Mr Skeptic

It would help if we also act on things rather than just meditating. Right, but generally we do the reverse, turning matter into energy in fission reactors (nuclear power plants) and also in fusion reactors (the sun, mostly). A human uses about 100 Watts. Or about 0.0000001 grams worth of matter per day. Or a bit more more if you eat more than 2000 Calories. No, but it can kill you due to oxidative stress. Oxygen is incredibly toxic to all living organisms; fortunately we have enzymes and antioxidants to protect us. Too much oxygen will do nasty things to you. (But at low pressure you could breathe more concentrated oxygen but get the same amount).

Try pubmed. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/NG_007114.1

Actually I think it was fungi that are the kings of cellulose digestion. Check out mushroom farms -- they turn mulch or logs into edible (and tasty!) mushrooms. Fungiculture

The cancer cells themselves spread to other parts of the body (metastasize) and then grow there. For a moment I thought you were talking about the infectious cancer in Tasmanian devils.

Well suppose you had a solid lump of gold the size of a large (2 L) soda bottle. The density of gold is 19.3 g/cm^3, so the gold soda bottle would weigh in at 38.6 kg or 85 pounds. Now certain types of statues may be thin without being hollow, but any thick parts are likely to be hollow so they can be thin. It's not necessarily a bad thing either. Which would you prefer, a small solid statue or a large hollow one, if they weighed the same?

1) Entropy relates to the number of states (possible arrangements) of a system. Temperature is just one of the components of this. Incidentally, in thermodynamics, "heat" is the transfer of energy that isn't work, regardless of whether it is thermal energy or not. 2) The sun produces energy in a nice concentrated form (the sun). This then radiates throughout space, becoming less concentrated and more entropic. Normally, sunlight would get absorbed by a molecule and become thermal energy. However, life uses special molecules such as chlorophyll, to force that energy to do work. Since work is not heat and energy is conserved, this decreases heat transfer and therefore decreases entropy, compared to what would have happened otherwise. There's no actual decrease in entropy overall, but the increase in entropy is delayed because some of that energy is stored in biomass. Of course, biomass isn't absorbing all that energy so it can sit around and do nothing. The energy is used to do work, a process that increases overall entropy. However, doing work one can decrease local entropy, as in the case of a refrigerator or life.

I meant both economic quality and estimated security risk. Eg, give folks who aren't criminals or otherwise a security risk a work visa, let them work in the US for a few years. If they are leaching off the system more than contributing, no citizenship for them.

I agree with this. Also, it would make employers much more wary of hiring illegals because they would all be bad people. Considering a largely positive economic of immigrants, and the better contributions of legal rather than illegal immigrants, I really don't see a good reason to restrict legal immigration to a particular quota. Definitely restrict them on based on quality, but not on quantity.

Stewart was mocking him for being all "totally committed" and "won't rest until", and then not doing so. Of course, all politicians do this, as do almost all normal people.

This one is false. It mistakes the meaning of a hudna and its false conclusions stem from this. There was no offer to acknowledge Israel as a nation. Khaled Mishaal has affirmed on Monday that his Movement was amenable to establishing a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital but without recognizing the Israeli occupation of Palestine. ... "Our main objective of reaching a comprehensive truce with the IOA [israeli Occupation Army] was to protect our Palestinian people, to lift the siege, and to open the Rafah crossing point, which spurred us to reject Carter's proposal", asserted Mishaal during the conference. They weren't going to acknowledge Israel and in any case they rejected Carter's proposal. To be fair, I suppose, Israel doesn't acknowledge Hamas either. On the other hand, neither does most of the world. Including links that refute your own claim is not really very convincing. Also, I don't think the US has nearly as much influence here as you'd like to believe. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Or, it could be entirely useless. It's not like they stopped making rockets during that time, they just temporarily shot off less of them. Were the rocket attacks few enough that Israelis could feel safe living outdoors?

I think he should have ignored it other than to say BP is footing the bill, although if needed he should have helped them acquire volunteers, grant permissions, or whatever to help cut through any bureaucracy that might be holding back treatment of the spill (such as the law that prevents the use of the skimmers). That's how I would have handled it, albeit it would have been unpopular among the folks who hold the president responsible for everything that is wrong with the country.

Well since we're comparing to England, maybe Israel could try the Ghandi method, trusting that Hamas wouldn't slaughter them all.

