Prometheus

They may or may not be devout Muslims: we don't want to fall into the No True Scotsman fallacy. Ideology is one factor among many that we need to consider.

Ah, but if the world were that simple. I agree that Islam, as all ideologies, should not be free to act with impunity: if people are killing in the name of a cause it should be scrutinised. But let's not fall into the trap of thinking it is as simple as that. With twice as much violence in the Bible than in the Koran, we need to find why adherents of one faith are apparently increasingly heeding calls to violence while others are not. I think we'll find it's the result of many interacting factors that cannot be reduced to religious membership.

So before we perform the operation, pi isn't any specific number? Or to use a quadratic: [latex] x^2 - 4 =0 [/latex] doesn't have roots of 2 or -2 until after we calculate it? Is it enough that some ancient Sumerian probably solved this one, or do we each have to solve it? Could it change with time: if it doesn't in what way is its existence dependent on time?

So the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter isn't pi before we do a calculation?

I'm not saying a thing - i find my house increasingly built of glass. Oh yeah, missed that. Not heard Counting Crows before, but i do like Vanessa Carlton. How about suggestions for covers that are better than the original? Original: Cover:

Because it got mentioned on a thread somewhere:

Let me check i understand. You have the probabilities (or odds) of win, lose or draw of something like 100 football matches. You then want to efficiently work out the probability of every single permutation of these 100 matches?

I don't understand. You go into great detail during your posts, so i thought you may appreciate a little detail in return, but instead you label it pedantic. Nevermind, nothing more to be said here. See you around.

The only point is that Buddhism is not nearly as homogenous as you seem to think. 'Buddhism' itself doesn't hold beliefs - its adherents do. And it's adherents have a great range of beliefs. The range includes belief, agnosticism and non-belief in rebirth. This range of beliefs is possible while still calling all these people Buddhists. That is all. Interesting. Source? P.S. Your posts touch on so many points i have difficulty staying on one train of thought: would you be able to keep your posts brief to accommodate my waning brain power.

The Dalai Lama also advocates action on climate change, but unfortunately (in this context) most Buddhists don't listen to him and those Westerners that do listen to him probably aren't climate change deniers. Came across this page: looks like most religions are already on board to some extent. Maybe they should organise a global interfaith meeting for all religious leaders, the goal being to make a joint declaration on the presence of climate change and actions required by the faithful. Wouldn't just be amazing for climate change but for the world in general to see faiths able to unite.

It's a nefarious kind of love that demands worship.

I don't doubt his intelligence, but neither do i doubt his divisiveness. Farage took a lot of the blame for this in the leave campaign but Boris' rhetoric was just as much 'us' versus 'them'. London mayor 2nd biggest job in UK politics?

I heard about 100 tories are ready to back him. Maybe he's considering whether it would be worth it: he knows he would have to preside over a complete mess. Imagine - we could live in a world with Putin, Trump and Boris all as national leaders...

Well the catholic church has adopted an official stance. That might help a bit.

Fair enough, but why the caveat that it needs to be practiced in the east? First lets look at some Buddhist texts. The Kalama Sutta is perhaps the most famous, but from a lesser known section the Buddha says: i.e. it doesn't matter if there is a life beyond this one (rebirth), Buddhism is a method developed to help you out either way - the Buddha is explaining an agnostic position on the afterlife. Here you can also find an argument that some of the earliest Buddhist texts do not teach the doctrine of rebirth: I hope by appealing straight to the scriptures i have by-passed your need for such non-rebirth believing Buddhists to be from the east. But just in case my anecdote of having met a Buddhist priest who does not believe in literal rebirth (she is Korean, from a Zen school), apparently Shin Buddhism - ironically a branch of pure land Buddhism, and thoroughly eastern - pays no heed to any afterlife. I accept that the majority of Buddhists believe in rebirth, but the key point is that such belief is not necessary and can (if you want) be taken separate from karma. There is no reincarnation in Buddhism: any reference to reincarnation is a slip of the tongue. Buddhism generally teaches rebirth - the subtle difference being that there is no transmigration of a 'self'. I think this is explained well here, but there's plenty of online resources. It is not just the case that Buddhism has a more rarefied and ephemeral concept of self: the concept of anatta, or no-self, is a core Buddhism belief. That is my least favourite description of Nirvana i have ever seen (for one it's not a place). My favourite: after enlightenment, the laundry.

Why would the light that is scattered start off in the UV? From having been scattered in the atmosphere via Rayleigh scattering? So the visible spectrum penetrates through water more easily, so that means it scatters less? I'm struggling to see how this characteristic of water accounts for its blue colour though. Total aside: i wonder whether the fact that the visible spectrum penetrates most readily through water contributed to the eye evolving to see those wavelengths?

The paralysis is not complete; i'd be surprised if she could scream but mumbling possibly. Actually, trying to focus on moving a hand or foot is quite a common trick of 'snapping out' of it.

Agree with all the above: sounds very much like isolated sleep paralysis and good sleep hygiene is a way reducing occurrence. If it persists and is severe enough you can seek medical help, but depending on your healthcare set-up you may first need to convince your general physician about it and that you need a referral to a neurologist. General doctors may not be aware of it, but neurologists certainly should be.

So there are plenty of resources around explaining why the sky is blue with Rayleigh scattering. Now according to this website, and others, one of the reasons the sea is blue is Raman scattering: But it fails to explain exactly why Raman scattering would produce a blue sea. As i understand it Rayleigh scattering predominates Raman scattering and would be sufficient to explain the blue sea. If anything, as anti-stokes scattering, which would shift towards the blue end of the spectrum, is rarer than stokes scattering, which shifts towards the red, wouldn't the overall Raman shift be towards the red end? I'd appreciate any pointers or useful resources to help me understand.

And soon hopefully: being able to communicate online with people who speak another language and with different cultural perspectives would make the world a smaller place. I wonder, will this be the first Star Trek technology to become common place?

At one level of magnification things might seem like chaotic arbiters of death, when at another they are part of the natural order of life. Take earthquakes and volcanoes: they bring nothing but death and destruction, right? Take a different perspective though and you see they are necessary manifestations of the planet having a healthy geo-system. Remove earthquakes and volcanoes and we'll soon have a dead planet. They only seem at enmity with life because we predominantly like to see things from our own perspective, but it's an arbitrary distinction: unnatural dare i say.

There are so many flavours of Buddhism that you'd be able to find some for which this is the case and others for which it is not. (Buddhism doesn't actually teach reincarnation but rebirth - the difference being there is no permanent self, soul or mind which passes between lives.)

They didn't explain how they linked this particular extinction event to climate change. I would have thought that a more objective would be the rate of extinction events, given that it seems extremely difficult at best to ascribe single events to particular causes.