Mr Skeptic

I thought your main point was that biased news organizations can still be of use. I can understand you not taking what they say at face value, but I certainly doubt its all lies. Like with Fox, I'm sure at least some of what they say is true. ;-) I think Cap'n has the right idea. The first definition for newspaper of record is, essentially, that the government considers publication in them to satisfy requirements for public notice. However, I think it was the second aspect that most people were thinking about. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper_of_record Excessive bias would seem to disqualify from this definition.

I don't like Fox News, nor most other news organizations for that matter. Fox News does however provide several valuable services: 1) Their extreme bias means that they will report certain stories that other networks would not, either due to their being less important or biased in the wrong direction, or both. So more news is reported. 2) In addition to point 1, their presence helps other news organizations remain more balanced, so that they are not shamed by Fox reporting a story they didn't. 3) Their blatant lies help people to realize that not everything you hear on TV is true. As for point 3, here are some of the folks who keep track of the lies and misdirections: http://www.newshounds.us/ http://foxnewsboycott.com/tag/lies/ And Fox News even went to court to support their ability to tell lies as if they were news (includes, of course, more lies by Fox): http://www.relfe.com/media_can_legally_lie.html

Thousands of years old, in this case. I know the feeling though, I've rediscovered several bits of physics only to learn that someone had already thought of it. Oh, and we also have incendiary bullets and bombs, the modern version of the fire arrow.

I generally make it a point not to ask guys who are showering with me about their sexual orientation. I think that both are true: our culture modifies our policies, and our policies modify our culture.

I too am wondering about the goose that laid the golden egg, and I know the oldest print version of the story is about 300 years old. I know the story is suspected to be older than that, possibly brought by the Vikings. I'd welcome any further insight you might have about this, or an explanation of what in the world you're comparing to said goose.

Hm, you're right. I think I confused "hard to solve" with "hard to play well". The dice make the "simple" minimax approach infeasible, which is probably what made the game interesting to computer scientists. Apparently modern programs use a neural net for backgammon. Go however is still hard for computers, especially the bigger board: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Go Still, they are making very good progress too, and I guess it won't be long before they beat the best humans.

Your idea is both feasible and has/is already being done -- in a sense. You can't really put an air conditioner outside and expect it to work (they move heat, not make it vanish). However, what you can do is spray lots and lots of water. A ring of misters around the roof of your house. The water evaporates and uses heat from the environment to do so (same system as sweating). This system also has the advantage of using very little energy. Of course you'd have to have something to keep away the "you're using too much water" folks.

Water on the moon has many important aspects. For me, the biggest part is what it can do to further space exploration and enthusiasm. Water on the moon makes colonization possible (easier enough to be feasible in practice), since having to lug the water there would be very annoying. We'd need the water for human use and for green houses, and also for rocket fuel. Because of the moon's low gravity well having a rocket base on the moon would be very useful. As for mining of space rocks, that does seem like a good idea to me. Keep in mind that there are lots of them everywhere (most definitely not only in the asteroid belt), and also their composition varies drastically (a big plus for mining). Some of them have a lot of volatiles such as water and methane. Some have a lot of rock. And some are almost entirely metal. Because of their low/almost non-existent gravity well, transporting the materials from them would be very easy. Landing on them is also easier and safer, at least if they aren't rotating very fast. I don't think we have any experience at zero-g mining and refining though.

Another aspect is that for realtime games the AI matters very little. In various of the old arcade type games, the "AI" of every creature consisted of a very simple repeated script, yet it was still challenging because reflexes played a large role. Basically the AI does not necessarily need any intelligence in some types of games. Also the purpose of the AI is to provide fun and challenge to the game player, not to be skillful and intelligent. Keep in mind that many AI players also cheat, such as by having a resource bonus. Chess is rather a different story; it is a very closed game which gives computers a huge advantage. A computer can beat the best human chess player, and a computer has "solved" checkers (is unbeatable in theory). But even among board games, the more open-ended games such as Go and Backgammon are harder for computers. And for large open-ended games like the Civ style games, I can beat their turn-based AI even when they have an impressive resource bonus and smartest AI, and that is especially easy for me on larger maps. I prefer the turn-based games, because it forces the developers to focus on wits rather than on reaction times.

Well, I was thinking of it more as a long-term solution. A person can't really drink all that much water at once without feeling very sick. As for simplicity, chugging a few more glasses of water throughout the day seems simpler than checking the sodium content of everything you eat. I doubt most people would be even close to having too few electrolytes, especially those who are trying to lower their blood sodium. Anyhow, your urine color will give you a good hint of your hydration level.

Biology is a major factor in brain development (just ask any animal), but the environment has a significant role too. Obviously any direct physical damage will have an effect, and so will nutrition, the actions of others, and the actions of self. In fact quite a bit of the brain's development will depend on the choices that brain itself makes. However, would that be considered an effect of the biology or the environment?

What with the current war on salt, I was wondering if a simple way to reduce sodium would be to just drink lots of water. As I understand it, it will reduce your electrolytes of which sodium is one of the major ones. What with all the people who are dehydrated it might have other beneficial side-effects, rather than the more dubious side effects "normal" drugs have.

