Mr Skeptic

A tautology is named a tautology because we agree it is so. Tautologies are always true because we defined them to be that which is always true. Which is a tautology which makes it true.

Well now your answers are correct, but your reasoning is still not. It is not a question of acidity or basicity (that's not the right word but you know what I mean), that part was for determining which structure at which pH. But for the second part, it is a question of polar vs non-polar. The first structure has a benzene ring, which is very non-polar, a carbon with hydrogens which is also non-polar, and a nitrogen with hydrogens that is significantly polar but not enough to make the overall molecule non-polar. The second structure has a charge on it instead of the -NH2, and the charge is very polar. Since water is a polar solvent, it can dissolve polar things. The membrane is mostly non-polar and keeps polar things from passing through it, but non-polar things can pass through.

Hm, I should also have mentioned you neglected the charge on structure 2, though I thought it was just a careless omission. And also, why do you say that structure 1 would dominate at a pH lower than the pKa? (edit: looks like cypress beat me to this) (Incidentally, I'm pretty sure the pKa is for the protonated form.)

For solubility in water, which form is more hydrophobic? As for the membrane, do polar or non-polar things pass through the membrane more easily?

A tautology is a statement of the form "If A then A" or equivalently "A or not A". It is obviously but trivially true, not really very useful.Also a lot of people complain about something being a tautology as if that disproved it, which I find funny because it just proves it is true. But I think I can go one further and say tautology is the only form of knowable truth. So here is my proof: Suppose A is true. But I said knowable truth, so how do you know A is true? It has to be proven. Case 1: A is a tautology, and therefore true. Case 2: A is not a tautology and must be proven. But to prove A if it is not a tautology, you need some sort of logical proof. But logic preserves truth, that is, you have to start with a true statement to be able to reach a true statement. But how can you prove that statement is true? If it is a tautology it is of course true, but otherwise you need to prove that, ... So eventually you are left with two things: 1) Tautologies, which are known to be true, and things deduced from the tautology (which would just make them more complicated tautologies) 2) Assertions, which you just say are true and don't bother to prove. Is there any other option?

I think taxing wealth (as opposed to income) is a poor choice because it punishes thrift and responsibility. That is, someone who spent a lot of effort throughout their lifetime accumulating their wealth even with a mediocre income, so they could have a good retirement, pay for their kids or even grandkids to go to college, or something... would be treated the same as someone with an absurdly large income that has only a fraction of one day's income in the bank and spends the rest on hookers and yachts or something. And no it won't be done just once, people know better and so everyone will be a bit scared of saving money. Really I don't see anything wrong with just increasing the tax rate on the wealthy for a brief period like everyone else does when they need money. This would be a much more gradual effect and would discriminate based on income rather than income and thrift, which to me seems more fair.

And also some CO which is toxic, colorless, odorless, and also flammable/explosive.

Indeed. And you, my friend, are palpably wrong in the level of certainty with which you treat your opinions and the conclusiveness of the evidence which you offer in support of them. I know you won't just take my word for it (I wouldn't in your position either), but feel free to ask others who know you well.

Yes, you got banned from the Politics forum. The mods presumed you would figure out why you had it coming, what with your repeated and apparently unrepentant violations of rule 2.1. Even if some of those were provoked, there's also no need to escalate which you often do. After the umpteenth discussion about whether to ban you, it was decided to at least remove you from the politics forum, since you seem to do the most damage in areas where the facts are uncertain (ie, you treat your opinion as fact and then apply your "conversational intolerance" against anyone who disagrees). Not sure if the politics forum disappearing completely for you was intentional. I'll go ask.

How about an energy density then?

Hm... I suppose you could check the option to auto-add to your watch list the threads you respond to, and then check that list.

Oh, sorry forgot to unlock the thread. I hope everyone has calmed down by now. Rigney had earned himself a vacation for his violations of rule 2.1 in this thread, but I guess no one actually gave it to him and it's a bit late for that now.

While we're talking about alternative chemicals for life, how about aromatic compounds? Can we make complex aromatic compounds without carbon?

What I find more interesting about that graph is that the older folks from back when we were more religious... aren't.

