Mr Skeptic

So who is responsible for bombing the twin towers then? The US, and nobody else? Edit: somehow I misread Iran as Iraq. For some reason I always mix up the two. My above comment makes no sense.

Until I finish that report that is due...

Won't the population start growing again when we start to colonize new planets?

Those with pica disorder will actually eat plastic toys, clay, old tires... Very young children also have a tendency to chew on things they are not supposed to.

I recommend Windows Vista

Depends how you look at it. Older women have about 100 times the probability of getting a mutation just before menopause puts an end to that. In having the cells ready but not dividing, the cells might grow "old" as they are not being renewed by replicating.

I'm a nanotechnological robot. I'm an assemblage of smaller, independent, self-replicating units that join together to pool resources and are collectively intelligent. Due to my nanotechnolgical construction, I am indistinguishable from a regular human. My goal is to join together with others like me to become the most powerful creatures on earth. You could consider that a risk.

And that's my point -- anything that's truly random is something we cannot explain, and accepting something as being truly random seems like giving up. So IMO we cannot ever accept something as truly random, even if we always model it as something effectively random. Re your rant about being banned elsewhere for crackpottery ... thanks for the heads up

It wouldn't surprise me if some people, especially religious people, have some issues with genetic diseases and their prevention. IMO, prevention would be a good thing, so long as it is voluntary.

Depends. Before the scientific method was formalized and organizations formed for the purpose of sharing scientific knowledge, scientific progress was almost non-existent. Just ask Aristotle.

Out of curiosity I looked up the common cold.

No, we would have sacrifices to try to appease the angry gods instead. I'd point out that with only enough knowledge to understand fire and farming, we could already wreak havoc on the world. Yet the knowledge itself is not the problem, the problem would be what we do with it. If you consider the impact of certain alien species on a habitat, you would know that knowledge is not the cause of habitat destruction. If you consider the level of knowledge a bacteria or virus has, you would know that knowledge has nothing to do with sickness. Knowledge is just a tool, and can be used for good or ill.

I wouldn't be surprised if the common cold actually killed a few people. Also, I recall reading that viruses can contribute to cancer? (that may have been retroviruses only)

So if you are drowning nobody should bother pulling you out cause you're gonna die anyhow? Though I do think it is more appropriate to measure number of years added to the life versus number of years subtracted, rather than "lives saved" vs "lives lost".

Though in the case of changing magnetic fields it could generate a potential. I'd imagine that even a little bit of electricity could have an effect.

I thought that was the consensus. Regardless of whether it is the main cause, it is certainly a cause. Anyhow, I was wanting to keep this thread from getting into one of those arguments where people make a lot of noise and no one changes their mind, which was the reason I mentioned at the start that it is about solutions rather than whether it is actually happening or not. I did offer one suggestion that doesn't involve CO2. I take it you would be a big fan of the giant space umbrella?

Don't forget how enormous a star is! If you were as big as a star, you would die due to overheating because surface area increases as the square of the size, whereas volume increases as the cube of the size. Remember that the star's rate of fusion is also limited because the hotter it gets, the more it expands, so there is less density for reactions to occur. This is a good thing, or the sun would be more like a supernova.

I agree with this, that carbon taxes and credits are a far better idea than specific regulations. The problem with regulations is that they can be stupid, slow, and overspecific, so if a better solution comes around, the law will still require the old one. The regulations also trample a bit on people's freedoms, whereas the carbon taxes and credits are simply ensuring that externalities get paid for, so it seems like a proper free market solution.

I'm pretty sure that disease and famine have killed far more people than have wars. Wars would happen anyhow, with or without technology, whereas medicine depends heavily on technology. So I'd say the advances of science have overall been used to save lives.

What about these babies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_magnetic_energy_storage?

Yes, welcome back

Let me preemptively say, behave yourselves, iNow and SkepticLance. Please don't bring that argument here too. This is not about whether or not global warming is real, it is about what you would do about it assuming it is real. http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/geothermal.html According to MIT, goethermal could be a major source for the US's power needs.

Is his job to teach, or to rant? That's what I thought. He should be fired for not doing his job. If they want to sue him too, that's up to them, and will be very interesting.

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha, That was a good one, yourdad. It was real funny.

I consider it a moral offense to commit suicide without a good reason. Being terminally ill, mentally half-there, and incurable pain might count. Being bored doesn't quite cut it IMO. I once contemplated suicide, and concluded that the proper way to do it would be to donate all my organs to people who would appreciate them more than me, but I doubt any doctor would have anything to do with such a thing. In the end, it gave me a better perspective on life. Most people would call Buddhism a religion. One would think that different religions would have different suicide rates. And society would have significant effects -- eg the rules for Seppuku for Samuri. Don't discount the possibility of an afterlife. If you count cryogenics as an afterlife anyhow And yet the suicide bombings have been quite successful for the groups, if not the individuals, that employ them. As others have mentioned, these people also get some real world benefits such as social status (and I am sure that there are arrangements to reward their family as well).