Ophiolite

Shape shifting!

Those are somewhat different from the way we sub-divided our reports. I'm casting my mind back forty years here, so forgive any inaccuracies. We would have had: Experiment Name Purpose of Experiment Experimental Apparatus Results Conclusion I am trying to relate your three sections to these. Let's start with the conclusion. Briefly, what was the end result of your experiment? What did you discover, or confirm? e.g. We found that when plants were deprived of sunlight, by being placed in a light tight closet, but otherwise provided with air, water and nutrients, they turned yellow and died after a couple of weeks. The discussion and evaluation are less distinct, and I suspect that a very specific meaning has grown up for these. I recommend you ask your teacher to clarify the difference between them, but in the mean time: Evaluation is where you assess the data you collected during the experiment. Did the experiment go to plan? Are the data good, reliable data? What do they tell us? How certain or uncertain is this? Discussion, would then fall either before or after this evaluation. If it is before it would include the purpose/apparatus of the experiment from my list at the start. If it is placed after it should look at what this data means in the larger shceme of things, or how the uncertainties in the conclusions might be addressed. Earlier I said 'let's start with the conclusion'. This is actually a good rule when preparing reports. A report is not a mystery novel. You do not need to keep the reader guessing till he gets to the end. In the real world people do not read reports! They scan them, they dip into them. I produce several reports in my work, ranging from four or five pages long to fifty or more. I fully expect that only the first page will be read by the people who matter. So the first page is an Executive Summary and it has everything important I want the reader to know. In scientific reports this would be called the Abstract and would likely be nore more than one or two paragraphs long. Before you put this into practice make sure that putting the conclusion at the beginning is acceptable in your school system. Hope that is of some help.

No, I think MM is talking about the ways in which leaders of the 'free, democratic' west, will use any bogeyman - world communism, the drug menace, terrorism - to further restrict our freedoms. Harking back to earlier posts by LucidDreamer, may I say LucidWriter would have worked just as neatly. Your points are well argued. To expand on one aspect - you mention Osama may be either desparate or confident to suggest he will strike big in the US again. Not necessarily. Terror and horror are closely allied. In a horror film much of the horror comes from the uncertainty and the waiting. So too with terror. 'I'm going to strike, sometime. Just wait.' Using this tactic Osama has managed to screw up the US economy and totally detract the US and the world from things that are much more important. It is for that reason that I agree with you - he wants Bush re-elected because the Iraq invasion has done wonders for his recruitment, if not of active terrorists, undoubtedly of sympathisers.

Your original post was titled 'is science arbritary?' I believe I have demonstrated that it is not arbritary either through the use of symbols, nor through its interaction with events. Your clarification suggests, if I understand you correctly, that the arbritary character of science arises from the peculiar character of the human mind. An alien mind, having a different structure, would perforce have a different science. And so we see that the science is a chance construct of the chance character of the mind, and is therfore arbritary. Is this a correct re-statement of your thesis? Let's consider that. We might consider three aspects to this: The character of the event or thing under investigation The methodology by which we investigate it The order in which choose to investigate and the relative importance we place on it The character of the event or thing is wholly independent of the mind investigating it, so that aspect is not arbritary. Light still travels at c for all observers, no matter how we investigate it, if our investigation methods are valid. The methodology we call science is, as noted in my earlier post, highly structured. I think you need to demonstrate clearly how a different methodology could still produce 'truth' about events or things and still be called science, I would fully accept the order of discovery will be closely linked to the character of the mind. That will not alter the nature of the discovery. To me, the 'truth' we are seeking, followed by the way in which we seek it are what define science. The order in which events/things are investigated is of minor importance. Since the first two are not arbritary, we cannot say that science is arbritary, though I concede that we can say the order in which we investigate phenomena is. Note: the spelling of arbritrary throughout these posts is deliberately arbitary.

You vindicated my uneasy feeling when I wrote that, but it's been a couple of decades since I had to worry about binary eutectics, phase transitions and the like. I suspected someone might challenge me on it. Thanks for setting me straight and for the useful link.

"Science is a system of arbitrary symbols". Surely this is a tautology. Of course a symbol is arbitrary. We generally represent the speed of light by the letter 'c'. We could just as easily represented it by the letter 'y' or 'A' or any other arbitrary symbol. That would in no way effect the science that we developed relating to light. "Science is a system of .............arbitrary interactions". Very clever. Having softened us up on a statement so blindingly obvious in your pleonastic opening phrase' date=' you drop in a second phrase that is, at least, highly questionable. I am, hypothetically, a biochemist, but I get up one morning, go to my lab and arbitrarily decide to investigate orbital mechanics of objects in the Kuiper belt. Or Severian (excuse me using you as an example) decides arbitraily to stop bashing baryons together and go off and look at sexual dimorphism in brachipods. I think not. A central point about the interactions of science is that they are highly structured, planned, assessed and documented. There is nothing arbitrary about these interactions. The event with which science is interacting may be partially arbritary, but the interaction is not. "Science is .....dependent on a mind interacting with the universe." Well, good. We can agree on that. However, the [i']events[/i] science describes are, for the most part, not dependent on the mind. [Let's set aside the role of the observer in quantum mechanics for the moment.] But science itself is very much dependent upon the mind, since science is a methodology and methodologies require minds to implement them. But none of this implentation or interaction is arbritary. With your premise flawed the rest of your argument is a logical non sequitor.

