Mr Skeptic

Speed reading may be effective in separating relevant research articles from completely off-topic ones. You might consider skimming over (which is effectively what speed reading is) portions of a textbook that are unimportant or mostly familiar. If you are in one of the "soft" sciences, speed reading might be of use. Speed reading might be a good method of refreshing your memory for a test. However, I strongly advise against speed reading as a primary study method. --- I've heard a claim that people who speed read a book remembered stuff better than people who read it more slowly. Does anyone know if that is bunk, or due to some other factor (less time to forget the first part, more concentration to maintain the speed, focus on only the more important parts, etc)?

Hope none of you are offended by this one then Cheers!

Didn't God order the Jews to completely exterminate the previous inhabitants of that land? All those problems due to not completely exterminating those people, eh -- I think that we should recreate the dinosaurs from their DNA fragments, and return the land to its rightful reptilian overlords. They've been there waaay earlier than both the Jews and the Palestines.

Wouldn't a database be better than a wiki? I think there would be a project of that sort somewhere already, but I'm not sure.

The biggest problem is confining the plasma. If you don't confine it, it will at best cool off and loose all its energy. The plasma can also damage the walls, throwing wall material into the core (sputtering); the heavier element will poison the reaction. Plus, producing the magnetic fields necessary to confine the plasma is very energy intensive, and you need to get more energy out than you put into heating the plasma and confining it. Another restriction is that the confinement should be dense enough, or the rate of fusion will be too slow to maintain its heat faster than it cools. I have an idea I'm sure will work though. Get a large amount of hydrogen together, and use its own gravity to compress and confine the plasma. As it compresses, it will heat up on its own accord. Since no energy is wasted in the confinement, it would be nearly 100% efficient. Man, I'm a god

I think apoptosis would count as suicide by all definitions because the cell clearly has the intent to kill itself. Part of the cell's "design" includes the ability to self-destruct, which is about as much intent as a single-celled organism could have. I think we have shown sufficient examples that some animals do indeed sacrifice themselves for a greater good. The extent to which they "know" that they are committing suicide is debatable, especially for insects, but I suspect that in higher animals there will be a few examples where the animals do know what they are doing. Perhaps we can narrow down the question to "self-serving" suicide. That is, do other animals commit suicide when such act would be neutral or detrimental to others? This is much less likely to be found as there would be significant evolutionary pressure against it. Maybe we're the only ones who do that.

Unless it erodes or gets abused.

A more familiar example of animal suicide would be the bee. They're like suicide bombers, only with stingers instead of explosives. Oh, and I think bees might kill more people than suicide bombers do (due to allergies), but I'm not sure of that last bit.

Like you said, activating every neuron at the same time would be completely useless and would interfere with your vital functions. It would be like epilepsy but much worse. As to whether that would be possible, I imagine it could be induced for a while, but would very rapidly become unsustainable due to oxygen demand and heating. It would be useless and fatal in several ways.

A similar thing has happened to me also. Once I dreamed about a plaque at a special creative maths camp that I had never heard of before but went to later. I just had this flash of the plaque in my dream, then I saw the same one at the camp. But that could be my mind playing tricks on me. It happened a second time too, and this time it was even weirder than before. I dreamed that I was walking in an unfamiliar place with my two brothers and a friend from school's little sister, Gabriella. Then I said, "This is a mighty long block." and she replied "Don't worry, I didn't bring you here to kill you." That was all. Later, I was going to my friend Guillermo's birthday party with my brothers. When I got there, he was at his dad's office, but his mom told us we should go there and it was just a block away, and his sister would show us the way. So my brothers and Gabriella headed for his dad's office. After walking a couple of blocks, was feeling uneasy (due to the location being strangely familiar and the number of blocks not being one) and I said, "This is a mighty long block." and as soon as the words were out of my mouth I remembered my dream and her reply in it. Then she replied "Don't worry, I didn't bring you here to kill you." I'd never been in that particular group (I never went anywhere with my friend's little sister anywhere other than school before or since. In fact, Guillermo was more a schoolmate than a friend.) If ever I had been in that place, it would have been years ago when I was doing gymnastics somewhat nearby, but I may have never actually been there before. And I don't dream very often (yes, I know that everyone actually does dream every night but forgets it). I'm talking maybe once a month or less, though I used to dream more when I was a kid. Anyhow, if another dream like the second I described happened, I would believe in metaphysics, but the scientist in me says it has to have been a coincidence. A few billion people dreaming, eventually one will dream the future.

At least some of the characteristics of races are an adaptation to the environment. In theory, if groups of people remained separate enough for long enough, they could speciate. In the modern world, that's not going to happen anymore because travel has become so much easier. Races may have been a starting point for speciation, as they are genetic differences between groups. I don't know how far that got, but I read somewhere that the children of parents from two different races are a little worse off than children of either race, which might be the beginning of speciation. If as someone else said there was some interbreeding even across continents, that might be enough to prevent speciation. In any case, such discussions are not politically correct, and I would expect to hear from plenty of angry people shortly.

I understand that men tend to accept more risk than women; that would be an "intellectual" difference. Most likely the difference in risk behavior also accounts for several other differences between men and women.

Placebo effect could be the best (and only) treatment available for some illnesses, so I see no ethical problems with using them in that case. Placebo effect could even be used with some problems that have very little adverse effects. On that note, does that mean that "faith healing" really does cure people?

Jesus saves, and takes half damage

That was faked by Disney. I bet it made them a bundle of money, the bastards.

It would be useful to have a math mode, but it would probably be more useful for learning than for writing. In any case, it would be disproportionate to the amount of space the text editing buttons take up.

Newscientist has an article about using bamboo composite as a replacement for iron/concrete for bridge building. Strips of bamboo are glued into timber-like shapes.

Well, considering that some people have sex with inanimate objects, it seems quite likely that they'd also have sex with sexbots.

The "evolutionary tree" would be the same type of graph as a "family tree". And, of course, no one is saying the tree is finished.

I think that old people will eventually change their minds when they see the next great idea, albeit more slowly than young ones. Consider that an old person doesn't really need to learn much new physics, as he can probably keep doing his job with the old physics. As it is, it would take several years to retrain someone with new physics, and if they are just going to get old and die, if they are already old they might be better off staying with their old physics. After all, there is still plenty of room for people who just know classical physics. (not that I agree with this, but it kind of makes sense). However, if people did not grow old, they would definitely be better off learning the new stuff.

What are you on about? Axioms are always valid by definition, unless they contradict themselves.

Consider that we have only been using radio for a very short time, and the socio-economic situation by that time (in our case, if not in general) allows for very rapid technological progress. Perhaps radio will be completely replaced in one or two hundred years. It could easily be that even with thousands of civilizations, we might be the only ones using radio. Odds are, some civilizations, eg an aquatic civilization, might never use radio at all.

I vote bunk... Bigfoot has become a myth, with so many characteristics that probably nothing can fulfill anymore. Though it may be based on a real creature, maybe, that creature wouldn't be Bigfoot.

But we haven't died out yet. It is entirely possible that our society outlive our own solar system, something amoebas are quite unlikely to do.

Thanks Psyber. My brother's problem seems to be nerve related, but the doctors have been sending him every which way to get tests and stuff for half a year already, and so far they suggest an "ignore it until it goes away" approach. He can't lift his right arm past horizontal, and by now the muscle responsible has atrophied. It makes me mad, and I think his insurance is trying to bail out/drag their feet on this one.