the asinine cretin

Watching this talk made me recall this thread.

Fascinating.

Sorry to interrupt, but I've got to give a shout out to the Hunt for Exomoons with Kepler project.

Has anyone used the three volumes on Calculus by Marsden and Weinstein? Here's volume one.

I have some titles on my wish list about this! I love dogs. D. F. Morey, Dogs: Domestication and the Development of a Social Bond J. Serpell, The Domestic Dog: Its Evolution, Behaviour and Interactions with People X. Wang, Dogs: Their Fossil Relatives and Evolutionary History

This is cool. Nanoparticles Give Cancer Drugs Better Aim And not about cancer per se, but I love this. http://www.scanadu.com/

Cheap and ubiquitous technologies for monitoring the body and identifying cancer in the earliest possible stages. One scenario: Near-future technologies capable of routinely monitoring blood, urine, and other things in a completely non-invasive way and without the need for patient cooperation. I imagine a common personal gadget of the future that will monitor the general health of the user (heart, liver, neurology, and so on) and upload their real-time data to a cloud where it will periodically be examined by a computer system analogous to IBM Watson capable of identifying possible risks far beyond the capacity of a human doctor. In this way cancer would be drastically reduced - perhaps virtually eliminated in prosperous societies - by early intervention and prevention. Basically perpetual screening combined with analysis of one's genome, history, etc. by an AI computer system. I'm hoping for something like this anyway. Oh, and then there would be an array of possible interventions much as is currently the case. The main difference is that cancer would never get off the ground. I imagine many, if not most, cancer deaths are related to timing of the diagnosis.

I don't know anything about robotics, but as a noob hobbyist I've had some fun fiddling around with this platform. http://www.microsoft.com/robotics/

I'm subscribed to about 200 science-related channels. Do they have to be funny? Here are a couple suggestions. (Although my favorite channels are not necessarily funny. Funny channels tend to be too dumbed down, imo.) scishow Space Fan News Veritasium CGPGrey EngineerGuy minutephysics numberphile NurdRage SpaceRip ViHart vsauce vsauce2 brusspup Let me know if any of those appeal to you and I'll recommend more. I'd also second CaptainPanic's recommendation.

I have come to dig this website. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=x%2Bcos%28x%29%3D0

I don't know. To have existed at all is pretty wild. If I may indulge in a stoner trip... I'm hesitant to say that people unequivocally cease to exist when they die. To me there are too many unknowns with respect to reality in the ultimate sense. This is not to say that I advocate belief without evidence, or that I reject the "lights out" hypothesis. I mean, if the ultimate cosmic horizon is infinite - which is possible - there are a lot of very odd possibilities, to say the least. Some kind of eternal recurrence may be true. Maybe there are infinite instances of each of us living an infinite number of lives forever. Maybe the Many Worlds Interpretation. Maybe the simulation argument is true and there is an ever growing chain of simulated universes spawning instances of us - "we" ultimately being information. Maybe time is static from a higher perspective and the idea of anything ceasing to exist is illusory. Maybe something like the Ultimate Ensemble multiverse is true and we're each as real, eternal, and Platonic as the number Pi, or the Mandelbrot set. Maybe some other thing that is literally beyond our powers of imagination. Based on our working foundational understanding of reality right now I find it logical to assume that death effects a kind of personal annihilation. I'm not aware of any good evidence to the contrary, nor am I aware of a means by which persons could exist without a functioning brain. I just lack confidence that our powers of mind are capable of apprehending the depths of reality. Maybe we'll seem like macaques to our far-future descendants. (And please, nobody misconstrue what I'm saying as attempted woo-woo. I realize the frivolity of the things I'm saying.) "What is it, of what an individual is, that continues to exist, that continues to live...after death?" I think the overwhelming majority of people have vanished without a trace. I sometimes consider the hoards of anonymous skulls piled about the catacombs of Paris. People who were their own centers of the universe for a few brief circuits around the sun. I suppose in a short span of geological time all of the things we care about will have vanished forever. If the biota ever happens to transcend this little rock maybe we'll be graced with interstellar progeny capable of some unimagined greatness that will make it all worthwhile. Pure fantasy, I know.

