Mr Skeptic

Well fasting occasionally isn't a bad idea. I once fasted for a week (I did drink unsweetened slightly salty lemonade for electrolyte purposes). It was certainly an interesting experience.

With that you can find an element with that density and give the radius of the element's atoms? I doubt that is your answer. I think you need more information. What is the full question?

I think the only real solution would be to have the content of threads analyzed by a computer. Not that the computer is likely to figure much of anything. I guess it might be able to filter out threads with frustration words (insults, "once again", ...). Most subscribed to is definitely a good choice, especially if people subscribe to the thread without posting to it. If you made thread ranking play a role in thread prominence, us readers might help filter for good threads. A combination of thread ranking with one of the other attributes (views, posts, subscriptions) would probably work nicely. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged The moderators here are some of the best I've seen. Except for the politics section, a little, but then again if you compare them to our political leadership they are positively shining examples of virtue.

There's a difference between support for something in general and support for something specific (especially if the specific thing is extremely vague). The things I've heard: 1) most Americans support healthcare reform, 2) Most Americans opposed the Democrat's bill (at various points in time at least) 3) A lot of people who opposed the "Democrat's bill" changed their mind and supported it when they were told what was actually in it. Now, there's something about supporting an unfinished bill. Consider this: Do you support not killing puppies? Do you support a controversial unfinished and not-yet-passed 2000 page bill to save puppies? Now the bill is passed and we can actually count on the things that are "in" it to, in fact, be in it. They're not in limbo anymore. To echo what padren said, this is pretty much the plan that we're stuck with. If it is repealed, it could be years or decades before another is passed (the people rejected it, pundits will say). Many people weren't even confident that the Democrats could pass this thing. Best to fix it up than try to start from scratch. Also I think that soon enough people will be clamoring for and being less afraid of the public option, especially if we could save absurd amounts of money by implementing it. Eh, give it some time for the actual details of the bill to be worked out and sink in, then maybe we'll have more accurate perceptions. After all there was not much sense analyzing a 2000 page bill that might get revised at any time. At least now we know what we're talking about.

I think that ability to find interesting pages could easily be a limit to growth of the site. Most-participated-in threads might be a nice idea, but would unfortunately include flamewars too. Might be worthwhile anyways though.

Hmm... Did you sign up for their public service ads, or are they paying you for those too?

Conservation of energy does not apply to changing reference frames. Suppose you have a 1 kg mass, and in your reference frame its stationary. In a different reference frame its moving at 1000 m/s. In one frame it has zero kinetic energy, in the other a million Joules of kinetic energy. Same thing with conservation of momentum. What you want to consider in a crash in the transfer of energy and momentum, and the speed at which the transfer takes place (power and acceleration). If you travel at 100 mph and crash a stationary car, it is much like the traveling at 50 mph and crashing another car at 50 mph in the other direction -- unless you consider the rest of the Earth. You're probably more likely to flip in the first scenario, or crash a stationary object. Cars are designed to crumple on impact. The crumple absorbs kinetic energy, and increases the time over which energy and momentum are transferred (for a lower power collision with less acceleration). You really don't want to crash a concrete wall at any reasonable speed.

For this reason I never use the front page. Even from the college computers that delete my browsing history so I have to type in the url, I go straight to the usercp. I always check my subscribed threads first anyways. Part of the reason is that those are threads that interest me. There's a lot of uninteresting threads; that's unavoidable; but I wish it were easier to find interesting threads.

Yeah, I'm using Firefox. The thing is I am considering getting a filterset for my adblock that doesn't block unintrusive ads. You know, to reward them for not being intrusive. However reading some more, it seems that it might be better to just whitelist websites I like instead.

I used tabbed browsing. I'd hardly notice any change if it hit me over the head with a Republican.

Agreed. If the Republicans make compromises half a dozen work days after being accused of being uncompromising, I will agree that the accusation was invalid.

