Ophiolite

Well, you are almost on the equator, so perhaps you can work on persuading Lee Hsien Loong to make Singapore the site of the first sky hook. They are the best chance we have of making space travel affordable.

Thanks for the prompt and comprehensive reply. I'll start delving into these. If I ever make it as far as Peskin & Schroeder I'll let you know! Thanks again.

Severian, your explanations of the sub-atomic world are always clear. Can you recommend some excellent web-sites (or books) that offer a current, well structured, lucid and maybe even entertaining digest of the field for an educated layman? I've googled through scores, but am not always sure about their reliability. (gib65, sorry for hi-jacking your thread, but I think these could be useful to all of us.)

Again, I am not entitled to comment on the innocence or otherwise of the victims of the 911 attacks. I was specifically referring to my own innocence were I to be the victim of a hi-jacking. My social and economic standing is very relevant here. I enjoy a lifestyle as a westerner that is achieved partly at the expense of third world nations. Example - 1.9 million children under the age of five die each year as a consequence of diarrhea. (That's more than six hundred times the number of deaths in 911.) The majority of these lives could be saved for a fraction of what is spent in the US alone on cosmetics. So we have chosen to value a bottle of perfume above that of a child, so that we can smell nice. I will not, therefore be surprised if a pro-Palestinian hi-jacker decides that in order to get his message across he feels entitled to place a similar low value on my life. As ye sow, so shall ye reap. So, I am definitely not innocent. The rest of you can make your own minds up.

DirteeRice, anytime I look at cases like this I am reminded of the astronomer Carl Sagan's statement 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence'. (There is a very interesting and relevant interview with Sagan on the subject of UFO's and extraterrestrial intelligence here http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/aliens/carlsagan.html) Your two cases are fascinating stories, but just unconvincing. SubJunk laments the fact that these cases are rarely investigated thoroughly, so that they always remain a mystery. I think whenever cases like this are investigated the mystery melts away and the explanation is hoax or misinterpretation, so that it becomes pointless to investigate new ones.

Here's something that might work. Approach one of Arianespace's customers, one whose public image is important to them, and ask to piggyback your satellite onto their launch. An extra 20kgs is going to be nothing for them. They get all the publicity of 'promoting an interest in science and space' among 'the young people, who are our future'. You get a free launch, so all you are left with is the cost of the satellite. This is workable if you have a convincing satellite design and its objectives are novel in some way.

I believe they found a total of eight individuals. You are correct about the consistency of the bones, but I don't think this effects the the structural markers. I beleive these are primarily related to the fusion of certain bones in adulthood: adults have slightly fewer bones than children. There are probably microscopic differnces too, but the condition of the material, as you have suggested, may render these ineffective in this case. Edit: AuburnGirl, your two latest links are working perfectly. Thanks.

Perhaps the best argument you could use for your viewpoint is that even though we are members of the same species, with very similar hardwiring, we are still perceiving reality differently in this instance. I think that would be misleading. Consider the fable of the six blind men who go in search of an elephant. The have heard of the beast, but know little about it. The first blind man walks into its flank and declares that an elephant is a wall. The second finds its trunk and identifies it as a snake. The one who stumbles into a leg is sure it is a tree, and so on. And all because their limited perception limts their interpretation of what an elephant is. Now, had these men been scientists the outcome would have been different. They would have discussed their findings, carried out experiments, approached the beast from different directions, investigated its behaviour in diverse conditions. Slowly they would have built up an improved, though never complete, picture of what an elephant was. The reality of the elephant would never change, their direct perception of it would change slightly, but their overall understanding would change enormously. Does that have any resonance for you?

Are you trying to build a flying saucer YT?

I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one. I remain comfortable with the notion that science moves towards describing objective truth. Individual scientists may fail in this goal because of the limitations of perspective and paradigm you have described, but the science is the same regardless of the mind set. Can I prove this? No. You would have got closer to convincing me if you had quoted J.B.S.Haldane "The Universe is not only queerer than we imagine, it is queerer than we can imagine."

Structural changes in the skeleton over a lifespan allow adults to be distinguished from children.

Can I just point out that fireworks are explosives (made with toxic chemicals) and explosives (and toxic chemicals) kill people. 5614 is a regular poster and it would be a shame to lose him. Be cautious, get advice (as you are doing here), and check the legal aspect too. It sounds like so much fun the government is sure to have made it illegal!

Slime-mold is very introspective. It probably wont have noticed.

