CaptainPanic

Crackpots focus on physics. Religious people focus on biology (and sometimes physics but most now accept that we go around the sun, not the other way around). Terrorists and drug dealers focus on chemistry (but you don't see those here since that is against our rules). I guess that the alchemists are out of fashion nowadays. What these poorly chosen examples are supposed to show is that all fields have their nut cases. Anyway, it could be worse: in Economics, the nut cases are in charge!

Maybe the OP means that kids typically have LOTS of creativity. Then school comes along, and says: "You must solve this problem, and you must solve it this particular way", while a child might intuitively feel that another solution is either just as good or better, and is interested to try several methods. Schools are often very much focussed on teaching a particular method (a tool), rather than teaching the skill of "problem solving". It is much easier to teach a kid a trick, and since teachers are often not so well-educated themselves, they may not even have a choice (at least in the Netherlands, the teachers are typically poorly educated in the exact sciences). I think that school systems in Western countries are slowly taking their first steps to fix this age-old problem, but it is a slow process because all children are different, and require different support and motivation to learn this more abstract concept of problem solving. New methods must be developed, and teachers must be better educated (and therefore perhaps also paid better?). If a kid has correctly solved a problem, but used the wrong tool, and then gets punished with a lower grade (as happens sometimes), the system is not motivating this kid to be creative or to invest time to solve problems. And I guess it would be popular language to state that the system is "dumbing down this kid". Maybe that is what the OP is trying to say? Note: I am just trying to make some sense of this thread. I don't know exactly what the point was of the OP. The above is my interpretation. Please don't think I am putting words into anyone's mouth.

Well, we generated 150 views for his youtube video. Normally, I would have removed this as spam (no topic, only a link?), but I noticed that my fellow moderators have tolerated this particular case. Since we seem to treat it as a puzzle, I'll post my answer too: It's a moray eel. But it appears that Basic Biology already wins the prize.

Alright, I will play the game. Obviously, it is really easy to disagree with everything I am about to say, because it all depends on a huge list of underlying assumptions about the scenario, which we did not define (yet). The US has two broad choices: 1. Stay out of it. 2. Fight. Assuming option 1 is also off the table, the US will do a number of steps on the short term: 1. Mobilize every bit of kit associated with (nuclear) missile defense. 2. Make sure the war is fought outside the North-American continent. Strengthen troops near a border zone (e.g. Ukraine, Korea). 3. Start bribing as many countries and parties as possible to fight as mercenaries for the US. 4. Try to infiltrate and destabilize whatever countries are fighting against the US. Then assuming that a nuclear war can be prevented, and a longer conventional war must be fought: 1. Convert factories producing goods for civilians to military equipment 2. Secure key-resources (oil, metals).

That is a huge thing to ask from students (especially young students, e.g. 18-year-olds)! When you're new to being a student at uni, you stlil care a LOT about what other people think of you. And asking a question to the professor is the same as admitting you did not understand it (i.e. losing face), despite the fact that the student might quite well realize that the teacher was not clear. It is quite possible that an entire classroom failed to understand something, yet none of them ask the question. Instead, they will all start discussing among themselves as soon as they have the opportunity (which, depending on the circumstances, might be right there in the classroom or lecture hall). I am not saying this is ok. I merely try to explain the phenomenon. A large part of the problem is that these kids must go from being kids to adults in a very short period. These kids must learn that asking questions is ok, even if you are the only one who did not get it. (And also not to look annoyed and breathe out disrespectful and impatient sighs when someone asks a question you already understood).

I don't think we can really discuss the actual question of the OP unless we define what WW3 means. Is that necessarily a nuclear war? Or just a war in which at a minimum the US is fighting against Russia and/or China? And should we discuss the strategy also in the "diplomatic" period leading up to war (in which the US would undoubtedly steer away from throwing nukes at others), or do we assume that the metaphorical poop has hit the ventilator, and we are seconds away from launching the nukes? A little clarity is needed, please!

Ok, at the risk of sounding serious and on topic, bacon has nothing to do with this thread, as Danish bacon exports of any significance across the North Sea only started in the 19th century. Instead, this declaration of war is most likely linked to the Second Anglo-Dutch war, in which Denmark fought on the side of the Dutch, while Ireland was ruled by England. This was already linked to by fiveworlds, but he posted only a link, with no text at all, so I assume that most of you just skipped that post. (fiveworlds, people don't always like to click links here... please just write it down in one or more sentences).