And I would take that seriously were there evidence that the Republicans wanted to do anything more than disrupt the debate. I guess bedtime really is 11:30 and after the vote to adjourn passed. And are you sure this was Democrat, not Republican hypocrisy? http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/pelosi-energy-congress/2008/08/01/id/324774 Brendan Daly, a Pelosi spokesman, told The Associated Press said Republicans "should go home to their districts and explain their record of obstructing common-sense proposals to address the pain at the pump being felt by American consumers and businesses." Here's the aftermath: http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=topics.print_pub&doc_id=478988&group_id=180829&topic_id=1412&stoplayout=true They made a bill and compromised with the Republicans on it shortly after returning from the recess.

Also, your list is Republican hypocrisy (with a few hypocritical Republicans thrown in for good measure), whereas his list is at best hypocritical Democrats. Yes, people are hypocrites, but there's a difference between "do as I do not as I say" and "do as I say and not as I say". There's a difference between having hypocrisy in your personal life compared to your public life, vs having hypocrisy in your public political life. And then some of those on that list only superficially appear to be hypocritical, and when you take a closer look it turns out they're not. http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/politics&id=4804677 Monsignor John Brenkle: "I don't think she has the possibility of finding other union workers here in the valley." Of the more than 300 vineyards, fewer than four are union, and most of the farm workers in the Napa Valley get paid better. ... But all of that aside, if Nancy Pelosi wanted to have union workers she could not ask the union for a contract. It's illegal and has been since 1975. A spokesman for the United Farm Workers Union explains. Marc Grossman, United Farm Workers Union: "It is patently illegal for any grower to even discuss a union contract, which is the only way you can supply union workers, without the workers first having voted in a state conducted secret ballot election." I asked Peter Schweizer, the Hoover Research fellow, if he had researched those facts before he called Pelosi a hypocrite. Peter Schweizer: "It's really for her to explain why there is this inconsistency. It's not my responsibility to go and find out how every single particular circumstance is handled on the Pelosi vineyard." Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged And it's still doing that. His link is the top result of this google search. Here is the cached page.

Interesting. Now I want to know what that would look like.

From personal experience, of course

I think raping anyone is wrong. If the coma patient has previously given implied consent to having sex (maybe she's your wife), then it might not be wrong, but would at best be extremely disturbing. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Well in Genesis God cursed the entire earth due to Adam's sin, and later before the flood said "And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. --Genesis 6:12" This seems to include animals, so I think that God got disgusted by his own natural creations as well. Elsewhere the Bible talks about how we are naturally inclined to sin.

I know what thermal energy is. You can't go making up personal definitions. I don't care how you define heat, and it doesn't even matter how you define heat if you are using someone else's definition anyways (when talking about heat engines). This is what heat is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat In physics and thermodynamics, heat is the process of energy transfer from one body or system due to thermal contact, which in turn is defined as an energy transfer to a body in any other way than due to work performed on the body. Repeat it all you like, but please also listen to what I am saying. I understand that expanding a gas lowers its temperature. Here's how they fail: In phase 3, they talk of compressing the helium into the heat source, and claim that the compression and rise in temperature brings the helium back to its original pressure. This means that they are compressing the helium either back to the original pressure and allowing the temperature to rise while they do it (this process at best takes as much energy as they can get from expanding the gas in the turbine so it won't work), or they are compressing it while maintaining the temperature at -240 C, in which case this only will function in an environment at -240 C which does not exist on earth. So it won't work. Well if you are getting paid to teach elsewhere, I do hope you aren't teaching thermodynamics.

Sayth the allknowing googles: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22list+of+democrat+hypocrisy%22&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai= Your search - "list of democrat hypocrisy" - did not match any documents. Suggestions: * Make sure all words are spelled correctly. * Try different keywords. * Try more general keywords. I know Democrats play the hypocrisy game too, but maybe the Republicans never bothered to compile a list. Lord knows they prefer personal experience to compiled facts. Yes I have seen them complain a bit about specific examples of Democrat hypocrisy, and from there accuse them of large-scale hypocrisy, but I could find no list of it.

