Mr Skeptic

Well skin cells (and hair cells) grow quickly because they are "disposable". We shed skin and hair cells all the time, and we use it as a continuously growing wall against the outside world. If they weren't rapidly growing, our skin would wear out. Nerves on the other hand, are fairly permanent cells. Even worse, their shape is really really awkward, since cells by default are rounded but nerves have all this long thing branching pattern, and it very much matters that those extensions are in the right place. Also, cells seem to sense the stiffness of surrounding tissue. This may cause problems since nerves prefer soft tissues to grow in but scar tissue is harder.

Except that you can't actually challenge a real opinion. I like chocolate, in my opinion chocolate tastes good. Go ahead, try to challenge that! Anything that can be credibly challenged loses its status as opinion (including a professed opinion of liking chocolate vs something like brain scans done while eating chocolate and other foods I like). Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Well what did you expect us rather clever scientifically minded folks to think you might use the poll for, considering that you created the poll shortly after arguing about whether someone's opinion was worth less than yours due to lack of support?

Well do consider that each DNA strand is covalently bonded together but only hydrogen bonded to its matching strand. Much like water has millions of covalently bonded H2O molecules that are hydrogen bonded to each other. No one considers water to be a gigantic molecule due to all that hydrogen bonding. However, the DNA strands bind more strongly to each other due to their sheer size, so maybe you could consider them one molecule. However, even simple heating will separate the DNA strands from each other without breaking the covalent bonds (this is done in PCR, a technique for copying DNA).

Technically, from maxwell's first equation and knowledge that the field is spherically symmetric. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Well I don't think you can get electromagnetic waves from those. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged You're talking here of conservation of charge, not of electric field. Yes, Maxwell's equations do say charge is conserved, but field is not charge. From Maxwell's first equation, if you put a box around something and measure the overall field coming out of the box (ie the divergence) this will give you the charge inside the box. However, an electron-positron pair can be created, satisfies conservation of charge, and yet has a field. The overall charge involved is zero, but the electric field is not the charge. An electromagnetic wave has both magnetic and electric fields but no charge whatsoever.

The chromosome is a single double-stranded double helix, made of two DNA molecules hydrogen-bonded to each other. We are diploid, and we have 23 pairs of chromosomes, for a total of 46 chromosomes. Each chromosome is double stranded. A cell that is partway through reproducing will have twice as much (92 chromosomes), but a cell that reproduced via meiosis (an egg or sperm) will only have 23 chromosomes. So you could have a cell with 184 DNA molecules and one with 46 DNA molecules, though normally your cells have 92 DNA molecules.

Do you mean this:? As I mentioned above, way back in the 60's NERVA and ROVER made nuclear powered rockets. These rockets were thoroughly tested and were able to generate as much as 250,000 pounds of thrust, with an Isp of 900 seconds or better. The best chemical fuels in use today are liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, the stuff burned by the three Main Engines on the Space Shuttle (SSME's). The SSME's produce a maximum of about 450 Isp. These were real projects testing nuclear propulsion. It was not gas core, but it was nuclear. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged How so? Just make a bigger rocket. Or a better rocket (nuclear). Or even without a rocket (space elevator or launch loop). Easier, sure, but also more boring. Also it's more expensive than living elsewhere on earth, but in space there is no really cheap place to live so there is no comparison -- it's either on earth, or expensive.

That's only true of real opinions however.

I voted "no" but I think "yes" is actually the correct answer. However, the reason I voted "no" is because all too frequently people call claims of fact an "opinion" and as such the supported ones are better than unsupported. But with real opinions, support is irrelevant. In my opinion, I like chocolate more than vanilla. Why do I like chocolate? Doesn't matter, and no matter how much you might support your position that you like vanilla better it really makes no difference. Because this is an actual opinion, not a claim of fact masquerading as an opinion. This can happen in the politics section, in people's choices of values they use to judge the worth of something. Eg my like of chocolate means that an ugly chocolate cake is better than a pretty vanilla cake, but someone who likes beauty would judge differently as would someone who likes vanilla better. In this case one need only mention what they value, and their values have the strength of unchallengeable opinion. You also get opinion when considering very vague and incomplete evidence; an opinion is then expressed because there is not enough information to reach a conclusion with certainty. This is more troublesome as for this type of opinion there is no dividing line between opinion and argument -- one can make a judgment with more and more conviction as evidence accumulates, but at some point it is opinion and at another an argument. Here support does mean something, but not necessarily very much depending on how clear the issue is. However, one can't go about repeating it as a counter to what someone else is saying, and then turning tail and calling it an opinion when challenged. If you want someone to agree with you it ain't an opinion. Opinions are shared, not preached. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged I'd have to agree with that. iNow has convinced me of one notable thing, the truth of evolution, via a link he shared. Being rude may very well provoke responses (this is known as trolling I believe), but by its very nature is unlikely to change minds. If you appear to be so invested in one particular answer that you are willing to violate social conventions to convert people, you will be seen as a closed-minded, untrusted, biased source. Unfair, perhaps, but the world isn't fair.

