CaptainPanic

I speak Dutch and English rather well, and French and German at a level good enough for holidays and pub talks, but not sufficient for a professional conversation. The language that is closest to English is probably French? The structure is quite different, but at least they share some of the vocabulary (albeit with a different pronunciation). If you want to learn a language for fun, and for holidays, then it may be easier to find a language that is closer to what you already know. However, if your aim is to become fluent, and to use it for work (for example), then it doesn't really matter. You basically have to be able to think, and even dream, in that new language. You have to 'disconnect' the knowledge you have of your own native language and the new language you are learning. When you speak this new language, you should not translate it anymore, but instead you just think in that language. Since you sort of disconnect it from your current knowledge, it does not matter if it resembles your current knowledge. All that matters then is motivation and lots (really lots) of practice.

Insulation, and a low surface/weight ratio. If the walls of your house can keep the heat inside for a day, then imagine what 30-60 kilometers of rock plus an entire atmosphere full of air can do. It takes billions of years to cool down... And in addition, the amount of heat in the earth is really huge, whereas it's outer surface is relatively small. A larger object gets a larger volume by the 3rd power (V = 4/3*pi*r^3), but it's surface only increases by a 2nd order (A=4*pi*r^2). Heat loss is proportional to the surface area that you cool through, but the heat contained within is proportional to the volume. So, in summary: the Earth has a very good insulation, and it has so much heat and so little surface that it takes really long to cool down.

Come on SplitInfinity, you're going hopelessly off topic. If you wanna talk about the conspiracy theory around astronauts who do/don't want to talk about E.T., please open a new thread. (I'm asking kindly, because I am not allowed to moderate a thread where I participate myself). This case was (probably) solved, and it turns out a balloon in the shape of a shark was floating around near Glasgow and gave some pilots a scare.

LOL So this is how UFO stories begin. Instead of just finding out what happened in Glasgow yesterday, the conversation already drifted off to the discussion about aliens. And then some of our experts jump in to make sure everybody knows that it is vital to look at the (total lack of) evidence. And in the meantime, nobody is discussing the event in Glasgow anymore, and everybody is instead talking about aliens! I want to talk about the event in Glasgow. What I think is the most important is when they discuss size: The object was small. Bigger than a balloon (they must mean a party balloon or weather balloon, not a hot air balloon), but probably smaller than any aircraft, as the pilot was willing to admit that it could be a microlight (maybe). So, although it is pure speculation, I think an RC aircraft, or one of those quad-copters could be the UFO. Or perhaps a drone (military, or privately owned).

John, you give me the impression that you disagree with my post, but then it seems as if you attack points that I never said. I actually agree that a 25-year-old can have a drinking problem, and I do not understand why you attack me on that - I never claimed the opposite. Regarding the biological issues, I agree that brain development between individuals will vary, and therefore a legal drinking age is at best a compromise, not a perfect solution to all individuals. However, in many countries, the legal voting age is also largely based on a human's development, as are the legal age to be employed, to marry, to buy tobacco, to leave school, to drive a car, etc. I'm curious where you stand on those? But I see that we just disagree. This biological reason is discarded by you, so therefore we will ultimately disagree on the whole discussion. We should just agree to disagree. Finally, regarding the drugs, the link you posted does not contain the word "heroin", and merely mentions less dangerous drugs. Also, you never addressed the actual point I am trying to make: that education and objective knowledge about substances can cause people to think twice about using them? I still fail to see the irony that you mentioned earlier.

John, let me first address the "Why" again (you seem to suggest that to define a "drinking age" is a problem). Arete already wrote that down, so I will just quote: So, while the 25-year-old may not be able to drink responsibly, at least the damage caused by such irresponsible behavior is different than in the 15-year-old, and therefore I would argue that a legal drinking age makes sense. And based on research such as I quoted, I think that we could perhaps derive a legal drinking age that makes sense from a biological point of view. I am not sure what your point is regarding laws. You seem to claim that sometimes laws should not be enforced, and I agree. Sometimes laws cannot be enforced but they should, and sometimes they can be enforced but shouldn't. It was my point that maybe it would be better to achieve the same behavior in kids through other ways than strict laws and law enforcement. Finally, regarding the heroin example, you actually seem to claim that I am not informed well, and that heroin is a much safer substance than I claim (or do I misunderstand you?)? Although this is taking the discussion off topic, I would like to ask you to back that up with any links or references. My actual point was that fear of a substance (any substance) based on good objective information, and the consequences that the use of it has, may prevent kids from trying it out. Since there is evidence that damage on kids prior to a specific age is larger than at a later age, this information itself may prevent kids from trying alcohol.

