution, that would be even more serious.

Only kind of: [hide]Though the vine itself is native to Asia, the most common cultivar was produced in New Zealand. Also, China hardly exports any kiwifruit, and New Zealand is the one that first commercially introduced the fruit to the world.[/hide]

For answers, look here: http://www.newsroom101.com/easiestquiz.htm 1. How long did the Hundred Years War last? 2. Which country makes Panama hats? 3. From which animal do we get catgut? 4. In which month do Russians celebrate the October Revolution? 5. What is a camel's hair brush made of? 6. What was King George VI's first name? 7. The Canary Islands in the Pacific are named after what animal? 8. What color is a purple finch? 9. Where are Chinese gooseberries from? 10. How long did the Thirty Years War last? Or you can answer here. (you can use [ hide][ /hide] tags to hide your answer). How well did you do?

I think that you would be able to do this if you had the occasional set of lenses at the proper places, to refocus the light. The trick then is to keep the lenses in place...

Thanks Cap'n! That seems to answer my question.

Yes. You have y(x) = kx, and then [math]dy = \frac{\partial y}{\partial x} dx = \frac{\partial (kx)}{\partial x} dx = k dx [/math]

Looks all correct.

No beliefs are necessary to do math.

I think that there is a strong connection between being atheist and moral relativism. I also think there is a strong connection between being human and hypocrisy, and both human atheists and human theists are human. I think a rock is also atheistic and it definitely isn't hypocritical, but then again it doesn't have morality either. Yes. A person who's actions do not align with their rules is a hypocrite, even if they change their rules after the fact. Generally the catch is they want others to follow the rule even if they themselves do not -- this is also hypocrisy. I think that moral relativism greatly diminishes hypocrisy; for example moral relativists have largely abandoned the idea that homosexuality is evil, whereas people with unchanging morals based on the bible think gay people should be stoned to death, but don't do so and make up various reasons why. Atheists are forced to take responsibility for their own morals, rather than being able to just mindlessly follow what someone else said and claim that they have divine guidance. Yes and no. Society sets the moral tone, and I try to work more or less within the morality of society, in addition to my own morality. But I reserve the right to consider them wrong. Yes, anytime I apply a different, less restrictive rule to myself than to others, that is hypocritical. My morality is based on maximizing human well-being. That's poorly defined, but applicable to all moral problems. The environment is necessary for human well-being, even if preserving it inconveniences a few humans a little. However I have no problem sustainably exploiting the environment. It is important to note that some things don't have a monetary value but are still appreciated.

Two things: 1) optimize the launch angle (45 degrees assuming no air friction). 2) maximize the launch velocity. This means that you either make the arm longer, or the torque stronger, or both. Depending on how your elastic bands work, you might not want to make your catapult like a real one that relies on twisting ropes, and instead make it more like a slingshot (if allowed). In any case, you want to use your catapult arm as a class 3 lever.

Sarah Palin offers Democrats the Tea Partier's money, so long as they can keep their guns and religion! I accept.

It's not space anymore when you fill it with hot plasma.

Great atrocities require the removal of political opposition, whether by assimilation or persecution, and regardless of whether it is religious or secular. Don't for a second think that secular opposition was nor would have been ignored.

The theory of evolution does not cover the creation of earth (see Nebular theory), nor the beginning of life (abiogenesis). Nor the creation of the universe (we don't have one agreed upon one, but we do have a Big Bang theory for the period a tiny tiny fraction of a second later). Please don't lump all of these under evolution.

Sounds flammable and possibly explosive. If you do this, do only a small quantity and from a safe distance.