CaptainPanic

Why? What harm?

There is plenty of discussion regarding the mirror test. I agree with you that dogs seem to have (some) self awareness. But I get the feeling a dog's self awareness includes its head, but certainly not its ass and tail. Once their head first somewhere, they don't care much about the rest. I really wonder if it is aware it has an ass and a tail. But on a more serious note: Aren't animals always planning ahead when they search for food? First there is the search or the chase, and then the reward (food). What I mean to say is that I am not sure that the observation of choices and planning are a good method to test for self-awareness. And I am not sure that a strong dislike of the rain is a learnt behavior or a deliberate choice. Personally, I think dogs can develop new habits, but they don't seem to make many deliberate choices...

I agree with hypervalent_iodine: you ask too much at the same time. Right now, the best we can do is point at Google and Wikipedia.

It's not the same: A government formed by scientists would never even arrive at the decision making, because they would get stuck discussing the measurements and conclusions. We would never arrive at any new situation. At least politicians will force decisions sometimes. Most of the time, it's the wrong decision, or at least it won't improve the situation... but at least ther eis change. And with luck, and by iterations, given enough time, we get to a desirable situation. In a plane full of scientists, they would all be doing calculations, and measurements. And everybody would be attending the last presentation in the back of he plane by the time they hit the mountain. In a plane full of politicians, there would be 16 pilots, and 48 copilots. Nobody would know how to fly a plane... but at least it would be changing course all the time. With ups and downs, there is at least a small chance it misses the mountain. (Yes, I exaggerate).

Heat. The rock won't move, and so in thermodynamic terms, nothing happens to it (unless you have warm hands, then it will locally heat up because of your hands). But you spend a lot of energy by pushing. You muscles tense, and that means you will burn up sugars (forming CO2 and water, and heat). And your body will get rid of the heat, by breathing out hot air, and by sweating, or simply by being in contact with something cooler, like air. So, eventually the energy we spend is going into the air, heating it up by a little bit.

A world with only scientists would be a nightmare. We would never agree on anything. But I agree that good education is very important (if that's what you meant to say).

Does anyone know of an entertaining source of information of the stars near our solar system (<50 lightyears)? I am looking for more information... and it's just for my own entertainment. No project, no work, no urgent questions, just a desire to learn more, while at the same time too lazy to chew through the dry information or poorly written websites and books. I have already found a nice atlas of the solar neighborhood, which 3D pictures of our neighborhood within 12.5, 50 and 250 lightyears, and quite a bit of additional information. I think is pretty awesome, although I personally would want to make that thing a rotating 3D model where you can seamlessly zoom in and out... But there must be more information out there. Has anyone compiled that information into a documentary, an even better model, or a good website? Or does anyone want to add some cool information in this thread? Thanks in advance!

Thanks for the answer. As for the trivia question (in the spirit of a quiz I refused to google it): I believe that the furthest out that any measurements are done on is about 1000 lightyears? Closest I am guestimating at 20 lightyears. But the furthest out in general is probably a lot further. Several billion lightyears, I guess. But there's no chance Kepler will find planets around those. I think that an extension of the mission will cost only a fraction of the initial investment (the design, construction and testing of the Kepler satellite itself, and the launch system)... so if there is reason to extend the mission, it would be a waste not to give that bit of money.

With more people on this planet than ever, can we say that diseases can also mutate quicker , because they basically have more feeding grounds - more humans - around? Would there be a reason to assume that the amount of diseases that evolve are a linear function of the amount of people (limited only by our health and healthcare, which kills off a lot before it spreads). If not, is there any other way to estimate the likelihood that a serious disease will evolve within X years?

Fine. But what gives you the right to make the choices for those selection criteria of what is unhealthy, and what is not? If it is private, then it's just another product on the market. And I can choose not to buy. Fine, I don't care. If it is public, and I am in that system no matter what, then I'd like to have a say in how it works... and I strongly disagree with your selection criteria of only alcohol, tobacco and bad food. Not while I see people getting skin cancer on the beaches every summer. I've given plenty of examples of unhealthy lifestyles which are somehow excluded, and in a mandatory public system, that is just discrimination. And in addition, I have shown you an article where it is shown that those unhealthy people do not cost us much. And in addition, they already pay higher tax on those products. So, they get hit 3 times by your proposal... They pay more tax on alcohol/tobacco, they pay higher healthcare, and they die too quickly to enjoy much of that healthcare. It's extremely unfair... and cannot be tolerated in a public system.

