Mr Skeptic

If the powder is still magnetic, you may be able to remove the splinters with another strong magnet.

Eh, can't be much worse than a mousetrap anyways.

Doesn't CO2 make the blood very acidic? That would be kind of painful.

You should be able to partition your hard drive if you run fdisk from a floppy. BTW what is the distro that you found?

Since you are in need of pain, here is how to install it from floppies: http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/install_from_floppy.html

History, and the reason that we should not repeat it.

You might want to try Damn Small Linux. --- I might ask, why do you want to bring such suffering on yourself? No GUI and no network, and you want to use floppies??? And you want to use fortran??? I'm not sure whether Damn Small Linux fits on a floppy. If your computer can boot from a USB, you may be able to just copy an install CD iso image to a USB stick. You could always borrow a CD drive from another computer. If your computer can boot from the network (that you don't want to use), you can do that too.

Eh, I for one wouldn't mind an anarchist nutjob for President. Better than an insane schizophrenic linguistically challenged one that thinks the ter'rists are out to get him and that God told him to piss off the Arabs.

I think you misunderstood what I said. If they can prove that there is no natural explanation for our existence, then the only explanation left would be an unnatural explanation. Regardless, I think that is a moot point because if we can be naturally formed by birth, odds are that we can naturally be formed in another manner (ie, not impossible). I was just playing the God's advocate I was under the impression that all children were taught about the earth centered theories and Aristotle's idea of science without observation.

The obvious solution is to sue the magnet company for millions of dollars for not putting a warning label on it (eg, Do not powder magnet and apply to skin) If no one here knows, it might be a good idea to call the company and ask them, as odds are they would be required to know in case their workers got exposed to the stuff. Here's what wiki says about neodymium:

Technically, ID is testable. But they have to prove that there is no natural explanation for our existance. I think what needs to be done is a DNA comparison for various related species. No need to dig up crumbling old bone fragments when you have perfectly good DNA to compare. If I'm not mistaken, given enough related species, you should be able to derive the DNA of their ancestor (according to evolution). Also according to evolution, the differences should be a random assortment of mutations, duplications, and deletions. According to ID, it should look like intentionally different designs and specifically not like random changes.

An evil thought has just occurred to me. If the government get higher tax rates from the extremely rich than from others, the government could increase its revenue by increasing the number of extremely rich at the expense of others. > Perhaps the government isn't as worried about the disappearance of the middle class as they would have us believe

Fire is lighter than air. It has mass all right, but if you put it in air it will float, like a hot air balloon. It has weight, but it is less than the weight of air.

That is no surprise to anyone. Why would earthworms want to have a less efficient developmental process? Evolution will always be toward greater efficiency, even though the parameters for efficiency (ie, environment) may change. Anything that makes you have more surviving offspring will be selected for, of course that is directional.

I think that there's two kinds of infinity: the one used in limits to mean "as the number gets arbitrarily bigger and bigger", and the ones used in sets that specify just how hard it is to "count" sets.

Most of the scientists living in the US also think the American (sorry, "English") units are silly, as do anyone who learned metric first. Where they live has nothing to do with it, really.

OK, thanks for teaching me. It seems I knew less astronomy than I thought!

I think lots of people consider the best for humanity in their morality. Then they go do what is best for themselves.

It could be ions. Given a large electric field like that of a thundercloud, some ions are formed on sharp objects, sometimes enough to make them glow blue. NOx and O3 could also be formed I think.

Take into consideration that internet polls are heavily biased toward younger people.

To das: Impredicative definitions are not the same as circular reasoning. Circular reasoning is basically an obfuscated "Assume A. Blah, blah, blah. Therefore A." Impredicative definitions are like recursive functions (which I assure you, work perfectly well).

The updraft of a 10km flame would probably be enough to pick up anything that you can

Many went extinct in the mass extinctions, but others did not. Does that not show that some species are able to adapt rapidly?

Only if there are no individuals that will be able to survive it. Sexual reproduction is there to allow rapid adaptation. You can draw on the gene pool of an entire species in a matter of one or two generations.

Why not? What would kill us in a few billion years?