Mr Skeptic

Well, that's what we've been doing. Not that we're particularly good at that yet. My grandma is proof that superstition exists. She reads the horoscope! Oh, and I do think that some of the superstitious beliefs have a tiny bit of truth to them too. If you walk under a ladder, you might be unlucky enough to have some paint or tool fall on your head. If you find a four leaf clover, you are lucky enough to have good eyesight and/or perseverance.

Ah! All 3 people are intelligent.

Good point. That might be another reason why the price of food might decrease with biofuel production. Eh? If ethanol costs half as much as gasoline, than why is anyone still using gasoline? I'm suspicious of this. What are your sources?

Ooooh! Free fertilizer and energy!

iNow, you do know there is an ignore button, right? I do believe I've seen enough from Norman Albers in this thread and others to know that I am not missing anything by using it (I very seldom use ignore). Also, if a sentence starts with your name, do we capitalize the 'i'?

All you can tell from that is that the blind man and a sighted man cannot both have a red hat. They could all have a black hat, one of them could have a red hat and the other two black, or both sighted people could have red hats and the blind one a black hat. In any case, there is no way the blind person could tell what color hat he has. Did you intend to limit so that there was only 3 hats in the closet, or some other limit?

That's not necessarily true. If we use cellulose to make ethanol, we might have an excess of food due to growing grains for their stalks to turn into ethanol (of course, they could also use switchgrass, but then they loose out on selling the grain).

I agree, no macroeveolution going on here. Especially if they stay the same species:doh::doh:

Of course, if you were omnipotent but not omniscient, you could just make yourself omniscient.

Absolutely. Everyone deserves acknowledgment for the points they've raised AND given evidence for. That's why we acknowledge the IPCC's report, for example. However, most people are disappointed with the number of points that you've given evidence for. Come to think of it, you did try to support this point that you made: (to bascule) I don't buy this, by the way. Nobody tries to shut down experimental attemps to measure the speed of light or a myriad of other commonly accepted scientific theories. They try to shut down global warming "denialists" because they feel harmed by the dissent. That's a political position, not a scientific one. However, that is a strawman. No one here is saying we should shut down experiments to measure global temperature changes. The proper analogy would be if people were claiming that light moved at, say, 100 miles per hour, and everyone else saying something like, You're wrong, silly. Basically, you are comparing people trying to stop people from saying things that have been shown to be false by experiments, with people trying to stop people from doing experiments. If you feel we have ignored another of your points that you raised AND provided evidence for, please remind us of it, and we can have a scientific discussion about that, rather than just trading insults and rhetoric about unsupported statements.

I think it is simply the "shotgun" approach to getting evidence. They gain over 400 very young witnesses, any of which could have something bad to say about their parents. What are the odds that out of 400 kids, one of them won't say something that will get the parents in trouble? They could do this whether their true target is the polygamy or whether they are honestly just thinking of the children. I'll add to that, officials never like to lose a case. Hm, that does complicate things significantly. But consider that in some cultures, marriages were arranged by the parents, frequently well before one or both children was anywhere close to grown up. However, if the children were cut off from the outside world, that would be significant cause for concern. Young children are easily manipulated, and to see only from one point of view would be very bad.

Ah, you mean removing a gene? That's fairly simple to do, and is not "modifying" the organism so much as "deleting" part of its genetic code. What remains is "natural" and contains nothing new, its just missing other stuff. Whereas if you remove a portion of a gene (not the whole gene) or change the gene, then you could end up with new proteins that weren't in the original organism. Is this what you were talking about?

I think that there is also an issue of knowledge. Someone who has "converted" from one belief to another is familiar with both beliefs and the arguments in favor of each. It is not easy to change from one belief to another, so they must have also invested a lot of time considering both. In this sense, they are an "unbiased expert" in the topic, and so can say with more confidence that they know which belief is better.

Um, the similarity I see here is iNow asking both you and Norman Albers for data, and both of you responding with no data but lots of rhetoric. And, in your case, ignoring the data presented as well.

Um, thats a good one. I think all the fundamental particles are point particles, making them all the smallest things we can observe. However, they have a wavenlength, which will limit how "small" they can be. Or, you could say that the lightest one is the smallest, even though it will have a larger wavelength. In theory, you can get photons of any wavelength if you put in enough energy, so there's no theoretical limit in that sense to how small you can see. However, the smaller the wavelength, the more the momentum and energy, so you could end up blasting away whatever you wanted to look at.

That seems probable. Even cooperating together/against others is useful, so is forming colonies. Once you have colonies, being mulitcellular is an obvious next step.

So, we need to boycott the China Olympics so that we can save the China Olympics?

Good point. A big resistor would be just perfect.

I think part of the point was for it to eventually get outrageous enough that no sane person would believe the last bit.

That's funny, here I was thinking that the "politically correct" thing to do in America was to pretend that global warming does not exist. Hence, the Bush administration pushing for reports to avoid the topic.

Re the gelatin idea, that is probably the best in terms of ease to do, and like Phi for All said, you can layer it for a better effect. You could even write a message or draw a picture in it. As for making it last longer, adding more gelatin than the recipe suggests should make it stronger and allow it to be solid at a higher temperature, and putting something like salt in should keep bacteria at bay.

That would be interesting, to make a battery that uses liquid only. It could in theory be infinitely rechargeable, as there would be no electrodes to corrode. However, it would need a membrane to separate the liquids, and would probably have a poor energy density.

A more permanent block could be made by embedding the coins in glass, clear epoxy, or plastic, but these would be harder to do than the other methods suggested.

I vote that life --> complex life is far more likely than non-life --> life. That's because life itself is already extremely complex, and once you have life all bets are off as to what it can do. Also, the universe currently shows 1 planet with life and complex life, no other planets with life. I'm surprised everyone else thinks life is easier than turning life into complex life. Maybe they misunderstood the question?

I'd go for a combination of both effects. The consuming of O2 into water could only cause an ~10% contraction, and would depend on the composition of the flame. If the CO2 can dissolve quickly, then you can get an ~20% contraction. I did this test in lab and got slightly over 20%, so I concluded that it couldn't all be due to oxygen consumption (more contraction than oxygen concentration, and the flame will go out before all the oxygen is consumed). But everything happened too quick to tell properly. Another control is to change the quantity of oxygen, to see what effect that would have.