(Funny all 10 minutes, but my favorite bit is after 3 minutes until the end).

You must have overlooked The Official "Introduce Yourself" Thread, which is a pinned thread in The Lounge. I moved your post and its reply into it. Also, welcome to the forum!

What does this even mean? Was there an order to declare war, or was that actually executed, and was war actually declared? I am not sure what is the topic of this thread. I believe from the link that it is related to pre-independence orders in Ireland, but I am not sure what that means, or what the legal status is of those orders. On a side note, I am sure that somewhere in Brussels there are some rules that state that it is not allowed for EU members to be at war with each other. At least, that would make sense in my opinion.

! Moderator Note R3sili3nt, The majority of replies to your posts request examples in which you apply the equation to something more concrete. Please honor that request, or this thread will be closed.

! Moderator Note microscopeguy, Rather than threatening people with legal trouble because of the contents in a post, I strongly recommend reporting a post, and leaving it to moderators to fix something. Posting such contents here is off topic, and therefore against our rules. The rules clearly state what to do in a case like this. Read more under section 4 of the rules. Everybody, The original topic has been answered sufficiently, and the thread was enjoying a quiet retirement somewhere on our server. The quality of products of companies change, and therefore it is hardly relevant to add information of companies to a 7 year old thread. In addition, there were some personal attacks in the last posts, which are against the rules. It seems the best to just close this thread.

News reports say 54% for No change, and 46% for an independent Scotland. Dutch newspapers online show photographs of celebrating No voters. It appears that Glasgow and Dundee were among the biggest wins for the Yes, while Edinburgh was has a large majority for No. At the same time, the newspaper suggests that both sides won. London has promised a lot more power for the Scottish government. Link in Dutch. Translation mine. But you'll find the same all over the interwebs. [edit]The Guardian even suggests it was 55% No, 45% Yes.

! Moderator Note Please note that the person who opened this post has not logged in since the day he posted this message. This could be an indication that he is not actually interested in the answers, and instead wanted to draw some traffic to the website that was being advertised. There is too little information to provide any useful feedback anyway. Therefore I am closing this thread. I'd like to thank everybody who at least tried to guess the cause of the problem.

That is such a stubborn British attitude! * You have also invented the pound, the stone, the inch and the foot. And by all the gods of the British isles, you shall stick to it! You did indeed invent the English language, but according to wikipedia, the word "country" is derived from Old French, and before that from Latin. But similarly to the word country, you (the English) have also invented the words (or at least the English translation) for "province", "territory", "state". In fact, wikipedia lists 29 alternative English terms for administrative divisions , of which at least a few should be applicable to the case of the UK. Yet, probably for historical reasons, you choose to have 4 non-sovereign countries that form a sovereign country, and just call them all a country. For me, as a non-native English speaker, that is confusing indeed. I am well aware that there are cultural differences between the 4 countries within the country, and yet if you click on the wikipedia link for "country", it will show a map in which the UK is a single color, and its sub-countries are not depicted. I see this as an argument that country is often used in the meaning of "sovereign state". Also, the explanation of what a country means never mentions culture or language as a factor of any relevance. And a set of individual laws is a derivative of sovereignty. So, when we ignore the obsolete and confusing British meaning of country, and use the modern meaning of sovereign state, Scotland can become a country when it gets independence. And if the No-voters win today, you should really consider to start using the word "country" in its modern meaning, which should mean that Scotland (as well as Wales and Northern Ireland) cease to be one. And start using the metric system while you're at it. * No, I do not have evidence for that. That was an opinion.

It is not a paradox. Both number of friends (50 and 200) must be taken into the equation when you calculate the chance that A is B's friend and B is A's friend. The chance of both happening is actually the same. The chance that A is friends with B is not calculated by just dividing 200 friends by the total number of Facetube members. If this were true, then A would have equal chances to be friends with a random person C living on a deserted island with only 1 facebook friend, and a particular person D having thousands of friends. But this is not true. He has a much larger chance of being friends with D than with C. This means that the number of friends of both people involved are needed to calculate the chance.

