Mr Skeptic

Of course they wake up. I've never done this, but from what I hear there is some relation between real world stimuli and dreams, which I guess is one of the reason people do this. It's certainly a different way to wake up...

The problem is not the electoral college, it is the single vote. Given a single vote, you are silly if you vote for someone who is not one of the top two most likely to win -- it is a waste of your vote. Therefore, no one votes for anyone other than Democrats and Republicans. The electoral college messes with it a little more beyond that too, but that is a secondary problem, and also an issue of state rights.

Nerves transmit information in an all or nothing fashion. They don't transmit post-processed sensory information. It is pre-processed sensory information. Your brain will receive it and interpret it based on what nerve the information came from. There is no "color" transmission in nerves, but there are nerves connected to color-sensing cells. When the brain detects a signal from a nerve known to be carrying information from a red sensing cell, it will interpret that nerve impulse as red. Close your eye and put a little pressure on your eye with your fingers. The pressure will cause some of the nerves in the eye to fire. Will you see pressure? No, you see weird light flashes.

I don't think MRI has the necessary resolution.

nevermind

Sounds to me like you are just artificially making pixels by blotting out light, one pixel at a time. In a sense it seems similar to the one pixel camera, where the pixel is rapidly moved. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged And as for that, it sounds like a textbook scam. It is no wonder you can't get investors. "it will no doubt work, have infinite resolution, only it's very expensive I need funding!". You can't get infinite resolution; it is impossible. In any case, you can get very good resolution with an extremely crappy camera by simply taking plenty of pictures with it and stitching them together (astronomers do this all the time). The trick is to get high resolution in a very low time.

The brain is one of the first parts to die -- it is a glutton for oxygen and glucose. If you die, you still have the connections between neurons (synapses). This information may be enough, although I have heard of the possibility that gene activation/deactivation may also play a role. I think your best bet is to freeze your brain and then slice it up very thin and examine under a microscope to record the synapse structure.

A willing partner, and no harming them (no STDs, unwanted pregnancies, child abuse, or cheating on a spouse/lover that has been promised monogamy).

Wrong! Heat is the flow of thermal energy. Oh and heat engines work on a flow of heat, and heat flows from warmer to colder, so to have an engine you need a heat source and a heat sink, and the heat source has to be warmer than the working fluid and the heat sink must be cooler than the working fluid. This supposed engine has no heat sink, and instead relies on people being too dumb to notice that there is no heat flow when expanding a gas (its a temperature change only).

A lot of the motivation to post on these discussion forums is to try to change someone's mind. The formal study of how and why people change their minds is called belief revision, and it is only a few decades old. Argumentation skills, of course, were practiced for longer than written history. Generally, to change someone's mind you either give them new information (that they believe) or show that they have a contradiction in their existing belief set. Given new information, they might simply add it to their belief set. To resolve a contradiction, they generally discard the "least useful" belief. For example, if someone has based their morality off of their religion, they are highly unlikely to reject their religious beliefs, and instead might modify them to accommodate the new fact, or reject the new information. Some links: Cognitive Dissonance When what you do contradicts what you believe. belief religion RESOLVING CONTRADICTIONS[pdf] Basically, just showing a contradiction in someone's beliefs, or sharing new information that contradicts their beliefs, doesn't guarantee that they will change the belief you might be trying to change.

So the temperature of the gas at that point is higher than the temperature of the surrounding air?

Easily the best suggestion of the lot. Simple, elegant, and necessary ... it will never happen.

Simple, it purports to be a heat engine but isn't. It isn't a heat engine because it has no heat sink. If you want more details, look here: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=43818#post530128 Learn about heat engines: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_engine

"Oops!" I think this one is for the best, however, as the religious exemption would have been yet another loophole most definitely not restricted to the people who honestly have religious reasons. True enough, I guess. Also a good point on temporary effects, since the provisions of the bill don't happen all at once either.

Because you get your morals from God and not based on having a victim? I agree. Can you explain why you think that though? Well at best, you are using something that does not by any right belong to you. The coma patient could be brain dead, in which case I would consider that person to be dead -- but their body still belongs to them and deserves some respect. In the worst case, it is just plain rape, though arguably not as traumatic (assuming they don't find out). I'm pretty sure some people have sex with their wife while she is asleep. I think in general a marriage partner can be considered by default as consenting to have sex unless there is evidence otherwise. It is after all one of the main points of marriage. I guess it would depend on the circumstance though; an open marriage or a marriage of convenience would be different than a strictly monogamous marriage.

