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Mr Skeptic

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Everything posted by Mr Skeptic

  1. Yes, we are animals, chordates, vertebrates, mammals, primates, and a few other classifications. I suspect almost all the people that say we are not animals will still say we are vertebrates and mammals. These classifications tell a lot of our body structures and biochemistry, for example they tell us what animals to test our drugs on and how close such testing will be for a given animal. We are also social animals, another sort of classification that also tells some things about us. And finally, we are a technological species, and as far as we know the only one. This last classification is extremely important for many things, which is why we invented the word "artificial" to describe the effects due to that aspect of humanity, and it is a huge aspect of our lives. I think that when people say we are not animals they are not referring to our classification within Animalia. When people refer to animals they often mean a certain subset of Animalia, excluding humans and the smaller animals, and probably also sponges and such, possibly also fish. Think of what is meant by "wild animals", what is being talked about probably won't include fish, insects, nor worms among other things.
  2. We can increase the pool of people that could be elected by changing our voting system to one where you don't lose your vote if you vote for a losing candidate. For example you could be allowed to vote for several candidates, or your vote could be carried on to your second choice (and third,...) should your favorite candidate lose. This would allow you to vote for candidates that you like even if you don't think they have a high chance of winning, since you won't be throwing away your vote for doing so. And that would allow many more candidates to run and more choice of how to vote.
  3. I'm fiscally conservative and socially liberal. The Democrats usually beat the Republicans in both of those (as far as I can tell), but neither of them really match my views very well. But because of our voting system I have to vote for one of them if I want my vote to count for anything. This really pisses me off because it is not a necessary failure of voting, just of the voting system we happen to have, and I and many others are stuck with candidates we don't like but vote for anyways.
  4. Well as ydoaPs said in post 3, the "magical" free will that many people believe in doesn't work (with or without an omniscient God for that matter). But what about determinism? What if you have an omniscient God that lives outside of our time dimension, and so can view all events past and present and future at its own leisure? I'm not sure if that also would require determinism. Oh, and also I know something God doesn't.
  5. OK, so I just randomly thought up a possible solution to our government spending spree, and possibly also to other problems. The idea is to have our congresscritters "own" the debt they generate; that is, they and the people they represent could be made to bear some of the responsibility for it. The idea is as follows: 1) Tracking the Congresscritter's Debt. The congresscritter's votes on various bills are tracked, and the spending and income of the bills are tracked and estimated. The estimated amount that they owe/bring in would be the Estimated Debt Dollars (EDD), and would just be so the congresscritter and the people have an idea of what their future holds. The Cumulative Debt Dollars (CDD) is the overall sum of the income/loss of the bills the congresscritter voted for. Both are only for bills that actually passed, and both are divided equally among the congresscritters that voted for it. This is for their seat, not the individual, so it is not reset when getting a new congresscritter. 2) Preventing Debt Accumulation. There would be two ways to prevent the congresscritters from accumulating debt. The first is "selling" their vote in exchange for other congresscritter's Debt Dollars. In this case their vote for that bill won't count for/against their Debt Dollars unless they want it to, and their Debt Dollars are reduced by whatever the other congresscritters "paid" to get their vote. The second prevention system is that should they accumulate a given amount of Cumulative Debt Dollars past a certain limit, then they lose their ability to vote for a certain period of time (or maybe give them a limited number of votes), after which their debt is forgiven or at least reduced. However they may still "sell" their vote if that would put them above the limit. The purpose of all this would be to give more voice to our fiscally responsible congresscritters (and the people they represent) and less voice to our fiscally irresponsible congresscritters (and the people they represent). However this might change the dynamics of the Congress in other strange ways so I'm not really sure what the overall effect would be. So what do you people think? Good idea, bad idea, needs [explain] modification?
  6. The length of the presidency is fine. What needs changing is our voting system.
  7. Well, there's a correlation between moderate drinking and better health. There's a correlation between abstinence and poverty/previous alcohol problems. There's a correlation between poverty/previous alcohol problems and poor health. Not sure if anyone has checked that the first correlation is not do to the second two.
  8. High concentration sugar will raise your blood sugar levels, which can be deadly or just plain nasty (just ask a diabetic about the effects). If you eat a lot of candy quickly you will feel sick sick sick. Also, I'm pretty sure rapidly changing your blood sugar levels increases your odds of getting diabetes. Also, sugar is fermented by bacteria on your teeth into acids which locally remove calcium from your teeth (cavities), whereas normally the sugar would be eaten with a fruit that could at least brush off your teeth a little. There's probably another reason, eg I've heard something about the rate that fructose can be processed is limited. That, and they're "empty calories".
  9. If you make HIV a condition that will make you hunted down like a criminal and killed, guess how many are going to volunteer to be a part of this process vs how many would hide their condition as best they could? In addition, some people would probably purposely infect others, just to rub in how nasty killing people is. A bloody dart thrown at one of the politicians responsible for such a policy, for example. The policy of exterminating infected people might be OK for some fast-acting fatal plague with visible symptoms, but even then quarantine would be better if possible. Burning dead bodies, on the other hand, is definitely a good idea in certain circumstances.