To put it another way, here is a long list of recent Republican hypocrisy, and no one here can post a long list of recent Democrat hypocrisy, either because they are too lazy and its so much easier to rely on personal opinion, or because no such list exists.

Chlorophyll itself is a synthesized chemical pigment, not a protein. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorophyll#Chemical_structure There's also proteins and accessory pigments, which help it collect light.

What they are saying is that children with pre-existing conditions will now get healthcare, and in a few years that will be given by insurance companies. This high risk pool you talk about as if it is already there, what is it called? When was it started? It seems to me it is a new provision from the bill, a temporary provision. http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2010/0324/Health-care-reform-bill-101-rules-for-preexisting-conditions The rollout starts with children. Six months from the day the bill was signed (let’s see ... that’ll be Sept. 23, by our calculation), insurers will no longer be able to exclude children with preexisting conditions from being covered by their family policy. For current policies, that means insurers will have to rescind preexisting-condition exclusions. Insurers will not have to take the same steps for adults until Jan. 1, 2014. ... The new reform law does create a temporary backup plan for those uninsured who have health problems. This Plan B is a short-term, national high-risk insurance pool. US citizens and legal immigrants who have preexisting conditions and have been uninsured for at least six months will be eligible to enroll in this pool and receive subsidies to help them afford the premiums. Under the law, the premiums for this pool will be the same as would be charged for a standard population of people with varying risks. Maximum out-of-pocket cost sharing for enrollees will be $5,950 for individuals and $11,900 for families, per year. This risk pool is supposed to be up and running within 90 days and then fade into the sunset on Jan. 1, 2014. You have to be careful where you get your news -- if it sounds biased then odds are it's not the whole truth. And making assumptions based on it is even worse -- your link didn't say that the pool already existed; you added that yourself.

Well, you could try injecting a signal for ultraviolet directly into the data cable feeding into your computer screen. Do you think you can make it have extra colors by doing this? If you have "information from nerve Z37 gives you the intensity of red light at such and such coordinates" then putting any signal on nerve Z37 will be interpreted as red at the same coordinates. The signal attributes will only change the intensity perceived. Do you mean to inject a signal directly into the brain? The brain has no understanding of ultraviolet, so it would have to learn to interpret whatever signal you are injecting. There's no signal anywhere that means ultraviolet; all the signals mean something else. You'd have to create a brain region for your ultraviolet signal before you could have an ultraviolet signal. Your first idea was the correct one: it should be possible to add color cone cells to the retina that can detect additional colors. So long as you do it early enough, the brain should learn to accept the additional colors. It might even work at adulthood (if it doesn't your brain will get all sorts of confused by the new signal rather than seeing a new color). This may be possible to do with gene therapy. See this: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/colortherapy/ Also, look up tetrachromats. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Yes. Since the cells in the retina cannot convert these frequencies to nerve signals, your brain never receives signals from these colors and never attaches an interpretation to them. There are no infrared or ultraviolet or blue or green frequencies in the nervous system; only nerve impulses that are assumed to have a given meaning.

water

Pleasure is often (but not always) a sign of good things. Pleasure in and of itself however is meaningless. The quintessential example of that is the drug addict in a drug induced stupor. Some pleasures are cheap and meaningless, even harmful.

Nope, what you are describing is called thermal energy. And then it stops working because when you compress it it heats up again. Yes, gas gets cold when it expands but it also gets warmer when it is compressed. They pretend that second part isn't true. They pretend that you are compressing it in a heat sink at 73 K, but they are not -- it is an adiabatic compression at best. If it isn't, where are they dumping the heat to maintain the temperature at 73 K? Please do. Also look up what a heat sink is, and what direction heat flows. You seem to have things backward: if your gas is really cold, then you need an environment that is far colder if you want that environment to be a heat sink. If your gas is a heat sink to the environment, then the environment is a heat source. Thermal energy flows from hot to cold, not the other way around.