The basic summary I'm familiar with would say that no two fermions can share the exact same quantum state (i.e., identical quantum numbers). ETA: Non-scientist here.

Here are some clues. 24) Reflection and Absorption 25 & 27) The Reflection and Refraction of Light 26) FWIW: Brewster's Angle You must have an appropriate textbook or lecture notes, no?

Is biological determinism true? To me that's the more valid question. Any ethical implications and interpretations would be secondary at best. Basing an ethics on the idea of biological determinism sounds like pretty poor philosophy. The idea of biological determinism strikes me as metaphysical rather than properly scientific. The data and insight of science are always important, but I think these are fundamentally philosophical and sociological issues. Social Darwinism and racism were/are not actually based on science. I think they're ideological and only co-opt science in a superficial sense - I might say they parody science. I'm thinking of such things as Lysenkoism and Creation Science as analogies.

Lots of awesome things dropped in that post. I was with you until the part about the Mayan calendar. How/why does that enter the picture?

Uneducated layman here. I know that motion (i.e., velocity) is related to mass and the rate of time by special relativity (e.g., the Lorentz factor, relativistic mass, time dilation, and all that.) I don't know how that could be automatically connected with the expanding universe and the arrow of time. My understanding is that universal expansion does not impart momentum to anything, and thus special relativity is not applicable (at least not applicable in terms of relativistic effects or whatever). Distant galaxies may appear to us as receding at relativistic and even superluminal speeds, but that is not related to their velocity in an inertial reference frame. The space itself between things is - if I may use a metaphor - stretching, and it's only relevant on cosmological scales. This is why light from those distant galaxies red shifts. It is not because the galaxies are moving so fast in an opposing direction analogous to the sonic Doppler effect of a passing train, but rather that the fabric of space itself expands and as it travels those vast distances the light is, as it were, stretched into the red spectrum and beyond. Anyway, my point is just that I don't know how special relativity connects the metric expansion of space and the arrow of time. It would be pretty neat if it did. I suppose what you're implying would merge general relativity and special relativity somehow. I look forward to comments from trained physicists. Again, I'm not even remotely a physicist and I may delete this post if it ends up being deemed idiotic.

Cool. And hey, that's a nifty site. I wasn't aware of it. No problem. I wouldn't mind taking a course in statistics some time too. It's interesting.

