Mr Skeptic

! Moderator Note Well, that definitely makes it a tangent. Splitting before this gets out of hand. Split from http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/51971-judge-orders-lesbian-nurse-back-into-military/

Quoting this one because it is related to the OP but I moved it with the tangent. ! Moderator Note Split off "Pedophile Rights" tangent

Odds are, a species that lives mostly in space would become adapted to zero g. Even with artificial gravity available, eventually they might go with less and less until they prefer zero g. Then planets would be uncomfortably massive. Similarly, ships designed for space travel might not survive Earth's gravity or might not be able to escape from it. Eg the ships powered by a fusion reactor would probably need to be built in space. So there could be plenty of reason for space-faring aliens to avoid planets, even if they do have so much more minerals.

Oh, it depends on how quickly you can set it up and how quickly it is evaporating, and how much ventilation in the house. If you faint it's game over.

Oh, I meant actual freezing, not just freezing temperatures. Once frozen, lowering the temp more doesn't really change much, and would probably be beneficial since it would slow down any reactions that are still occurring. mm, bugsicles.

Oh, I see. You can choose not to find 17-year-olds sexually attractive, but you can't choose not to find a certain gender attractive? What a strange notion. Well, please report the post where you want the split, and maybe another mod will split the thread (I'd rather not do that in a thread I'm participating in).

1 a) weight is not mass. Your answer should be a unit of force. b ) Newton's laws of motion, once you find the net force c) consider the barge and the tug separately d) the force somewhat holding back the tug and pulling forward the barge 2 If you are in an enclosed accelerating box, it is rather hard to tell the difference between acceleration and gravity. What you feel is the force with which the floor is pushing up at your feet.

Good idea, but of course they also have to give people opportunity to spike it since the bartender won't. Eg ask people to buy or fetch her a drink, or go to the bathroom. Best combined with some surveillance so we can put some bastards behind bars too.

Some insects can survive freezing just fine. However, nitrogen can also kill by suffocation by displacing oxygen. So if you put a few semi-insulated containers of liquid nitrogen in the house, it would leave your house oxygen-free for quite a while, which would eventually kill the insects. (You it will kill quickly, and no you won't notice being short on breath).

Closing dupe. http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/52022-how-do-i-calculate-the-partial-pressure-of-butane-gas/page__view__getnewpost__fromsearch__1

So what is the partial pressure of water at that temperature?

His example is of pedophilia, not of child molesters. Like the difference between consensual sex and rape. And he is not connecting that to homosexuality, rather to social morality of sexuality, and pointing out that it changes across cultures and times.

Sure, and you can't directly see the paperclip either. What enters your eye is light from a light source that hits the paperclip and is absorbed/reflected from it, passes through your cornea and lens, which focus the image onto your retina. The light excites the photosensitive cells in the retina, which excite nerves, which causes a series of depolarizations of nerves followed by release of hormones at the synapses and absorption into the synapses of the next nerve, etc, producing patterns of nerve impulses that travel to your brain and are interpreted by the visual cortex as a paperclip, then this information sent to your consciousness. (this is the simplified version of course). It is the series of nerve impulses that reach your consciousness that you are aware of, not the paperclip. The same pattern can be summoned to your consciousness via other means (dreaming, insanity, hallucination, memory, etc), therefore it cannot be said for sure that you saw a paperclip, rather the fact is that your consciousness is aware of a paperclip. To conclude that you did in fact see a paperclip all the above steps must have happened (well you can skip the lightsource if you use a red-hot paperclip, but then it won't be magnetic). Now suppose that what you see is a paperclip dancing a jig. Is it a fact that the paperclip was dancing a jig? Why would this not be a fact if you consider the other things you see a paperclip does to be facts? Perhaps because you have theoretical reasons to believe paperclips do not dance and so what you saw was not real?

And what about a schizophrenic's observation that he saw someone sneaking around in his kitchen and putting something in his drink? What about the inevitable contradictions in eyewitness testimony, or that people's memory of an event can be altered? Just because someone saw or didn't see something doesn't make it a fact. A well-supported theory supersedes a few observations. Please remember that observations are not facts nor in any way superior to theories because observations are always based on theories. All the theoretical workings of an experimental apparatus, for example, are part of any observation made with said apparatus, and this includes the human brain.

