Mr Skeptic

What law of physics was it that said that you couldn't go faster than the speed of sound? That's right, none! The "sound barrier" was certainly thought impossible to surpass (due to the plane shaking apart), but that is different than violating a law of physics. Saying something is impossible, and proving something is impossible are two different things. BTW, when did they have the first supersonic bullets? As iNow said, we may someday find loopholes that allow us to do things previously thought impossible, without actually breaking any laws of physics. But if we ever break the laws of physics, we will just get some new ones

It would be nice to have a website that contained every word of every public speech that each of our politicians have made. It may help fight deception and promise-breaking and other shenanigans. Gotta analyze those politicians.

He seems to have moved on to other forums recently. (Wrongplanet now shows up before SFN for atomikpsycho.) Maybe he learned something during his brief visits here. Or maybe they didn't delete his posts yet.

Wow! An 8 pager about retroviruses and their role in our evolution. Retroviruses are quite fascinating, and are used to insert genes in genetic engineering. I've even heard that they can be used to revert adult cells to stem cells. Regardless, they may soon play a much greater role in our "evolution" than they have ever before. ... The prospect of reviving ancient viruses seems like a dangerous idea. Especially if they are able to affect multiple species linked by a common ancestor who originally got the virus (ie, was susceptible). I do anticipate any medical advances they may gain through this, but they had best be careful. I'm particularly interested in the role retroviruses may have in cancer.

How do we choose ... which threads get closed?

Are you talking about the strength of the force increasing with distance, or just the energy?

elas, if you titled your thread "hypothetical" or "speculative", the mods may be less inclined to move it to the pseudoscience and speculations section. If what you are proposing is not accepted physics but you talk as if it were fact, they will not want to leave it in the science section because it may confuse people. Also, you're not really supposed to be ab/using SFN to make your site more popular, though you might be within the rules since it is part of the discussion. Best ask a mod.

Most heavy metals are toxic, whether they are magnetic or not. Even the necessary metals will be nasty if their concentration gets too high.

Continuous functions look linear for a small enough section of them.

I know. People who think they understand things, when they really don't are really annoying. Like you said, ignoring them doesn't always work. Some of them have fixed ideas, like the idea that they can go about redefining words or that they are smarter than everyone else. Nothing is fixed, especially definitions, or the amount of energy, charge, and momentum in a closed system. Always changing, they are.

The purpose of trolls is to get people to answer them. The purpose to discussing the purpose of discussing life is ... uh, actually, there is no purpose to discussing the purpose of discussing life, at least not with certain people. mooeypoo is much more patient than I am.

Fred56, if you are asking for the context of "misbehave", it is right here in the rules section. Feel free to argue with the mods about what exactly the rules mean

I'm not afraid of change. I just don't want to be Microsoft's beta tester. Let them get their act together, and give me a reason to switch, then I will use Vista. I don't give a damn for prettier graphics.

When enough people have an opinion about what a definition is, it becomes a fact. This is because definitions are arbitrary, so you just need to get people to agree with a definition and that's that. Definitions (unlike facts) are subject to truth by consensus. If you are on the side with less people, your definition loses. Complaining about it won't accomplish anything. That's not necessarily true. If you misbehave, the mods can close your threads, and if you misbehave a lot, they might ban you. So you might not be able to keep going on with this.

Would intelligence have to be chaotic, and have powerful internal feedback loops?

Gaining knowledge about "the real world" via an interaction with it, especially by sight. This would be the definition used in science. Sometimes an observation might also be noticing an implication that you had not seen before.

Maybe he wants to get a BS degree.

Never argue with an idiot, they drag you down to their level and beat you with experience If all else fails, use ad homs

To extract energy from a force, you need to move a certain distance in the direction of the force. To go back to where you started, you need to move against the force, which requires you to expend energy. If you end up where you started, you cannot have gotten any energy out, and probably lost some due to friction. If you build your device, perhaps you will understand how useful the laws of physics that tell us it wouldn't work are. Also, you can't patent a perpetual motion machine because the patent office believes in the laws of physics. Since you can't patent it anyhow, and neither can we, and it won't work anyhow, you lose nothing in telling us how you think it will work.

It all depends on what you count as "doing". The job of an OS is not to show you pretty graphics. That would be (part of) the job of the GUI.

I'd seriously suggest that you read the link he gave, which gives the accepted definition(s) of entropy. You could insist on using your own definition, but then you would have to explain your own definition every time you use it and put up with people who get annoyed at you for not using the correct definition.

Even so, if your family thinks that you have been wronged, they will try to avenge you (and/or go for the loot). So unless there is a law preventing your family from suing the doctor that decided to donate your organs, it may be a good idea to get their permission. Perhaps not ideal, and perhaps not "right", but it more or less works.

It won't work. Like they say, "There's no such thing as a free lunch." Though in physics they say it differently, "Energy cannot be created or destroyed" and "Energy always degrades into a less useful form." If you tell us how you think your idea will work, we can tell you why it won't. Or you could build and test it yourself if you don't believe us.

The idea is to prevent a hypothetical problem where the doctors "donate" borderline cases instead of trying to heal them.

Hm, I like reading scifi and fantasy books even though I know half of it is BS, and the rest made up. How many of the attendees actually believed the psychic? Maybe they went for entertainment, or to study the art of BS.