Sure. The little test program I wrote yesterday was in C# (using Microsoft's free C# "express edition" IDE - available here). It didn't take long to write and would be easy to rewrite using Python, JavaScript, or any other language. I wasn't intending to share this so don't diss it. hehe. I've commented it and simplified it a bit. const int Goat = 0; const int Car = 1; private void RunSimulation(int iterations) { // Win counters int StayWins = 0; int ChangeWins = 0; // Doors array int[] doors = new int[3]; Random rand = new Random(); // Selected index variable int index = 0; // Perform iterations for (int i = 0; i < iterations; i++) { // Reset default doors value for (int x = 0; x < doors.Length; x++) doors[x] = Goat; // Set random index to "Car" int car = rand.Next(0, 3); doors[car] = Car; // Randomize selected index /* Uncomment following line to randomize selected index on each iteration */ //index = rand.Next(0, 3); // Set "revealed" door where != index and contents != Car int revealed = -1; for (int x = 0; x < 3; x++) if (x != index && doors[x] != Car) revealed = x; // Test success if stay and success if change if (doors[index] == Car) StayWins++; else ChangeWins++; } // Output results Console.Write("[stayWins:{0}][ChangeWins:{1}]", StayWins, ChangeWins); } P.S. If you think the last part is dubious consider that there are only three options and that after the reveal there are only two options and just one goat. Thus, every time the selected door doesn't contain the car, changing to the only other available door would win. This could be written quite redundantly in this way. // Test success if stay and success if change if (doors[index] == Car) StayWins++; else { // The following will always increment ChangeWins for (int x = 0; x < 3; x++) if (x != index && x != revealed && doors[x] == Car) ChangeWins++; } I think if you understand what's happening here (that is, the "reveal" rule and the then perfectly straightforward logic of winning) you will understand why the often counter-intuitive Monty Hall Problem odds are correct. I'm not 100% sure of what you're asking. You can change the iterations parameter in the code I posted to 10^6 if you want. Here is a sample of the results after doing so. Statistically it isn't going to be different than the 10^3 iterations. [stayWins:332556][ChangeWins:667444] [stayWins:333503][ChangeWins:666497] [stayWins:333336][ChangeWins:666664] [stayWins:333693][ChangeWins:666307] [stayWins:333350][ChangeWins:666650] [stayWins:333231][ChangeWins:666769] [stayWins:332359][ChangeWins:667641] [stayWins:333530][ChangeWins:666470] [stayWins:333827][ChangeWins:666173] [stayWins:333831][ChangeWins:666169] [stayWins:332490][ChangeWins:667510] [stayWins:333110][ChangeWins:666890] [stayWins:333443][ChangeWins:666557] This is effectively: StayWins=1/3; ChangeWins=2/3. Same as before. If you sum the StayWins and divide by the total number of samples you get the mean. mu = 4332259 / 13 = 333250.69230769230769230769230769. The tendency as you increase the sample size is to approach 333333.33... Since a failed StayWin implies a ChangeWin we can infer that its tendency is to approach 666666.66... And of course their sum, namely 999999.99..., is equal to 1000000. The code is there for you to play with if you don't believe me. The interesting question to me at this moment is psychological. Why is this utterly counter-intuitive for so many people? I fell for it initially. Is this an example of a logical defect in human cognition? What other defects of this kind exist? How does this bias our ability to make rational decisions? And so on.

If anyone doesn't believe it I'd say write a simple computer program and behold the results for yourself. It's a simple algorithm and perhaps the exercise of coding it will make it understood. Here is a random sample of my results, each after 1000 iterations. [stayWins:329][ChangeWins:671] [stayWins:318][ChangeWins:682] [stayWins:340][ChangeWins:660] [stayWins:306][ChangeWins:694] [stayWins:329][ChangeWins:671] [stayWins:334][ChangeWins:666] [stayWins:351][ChangeWins:649] [stayWins:334][ChangeWins:666] [stayWins:325][ChangeWins:675]

When I first heard of this I supposed the odds would be 1/2 after the goat reveal but now I get it and am slightly disturbed. I'm writing a simulation at this moment just for fun.

Two popular books that immediately come to mind are J. Diamond's The Third Chimpanzee, and N. Wade's Before The Dawn. Oh, also R. Klein's The Dawn of Human Culture. If you're into casual reading I'd recommend those. Klein also has an epic tome called The Human Career.

Indeed, hypervelocity planets have not been observed. However, it is possible that they will be someday. The press release indicates the plausibility of detecting a hypervelocity planetary system, within certain parameters, using the transit method. Just something else worth noting for the questionposter. P.S. JWST could potentially detect an unbound hypervelocity runaway planet. Or so I've heard.

Personally, I'm attracted to natural burial and the concept of the mushroom death suit. I'd essentially like to be composted in a way that deals with mercury and other potentially hazardous substances in my corpse. If people were naturally buried, instead of embalmed and entombed, space could be reused very regularly if necessary. I'd prefer to be buried naturally in a forest set aside and managed for that purpose. A tree or other natural landmark, and GPS coordinates would mark my burial site. The idea of conventional burial pisses me off and cremation has its problems. There are recent technologies that are an improvement on cremation, but the natural approach appeals to me personally. Composted and consumed like nature intended. Woot!

The diameter of the Earth is pretty close to 13000 km. I just double checked on wikipedia and it says the average diameter is 12,742 km. But yes, in my haste and inattention I plugged in a m/s value where km/s would be correct. Derp. Epic fail. lol. Thanks. Here's round two with a result that is much more in keeping with reality. Impact energy of 5.6x10^36 J, which is much more reasonable. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1.3x10%5E4km+asteroid+impact+6x10%5E6+m%2Fs