We've been amending our Constitution every so often, and I'd say we're about due for amendment #28. If you could amend the Constitution, how would you amend it? Do you think your proposed amendment has a snowball's chance in hell of passing? I'll collect the more popular proposals later for a poll. My suggestion: Every 10 years since a law was enacted, it must go back to the legislature for renewal. Unless voted for by at least 40 votes in the Senate it shall be stricken from the laws. Will it pass? One can only dream...

And what does your morality say about having sex with, say, an inflatable doll? I suspect the specific circumstances and rights of the coma patient isn't too relevant to your morality. I'd say that raping the coma patient is definitely worse than having sex with an inanimate object though. Oh, what if the coma patient is your wife?

Well much as I support individual liberties, I don't see the government ever letting go of the powers it has granted itself via the commerce clause and creative interpretation of the Constitution. The war on drugs, legal drinking age, seatbelt laws, for example. Healthcare really is just one more on the pile (which is why I think this question is rather off topic, and in any case I think everyone already spoke their mind on this topic as it relates to healthcare). Hm, I guess the government deals more with popularity than with economics. Accidentally denying someone medicare will get them very bad press, but letting a few people get away with fraud probably not so much. I think popularity may be one of the reasons they didn't have the public option. If they did, then the government would have to make some choices as to which procedures to cover, and people might blame them for being callous. Much better to pay an insurance company to take this bad press. Can you give an example of one (other than the one below)? But wait, who pays for giving care to the uninsured? Somehow I don't think it is the insurance companies (else you don't need insurance...). I think the way it goes is that these costs are required of hospitals, who pass this on as a cost of business to both the insured and the uninsured that can pay for it. So I think this money should go to directly to the hospitals, not either the insurance companies or paying customers. Then the hospitals don't have to pass on this cost to anyone. If this is so bad for health insurance companies, then why is their stock going up? I think this points to the people who actually know about the health insurance industry strongly disagreeing with you (much as they might complain publicly).

Well I have a different idea. Rebar costs about $1 per kilo, and the strongest grade is 20 kg/m and over two inches thick while the weakest grade is 0.5 kg/m and 3/8 inch thick. I think rebar could take a serious battering. So my idea is get rebar supports, possibly more than one, and build a platform on the top. The platform could be build of stuff that is essentially junk, since it does not have to be waterproof like a boat.

Hey I can say that I can flap my arms and fly but just because I say so doesn't mean it really is so. The Kender engine doesn't fit the description of an engine and no it won't produce mechanical motion because the laws of physics don't allow it to. No matter how much they say it will.

Folks, I think it is pretty clear from iNow's sources that the government can, has, and will continue to wield the sort of power required to have the healthcare bill, and that the Supreme Court has and will continue to let them. That you personally disagree is fine, but it really will make little difference. Furthermore, I think it is rather off-topic since it applies to so many different things the government does (and has done and will continue to do). Also, regardless of anyone's opinion, the Republicans will take this to court. So in summary: yes, this is another expansion of government power, and yes, you now have a little bit less economic liberty. And yes, based on history, they probably will get away with it. How about we focus on something more specific to healthcare: what are the good points in this bill, and what are the bad points? Could they have done something better?

Except it's not an engine. What it boils down to is a gas inside a tube heated by the sun.

Well coca cola has a pH of 2.5, which is just a tiny bit less acidic than pure lemon juice. I can drink it without a problem. Except for my teeth I suppose.

Sometimes the very same math explains things that have wildly different physical explanations. Equations like Maxwell's equations are used to explain electromagnetism, but at their heart these are just conservation laws. Change the constants, and you can use almost the same equation to explain aspects of fluid dynamics, for example. Does this mean that electromagnetism is a fluid? Not necessarily, but it does mean you can successfully pretend its a fluid if that's how things make sense to you. Math is actually not a science, it is more a branch of philosophy. Math is extremely exact; a mathematical theorem is proven beyond any shadow of a doubt, and will always be true and cannot ever be debunked. But like in all philosophy, you do need to start with assumptions. Certain assumptions give you Euclidean geometry, and so long as you hold those assumptions Euclidean geometry gives you the right answers. In science however, there is no real way to tell what are definitely the right premises to start from. If your premises are true, then the math will give you correct answers. If your premises are false, then math can't give you the correct answers -- what you need is better premises. And that's one way to think of scientific theories -- the premises used to build a mathematical model of the universe. The scientific method is an attempt to find correct premises, or at least premises that are close to being correct. But in the end, the premises might turn out to be wrong. This is no different than anything else. If a trial held in English convicts an innocent person, you don't go about blaming the English language, just because that is the language they used for the trial.

I thought about velocity, but that doesn't fit "action".