First, a compliment on Arete's post which explains why there are age limits to alcohol consumption, and as far as I'm concerned is a strong argument to attempt to reduce or completely prevent any alcohol consumption by teenagers. This allows us to move on, and talk about the "how". How can we prevent it? People refrain from using certain substances because (1) the chance of getting caught is large or (2) because it is part of their morals or habits or (3) because it is just really unhealthy. I would hope that in a modern society, points 2 and 3 are important reasons why we act like we do. So, for example, I don't use heroin. Not because the chance of getting caught is so big. No, I don't use heroin because it would turn me into a zombie in a short time, and I would stop functioning properly in my society. And my thoughts weren't any different at the age of 14. So, why doesn't this same argument work for alcohol? I think a large part is due to a total lack of information. Kids at the age of 14 just don't know the damage they're doing. Also, it is morally acceptable or even encouraged. These are two large problems that are not dealt with in this thread yet. You're all going on about chances of getting caught. I think that alcohol is something that should be dealt with within a family. Parents should raise their kids in such a way that they just don't want to touch alcohol at a younger age. And if parents choose to do that by "enforcing" some rules, then so be it. Kids who drink are just one of the symptoms of a larger problem: some families don't function. And this is something that society just has to deal with itself. Governments have been trying to be a nanny state for too long. I think one of the core-problems is that people just aren't responsible for their own well-being anymore. The fact that quite a few of you suggest that if you do away with the age limit for alcohol, alchol consumption would rise just shows that kids these days aren't brought up right anymore. I mean, age limit or not, if I would have drunk alcohol while I was under 18, I would have been in big trouble with my parents. (And those are the people who should be responsible here). Btw, I don't like the word "unenforceable". Every law is enforceable, but I really do not wish to live in such a Big Brother society where the chance of being caught is 100% if you break any law. I am able to behave also without the cops looking over my shoulder at everything I do.

I once took a printer apart, removed the electric motors, and used one of them to build a Van de Graaff generator - using this site as a guidance (note: I am not the author of those instructions).

! Moderator Note The best way to 'enter the medical field' is to search for a medical school that matches your level of education, or to first get more standard education (e.g. high school) and then enroll into a medical school. But you're the same guy who is writing in another spammy thread about medical assistants, so this thread will be closed. Thread closed.

The very high deceleration (in popular language: how many G's you get) upon impact with some obstacle is gonna be the killer. Thick armor is not gonna make that impact any less. A pillow could possibly work better actually.

Study logical fallacies, so you can deal with them. It is vital that you notice it when they are used against you, and it can be nice to sneak in a fallacy to get you an advantage every now and then. Also, you should be careful with emotions: you can appeal to the emotions of the audience, but you should remain in control of your own emotions at all times.

According to wikipedia: Is that what you asked for? I believe the extraction is done with acids (sulphuric acid, hydrochloric acid). Essentially it is just dissolved out of the ore.

I often just go onto Youtube, and search for "BBC documentary" or just "documentary", and then I refine the search to all movies longer than 20 minutes. This generally brings up tons of high quality documentaries. Not exactly the same as what you said, but definitely worth a try.

I used to love my own notes too, when I was in university. But now, after I've been working for a number of years, I find that it is extremely inconvenient that I cannot perform any searches on my notes (they're on paper). So, my recommendation: make sure you can search in your notes, or they become worthless as soon as you forget what is written down where. I am actually pleased that I still have all my books from university. I use (some of them) quite frequently. They have an index, which is quite convenient.

Exactly, and I would expect a civilized country to be able to take such a subtle factor into account. If someone drives a car, and accidentally causes an accident, I expect a minor punishment to keep this person sharp. If the same driver would deliberately aim for a pedestrian, the punishment should be equal to manslaughter or murder. Intent matters. Also when it comes to issues related to the dreaded "Terrorism". The real issue The main problem with terrorism is not the information about bombs, or even that some people have explosives in their homes. The main problem is that we're all super paranoid about it, so that rational discussions become nearly impossible (except on our lovely forum). We seem to accept risks in life as a part of life... except when it comes to terrorism, then suddenly we wish to have 100% protection against it. The discission should be about: "Do we want 100% protection against terrorism?". If the consensus is a resounding "YES", then we should proceed to remove potentially dangerous information from the net, and from libraries. But from my point of view, the first discussion has not yet ended, and I argue that 100% safety from terrorism is not only not required, it is both economically and socially undesirable.

