Prometheus

Not all of us are so uncomfortable with the fact of our limited and imperfect existence. But you raise an interesting point, some humans are not uncomfortable with pursuing 'forbidden knowledge'. The late Terry Pratchett put it well when speaking of fantasy: we need somewhere to explore the rising ape and the falling angel. Strive to be gods? Sure, why not? But (a very large one I hope you will not miss), I am not talking about some ultimate creator God, but rather a vague idea that humans can and should strive towards some perfect ideal, knowing full well we will never achieve it, and to do so we must practice love and knowledge, the best path to wisdom according to many a great sage.

I wasn't aware it was the moon that kept the earth at that angle. Actually i imagine there would be three moons: a smaller than ours but closer, one about the same size but farther (such that they both are roughly the same size in the night sky) and a small irregular shaped one with a more elliptical orbit. No idea how stable this would be.

Good to know it's at least somewhat feasible. I first imagined the suns would, at times of the year, both appear roughly the same size and luminosity in the sky, while at other times one would hide behind the other such that only one sun would appear in the sky. I think your latter suggestion would work fine in this case - i can easily believe in such a stable system even if it is unrealistic. Given we accept this system as given, how would that influence the seasons? When there are two suns in the sky would it not get hotter, such that it would influence seasons more than the reasons we experience seasons on Earth? Could it then be that summer and winter occur at the same time all over this world?

I'm creating an alternative Earth for a fantasy story and wondered if people may help me speculate on certain features of it, and how 'Earthlike' they would render the world. I don't need realistic so much as believable - but i would like it to be believable to a scientifically literate crowd. For instance, would it be possible to have the world orbit in the goldilocks zone of a binary system and still be 'Earthlike'. I guess this would alter the seasonality of the world, but i don't know enough astronomy to speculate what difference that might make. Would it depend on the relative orbital speeds of the two stars and the the world? Further, would the stars both have to be yellow like our own sun. If even one emits a different spectra there would be significant consequences for the biodiversity surely? And how would eclipses of one sun relative to the world effect its weather and climate? Loads more questions like that, so any pointers, tips, references appreciated.

Excess humours in bile were once thought to cause malaria, therefore current models that it is caused by parasitic protozoans could be just as mistaken.

Yes, i see your point. I am somewhat naive though and would rather have complete freedom of speech and accept the potentially catastrophic outcomes as part of the bargain. But this is going off-topic and i'm not sure i can really say more on it as my own opinions on the matter are not quite formed.

The myopia displayed here is breathtaking. Do you further suggest that biologists and doctors shouldn't advise government on such issues as antibiotic resistance or the increase of type 2 diabetes? Nevermind, i shan't expect a direct answer - the best i can hope for is obfuscation. Perhaps you should replace the scientists advising government, you certainly have the knack for dodging questions.

I understand where this sentiment comes from but i must strongly disagree. Free speech must allow for people of all perspectives to voice an opinion. In this context it has the added benefit of allowing neutral spectators to see how poorly constructed many arguments denying AGW are. Shelagh. Will you please answer the question myself and Ophiolite have posed in various forms several times. Are you equally sceptical of our models of any of cancer, planetary formation, geomagnetism, abiogenesis and whatever has been mentioned? There is as much or more uncertainty in these fields within the scientific community as there is in climate science. And just so there is no ambiguity, avoiding answering direct questions is one of those tactics some arguments employ which display a paucity of reason.

Where specifically?

Yes, discussing. Bear in mind this is a science forum: it's not enough to simply state a belief, people will generally expect you to back it up. Is that unreasonable or unexpected? As for the bullying: it's an interesting claim. Many people here have tried to change your mind. But note that the majority have either given links to evidence or provided reasons in their posts, such as pointing out inconsistencies. You have generally ignored these (including one of mine), and simply reiterated your belief. This annoys people, so people may become curt with you. This is not bullying, though it may be impolite. I have some respect for you holding onto your views despite peer pressure. But you lose that respect by ignoring people's attempts to discuss evidence. Is that the same as bullying?

Why would you participate in a discussion thread about global warming if you didn't want to discuss global warming? And are you also a sceptic on above mentioned issues of cancer and planetary formation? The reason i ask is because some people have a much higher threshold before believing something - fair enough if consistently applied.

And is fiercely resisted in some quarters. One day, soon hopefully, it will not be offered on the NHS. By their own admission, the models cancer biologists are using are incomplete. Hence, to be consistent, you should be sceptical of cancer.