Well, it is even better then to privatise the whole medical world. Why would you keep it within the tax system, if you're gonna run the medicare as a company, with "cost effectiveness" in mind... then you are better off to make that a company than a government. Why not include the sports? What's that nonsense? Because it's harder to sell to the population that you pay more if you do sports? Nonsense. Some sports are extremely unhealthy (fighting sports, like boxing - look at Muhammed Ali in his old days... with Parkinson for the last two decades or so, which is a direct result of the blows to the head). If you're just gonna be disciminating against alcohol, tobacco and poor food, and not against all other unhealthy things in life, then we might as well stop this discussion. I cannot fight an opinion. You win.

I can understand that people say that the risks in this research are so great, that is would be better if it is stopped, and the virus destroyed. But look at the potential benefits. If we understand the avian flu better, we can save people. If this research goes horribly wrong, we lose half the population of the planet. If this research goes the right way, and the avian flu does break out naturally, we can save a lot of people because we understand it better, and can make a vaccin a lot quicker. Researchers in the topic of nuclear fission initially also did not intend to kill people. Should we blame the researchers for working on nuclear fission, or maybe the leaders who started the war, made a huge project to create a bomb, and perhaps in a secondary way the generals who decided to use this bomb instead of alternative measures? Or should we applaud the researchers, because it also gave us (relatively) clean energy from nuclear powerplants?

According to the article, the point is to study how to fight an airborne version of the H5N1 strain. For that, you first have to create it. But I agree that it's pretty damn dangerous and it might be better to do this study at a very different location (not a university), even though the virus is kept behind locked doors, guarded by armed guards.. At the same time, it's only a matter of time before another disease spreads...

So, to make a long story short: according to you, life would be better if you pay for whatever disease/injury you might get in the future - extrapolated from your chosen lifestyle. And how exactly will a doctor distinguish between a healthy lifestyle, but an unhealthy physique? Will naturally healthy people naturally pay less? (And people who are born sick pay more? What about parents who deliberately decide to keep a child with disabilities, even if abortion is still an option - that's a deliberate choice - should they pay up?). And will the doctor (and medicare) praise you for doing sports, or punish you for unhealthy sports? Will you outlaw Australian Football, which is violent and causes relatively large numbers of injuries? Or must players pay more medicare? And what about kids who play? You know how dangerous unhealthy that can be? I can foresee a financial incentive to keep kids indoors, and force them to do their exercises on a hometrainer, rather than on the playground. Playgrounds can be dangerous! Or what about someone who has a small workshop at home? Building cars or something for which he/she needs heavy machinery? That's riskier than watching TV and doing your 30 minutes mandatory exercise. So, if you have a workshop, up goes the medicare. And high heel shoes should be taxed more than hiking shoes. And if you don't dress warm on a cold day, you will get fined by the police. And wearing safety gloves and googles becomes mandatory while cooking. Did you know that most accidents happen at home? Maybe being at home should be counted as a risk factor too? So, how will this ever be a fair system? I hope you don't plan to install cameras everywhere to spy on people to catch them in the act?

This morning, I read that Newt Grigrich is already warming up for some ultimate scaremongering: North Korea can nuke the electricity grid in the entire USA. You can bet that the political situation in North Korea will be completely milked by him. And it doesn't matter that experts say that the US has plenty of interceptor missiles to shoot down any North Korean rockets, or that there are no indications that the North Koreans even have rockets that can deliver any warhead to the US. And unfortunately, there are plenty of politicians in Europe too, who don't mind milking this North Korean cow for a while.

How long is Kepler's mission then? To find planets like Jupiter and further out, it would need to span multiple decades!

We're getting a little carried away with the posts #3 and #4 in this thread - a thread which initially addressed the health issues only. Financial issues and economic factors only came in later. Hope that's ok, because I still think that the post I made is the only decent one on that topic. Greg, you still don't provide an economic study of smokers/obese people vs. people who don't do that. You still cannot show that an unhealthy life is worse for the economy than a healthy one. You dismiss the data I provide - at first with an anecdote, which you then removed and replaced by circumstantial evidence. From what you show, you cannot conclude that alcohol leads to alzheimer, and therefore the costs of medical treatment of alcohol users is higher. Maybe those people would eventually get alzheimer anyway, and alcohol makes them die earlier which is cheaper (again, looking only at the harsh and dry economic factors, not happiness). There's nothing that shows that my interpretation of that alzheimer data isn't correct, and yours is. In fact, the study you show says that alcohol leads to Vascular Diseases (VD), and those can itself be often fatal. In some cases, this leads to alzheimer instead of death. We know that cardio-vascular diseases are the #1 cause of death, and most of those people dying from it never develop alzheimer. So, that supports my point that more often than not these people will just die, rather than get alzheimer. You're gonna have to do better.