At least one monkey was seriously harmed in this thought experiment. I agree with pwagen (post #2), assuming that at t=0 s, monkey simply hasn't started and that at t=1 s, he arrived at 3 ft.

Bomb technology as simple as that used in Boston is no different than a firecracker. Removing information of such simplicity will achieve nothing, except that the terrorists win because the disruption caused in society by such draconian measures is a thousand times larger than the effect of the actual bombs.

Alright, let's talk about this Searl generator. As some others mentioned, proving something cannot work is not possible, so instead, I will merely ask some questions, and I will make a few observations. I must then leave the conclusions to you. First of all, the website just doesn't mention where the electrons should come from. If they are from air molecules (nitrogen, oxygen) then there should be a measurable flow of air in and out of that device. I read that the machine should have a cooling effect on its environment and on itself, but a quick calculation shows that the cooling should be of such magnitude that prof. Searl should have severe signs of frostbite all over his body. If this machine is 15 kW of power, it should be marketed as an airco, not as free energy. Your average air conditioner has a power of 2-3 kW. The chilling effect of this device should be very noticeable. If they are some free-floating electrons then air should be a plasma (not just a gas). Logically, air should then conduct electricity. I wonder why nobody seems to be able to find these electrons. If there were indeed electrons that can interact with moving and turning magnetic fields, wouldn't it be logical that these electrons should interfere with many other systems? From the website itself: This is false. There is no such thing as an "open system". If your system is open, then you simply did not choose the boundaries of the system correctly. That energy will come from somewhere. Even Searl seems to agree on that. So, my only question is: where does it come from, and why doesn't Searl have a clear answer about that?

Did it occur to you that we are not all part of a giant conspiracy? When most of us were at university, there were no men in black who came and said to us: "You shall defend the mainstream, or else!". Mainstream science just works.

You wonder what abusive behavior you have ever committed, and in the very next sentence you insult the staff of this forum by comparing it with an oppressive regime? LOL. Good one. You should compare any online forum to someone's household or shop or a sports club, not to a country. If you are annoying for long enough, you will get kicked out. Admins are not the democratically chosen representatives. They actually own the place. (I'm a mere mod, not an admin, btw). And by the way, we didn't hide this thread yet, did we? If you search around, there are more threads like this. Not hidden. Public.

I often find myself in a position where I want to applaud, but I have a glass (of beer) in my hand. It is not always easy.

Please use the report button at the bottom of each post if you find a post that breaks the rules. The fact that the moderators did not take action against a particular post does NOT mean that we reviewed it, and think it belongs on our forum. We may simply not have read it at all. We do not claim that we will detect fallacies. A lot of the moderator-actions are initiated by other members who 'detected' it for us. We review and take action. Anyway, please provide examples. For the discussion here (if you wish to continue), it may be useful to have a set of examples. Also, I repeat, if you spot a fallacy, please report it. In principle I would not object to this suggestion, but there is a practical issue: not all members visit the forum often enough to do a sort of moderation on their own threads. So, in certain cases, we would have to moderate, and in some cases we could leave it. If forum software would keep track of something like that, I'd be all for it. But it can't, and to keep moderation fun and practical, I think we'd better leave things as they are.

I recently did a presentation, and received an applause. And it was good, until I started to think about it, which I probably shouldn't have done. So, is clapping a cultural thing? If so, who started it? Do we know of cultures that do not clap/applaud to show approval? Wikipedia says it is probably as old as humanity, so could it be that it goes deeper, more like a dog wagging its tail?

Well, we can't really argue with that, can we? Seems this discussion is over before it got started. Do you mind if we close the thread, since a belief is not a discussion topic?

michel123456, if you can, I seriously suggest you check out that "Collusion" plugin. It'll scare you. I have it running for only a few hours. I visited 12 different websites today... but through those 12 websites, I also got information from an additional 62 other websites, among which some advertisement companies. SFN get info from (according to this plugin): - otenet.gr - gravatar.com (something with avatars) - youtube (probably embedded videos - so our members posting, not the forum itself) - facebook (probably one of the icons / links at the bottom of the page) You see, when you download a page, you automatically download stuff from other pages. One newspaper I read puts the website that I see together from as many as 17 urls. Welcome to the internet!