DrP

...and 2 pictures won't be enough due to the very large spread of variations from body to body also. There was that famous art work recently where the artist made a wall of vaginas by casting the vaginas of about 50 women - they were ALL totally different in appearance. (admittedly, the penis might be more uniform in 'design' from person to person, but there will still be variations with varying aesthetics from person to person). The point of the vagina wall iirc was to make women feel more confident in their own bodies - too many young girls were having cosmetic operation done on their flaps to make them look more 'normal' - where the point is that there is no real normal when they all look so different and they should be happy and confident with what they have. Just to add to that - I do not think it is a very responsible thing to suggest that it is disgusting or abnormal if someone hasn't had it done or looks a little different. It might put pressure on a young self conscious person to have himself cut just to fit in - I think it is deplorable.

it is too small and it is also biased - you come from a place where, I presume, this practice is the norm - so anything contrary to that norm will seem odd because it is different to what you have been taught. If all of the lads have had the cut and all of the girls have only been exposed to penises that have had the snip, then of course they would think anything different would be odd.

Yep - I can indeed "pleasure off myself" as you put it.... I am quite good it at thank you. ;-) but I fail to see the relevance. I am certain that the worlds majority do not fell the same way about wanting to bomb everything flat to take us back to pre civilization. I think it is an evil plan. Do you plan after that to keep everyone in ignorance of all of the amazing things we have learnt over the past few thousand years after that? The fact that you fail to see any positives from our advancements in technology over the last few thousand years just tells me you probably do not understand the drive behind science and the desire to understand the universe through actual testing and knowing... you want to 'ohmmmm' over the plants and worship nature without actually understanding it. Humans are what nature has given us as the dominant life forms on the planet right now. Technology is what we have designed and created from our learning - it took us a long time to get here and you'd just erase it all like that in exchange for a return to even more ignorance than we currently have. Keeping people in the dark by forbidding them proper learning and tools, rather just have them running around without learning worshiping plants in the woods.. It sounds terrible to me.

I do not understand the sentence you wrote in reply - is English a second language? Pre civilisation? As a species that can communicate around the globe, sharing ideas and learning, progressing together as a species towards further understanding of ourselves and the universe, building new interesting things that can improve our life styles and prolong our lives for the better.... I for one do not want to take a backwards step to pre civilization... it is by the very definition of the word - Backward.

Rust is Iron Oxide. Water oxidises the iron faster than air but as far as I can remember no water actually forms part of the rust as you suggested above. It is Iron and Oxygen giving iron oxide. Oxidation of Zinc takes a lot longer... it doesn't 'rust' per se but oxidises to a white zinc oxide (rust is a specific term for the oxidation of iron). This takes a lot longer than Iron - I do not know what the exact conditions are for Zinc to form it's oxide... maybe you need heat and maybe other conditions rather than just air or water at STP. Google 'oxidation of Zinc' for that kind of info. Hope that helps a little.

You want to bomb all the cities in the world to take us back to pre civilisation to satisfy your technophobic desire to live naked in the forest and worship plants? "...until we are in the natural flow" - what do you think it means to be 'in the natural flow'?

Pretty much. I want something that doesn't have fire safety in mind at the heart of it's design - I want it to heat whatever is in front of it to near ignition. Thanks - I've found a few things similar. Some of them are 9 kw, I even found a 49 kw heater. You don't want to stand right in front of that one!

Here is a you tube excerpt of it.

...and an amazing one at that. Beautiful!

Hi, Any advice on what the best type of heating solution would be for the following scenario? I have seen some large infra red patio heaters and have also looked at some gas panels. I am not sure if the IR will kick out enough heat for what we require. We need a heating panel (can be gas, electric, whatever) that is large and will kick out enough heat so that something left near it will start to singe. Ideally the item (a wood panel) will reach a surface temp of around 400C and stay about there. I remember the old electric bar heaters that were hot enough to set stuff alight if you left things too close.. (my nan's dog regularly ignited its fur by lying too close)... but I don't think modern electric fires kick out direct radiated heat like that anymore. So - what are the hottest and most dangerous heaters out there - I need a really severe one that will toast a dog or a wood panel if left a few feet away. (I have obviously searched around a bit - the best I can see at the moment are the large patio heaters, I was wondering if a ceramic gas fired panel was available or something, I can only find home solutions though, which are designed to be safe, so won't really set anything alight). Maybe we need to build our own gas panel? Thanks for any suggestions/leads I can investigate further. OK - Thanks - I think I have now found some higher power industrial heaters that kick out 9 to nearly 50 kw of heating power. Both gas and electric. A phone call to the company that makes them and a discussion with their tech team helped. I just wondered if there was anything obvious I was missing.

