Mr Skeptic

He won't, otherwise he can't change it at his whim to fit his argument.

It's a communications theory concept that cypress does not understand and is irrelevant to this topic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_entropy

Well, I rather like the idea of the launch loop, although I doubt we could keep it safe from people who want to shoot it down for whatever reason. Nuclear fission propulsion I think would be most practical (space is definitely not the issue there, it is weight and safety). The nuclear lightbulb is my favorite of those, although I'm not sure how it would work in practice. The important thing is the efficiency, which can be far greater than the best possible chemical propulsion. Note that for chemical propulsion the propellant necessarily makes up the majority of the payload. Ion or even fusion if we can get it would be ideal for propulsion once in space, maybe for a dedicated space-only ship.

Not so fast, the shrew has a brain that is 10% of it's body mass, far more than humans. For total brain size, the sperm whale has a brain about 6 times larger than a human's. However, when we do a fancy formula for expected brain size given type of animal and its size, then we come out on top. As for being more intelligent, we are in the way we define intelligence, but it could be defined in other ways and then we wouldn't be top anymore (eg for 3D navigation I think the birds will beat us). One thing we do have, is that we are born totally helpless and are helpless for an absurd period of time, which means that we don't need to have things programmed into our brain to the extent most animals do, and can learn it on our own rather than as instinct. Animals which do this tend to be more clever, and I'm pretty sure we're the most helpless/for the longest when born.

I can't really say with certainty whether it might or might not be possible. We don't really know what causes mass, although maybe our shiny new collider might find the answer in a couple of years (the Higgs boson, or not). Once we know what causes mass we might have a better idea of whether it would be possible to change it. It would be a very useful technology for sure, but as Sisyphus noted there's the issue of conservation of energy. For example, if you turn your mass effect field on, accelerate your ship to 0.99c, then to turn it off you'd need an absurd amount of energy, or turning it off would bring your ship to a near halt. And if on top of that you add in conservation of momentum, I think that either you can't have this tech or we'd have to change how we think of momentum. Anyhow, I'm fairly certain it won't work, due to the difficulty of maintaining both momentum and energy in all inertial reference frames, while somehow changing the mass.

Nope, Earth is not a closed system. We gain and lose energy, and in fact now we're gaining a bit too much energy and not losing enough, so we're getting warmer. Gold, useless as it is for most purposes, is nearly corrodeproof and will stay here unless we lob it into space. It's much more conserved and much easier to trade. Also, using energy as currency would just result in absurd overproduction of energy, with the result that much of it will be wasted or used inefficiently, compounding our global warming issues. Actually, the value of everything else relative to the Joule would plummet. The Joule will still be 1 kg m/s^2, sure, but what would it be in gold, bread, blowjobs, or whatever else you wish to compare it to? Since energy can't be stockpiled no one would want any more than they need, people would have to make up some new less important uses for it and so it would have lower value. Furthermore, energy has different value in different places (just look at the price of energy). Energy is actually one of the most dangerous things there is, especially so when in concentrated storage. Yes, I think electronic currency would be ideal. No more currency getting lost, stolen, used for obvious criminal activities, etc. And the government could actually put some teeth into bans on prostitution and such. But that would just mean it cannot ever reach 100% acceptance, since criminals and their patrons will simply switch to some other form of currency, eg gold. Hm, I wonder if there would be any way to make electronic currency that is also private?

Well, my guess would be that matter is made of compressed spacetime, so there's less spacetime to go around nearby matter. Of course that's just random gibberish until someone finds an equation that would describe such and checks that the predictions are correct. Is that the sort of "why?" that you were looking for? Because if you were looking for a "why?" that would not involve new equations, the sort of question that Newton thought irrelevant to his idea of gravity, then science isn't really the place to look for such answers.

Galaxies, solar systems, and planets don't fall apart. But distant galaxies are receding from each other at faster than the speed of light, and will no longer be in each other's sphere of influence in the least (falling out of the observable universe).

How does that prove it can't be zero? All you can see in that example is the changes in energy (from chemical energy to gravitational potential energy to kinetic energy to thermal energy), all with energy being conserved, but from that example you can't say what is the total energy.

Maybe, but "protein" is not what your body actually needs. It's the amino acids that proteins are made from. There's 20 different ones, although your body can make most of them. However, some your body cannot make, and no matter how much of the other amino acids you eat (ie protein), if it is lacking in one of the essential amino acids then it won't suffice. As I understand it most of us get plenty of protein anyways.

You mean, these are objectively known to exist in animals other than humans. And even if it were true, what you need to say humans are not animals is to find something not that is unique to humans, but that is unique to animals and humans do not share. Which of the attributes of Animalia did you say that humans do not possess?

Nope, but you twisted it so that it sounds evil and nasty. Here, let me give you an example: The Republicans by and large aren't terrified of nor have expressed much disagreement with, the United States Pirate Party. Now tell me, is that because they agree with them, or because they are no danger due to their small numbers? And suppose that some politicians were to suggest banning the members of the United States Pirate Party from having guns, what do you think the Republicans would think of that? Would they not support their rights to own guns even though they disagree with them? Would they not see that as a Constitutional issue? The left are standing up for discriminated minorities, yes, but that doesn't mean that they agree with them nor that they'd allow said minorities to pass laws that violate other people's rights. Meanwhile, the Christian right is complaining about the First Amendment, cause it gets in the way of them getting their way, of legislating their morality and having their stuff taught in public schools as the truth. They have and will continue to vote for and actually pass things that the left disapprove of. --- To put it another way, are you complaining that the left won't stand up for the poor and downtrodden when such become the majority and start trampling on everyone else?

