layman77

So, I've heard proponents of the three hard sciences, physics, biology, and chemistry say, that it isn't scientific or scientific enough. If so, who should you go to if you are having an emotional or mental problem, rather than a psycologist of psychiatrist? Also, I'm not sure they qualify as scientists per se, just like a medical doctor just uses the medical techniques/methods they've been taught, they don't actually perform research.

I wasn't sure whether I should have posted this here, or one of the biology forums.

I've heard some call it a "soft science" or a "social science" and some even fans of the hard science say it is not a science at all. Why is this? And if it isn't what would be a more scientific alternative approach?

Well, maybe it could acceptable. We tell them other things we don't believe exist either, like Santa Claus. Of course, you still get presents after you learn he doesn't exist.

Atheists are fond of saying that atheism is no more a religion that baldness is a hair color. But, this isn't exactly true. Strictly speaking atheism is the absence of belief in deities, not the total absence of religion. While most atheists are secular, couldn't one be religious if they're religion doesn't have any deities?

I've heard about this in the form of the casimir effect and how/somehow it could be used to create a warp drive http://www.space.com/17628-warp-drive-possible-interstellar-spaceflight.html But, I'm wondering, how could negative energy be used in this way? What I mean is, what you do is contract the space in front of you, expand it behind you, so the ship isn't moving, the space around it is. But, what would be the appartus/setup that would make use of the casimir effect to do this? Positive energy is pretty straightforward, you burn coal for example- to heat steam, the turn the turbine to turn the a coil of wire between two poles of a magnet, what would you use to contract the space in front of you and expand it behind you?

I can understand them being able to actually arrange the pre-grown cells onto a scaffold for growing organ, but will the printers ever actually be able to print the cells themselves? What would be the difficulties trying to do this, seems like it would be like trying to print a water balloon for the most part, hard to do, hard to keep it together as you are doing it.

I bought a whiteboard for our refrigerator with 4 attachable magnets on the back. They are rectangular magnets that I attached the magnets to the adhesives on the back, but when try to it attach it to the refrigerator, it can't even hold on to it! The white board just slides down the fridge to the floor. I guess I could get some stronger magnets to attach to the back instead. But, is there anything I can do to strengthen the magnets already there? What if I attached 4 more rectangular magnets to the back to the magnets already there, so say the North Pole side of the magnet sticking to the fridge would be attached to the south pole of the magnets I attach to them, and then I could attach it to the fridge again?

I think basically the fluctuations are read, frequency and amplitude and some specific patterns in them represent sounds, etc. Like if we were to put a single word repeating on a frequency, what the pattern would be. That would be a good example to show, and certain patterns are decoded. Ok, so frequency means the frequency is varied, and amplitude means the amplitude is varied, and certain patterns mean certain things. The reason I thought that perhaps in FM, the frequency stays the same, but the amplitude varies (even though it is called FM) is because if you set your radio to 98.5FM, the frequency would be changing to make the patterns of someone's voice/sound, etc, so if the frequency is changing wouldn't that mean that for fractions of a second it WOULDN'T be 98.5Mhz, and the radio wouldn't pick it up?

Thanks, but that's quite a mouthful, Well that third paragraph in particular. I don't know most of those terms. Of course I know about wikipedia, but those articles like many on it are very complicated and you need to first know them to be able to understand the article. That's quite a gripe I have with wikipedia. My vocabulary is decent. I'd guess I've heard most English words, but there's no need to be overcomplicated when you don't need to be. That's one thing my Government teacher used to say, that why don't they just write it some everyone will understand it? True, you can't understand some things without first understanding pre-requistites. You need to learn Trigonometry and Algebra to understand Calculus because these maths are part of it, but not always. I hadn't really caught on about it, I hadn't realized that only the amplitude is changed in an FM broadcast, and the changes somehow code to sound (like you said, the second paragraph) that would be a lot simpler to say.