PS - maybe that was a bit harsh - but Chinese fakes are well know about - the lack of finds is mentioned in that article about disputes between governments and the independence army... so they expect more finds to come in the near future. I just find it odd that we have loads of dinosaur fossils from China from the 90's that do not have a single feather on them - now every fossil from China seems to be covered in feathers. (again - I'm not disputing feathers on dino's - that is undisputed now... I am questioning the number finds all of a sudden when there were none before, from a country known to have faked many many fossils in the past ).

Looks legit - there was a spate of fakes coming out of China that flooded the market a while back from what I was told - they take some amber and melt it over a modern day insect or something and try to pass it off as a preserved fossilised animal in amber so as to sell it for lots of money. I'm not saying these recent feathered finds from China are fake... it just seems suspicious that after a decade or 2 of our suspecting these ancient animals to have feathers, there are a lot of feathered dino's being found all of a sudden in China.... why didn't we find any with feathers on any before? - it is 'almost' as if they have realised they will get more for the fossils if they are exciting enough to prove a new theory, so they make them and sell them. DISLAIMER - I believe dino's had feathers, that is well supported, and I am sure for the most part the Chinese people are very honourable and would shun anyone who fakes amber captured insects or feathered dinosaur fossils - I am just saying it is suspicious that all of a sudden they are all over China. Their T- Rex cousin is covered in feathers and so are their raptors all of a sudden - where were these 2 decades ago?

The Danish supposedly have the shortest working week... but after a quick search it seems different sites claim different hours ranging from 31 to over 40 hours per week. I read somewhere that they were rated up the as one of the 'happiest' countries in the world, with a high min wage and large holiday entitlements and low work hours.

What powder exactly? What conditions does this powder need to be under for these LENR's to occur? From reading around it does seem like the initial experiments were set up by a con man to get funding. Has this changed? Are there credible labs producing results now? (I did not go to the link) PS - what are the nuclear reactions taking place and how are the new products characterized?

I haven't seen any! The mod asked us not to debate evidences for or against here though, but I'd like to ask for just a single piece that you might think holds up under investigation - just saying it and expecting people to accept it isn't evidence. I'd like to answer jfoldbars question in post#36 though "....why didn't the science in you cause confliction in your mind?" ANS: it probably did - but I reasoned it away with god mumbo jumbo... also, the science we know now about evolution is way ahead of where it was when I was a lad.... or at least the science I now know regarding evolution is way ahead of when I was a lad. ;-) The final nail in the coffin on the evolution debate (I discounted lots of things as co-incidence or incomplete knowledge before) was watching Dawkins and his pal physically hack apart a giraffe's neck to get to the laryngeal nerve... they ripped it out and showed it to the camera and explained the history of the evolution of this nerve and it shows indisputably how we are ALL evolved from fish. Once I accepted this I went back and looked over all the things I had ignored or shrugged off as uncertain and it all holds up pretty well. Of course there are some theoretical gaps regarding the first cells, first proteins etc... but the explanations are improving for sure as we continue to learn more - it is a work in progress.

but the co-ordinates define the space right?

It isn't my field - I do not know anything about this 'speed of time' thing you mention. To me Speed is distance / time. When people measure C (the speed of light as 'the distance it travels over the time it takes') they do so by observing from their own reference frame the distance the light has travelled and then they divide that by the time it took. No matter what reference frame you are in C is measured the same - C.

I can believe it - the statement is wrong, so someone marked it -ve so other people wouldn't think it is correct. It wasn't me, but I get why they gave it to you. Your statement that C will be can be measured to have different values isn't what is observed when it is measured - it always comes out as C. Your statement contradicts the theories and measured observable experimental results that are well know. Maybe if it was asked as a question ("CAN C be measured at different values....") Rather than as a statement of fact it might not get such a negative reaction.