Does any one here use the Gene Ontology database. I want to use it to look at some enzyme kinetic parameters, which i've been told the database now catalogues, but i can't seem to find them.

I would say that "just being" is neither meaningless or meaningful. A universe with only rocks in wouldn't be meaningful or meaningless: it takes sentience to imbue existence with either of those properties. But I take your point, the universe does not seem to exist for any particular. I can only tell you how i walked through a similar path: the trick was to keep breathing in the hope something would change, until finally i created some meaning to my life by finding some passions. I wonder how much ennui is due to shifting away from religious views: where once man had a given purpose with a goal in sight (heaven), now some people feel cut adrift from the existence.

Yeah, i think it's a reasonably common feeling, at least in my experience. I guess you've already come across the existentialist philosophers: as Albert Camus said, "To decide whether life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question of philosophy” Existence isn't inherently meaningless or meaningful: it just is. If you want meaning in your life, create it. In the myth of Sisyphus we can imagine him happy.

I can't believe that is true, i would have thought geography essential knowledge for history. Or maybe that's archaeologists. It seems mountains played some part in Chinese history too: check out the warring states period and the 3 kingdoms period. Btw, it's the Pyrenees between Spain and France.

It's a thing. What's the solution? Clinicians already have a great breadth of things to learn, it's unrealistic to expect them to learn the requisite maths too. Some cross-disciplinary approach is required.

I did a whole module on ARIMA but still don't understand it. Have you tried de-trending and eliminating seasonality from your data? What package are you using to analyse the data? There are many other methods for analysing time series, but apparently ARIMA is the simplest so probably the best to start with.

Wish i could shed some light on the matter but i can only sympathise with your plight. It highlights a current gap in medicine: we have the tools to measure for these associations, but when it comes to a particular individual no one wants to say anything (even doctors). There are some doctors starting to specialise in genetic medicine but (where i live at least) it feels like the field is moving faster than clinicians can keep pace with.

When we consider some of these systems in isolation we tend to get a good understanding of them. The problem is these systems don't exist in isolation: they have many nuanced interactions in real life, and when we try to put together all the things we understand in isolation it gets awfully complicated. I think the solution is mathematics: it's proved an excellent way of understanding complicated things in the past. I feel biology in general is now ripe for a similar quantitative treatment physics has enjoyed for centuries.

Did it this way in case anyone else is wondering (the dataset is called TitanicData): name := TitanicData[[All, 4]] seperatenames = Map[stringSplit, Rest[name]]; seperatenames[[All, 3]]

Maybe it could be considered as loosely analogous to entropy. Usually there is a narrow spectrum of results we would consider desirable and a great many we would consider undesirable. We might then expect things to go wrong more often than right.

The names are stored in a list of strings. There is a function called StringSplit which splits a string into substrings from which i got a nice table, but i can;t find a way of getting mathematica to work with the substrings to do further work. Mathematica is quite different to other languages i'm learning (R and Python) and i'm beginning to think it isn't worth it.

I'm trying to learn Mathematica, but the support community is a bit sparse. Hoping someone here could help with a particular problem. It's from the Kaggle Titanic data set: {{"Name"}, {"Braund,", "Mr.", "Owen", "Harris"}, {"Cumings,", "Mrs.", "John", "Bradley", "(Florence", "Briggs", "Thayer)"}, {"Heikkinen,", "Miss.", "Laina"}, {"Futrelle,", "Mrs.", "Jacques", "Heath", "(Lily", "May", "Peel)"}, {"Allen,", "Mr.", "William", "Henry"}, {"Moran,", "Mr.", "James"}, {"McCarthy,", "Mr.", "Timothy", "J"}, {"Palsson,", "Master.", "Gosta", "Leonard"}, {"Johnson,", "Mrs.", "Oscar", "W", "(Elisabeth", "Vilhelmina", "Berg)"}} What i want to do is isolate the first names of all passengers - this corresponds to the third word in each element, so {"Braund,", "Mr.", "Owen", "Harris"} = "Owen". I have been unable to find a way to do so. The closest i have come is putting the data in table form, the third column of which is first names but then trying to take this column with: data[[All, 3]] // TableForm doesn't work seemingly because Mathematica still doesn't recognise the column as a column - though who knows what Mathematica is doing behind the scene. Any help very welcome.

Surely if placing all the blame on Islamic ideology is simplistic, then so too placing all the blame on western ideology is simplistic. No doubt there are complex interplays, so no-one actually has the answer. The question is whether we can meaningfully quantify how virile an ideology is in inciting hatred, then we can see how particular ideologies, religious or otherwise, incite violence.