Ok, so here's where I've got most of my information on it. This is part where I start to have trouble http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/radio7.htm So, does 98.5, Mhz mean that the wave oscillates at 98.5 million waves per second? Meaning it goes up to a peak then back to zero many times per second? What I don't understand is how you can put information on the wave. If you trasmitted at 98.5, it would just be that frequency, but a sound wave is totally different, it's frequency and amplitude vary quite wildly, not exactly at 98.5, how could you put that on top of a radio wave? This seems to help me a little bit. http://www.qrg.northwestern.edu/projects/vss/docs/communications/1-how-is-data-put-on-radio-waves.html Certain fluctuations in the wave correspond to 1's and 0's, but that digital isn't it? Radio's were analog when they first started out. And, would varying the frequency or amplitude make it audible? If you tuned to 98.5 but the frequency frequently changed to put the information on it, then you wouldn't be able to run to that frequency, it would "blank out" as soon as someone spoke, wouldn't it?

Well, yeah, say I could just put on a helmet, hooked up to a tv and say I want to look at June 1st 1990 from 8PM-9PM, and it displays what I saw. Is this possible?

Just like a video camera does. I was told once by a psychiatric nurse who worked at a hospital that everything is recorded on your brain, not just sight either, that everything you've ever experienced is there, from all 5 of your senses. But the reason we can't recall it all is because most of it resided in our subconscious. You can remember specific facts when you specifically look for them, like phone numbers, addresses, passwords, directions, how to drive a car, etc. That your conscious is somewhat like a computer's RAM which stores something the computer is currently working, while the hard drive has information on all the data on the computer. If you view this, scientists are starting to use fMRI machines to read specific thoughts. An experiment I'd like to try is have them focus on a few specific dates they can actually remember, and see what parts of the brain the machine reads. Of course, everyone's memory of a day is not unique to someone else's. Your 9/11 may not have been the same as mine, but I wonder if the day will ever come where you can focus on any date, basically take a video playback of any time in your life, that video cameras may even become obselete. And someone could give more than just testimony but a video of what actually happened.

Also, shouldn't be see a greater density of stars/planets/matter in one direction, which would be where the big bang originated, where it started?

Posted this here because I was thinking light is a quanta of energy, was wondering if I should've posted it in classical physics. I've heard that every spectra of the EM spectrum (radio waves/microwaves/visible light/infrared,etc) has a certain wavelength, but I'm just curious about the research that led to this. This has been experimentally verified correct? What is the experiment you do to show this? And, each of the spectra on the EM spectrum, all them is a form of electro-magnetic radiation, and electric and magnetic fields are at right angles to each other, is there an experiment to show this too?

I wonder, are we sure that dark matter exists? It's proposed because there is a greater gravitational pull then the "light matter" would allow. But, what if it isn't dark matter, matter we can't see in this universe. What if the gravity comes from some other universe, dimension, where their matter interacts with ours?

A lot of people think that the universe is infinite. But, it isn't, is it? If you asked most people that if you could get in a spaceship and go to the end of space what would be there, they would say "more space." But is this true? What a lot of people don't know is that the big bang didn't just "create" all the matter and energy in the universe. It created space itself. That there was no space around the singularity before the big bang. Though, I'm not sure how we discovered this/what evidence there is to support it. But, assuming this is true, and that space is still expanding per the big bang (as it is still in progress) if you go in any direction eventually they'll be a point where you can't go any further, because space has not yet expanded that far yet. You hit a wall, so to speak. So, we could think of the universe as a expanding sphere. Actually, I wonder if we'll even have telescopes eventually powerful enough to see the edges of space- to see out to the point where space is still expanding, and thus we couldn't see any farther.

I have a digital bathroom scale and it's quite frustrating. I think I may get a traditional spring one. I can stand on it three times and it will give me slightly different weights like this: 1st time :209.1lbs 2nd time: 208.3lbs 3rd time: 207.4lbs And, no- this WAS three times in a row over a period of 15 seconds, I was not weighing myself with or without my clothes or shoes. I had the exact same clothes on all three times. I wonder what's going on here. I want to diet but I guess I can't rely on my scale. Seems to be the best ones seem to be the more "primitive" ones like with a spring dial or the one at the Doctor's office which has weights on the weight amounts. Do certain actions alter what the scale says? For example, if I were to squat on it instead of stand on it, it might give me a much higher weight. If I were to stand on one foot. Or perhaps in my case the way I am standing the way my weight is distributed on it. I wonder why this should even matter. I'm the same weight whether I'm standing, squatting, or one foot, my weight is the same. Maybe it depends on the sensors I'm standing on, if I were to stand on one foot, a certain area of the scale would receive all the force, and most of the other parts would receive none, but I wonder why that should matter as well, it should tally up the same, shouldn't it? 208 on one spot +0= 140 in 2 spots+0=208 Anyway, what I am I doing wrong, if I am doing something wrong. I just want my real actual weight every time.