I am currently annoying US Citizens on behalf of the government (double checking Census stuff -- has to be done, I guess).

Other than his handling of the financial crisis I like pretty much everything else he's done. I kind of wish that he had done a better job with the health care bill (my idea is a moderate but entirely partisan bill, totally ignoring any Republicans that didn't want to actually cooperate rather than attempting (pretending?) to be bipartisan in the face of opposition (hostility?)). But I can understand that being a mess. As for the oil spill, I particularly liked his handling of it.

It's actually the entire point of meiosis, to produce genetically diverse cells. They are all similar in that they have one set of genes each. If you had an entirely monozygotic cell, the results of meiosis would be identical (and this is the point of "hybrid" cultivars).

Somehow I doubt that the IRA's founding goal was the destruction of England. They just wanted freedom, which is easy enough to grant.

In any case, I doubt Israel could realistically accept 4 million people, many of whom don't like Israel, to enter their country. Doing so would significantly weaken Israel's position and put citizens in danger, and can't be undone. A possible 10 year or less truce, on the other hand, is so very easy to undo. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudna In addition, they would not stop attacks from their territory on Israel during this possible 10 year or less truce. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas#Presidential_and_Legislative_Elections http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/1510074/Hamas-offers-deal-if-Israel-pulls-out.html Really, what it seems to come down to is an offer designed to make Israel look bad. It was not a peace offer and not even a truce offer. It just kind of looked like one.

I'd imagine, what with you being so mad you can't even spell your race/culture.

Simple. Self-defense applies whether you are defending yourself of your buddies. While some soldiers are willing to risk their lives (to varying extents) to save civilian lives, not too many soldiers are willing to allow their buddies to die, for any reason at all. If you have a soldier on the floor surrounded and being beat on, his buddies can't shoot for the legs since they risk hitting the buddy they are trying to save, and also it would be much less effective than a head shot. The shots from multiple directions is more interesting. It is doubtful that a soldier walked around someone shooting them all over, and said person remained standing during that time. Or, maybe several soldiers shot him over a prolonged period while he remained standing. A more likely explanation is that said person got shot near-simultaneously by several soldiers. Now, it could be that the soldiers all pointed their guns at the guy and said, "OK we all shoot him on the count of 3. 1, 2, 3!" To me this seems less likely than that the guy did something particularly dangerous (such as attempt to stab or shoot someone) and instantly got gunned down by several soldiers. As to why I said execution style killings don't fit any of the facts, is because such killings require the killer have complete control over the victim. Apart from that not being the case (consider how many soldiers got badly wounded for example), but multiple bullets used also contradicts this. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged I suspect your inability to imagine how you might be wrong is showing here too. What you have here is called a strawman.

A & ~A breaks the rules of logic and does not exist. I was going to say how a god that can microwave a burrito so hot he cannot eat it, is greater than a god that cannot. Also, a god that could eat said burrito anyways would be better than a god that cannot. Essentially the same argument as you folks made above.

On the surface, there is no center. Every point on the surface looks as central as any other point. The center of the sphere is within the sphere, but off the surface. I'm not sure. What exactly is your meta-center?

Perhaps, but that [execution style killings] totally contradicts all the other facts. Including the claims in that article concerning where the bullet wounds were. In any case, it is quite possible for shots in the back, in the head, and in the back of the head to be fired in self-defense. I can tell you how that could be, if you lack the capability to imagine possibilities other than your favorite.

Good question, especially since there was a Nobel Peace Prize winner around. Literally, in this case. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged I'd agree with that. The protesters might not be interested in showing the truth. But not everyone understands that heavily edited videos are not evidence of anything, not unless the whole video is also available. They are one-sided stories, and there's no reason Israel would want their enemies making one-sided stories that appear to have a grain of truth (whether they are in fact true or not). I think we should make a law that all confiscated recordings need to become publicly available.

I think they'll be recognized as the party that got kicked out of office... Unless, like you said, we the people actually realize it is necessary despite being painful.

Well I suggest the following being. Definition: 1) It is shaped like a horse, but it has a single, spiral horn sticking out of it's forehead 2) It is invisible. 3) It is pink. 4) It exists; it is real; it has a real physical existence. So what we have here is an invisible pink unicorn. A real one, too, by definition. The trouble, of course, is that it does not in fact exist. The properties 1-3 are contradictory of property 4. The definition is self-contradictory, and so despite being defined as existing it does not in fact exist.