Perhaps, but it is not so easy. Take a brief glance at this, it's only a small part of what goes on in the living cell: http://pubs.acs.org/cen/coverstory/8048/pdf/8048bigpicture.pdf If that process were to break down, just how easy do you think it would be to get it working again? And it will be more complicated than that if your proteins start degrading, then on top of getting the right concentrations of the chemicals in the picture, then you also have to replace the proteins and get them all in the right place, and do it fast enough that it all doesn't break again while you're doing so.

I think the process would be too expensive compared to the benefit (so a bad business idea).

Arg, I spent over half an hour searching for the study. Apparently words like "atheist" and "theology" are very popular words that appear all over the place, and I couldn't find the relevant polls. Here's one graph, but it includes the humanities in general and I can't access the study without paying up. Also wiki has a page of Theologians by religion, but of course that is useless for statistics. Still for whatever it's worth, over 1% of the theologians on that page are atheist, but I'd imagine atheist theologians might not want to publicly acknowledge atheism.

I disagree. If your ability to check out potential threats is limited, it makes sense to focus on where most of the threats are. Catch the most threats with the limited resources you have. If a passenger is visibly nervous, security should give him a little extra scrutiny. That doesn't mean to ignore the non-profile group, just they get slightly less scrutiny consistent with the lower risk that they are carrying something dangerous. However, if the non-profile group does not have a lesser proportion of dangerous people than the profile group, then the mistake is not in choosing whether to profile or not but in the choice of profile. So long as the profile is correct and security resources are limited, profiling will increase the success rate.

That's a false comparison, and you know it. How about you compare the whole war vs no war at all? I know destroying the power structure and then leaving it up for grabs is a bad idea, but that might be what we're doing in the Middle East as a whole (see: Iran). But at least that will be at the nation level. In any case, are you willing to go with the comparison of trashing Iraq and rebuilding vs not trashing it at all, or are you going to insist on comparing that to trashing the place and leaving it in ruins and up for grabs?

They can vote and in enough numbers to get their way -- to change the law (not make an exception to it). Muslims can also vote but they are a very small minority and in our winner takes all system they're largely irrelevant for voting purposes.

My point however, is that knowing how it works is entirely different than believing in it. The equations give the same answers whether or not you believe in them. I guess the same is true of theology though, "what would Jesus do" does not require actual belief in Jesus etc. What belief does do is increase interest in the subject, which usually increases the competence in said subject. To turn the thread on its head, why are so many theologians atheists?

It's one thing to make the terrorists mad (who cares they're already mad), quite another to make the civilians terrorists. If your actions are converting people to terrorism, that doesn't make for a very effective war on terror.

Just keep in mind that you need to be very proficient with both your signatures if you choose that option. Otherwise, the signature you use less will be more susceptible to forgery since it is inconsistent which would give more leeway for sloppier forgeries.

I'm pretty sure manure is available as a liquid.

Personally, I've found Ubuntu easier to install by far compared to Windows XP. I liked its usability better too, especially the part where I can copy paste with two clicks total (one to select and a second to paste, unlike windows where you have to select, copy via keyboard/right click and select copy, pick a location, and paste via keyboard/right click and select paste. Select and middle click is so much easier, and if I have to do a lot of copy/pasting I really want to use Linux. I do an awful lot of that when coding. As for troubles, both gave me the about same amount of troubles (except for viruses/malware of course). I do love the packet manager though; its an awesome way to install, keep track of, and update a lot of programs, compared to the disaster of files everywhere with Windows + registry. However, the killer is that all the games I want to play are mostly windows only. As for Windows 7, I'll install it when my XP breaks or they make games I want to play for it only (I knew enough to stay away from Vista, telling my friends I'd install it when Microsoft changed its name ). I guess that's another plus for Ubuntu, not having to worry about a profit motive, such as intentional introduction of forward incompatibility forcing people to upgrade. --- You shouldn't have to use root access to use a text editor. However, if you are trying to edit files your user does not have permission to access then you need to use root access. This is intentional and as easy to use as possible, under the circumstances. Your home folder and probably everything in it belongs to your user and should be editable without root access. If you want to constantly use a file or folder elsewhere, you'd probably be better off giving your user write access to it (or ownership), else you have to edit it as root.

Conversely, believing in quantum mechanics won't make the equations work if you're doing the math wrong. Doing the math wrong if you don't believe in quantum mechanics doesn't mean the equations don't work for you, it means you don't know the math. Are you seriously suggesting the equations are giving you the wrong answers just because you don't believe in them? So do you think that just because someone knows physics then they should be really good at socializing since they are so smart? People focus on one thing at the expense of others all the time.

I almost deleted that as spam, but it seems there's some truth to it: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080423075810.htm