I can't imagine a catalytic way to get helium. But maybe if we get the other stuff... There's oxygen concentrators that remove some of the nitrogen, and I imagine we could get a similar thing that removes the oxygen, and then what is left could be collected by compression/distillation, since they would all be fairly valuable gases. On a related note, I wonder if the atmospheric concentration changes as you go higher. I'd imagine there'd be more helium at higher elevations, so less down where our machines would be. Helium is special not so much for its lightness but because it is a noble gas (which is also the reason that it is used in balloons, as noble gases aren't flammable). Also the helium nucleus is fairly special, both for helium-4 and helium-3. Also helium cannot liquefy at atmospheric pressure even at absolute zero. This makes it necessary for reaching near absolute zero temps by using liquid helium, as with other gases your gas would liquefy and mess up the refrigeration system. Also liquid helium is a superfluid, although I'm not sure what use that is. Probably for playing with quantum effects.

Hydrogen is twice as light as helium, so would make better balloons and better chipmunk voices. But it is also flammable and in the right combination with oxygen or air can be explosive. Which just adds to the fun in my opinion, though I'm sure someone would somehow manage to burn their house down with it.

First, solve for the vertical component of the velocity, and with that you can calculate the x component. You'll also need to find out how long it took the orange to go up from 1.5 m to 5 m.

No, not even close. Go get a 100% agreement from a group of 60 people about a complex topic, and then come back and say that. For extra fun, try doing it while 40 people in the same room are trying to prevent said agreement by any means necessary.

Of course. Heavens forbid we use something flammable when we can use an important resource we will run out of shortly instead.

Sure we can. That's what police systems are for, they "encourage" people not to do corrupt things like steal, kill and bribe. How about this for our moral integrity (in particular the jewelry store)?

I think there's better ways to sequester carbon. Of course there's also the fact that we're digging coal out of the ground and burning it, so maybe we should stop doing that before we start burying something as valuable as wood. Alternately, we could turn it to charcoal which would release some valuable gas fuel (also can be converted to liquid fuels with some extra effort). Though that would lose some of the carbon, it gets a valuable byproduct and converts the wood to something that is not biodegradable, so that it could be buried anywhere saving on the costs and emissions of transporting them, and I hear it also makes farmland more productive (called biochar) and needing less fertilizer (which we are using coal to make). Also other plants could be used instead of wood, since as char they won't rot. But perhaps the most interesting suggestion is that we can fertilize the oceans. The iron concentrations in many parts of the ocean are a limiting factor for algae growth, and putting just a little bit in could make a big difference. One of the proponents has said, "give me an oil tanker full of iron and I'll give you an ice age". However there are concerns that it would affect the ecosystem, particularly that all that algae decaying could cause anoxic conditions.

Sure. A person is "more alive" than a bacterium, and so can die at the level of personhood (brain death), at the organismal level, and at the cellular level. But perhaps a better example would be, death is caused by life expectancy. The shorter the life expectancy the sooner they die. Before you complain that this is circular reasoning do consider how we define instability to make a fair comparison. Well, just because you have trouble finding what physical laws could cause an uncaused event (hint: uncaused), doesn't mean that supernatural entities as a cause is somehow less entities than no cause (ie, simpler). Though I do think that claiming something has no cause is unacceptable for science.

What is so ridiculous about it? How exactly does it fail as a metaphor to reality? Do you think you can "see" in any other way than as described, other than that your "tennis balls" are smaller (but still have momentum)?

I chose meerkat because I gave a speech on them a couple of days ago, and I stuck with it to be consistent. You are correct that the number 74 can be made to show up everywhere, however, that is not useful. Because you have to do arbitrary things to get the number and have to do it already knowing about , you can't use it for prediction. That pattern only works if you make it work, which just wastes time. For example, any period of time can be used to reach a number in the 70's by your method of making it a week times a 1 digit number. So a billion years is 7×5.2177457 × 1010 and dropping the extra digits gets to 75 which is almost 74. The same can be done with any amount of time, so your 74 could be any length of time so it will of course be everywhere. There's no reason for the choice of operations done other than that they're the ones that will turn the number into 74. Here's an even better example to disprove your theory: as you said, a meerkat = 1a + m13+e5+e5+r18+k11+a1+t20=74. Since names are arbitrary (they are made up by people and have no relation to reality), you have just demonstrated that you get 74 from arbitrary data. If your conclusion is supported by random data it means it is worthless. To summarize: you are citing as evidence a type of test used to show theories are false and showing your theory does not pass it.

The observer could be a rock, or really anything too big to be in a quantum state. No need for it to be conscious.