Hey John, thanks for a good explanation of a couple of issues that I hadn't thought of (e.g. refractive index of steam / hot air). Just a question through, you claim that water is transparent to UV. However, this graph show that the absorption coefficient for UV is several orders of magnitude larger than for visible light. I realize that water is also transparent to visible light, and I did find other sources claiming it is transparent to uv. I just want to find out how transparent it is. Would any significant portion of the energy be absorbed (and given the high power of the laser claimed in the article, I think anything over 1% can be called significant). That said, I am starting to see more problems than solutions with this laser to penetrate fog / rain. I just realized that if you evaporate the water, the resulting hot steam / air will also have a much lower density than the surrounding air, so you also get convection which increases the air flow through the beam, thereby increasing the number of water droplets that get in the way.

Correct, that was my assumption (and you are correct to challenge me on it). Maybe they mixed in a little UV? Water is not very transparent for UV, as far as I know? Would it be possible that the trace-laser sort of clears the path in 1 wavelength, and the real laser uses a second wavelength? This is pure speculation, but I think it is interesting.

spacevudo was banned for spamming. The rules say: We don't mind if you put a link to your noncommercial site (e.g. a blog) in your signature and/or profile, but don't go around making threads to advertise it. When you do the exact opposite, and make threads with the sole purpose of advertising your site, you get yourself banned.

No it's not, is a different place within the UK. No different than saying Birmingham is a different city than Manchester. Well, there are 4 countries within the country. And yes, that is really confusing. I don't think it's worth fighting over though. You were both right in a way. John was right because Scotland is not the same country as UK. It is a country within a country. But Delbert is right because we're discussing the independence from the UK (i.e. Scotland becoming a sovereign state), and therefore the fact that the UK calls its 4 parts "countries" instead of a more logical word is not very relevant, and just confuses things. Now move along, there's really nothing of interest to see here.

That is exactly the first thing I wondered. But can't you just evaporate all that water? How much of the power gets scattered because of fog, and how much gets used to evaporate the water? If your laser beam is 5 mm wide, and the linear velocity of the wind is 1 m/s (it's never very windy when there's fog), and your target is at 5 km, then per second you need to evaporate all the water in a total of 25 m3 of air. Since according to wikipedia, there is about 0.05 g/m3 of liquid water in fog, that is a grand total of 1.25 grams of liquid water per second. The power required to evaporate that is 2.8 kW. The way I see it, is that the water that enters the side of the beam is evaporated, and never even gets to distort whatever light is in the center of the beam. The light at the center of the laser beam doesn't need much refocussing. (Even though the article seems to suggest something like that).

John, are you really asking for "Evidence" when someone compares the potential independence of Scotland to a fish? I know emotions are running high, so I just want to check who's still using this thing called humor, and who's secretly stockpiling large fish to slap people with? You seem to acknowledge that Dekan's post was an opinion, and evidence for an opinion is a rather strange thing to ask for. Open borders between Scotland/England is dependent on treaties. Since the current UK don't seem to like such treaties much (they aren't part of the Schengen treaty for example) an open border will depend on how much Scotland will open up to the rest of the EU. If Scotland enters the Schengen treaty and the rotUK (rest of the UK) won't, then I could understand that there will be a passport check at the England/Schengen border.

Even though I am a moderator myself, I'd like to respond to this too. This forum is one of the healthiest places I know on the internet, precisely because the moderation is quite strict. If we would allow anyone to post just anything, bigotry, racism, crackpottery, pseudoscience, conspiracy theories, etc., this forum would quickly become quite rotten. The internet has a tendency to produce lots of filth, especially when you allow people to remain anonymous. It takes a bunch of dedicated moderators to keep that off the forum. At this point, I would like to repeat that the moderators are volunteers. We are not paid. We do this for fun, because we like this forum. Regarding fresh ideas, we welcome them with open arms (that is my opinion). Typically, new ideas generate lots of replies. That, in my opinion, is a warm welcome. Obviously, this being a science forum, most people who reply will try to shoot a hole into the new idea. But that is just science in progress. It was spent on cheese nips to bribe the moderators.

! Moderator Note pears has said it right. Questions such as this should be answered by a doctor, not be an anonymous person online based on a few lines of text. Thread closed.

I don't know tips & tricks, because I don't have kids. But I can still say: Congrats, also to the mom! w0000000t!!! We'll be seeing the ydoaPsjr here in a few years! (Make sure to announce the moment, so we don't ban the both of you as sockpuppets).