Just so you know, there's a difference between force, work, and acceleration. For uniform circular motion you have a force (centripetal force), a pseudoforce (centrifugal force), an acceleration (the result of said force acting on the object), and zero work (the displacement parallel to the force is zero). That the work is zero is obvious: the kinetic energy does not change. That there is a force is also obvious: there is an acceleration. And we're telling you that when you multiply by zero you get zero. Whatever force you like over zero distance is zero work. It's that simple.

For a human to hold a bow is work, which again is the integral of force times distance parallel to the force. No work is being done on nor by the bow; the work is in moving actin and myosin molecules. (In fact for a human to do "nothing" is also work.) Try this: put a stick holding the bow bent. How much work is the stick doing? As for that cup of coffee, try not eating and not doing work for a couple months, and I'll tell you again about how humans actually do internal work despite not doing any external work.

Also I note that in this thread you were disputing the possibility that a force that does no work exists, not the possibility that a force that has never done any work exists. Don't move the goalposts.

That you think it is false, simply shows that you lack education and common sense. It takes no genius to realize that a weight sitting on a table not moving is not doing work. As for the nonsense about you having taught college physics, there is no way you could have taught college physics without knowing what work is. So this makes you a liar as well. There's a reason they teach the simplified equation for work in high school: most kids don't know calculus. However they do also teach about the distance component having to be parallel to the force, in high school. And the "everyone disagrees with me, I must be so much smarter than them" attitude shows arrogance as well. Anyhow, here, please go learn something about forces before trying to teach others about them. It would save everyone so much time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_(physics) In particular this bit: However, if the force and the displacement act perpendicular to each other, zero work is done by the force:[4] W = 0

It's true that medicine has not been able to do much/anything to raise maximum life expectancy. For now the best we have for that is to live at near starvation, preferably in a sterile environment (see the Metusaleh mouse project). However, we have done wonders at increasing average life expectancy. Childbirth was a major killer of women back in the day. Infant mortality was rampant. This despite their living a much healthier lifestyle (other than hygiene).

The physics fields are, for every point in space (or spacetime if you prefer), there is a vector. A vector is usually represented by a little arrow; it has a length and a direction. It can also be represented by curved directional lines where the tangent to the line gives the direction and the density of the lines gives the strength (this is the usual representation for magnetic fields). The vector tells you the strength and direction of the field at that point. What I'm describing is, of course, a mathematical construct rather than a physical object or thingamajig. Telling what the field is really "made of" is meaningless to science unless there are corresponding predictions made by said understanding. Classical physics just says the field is there, don't worry about it. Quantum physics says it is made of virtual particles.

George Washington John Adams Thomas Jefferson James Madison James Monroe John Quincy Adams Andrew Jackson None of these were natural-born citizens of the US, but became so after birth. John McCain was not born in the US, but rather on a military base in the Panama Canal Zone. He's still considered a natural-born citizen though. Obama was born in the United States (in Hawaii after it became a state) and has the birth certificate to prove it. As far as I know, the public has never before been shown the birth certificate of a president. Yup.

If you accept that, to be science, a field must deal with the real world, then things like math and philosophy are not science. While math and philosophy make claims that are proven true, they don't say anything about the real world. But if some theory says something about the real world, it could potentially turn out that something else happens, which would prove the theory wrong. And if this were not the case, it would instead be the case that the theory didn't really make any predictions about the real world. "Hints" and "nice sounding explanations" aren't part of science. Anyhow, that's what falsifiability is about.

Is you also a college student who has good grammar?

I'm shocked, shocked I say! I would never have imagined that humans would stoop so low as to kill a cop. That's never happened before those evil illegal aliens arrived! Yeah, did you have some evidence that illegal aliens are a problem, or just a couple of meaningless anecdotes? (not that we don't care about the cop, it's just that the argument does not provide evidence for the conclusion).

I've always thought this sort of thing was plain awesome. Though I'd rather have a similar armor that is flexible solid until needed to be hard, rather than one filled with liquid.

Decay rates can change depending on the conditions, but really the conditions needed to make a noticeable difference are the sort of thing you can make in the lab, with some difficulty, not really the sort of conditions found in distinctly non-vaporized mummies or fossils. Dating methods depend on more assumptions than just decay rates, just so you know. Decay rates are the least likely to be at fault, unless the physical constants really do change. You need to know the initial concentrations, correctly measure the final concentrations, and know the amount of contamination/dilution (or assume none). The initial concentrations of C-14 (relative to C-12) might not be all that stable, seeing as they are constantly created from nitrogen by radiation and carbon is used by living things. We changed the relative C-14 concentrations by our nuclear testing and also by releasing old carbon from coal and peat. But it's usually the dating methods that are for longer timescales that people are upset about.

I do, in the form of unnecessary extra tests, performed more for covering their own ass from being sued on the slim chance that the test actually turned out to be necessary, than concern for the patient's well-being. Tests which might slightly harm the patient, as well as his wallet, and also waste the patient's time and that of other medical staff. Not that I can blame them, given the way patients have been throwing malpractice lawsuits at them if something does go wrong.