One idea I thought of is would it be possible to create a real-life minotaur by splicing some bull and human DNA?

I've been hearing now that it's possible for some instruments to measure some of your emotions. For example, they can tell if you are happy or sad, but how is this accomplished? My guess is through a correlation, they get a particular brainwave and ask the person how they feel and the person knowing how they feel would tell them, and they can use this again, when the brainwave manifests they know how the person is feeling. What about stress though. Is there any machine that can quantify how much you are feeling, say could group it on a 1 to 10 scale, where 1 in the mildest stress possible, and 10 is on the breaking point, on the verge of having a nervous breakdown, so it could be objectively measured through measuring the intensity of certain things, heartbeat, blood pressure, breathing rate, etc. The thing is, only certain stress manifests at certain times. If you went in for a brainwave at the hospital and felt relatively calm, it would show you as having not a lot of stress, but if you had a helmet on at work that you wore for the whole day, it could measure it throughout the day according to that activity. So, if you doctor ordered a stress test, the one at the hospital wouldn't be very accurate.

No live camera's yet, but they do have street level view in some places. I wonder if eventually they'll have it everywhere on google earth.

Is it a rule here not to necromance threads? I did for this one since people already have.

Then why have so many parents train, maybe not all trained their kids not to run into the street WITHOUT hitting them? But you need water to live, you don't need to spank a child to get them to behave properly Now, that's a fallacy, straw man attack in particular, where did this say that the law would solve all the world's problems!?! Can't you see your mistake? I hope your joking or exagerrating.

that doesn't mean you have to hit them to teach them. Why can't you put him in his room for 4 or 5 hours to teach him? It seems people think that physical punishment is the only solution, that it is the only thing that will work, I'd like to see some proof. Show me how many children where ever other method failed. I don't think there are droves of them. Wow, it's lazy to protect children, is it really that hard or expensive to buy some covers for the wall socket, no you'll dole out the belt, problem solved. You should be watching him in the yard, to make sure he doesn't do it, and prevent him from doing it if he does. Not spanking him if he happens to try. No, if he learns violence that early you can be he'll be violent in life, Kids do feel the pain emotional and physical, can you back what you're saying with some evidence? I've given you mine. I remember very clearly the time I got hit, it does stick with you, you don't forget it. Please back this up. Not if you hit when they're that young. Hmm, so should you have the right to hit your wife if she does something wrong? Why are only kids the ones who can get hit? That's hypocritical. Actions speak louder than words my friend. Physical violence is a lot different then what you describe, again refer to that study I gave you, which you keep ignoring. Take a look at this one too http://www.naturalchild.org/research/discipline.html There are other punishments you can give them, it doesn't have to be physical.

When was the last time you heard of a "natural" nuclear power plant. Yet, they said it was ok to hit because animals do it. You're avoiding the argument, ad hominem is they call it. If shock is ok, to teach someone that something isn't acceptable then why isn't it ok for your boss to hit you at work, or for them to whip an inmate or soldier, they would have made the same arguments when it was alllowed, you think that it's a perfectly acceptable form of punishment, the same as they did, yet now it's been completely banned in most places. Fact is, it's only a matter of time before it's banned, children are the only ones left you can hit legally hit and get away with. Well, no, put some covers on the sockets! And keep them away from those dangers, like a good parent should! Don't hit him because he walks out into the street. It's your fault you let him in the first place. You shouldn't have let him out someplace where he could get hurt, then you hit him for it?! And all that hitting them will teach them is fear, they have to understand why it's wrong. You're going to a hit child who can't even understand your words and expect him to know what it means. And hitting him that young will teach him nothing but fear and aggression and to solve his problems by hitting. Imagine if he sees another child put his fingers in the socket, and he hits him like you did. What about other problems that will be solved by hitting, maybe someone took his toy away, hit. Maybe he doesn't like someone or someone, hit! Refer to the study I liked to above, a little bit is no good either.