Greg H.

First, be aware that aluminum melts at something like 933 K (660 C) - whatever you smelt it in has to be able to withstand that temperature long enough to actually melt the aluminum and hold it until you pour it off. Second, check out http://www.submarineboat.com/casting_aluminum.htm It seems to cover at least the basics, and tells you how to build a foundry to actually melt the aluminum (as well as how to make interesting parts from it, should you desire).

Do you have an example of this phenomenon you could provide? I am unfamiliar with the concept of binary stars not orbiting their common center of gravity.

First, as has been said many, MANY times, pure chance was not involved. The natural laws of chemistry preclude the idea of pure chance. Second, even assuming that pure chance was at play, when you have trillions of molecules trying trillions of combinations simultaneously, the chance of any given outcome becomes very close to 1. So what if the chance is 1 in 1,000,000,000,000 if I have 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 attempts all happening at the same time - the result I need is bound to come up just based on raw probability alone. Let the chance argument go - it's invalid, and it fails to account for all the variables. Second, no living mind was responsible for the blueprint for water. Simple chemical bonding , available at any molecule near you, is all that is necessary. No divine interaction, no thinking at all. Just mix hydrogen and oxygen properly and bam, water! It's magical (not really). No other chemical molecule requires a living blueprint maker either. Chemistry takes care of itself.

Because it's income - the source doesn't matter. Income over a certain amount per year generates a tax liability to the government. Regardless of how hard you worked, you pay taxes on the money you earned. Your argument that if you "bust your balls" making the money you shouldn't pay taxes on it could just as easily be applied to construction workers, or firefighters, or a whole host of other professions. Heck by your argument, professional football players should be exempt since they are, quite literally, busting things to earn that money, and training their asses off every season if they want to be successful. It's a bad argument.

First, your English is quite good. Better than some people for whom it's the native tongue, so don't worry about that. Second, the reason it shouldn't be 1 are the same reasons it's not 1 - it leads to contradictions and problems in the most basic of maths, as DH pointed out. Whether you want to call it indeterminate or undefined, division by zero (which is really what you're talking about) renders a lot (if not all) of mathematics essentially unstable and meaningless.

Dude chill. Attack less, discuss more.

If you live in the US, the landlord should have presented you with a Residential Lead-Based Paint Disclosure disclosing if there is lead-based paint in the building, if it was built prior to 1978 (when lead based housing paint became illegal in the US). This is required by Federal Law for any residential unit built prior to Jan 1 1978. In any case, if you have lead based paint peeling off the walls, I'd talk to a lawyer to see if you can either A) force the landlord to repaint with an approved paint or B) move you out of the apartment without violating your lease fair failure to maintain the property in a safe condition.

Do things always have to be right or left? What happened to the good of the country as a whole, as opposed to what's good for my group.

And this is exactly why I am so disillusioned with American politics. If a good idea comes from the "wrong" side, we have to vilify it, even if we like it, otherwise we're disloyal. Not that the original idea was necessarily good, but the phrasing of the question above to me indicates a perfect example of this kind of divisive us or them thinking that is ruining our country.

And lets not forget the injustice of our service men and women paying income taxes. Surely putting their lives on the line is enough of a tax.

I'm still confused.

Belief is the problem. Verify what people are telling you - fact check. Then you won't have to believe - you'll know*. * - and knowing is half the battle.

I am going to go with static electricity from the moving probes, but I'm not an expert. And I found this from an owners manual for one of Radio Shack's multimeters: http://support.radioshack.com/support_meters/doc46/46988.htm

Additionally, let's consider fractions as proportions (since, that's really what they are). If I have ten widgets and I give two away, it's easy to see that a) I have 8 left, and b) I have given away 20% of my initial widgets. But if I start with 0 widgets, and I give 0 away, I still have what I started with, which is none. Can I even break up 0 into fractional parts? That's what you're really trying to do when you divide - break something up into smaller chunks. Can I really break a pie up into 0 pieces? (Well I suppose if I eat the whole thing...) but it doesn't leave me with pieces of pie, it leaves me with no pie at all. Logically it makes no sense. And how can I break up no pie into smaller pieces of no pie? (i.e. 0/0) If I have nothing to begin with, how do it make it smaller nothings? An answer of 1 implies that there is a whole "something" there. So what is the whole "something" that results from nothing divided by nothing?

I believe he's on about this: http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2012/jul/31/picket-olympics-math-medal-winners-pay-9000-irs/

While I believe that you believe, that belief is not proof. Furthermore, the very idea of omnipotence is logically flawed - remember the old "Can God make a rock so heavy he can't lift it?" debate. That aside, even if God exists, your claim was not that he knows everything, but that he is more intelligent that any human. You'd have to devise an objective method to test that claim, not just base it on heresay and theology. But this is wandering off topic. I'll just reiterate that my original post was half-joking (as in Wikipedia's infamous citation needed), and we can leave it at that.

The fact that it implies that 1 = 2 seems to only reinforce my point that it results in no useful answers. It's like saying that 1 + 2 = blue. Sure it's an answer. It may even be correct if blue = 3, but the answer, as given, doesn't really help us in any way.

The do the experiment and publish the results - generally those who have an idea are the ones who first test that idea to make sure it's accurate.

It was half a joke - but in order to declaritively assert this, you'd have to actually prove that a) God exists, and b) he possesses this quality. It's that part a) that keeps tripping people up.

In computer floating point operations, dividing by zero is defined to result in either positive or negative infinity. If you look at the algebraic equivalent of [math]\frac{0}{0} = x [/math] it's [math]x\times0 = 0 [/math]. In this case, x can literally be any number since anything times 0 is 0. A graph of the result set would be meaningless, since it would, quite literally include every number in existence. More appropriately, we could write the formula for such a graph as [math] f(x) = 0 \times x [/math] which would result in a straight line from negative to positive infinity right across the y-axis of the graph. This is the reason the operation is undefined - it doesn't result in any useful answers.

[Citation Needed]

One is the loneliest number.

You really don't want to do that.

Believing in God is not the same as believing in Intelligent Design, as you well know Alan. Next fallacious argument?

Maybe this year I'll try quantum Santa Claus with the kids. "Just wait kids - any second now that waveform is gonna collapse into those iPhones you all wanted. But remember, if that's not what's in the box, you opened it too soon. Or too late."