Then please provide us with some studies from that Google Scholar where you can find the numbers. I link to an article about a study of the statistics of the costs of disease, by qualified people, and you replace that by a story of your father in law. Hardly an improvement of the facts, is it? I cannot accept that either. All the rest you post is merely a suggestion. I want data.

I get the feeling you didn't check out that NYTimes article I posted. Or, you seem to completely oppose that study. It's the non-smokers and non-obese people who will develop endless problems. What actually happens is that smokers and obese people will develop a disease, and often die of it. In economic terms, that's good riddance. Sounds harsh, and it is - but we're talking economy, not happiness. People whose hearts and lungs are healthy, will develop problems with their knee, hip, shoulder, eyesight, hearing, etc., in other words, all kinds of non-fatal problems, which cost money in many ways, ranging from the hospital treatments to the construction of elderly homes and scooters for elderly because they can't walk anymore. Our entire society is being adapted to old people who are still "healthy". And that costs a fortune. You can't keep old people healthy all the time. And if one thing doesn't break down, something else will. It's sad, but that's life. The number John Cuthber presented: 2.5 million deaths annually by alcohol. Sure it's probably true, but what the World Health Organization does not say is that without alcohol, those people would just die soon after of something else! Imagine a world where health and productivity ARE an actual concern. Why do we allow basketball, cycling and football to be played? Those three sports alone cause nearly 1.5 million injuries per year in the US. Not only does this reduce the productivity, it is also a big bill for the healthcare. Sure, it's not fatal, but we're talking productivity here. You can do another - safer - sport. Like spinning (that's the indoor fitness cycling). It's just as good for your health, but your productivity for society is much less at risk. But I am sure that you agree that we shouldn't ban those sports. I'm no machine whose productivity rate must be kept at an optimum. I do not want to be fined for catching a cold. I want to be able to cycle, despite it obviously being more dangerous than walking. I like to grab a burger and some fries occasionally, even if the salad was more healthy. And I like to get a couple of beers in the weekend. People just don't live forever... why can't we go out in peace, while having a glass of cognac - perhaps one too many - and a cigar? Why must my life be extended by 5-10 useless years, which I will likely spend practically deaf, forgetful and in a wheelchair? I'd rather have a blast now, and go out a bit sooner. Why is that not MY decision? Why does my government try to make me go bankrupt if I lead such a life?

Because stuff gets attracted towards the stars by the gravity? In fact, the large majority of the matter in any star system ends up inside the star. Disclaimer: I'm no astronomy expert... and you should regard this post as an opinion rather than fact.

Smokers and obese people are cheaper to health care than healthy people. (NYTimes article)

It begs the question whether we live happier when we get really old, but have outlawed all kinds of unhealthy activities, foods drinks and other substances - or if we are happier in the knowledge that we might be living shorter, but we can do whatever the hell we like. Health is important, but not everything. Some people wish to push the balance still further towards health... but at this moment, the taxes on booze, cigarettes, and strict laws on drugs are already so severe that I think it's enough. Let's stop here. The ever increasing taxes on booze, cigarettes are not mainly motivated by concern for our collective healths, but very much more by a concern for the state treasury. It's just tax with the purpose of getting money, not tax with the purpose of reducing early deaths.

The strong opinions of trolls can start quite entertaining threads. As long as trolls take aim at a concept or theory, rather than at someone personally, it can also make the place more lively. And whether it is intentional or not, this forum seems to have found the sweet spot - allowing just enough trolling to keep the place fun and also slightly provocative. Exactly what science needs. I do not think that is even relevant. If we (e.g. you, as a mod) would know for a fact that someone is "functionally disadvantaged" and therefore not able to behave properly, and it's also not provocative in a functional way... would there be any reason to tolerate such behavior? I don't think so.

The topic title mentions alcohols, so maybe he just means methanol and ethanol? Making methanol from excess hydrogen is already commercial (see below), so if we assume that we are all happy with the windturbines (which is NOT the topic, so let's bicker about that in another thread), this is perfectly feasible and even economically interesting. from wikipedia: I totally agree with John Cuthber that extracting CO2 from the air is extremely expensive and inefficient.

If you are a chef, then you probably know that the inspection comes to every restaurant every now and then. Perhaps it is possible to contact them anonymously, and give a tip that you suspect something weird is going on. Obviously, it's a little strange too that a chef in a different (competing) restaurant would give a tip against another restaurant, so if it's not anonymous, I would be careful.