I thought that would be the line of Deirdra's you would go for, It was the most contentious. I've lifted this from one of my posts to the Mind of a Terrorist thread. A final point that may offend some, so I shall put it in personal terms to try to reduce the offence. If I am ever on a plane that is hi-jacked please do not allow any part of the media, or any politician, to refer to me as an innocent victim. In voting as I vote (or even worse not voting), in living the consumer life style I do, in focusing on my life, my needs, my wants (where 'my' includes family, friends, and fellow Economist subscribers), I have lost all entitlement to be considered innocent.

Rape and abstention are aberrant forms of genetically determined, though environmentally modified, sexual behaviour patterns.These behaviour patterns may be heterosexual or homosexual. The choice lies in whether or not you follow an aberrant pattern (rape or abstention in your examples), not in whether you are inherently (yes, deliberate word choice) homo or hetero. Damion and Sayonara have laid this out in detail. Which part are you failing to understand? Additionally, there seems to be an undercurrent in your posts that is based on the following beliefs: homosexuality is wrong; homosexuals could change if they just tried hard enough. If you are not homophobic you do a pretty good imitation of someone who is. You are entitled to such a world view, but don't try to justify if with bad science.

It's both. The way Nash and others formalised the inter-active decision process, focused on the things that are common between games and economic systems. We know that games are a key aspect of childhood and form a means of learning. There is that expression, now a cliche, Life isn't a rehearsal. That's true, but games are a rehearsal. Because games are more structured than real life, it is easier to analyse them, then to extend what has been learnt to more complex and realistic situations. Government Health Warning: I know nothing about game theory, never saw the film, and am throwing out the thoughts above as a means of teaching myself. Caveat emptor.

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing it with us. I couldn't get into the abstract directly by your link - it kept generating various errors. This one worked, however:http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v392/n6672/abs/392173a0_fs.html Oops - that's the same as your link. There must be an intermittent problem on their server.

Unfortunately cyles of violence, like outdated scientific theories, generally end when all the protagonists are dead. Recognising the responsiblity that we (i.e. the west) bear in many of these matters can go a long way to detach the young from the unhelpful attitudes of the old guard, and so speed that day. (And before someone throws a bleeding-heart liberal soubriquet at me, let me assure you I am speaking from a very selfish posture of not wanting myself or my family blow up, oppressed or economically disadvantaged, because we haven't the gumption to address the genuine needs of others.) Diedra - liked your whole post.

To try to return somewhat to Bloodhound's original theme I raise the question, "Which is the biggest influence on voters: newspaper edndorsements, media reporting, presidential debates, views of friends and family, prejudices and habit?" Or, if you wish to stay on the amended theme, "To what extent does the divisiveness of the Civil War remain in the fabric of US political life today, and how does it express itself?" [And Pangloss, thanks for the enquiry on my wife. She is fine - the car has a broken fuel line from the rock she hit. In this case its not driving on the left or the right of the road that was the problem, it was not driving on any part of the road.] Deidra's post went in while I was writing mine. Could you clarify what it is you wonder. I'm not sure if you are agreeing or disagreeing with PanGloss.

If this report, on cloning, is accurate it does raise a host of ethical questions. Most of them revolve around whether we consider it this creature or a fellow human. Mokele, re-hunting predators or herbivores, you were quite right to take me to tusk for the mammoths!

Right, but you did say carbon bonds. I agree water would be a problem, which was why I said it would need some currently unimaginable chemistry to work. I don't actually think the chemistry is unimaginable - its just unimaginable to me. I was hoping my comment would incite a reaction from one of the chemists. (Oh, Subtlety where is thy sting?) I see you're in Finland. I had the great pleasure of mapping a mantled gneiss dome in the vicinity of Liperansalo, near Joensu, some years ago. Great time. Great people.

The methodology of science is intended to provide an objective, independent, 'real' view of the Universe.That is fails to do so some/much/all of the time is the reflection of the limited time and resource that have been applied; it is not a reflection of a failure of the methodology. The charateristics of mind that you mentioned - emotions, sentiments, mind events - are precisely what the methodology is designed to circumvent. There are plenty of things that our mind cannot detect through its senses that we can nevertheless investigate, interpret and understand. This process of setting aside the 'mind events' is a central part of our science and must be a central part of the alien mind's science, if it is still to be called science.

I wouldn't even begin to try, but if you google "John Nash" there are host of good links. I found this description of game theory useful: Game theory studies interactive decision-making, where the outcome for each participant or "player" depends on the actions of all. If you are a player in such a game, when choosing your course of action or "strategy" you must take into account the choices of others. But in thinking about their choices, you must recognize that they are thinking about yours, and in turn trying to take into account your thinking about their thinking, and so on. from - http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/nash/sfeature/sf_dixit.html von Neumann and others had already looked at situations where there were winners and losers. (I think its called a zero sum situation.) Nash was the first to examine, and explain, situations where all of the participants could win.