Greg H.

Define "very fast". A giraffe can sprint at roughly 35 mph (60 or so km/h) - that's a hell of a lot faster than I can run. But in terms of animals, it is, admittedly, not that rapid. Also, as giraffes can drink water from the ground (and lay down to sleep), they would have no issues eating close to the ground shrubbery, if they really needed to. The fact that the routinely do not eat such shrubs in no way implies that their consumption is any way impossible.

Here's my question - if there's no discernable difference between an illusionary world and the "real" world from the point of view of the questioner, what difference does it make? For all intents and purposes, it is real.

It could, if you plan to go into a the very narrow and specific field of writing data analysis or middleware applications specifically geared towards biologists and biological research. It may help some if you're planning to go work for a gen engineering firm or maybe one of the big seed companies (Monsanto, Pioneer here in the US), since you'll already have at least some idea of what drives their business. Otherwise, no, though it certainly won't hurt.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. /endprincessbridereference IN a more serious vein, if you can't provide math, then you're running on intuition, which is a pretty bad way to do science in general, and physics in particular. No, they won't, as has already been demonstrated. If you want to prove physics wrong, you're going to need more than some handwaving.

Because those adaptations were especially advantageous in the environment that developed a given particular species. That's like asking why are there so many types of trees. Because what works in one geographic area may not work as well in another.

Will Pat Robertson do? Pat Robertson Implores Ken Ham to Not Make a Fool of Christians

I wonder, in the case they are successful, if we could flee to another country and claim asylum from religious persecution.

The simple anbswer is that there was no selective pressure for us to hear outside that range. There may be individuals even now that are capable of hearing lower or higher sounds, but there's no selective benefit to the extended range, so evolution isn't going to play a part in the distribution of that trait among Humans. Among wolves, it would play a part - wolves that can hear mice better get to eat more often, meaning they get to survive longer to pass on their genes,

In the US they cannot. They have to demonstrate probable cause to enter your home without a warrant. Also, as firearms ownership in the US is (presumably*) a right protected by the Constitution, adding this kind of mandatory inspection clause would prove problematic from a legal standpoint. * I say presumably because, as far as I know, the US Supreme Court has never specifically ruled on the individual versus collective rights issue. Someone may come along and correct me, but the crux of the matter is that if the 2nd Amendment is an individual right, then a mandatory inspection of my dwelling absent probable cause or a court ordered warrant infringes on that right (the theory being that rights are assumed unabridgeable, expect in the interest of the common good, as opposed to priviledges, which are granted and can be revoked), and on the right to be secure in my property and belongings from unreasonable search and seizure. Edit: As it turns out, they have come down off the fence. District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008)

It also causes engineers to fart rainbows, or so I've been told.

Get a lawyer that specializes in international intellectual property laws.

Without becoming stupidly invasive, you could only enforce it in a secondary capacity - that is, after the fact of an accidental discharge, the investiation would have to determine if the accident was caused by improper storage of the weapon.

There are already devices available that will prevent these kinds of senseless tradgedies; they're called gun safes. I keep both of my weapons in a safe with a digital combination that my wife and I both know. While it is possible that the kids could still guess the combination (it is, after all, only a four digit number) and retreive the guns, the risk of an accidental discharge by one of them is reduced to an acceptable level because the weapons are not freely available, and if they're willing to try and guess one number out of 10,000, it's not really an accident to begin with. My point being, secure storage of weapons is already available. If you really wanted to go hardcore, you could add trigger locks and slide blocks to the gun safe storage, adding increased protection from accidental discharge. The problem is that people don't store their weapons securely to begin with - in your night stand is not what I would call secure.

One of my cats will investigate pictures on my ipad. She tends to be more interested in brightly colored pictures (regardless of content). The other one shows absolutely no interest in pictures at all, whether physical or digital. Edit to add Found an article from Wired magazine interpreting how cats see the world based on what we know about how their eyes work. http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/10/cats-eye-view/

The first thing we need to do is stop electing representatives that are so partisan they can't even keep the government open, much less get anything accomplished. Then maybe we can hae a rational discussion on the topic instead of having to listen to frothing neckbeards (from both sides of the discussion). I have long been a supporter of titling guns like you title a car. You track every sale - private and dealer based - at the state (or federal) level, and pay a property tax (this may be a constitutionally fuzzy area, though).on a yearly basis. Every five years you recertify on a gun rage to insure you still have the ability to handle the weapon safely (like a driver's test, but with ammunition). We, as a nation, have the right to own weapons - it's about time that we, as the owners of these weapons, demonstrate that we have the maturity and the responsibility to do so.

I had to read this twice to make sure I had read it correctly. What are you talking about?

This is the problem with banning by IP address or range. Those of us who routinely connect from behind a proxy server (such as myself) may find ourselves banned because someone else on the same network is a jackass.

Your correction is noted, and appreciated, but the central point remains.

Mostly because it's impossible to do.

Common sense is actually a pretty terrible way to do science. It works reasonably well on scales (time, speed, distance) that we're familiar with, but when you start getting into relativistic effects or quantum mechanics, common sense often deviates significantly from the way the universe really works. I mean, let's be frank - would you accept that as it moved faster and faster, an object gets more massive, while also getting shorter in the lengthwise direction? Those effects, experimentally proven, violate any sort of common notions of how the world worked when they were first proposed. That's (one reason) why scientists are so rigorous about the math - despite our perceptions and our intuitions, math shows us what should happen, regardless of how much sense the answer makes.

Fair point. Though the whole thing brings to mind the Mark Twain quote about lies, damned lies, and statistics.

@Endercreeper: Not to drift off topic, and ignoring the impossibility of travalling at the speed of light, but what would it mean if, in the following equation v = c? [math]\tau = t \sqrt{1-\frac{v^2}{c^2}}[/math]

More importantly, if cause still precedes effect and entropy still increases, what are you using to define time as "backwards"?

What's interesting is that while the US has the highest number of guns per capita than any other nation in the world, we're actually pretty far down the list on number of gun related homicides per capita, as well as percent of total homicides by guns.1 1 - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/nation/gun-homicides-ownership/table/

Please, think of the researchers!