You need to make you own decision. Personally - I would go with what floats your boat. Just because your Ph.D. is in XYZ, doesn't mean you can't work in other fields, it simply proves that you are capable of working on such a project with a commitment that takes years out of your life and that you can stand up and defend your work against a panel of your peers (in the way of publications and viva voce). If you applied for any scientific job and you have that MSc or Ph.D. or BSc behind you, you will have more chance of getting to the interview stages. Employees like their employees to be qualified - it saves them spending money in sending them on training courses etc. A lot of the skills you will learn and pick up are going to be transferable to any other field anyway. Also - even if you get a job in your exact chosen field of study - it doesn't mean you will know everything there is to know about it and you will have to start humbly, learning what your job is about and working our how you can use your skills to better the company you end up working for. Sorry, I am dragging on - I am just saying, it might not matter exactly what your field is, unless you want to continue further in that area of research after your doctorate, in which case, it is not guaranteed anyway, so you might as well study what interests you the most. Do you think that you will not be able to work in the field of instrumentation with a Ph.D. focused on Fusion? I would think it would give you good skills and learning that you could transfer to pretty much any field imo. I've always seen these degrees as proof you are capable of learning rather than proof that you know anything at all. Our understanding of the world changes so rapidly anyway, what you learn might change within a decade and be obsolete... so why not do the course you really want to. (Warning though - before you get your hopes up - when I tried to get into that field they wouldn't even talk to you unless you were a straight A student with a good first class degree.... which is why my Ph.D. is in Chemistry and not Nuclear Fusion ;-) ).

The bible is the main reason people believe this stuff in the first place. Directly or indirectly. Maybe someone believes because of a friend or a relative's teachings/words, but then that person's faith still stems from the book. Pointing out the flaws and inconsistencies in the book is one way of converting someone as the book is pretty much the only evidence for the whole shebang. When I was a believer, I would make so many excuses as to why certain parts of the bible were not relevant today, why god behaved like such an asshole in the OT, why 2 people reporting about the same event give different testimonies etc.. How it was possible for animals to talk and the dead to come back to life and for the blind to see. Why he allows so much suffering, yada yada... I would have said that you need to read it lead by the holy spirit and ignore the parts that had been corrupted by men... you can make excuse after excuse for god and the bible, but eventually you have to be honest to your self. If god is so great then he doesn't need you to fight his battles for him by trying to justify his horror, his failings and his reluctance to step up to the plate and do a god darn thing about anything. That way of thinking I now see as a totally backward way of thinking that is holding the world back from progressing towards peace, and ironically, the true message of the bible - To love your neighbour.

Being fair H_I, the thread is about WHY we converted from believing to non believing. Holes in the bible are very relevant to why some people drop Christianity. jfb asked why we 'converted' - As I said before - it is very complex and personal for each, but here are some the reasons that lead to me dropping the myth: Holes in the bible that I could no longer make excuses for. Solid Scientific evidence for Evolution, which completely contradicts the bible (I went through a phase of believing the 7 days in Genesis were 7 'time periods'... but that is clutching at straws). Real life contradictions to what is suppose to happen spiritually within the Christian belief. Total lack of appearance by god to ever show his face beyond what can be put down to coincidental superstitious nonsense. Discovery that there are many similar myths to the Christ one that came before. The obvious use of religion by many to advance their political stance. The demonstrations of many that explain how things like 'baptism in the holy ghost' and the like are psychological states and states of mind that can be replicated in non believers by simple suggestion, hypnosis or drugs. These are just SOME of the reasons I changed my mind.

That's such nonsense - The bible is full of holes... any evidence of the existence of anything that happened is word of mouth. Gravity etc... (science) can be tested. If you release an apple - it falls. Every time. EVERY time - because it has been tested and found to be a real thing. Jesus might be alive in people's hearts... but he is in fact dead. Totally dead for over 2000 years, if he even existed, which is debatable now as he is just a rehash of the other died and resurrected mythological deities such as Mithras, Horus etc.. of which there were about 4 or 5 before Jesus and they all have the same story (virgin birth, died for sins, resurrected blah blah blah.) Also, In support of religion being testable - it is - it fails often to support any of it's claims beyond statistical expectancies and fails a lot of people that put their trust in it.

ha ha - well it is a lot more complex than that really. Being a scientist is not new. I was a scientist and also believed in god for many years. There are many reasons why I believed and many why I now do not.

I posted this a while back - it wasn't that long ago I described myself as a christian. http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/92254-a-statement-of-faith/

We have law systems in place... as we approach a more utopic society we could de-select the violent and the cheats from our gene pool... not buy implementing anti breeding laws or anything as horrific as that... hopefully as we progress, the violent and predatory traits that we have needed to survive as a species will stop being attractive traits to mates and loving and caring partners will be preferred and selected. Society is already changing.... I think it will take a long time... evolution seems to take a very long time - I think we (Humans) are in our infancy as a civilization. On the bright side - it is very interesting to watch and see what happens. We have moved forward a lot over the last few decades, let alone the last few millennia.