In fact, my main complaint against the healthcare bill is exactly that: I have no idea what's in the healthcare bill.

However, things stop being opinions when they extend past yourself yet are expressed with certainty.

I think faith and works are inseparable. If someone believes that he will get hit by a train on April 13, 2010, he's not going to be crossing any railroad tracks on that day. Someone who truly repents is not going to go about doing it again all the time. Here's another "As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, "I will follow you wherever you go." Jesus replied, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head." He said to another man, "Follow me." But the man replied, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father." Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God." Still another said, "I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say good-by to my family." Jesus replied, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God."" Luke 9:57-62

The reactor in the "nuclear lightbulb" is a gas reactor. It won't melt down because it is a gas. If it overproduces energy, it will simply expand, reducing the density and so slowing the reaction. It needs to have a separate storage container, full of control rods and impact-resistant, where the uranium hexafluoride can be put to either turn it off or in case of problems. Many rockets use highly toxic materials for fuel or oxidizer. The nuclear lightbulb uses hydrogen.

And what if you vaporize the water, increasing the volume but decreasing the density? Then your pure water will be less concentrated.

In some countries, an unwanted pregnancy can end a woman's life (when others find out about it).

On a slightly different track, might I suggest we start suggesting adding a "no" to the pledge, ie "one nation under no god". It won't happen of course, but it will stimulate discussion as to why that cannot be allowed.

Well here's my suggestions, for biotechnological choices: Option 1: Protein designing software, such that you give the program specific requirements for the protein and it gives you the code for that protein. Assume an average PC can either tell the shape of 1000 average sized proteins per second, or within a day can give a protein with a given (relatively simple) property. Option 2: A cheap computer-DNA interface. Assume that it consists of a chip costing about $100 with a large array of DNA read/write heads that can read from DNA to electronic signals or write to DNA given electronic signals, at the same speed and error ratio as DNA Polymerase. Option 3: A power plant; it is a genetically engineered plant that can produce electricity at about half the efficiency of a regular plant (the other half is used to maintain the plant). Just plug it into the grid. Assume the plant is capable of storing extra energy as sugars during the day to provide power overnight.

That's exactly what I've been saying. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Actually, no you are not. It is not about suffering in and of itself; it is that the ability to suffer is one of the things that point to personhood, poorly defined as it may be.

Well I certainly read a lot into the "anywhere" aspect that they could grow in -- eg grow in a cave or on a generation ship. Such a "plant" would solve both our food and our energy needs. It is your scenario, so you can specify you know.

Hm, but I think that it would at least be fair to declare someone the loser if they repeatedly violate the rules of debate. But yes; judged debates are supposed to be done on a neutral topic so that the winner is based on the debating skills of the participants rather than the "truth" of their answer. But that would be rather limiting if we just had debates on such topics.

And what is the alternative? Shall we let the government dictate what kids must learn? What if they decide to teach patriotism and unquestioning loyalty to their leaders?

There's two reasons to buy seeds. One that has been mentioned is that some seeds require certain triggers before they will germinate. Another is that some of the seeds you buy are hybrid seeds. If you know Mendelian genetics, the way it works is the seed suppliers have homogeneous two plants, one AABBCCDD and the other aabbccdd, and they cross those to get heterogeneous offspring that are AaBbCcDd (where the letters stand for two variants of four genes, presumably ones that are important for food production). Heterogeneous organisms are frequently better than the homogeneous ones. However the setup I described uses some homogeneous plants but guarantees heterogeneous seeds. If you let your plants breed, it is very unlikely that you'd get heterogeneous ones, so your seed would be more wild type. The pulp is not nutritive for the plant; it is a bribe to get us animals to spread their seeds. Plants are perfectly capable of having huge seeds if they want to nourish their young. The dirty little secret is that "life" and "death" are actually rather poorly defined words. In a dry state, the seeds go into some sort of suspended animation, where they use little or no energy to live but have limited or no self-repair. Fortunately, the seeds components seem to be designed to tolerate dry conditions without breaking or decomposing or receiving much damage.

What if instead of the Copenhagen interpretation you use one of these?

Sure, lots of stuff is useful whether natural or not. Naturally produced chemicals often have some sort of specific effect on living organisms, such as toxins against certain types of critters. When one toxin is far more toxic to one type of creature than to ourselves, we frequently use it to poison them with little harm to ourselves -- hence herbicides, pesticides, antibiotics. Even things that are very highly toxic to ourselves can be useful, either in warfare or for painkillers, or to paralyze specific muscles for cosmetic effect (botox). Other natural substances like coal, iron, gold, wood, etc also have more mundane uses. Yes; and that is also what the original organism uses it for: to compete with other bacteria.

I'll go with: "A massless electromagnetic wave containing an amount of energy equal to h*f, where h is plank's constant and f is the frequency." An electromagnetic wave is "a self-contained wave propagated by its own oscillating electric and magnetic fields" or "the solution to Maxwell's equations given zero charge"

I think the answer to that, is "Whatever the hell they want."