OK, so better results on a test while under the influence of "stereotype threat" is not quite the same as smarter. Part of the study was to activate "stereotype threat" by exaggerating how important the test is at accurately identifying their intellectual strengths and weaknesses, and asking them about their race, before the test. Black people who watched Obama's success did better than the ones who didn't. New York Times: Study Sees an Obama Effect as Lifting Black Test-Takers These guys think the study is full of it (but haven't actually read the study): Most bogus study ever? Original study: The ''Obama Effect": How a salient role model reduces race-based performance differences @ Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. (interestingly the study also shows a slight change in the opposite direction for the whites, but it is not mentioned and probably not statistically significant) I guess that this relates a little to the half-joke that racism is over now that we have a black president.

Yes, and over time the changes accumulate to big differences, and when the differences are enough we call them separate kinds, where "kind" could be at the level of any of Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Mammalia Order: Primates Family: Hominidae Subfamily: Homininae Tribe: Hominini Genus: Homo Species: H. sapiens and some in between, depending on how different you want your kinds to be and how many categories you have. The farther up this list you go, the longer since the various species in the category shared a common ancestor. (there are however a few categories that aren't based on common descent in various ways. Such categories are called paraphyletic (contains an ancestor but not all descendants of it) or polyphyletic (contains distantly related groups without including their common ancestor and all its descendants). For example, reptiles are paraphyletic (include the common ancestor of birds but exclude birds), whereas warm-blooded is polyphyletic (includes birds and mammals but not species in between). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phylogenetics

Not disprove, but confuse. Macroevolution is defined such that it cannot be observed, and then they complain that it has never been observed. Then they say the failure to observe it means that the theory of evolution is wrong, even though it is the theory of evolution that says it can't be observed (either in a given timeframe or because they defined it inconsistent with evolution).

And what makes you think direct observation is so reliable? I prefer my facts verified by multiple independent parties and repeated tests, which cannot be done with any specific observation but rather only with more generic theories.

Well, I suppose micro and macro evolution are useful terms, but they shouldn't be confused for two distinct things. The distinction is arbitrary, and no one really defines what specifically is the difference, although some Christians define macroevolution in such a way as to be incompatible with the theory of evolution. Anyways, I liken it to microerosion and macroerosion. Call them what you like, one is just more of the other. Anyhow, you don't really even have to understand how evolution can work to see that it has happened. I've yet to see a christian who can explain why the retroviral DNA embedded in our genomes matches the retroviral DNA in related species, nor why we have broken retroviral DNA in our genome in the first place. For evolutionists this is no surprise and in fact expected because retroviruses are a type of virus that inserts itself in the DNA of its host, just another type of mutation that can and does and has happened.

Its rather hard to tell which of these are your postulates and which are supposed to be deductions from your postulates. To me it looks like they're all postulates, which doesn't seem very useful, even without considering accuracy or lack of predictive value. The deductions should at least say which postulates they're derived from, but I don't really see how they could be derived from any of your list. And of course there's the vagueness due to lack of numbers. You have an awful lot of work if you want to turn this into something potentially useful.

Various bleaches can be used to disinfect things from almost any type of microorganism; this is because oxidizers kill life. I suppose you could use it on your skin if you wanted, without too much harm. But don't go about drinking bleaches, you will regret it.

You're wrong, but before I deign to answer please explain why you believe that. You're wrong, but before I deign to answer please explain why you believe that. Yes, most of the classification categories refer to common ancestors (and traits) we have with other animals: Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Mammalia Order: Primates Family: Hominidae Subfamily: Homininae Tribe: Hominini Genus: Homo Species: H. sapiens There's yet more subdivisions, eg sub-phylum Vertebrata. There's also better and more recent evidence, largely called phylogenetics.

An intelligent civilization would have to be intelligent, social, and some manner of technological.

Well, I'd think that you have to take some of it while drunk, then read a passage and do a reading comprehension test, or some sort of other memory test. According to wiki, GBH is hardly ever used as a date rape drug anyways.

Online schooling is only for those with enough self-discipline to study. In theory it could rival all but the very best schooling, at least in subjects that don't require much interaction with teachers. Of course, some versions of online schooling also have online real teachers, while some don't.