  10. I'm going to have to disagree with that. It's product has to be popular not good, to get the audience to attract advertising bucks. Also cheap, to make a profit. And just like we fill our food with salt, sugar, fats, preservatives, artificial colors, artificial flavors, substitutes, etc that make the product cheaper or more popular, but not necessarily better, I expect the same would be true with broadcasting. The profit motive is all well and good when the objective is profit, but what about when it is not? As pointed out, a lot of the alternatives to NPR are other publicly funded sources.
  11. This is yet another example of how broken our election system is. Having an additional candidate join a race (but lose) should not affect the outcome at all, and in a proper election system it wouldn't. But noooo, we have to use the election system where your vote counts for nothing if your candidate loses.[/rant] Personally, I view Sarah Palin with a mixture of glee and terror. Just gotta give her enough rope to hang herself. I'm pretty sure the general population will stop her, but if the Republicans don't want her among them then they'll have to find some way to stop her themselves. The problem, of course, is that a lot of the Republicans do want her.
  12. Personally, I think the warp drive is better (whatever it is that the Star Trek ships use). As for that "Gravitational Isolator", is there any evidence that it would even be possible?
  13. My feelings are that it would be most efficient, to not burn the coal in the first place. So, use coal to capture carbon. Coal is well-suited for that task since it is not biodegradable, and as a solid it won't leak out from storage.
  14. What you have suggested is impossible, and most likely means you have not been reading what we have been saying.
  15. Yes, what you said is that you wanted to not talk in rhetoric, and followed that up immediately with a rhetorical statement that is false. Yes, we all understood what you mean but what you said is still false. Figures of speech aren't literal. Someone who is literally in bed with someone is, in fact, in a real bed with them; someone who is metaphorically in bed with them just has some sort of agreement with them. If you would like us to not take you at your word but rather try to guess at what you really mean then I guess this isn't much of a problem. But then don't go complaining when people read into what you are saying things that you didn't intend. As to the topic of the thread, is there any evidence that this trip costs more than the benefits it is expected to bring?
  16. Me too, and I sometimes just use my hands. But sometimes you have a nest that weighs a couple of pounds, and then you really don't want to get stung.
  17. Current is a flow of charge, usually electrons. If you move the positively charged ions from one end of the battery to the other, and then neutralize them with electrons from that side, it will draw electrons away and more electrons will flow to replace them. Power is energy/time. By increasing the surface area, the reaction can happen quicker and so deliver the power quicker (and drain the energy from the battery quicker).
  18. The catch with these self-referential statements is that anyone else can easily see the statement must be true. The person mentioned in the statement knows that everyone else knows it is true, but that he himself can't because then it would be false.
  19. Well if it is getting rid of wasps that you want, knock down their nest on a cold early morning. They're cold blooded and are very sluggish when its cold. Wear as much clothes as you can though, and you can also put a sheet over your face. If it is a small nest (not multi-layered one) odds are the wasps won't even get you even without protection.
  20. I'm not sure what hairs you think swansont is splitting. How much do you pay for the airspace that you broadcast in? You don't pay because you don't broadcast, you say? So does that make you subsidized by the federal government?
  21. Plugging a regular extension cord or power strip into an outlet shouldn't really have much of an effect. I suppose there would have to be some loss due to the extra length and the fact that we use alternating current, but nothing significant. However, if it has a (dumb) transformer on it, the transformer will keep functioning even without a load and will lose some of that energy. You can tell because they'll be warm. The warmer it is, the more power it is wasting.
  22. Well it won't be because of mobile phone use. The sun is far more dangerous than those, with both higher energy radiation and much much more of it.
  23. I don't really see much reason to doubt it. As CharonY said, both are very social creatures. Also, dogs are domesticated by man and that chimp seems pretty friendly with people too. Odds are the chimp has interacted with dogs before, even if not that particular dog, and also seen humans do likewise. So he could have learned how to interact with other animals like people do.
  24. So I was looking at Godel's Incompleteness Theorems a while back, and I realized that the same should apply to people as well. So then the Godel sentence for God would be, "God cannot prove that this statement is true" or, if you prefer, "God does not know that this statement is true" If you think about it, those statements are true, but only so long as God does not know/prove them. But if He does, then God has a contradiction (ie God would be mistaken). Of course, the same goes for you and me. For example, "I do not know that this statement is true" I'm not sure what exactly to make of that. I realize that it must be true so long as I don't know that, but it seems strange. Maybe I'm just confused (This topic could be moved to philosophy if people would rather talk about the implications for normal people vs for an "Omniscient" God)
  25. Here's the fixed link: http://blogs.reuters.com/afghanistan/2010/10/23/obama-in-india-next-monthripples-in-the-region/ --- Hm, interesting trip. I hope we get our money's worth. India is advancing nicely and with 1 billion people there they would make a very valuable trading partner.
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