We all generate false memories of varying degrees of complexity all the time. Our brains are constructed in such a way that they seek out patterns in what we sense and experience. If there are no patterns there the brain will invent some. (Schiraperelli's canals would be a simple, but classic example.) I suspect this plays a role in generating at least some false memories. For a more studious consideration look here at the False Memory Syndrome web site:http://www.fmsfonline.org/t

You shouldn't try to extrapolate analogies. Didn't you post this in another thread?

How slow could I run would be more accurate. When I did jog, then my best 10k time was 42 minutes. Sprinting was not on my agenda: I ran to forget, and running for less than a minute was not long enough for that.

It adds an interesting chapter, but in what way does it shatter the story?

Since the initial find includes the remains of eight individuals,then that does not compute.

A group of non-biologists discussing bio-chemistry; excellent. Can anyone join in? Thanks. Life is constanly fighting a battle to stay in one piece - which is why when you die, you don't - stay in one piece. The colder it is the less likely you are to go to pieces (Gosh, that must be why we use refrigerators!) The flip side of the coin is that the very chemical reactions that constitute life preceed much more slolwy at lower temperatures, and would need some currently unimaginable chemistry to work. TANSTAAFL. So anything that did live there would be slow, ponderous, single minded and icy cold. [Remember you heard it here first, the Titanians are Republicans.] For a more sophisticated treatment of this same argument (minus the cheap political shot) I imagine googling [biochemistry entropy thermodynamics "reaction rates"] might turn up something.

The similarity is that in both cases a significant proportion of the population were being persecuted' date=' and intervention was made difficult by certain other foreign countries having a vested interest in maintaining the [i']status quo[/i]. The difference is that Sudan has a smidegeon of oil, Iraq is overflowing with it.It is my belief that the primary reason for invading Iraq was not to locate and destroy non-existent WMD, nor to rescue a people from a vile dictatorship, but to secure ME oil supplies. (Incompetent way of doing it, but that's just another opinion.) Sudan stands little chance of being rescued from itself by the West because they just don't have enough oil to deserve rescue.

A couple of points, that have perhaps already been made in a slightly different way. I think it is important not to dismiss the importance of the knowledge and understanding to the general public. Without NASA we would not know what the face of Mars looks like; the Galilean satellites of Jupiter would be specks of light, not distinct worlds; the complexities of Saturn's rings would be unknown; no man would have stepped on the moon. The world we inhabit today has a feel that is different for everyone because of these discoveries. As an example, concern for the environment began to be a public concern when the first photograph of Earth in its entirety was published. And to emphasise an earlier post, without satellites our navigation (at sea and in the air), communications, news media, weather forecasting, land management, environmental monitoring would cease to function. Now the majority of satellites fulfilling these roles were not put there by NASA, but without the lead provided by NASA it is doubtful they would have been developed. Which leads, neatly, to my final comment. NASA is most effective when it is pioneering, not when it is operating a trucking service to near Earth orbit. It should function as a catalyst, and that way it can avoid becoming a catastrophe.

If we can send troops to Iraq 'for the benefit of the Iraqi people' then why can't we send them to Sudan?

Production levels are around 350,000 barrels per day, of which almost 300,000 is exported. The quoted reserves are only 500 million barrels, so at this rate, and with no further discoveries, they have a problem within the decade. The oil is produced from a single field operated by a joint venture between national oil companies of China, Malaysia and India. This is relevant because it means they have the tacit support of the two largest countries on the planet an a key islamic nation. (I believe the Canadian Company Talisman pulled out under domestic pressure.) The US has arguably acted in a responsible manner in relation to Sudan through both the Clinton and Bush administrations, seeking to broker a peace settlement between the government in Khartoum and the insurgents in the south. Their failure to achive a result is more a matter of the intransigence of the Sudanese government, abetted by external support, than it is about incompetence or disinterest by the Bush administration.

Which is why I said 'most'. Mercury is unusual anyway. Not just quartz crystals are transparent, there are plenty of others too. Interesting point there is the question of purity. Most (there's that word again) opaque or translucent minerals either contain some impurity or are part of continuous reaction series. The transparent ones, like quartz, have a very pure composition and consequently a very uniform crystaline structure. Again, just thinking out loud.

Yes, do be cautious MM. In the UK, criticising The Economist is slightly more serious than accusing the Queen of armed robbery.

Pure guess: it likely is related to the fact that glass is a supercooled liquid. The amorphous micro-structure must some how facilitate the passage of light. Most transparent 'things' are fluid, most opaque 'things' are solid.Too tired to google for the truth.

Try this google search: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=%22synthetic+versus+natural%22+-vitamin&btnG=Google+Search It turns up Synthetic versus natural protease inhibitors, synthetic versus natural tumor peptides in cancer immunotherapy, synthetic versus natural gypsum, Synthetic versus Natural Fertilizers, synthetic versus natural diamonds, synthetic versus natural insulin, etc.

You make a thoroughly valid point. There are so many peculiar (in the strict sense of the word), even unique aspects about the Earth, its location and external environment, any of which, were they different, would have prevented life evolving, or would have destroyed it by now. That's why I am a pessimist when it comes to the possibility of advanced alien life.

As recompense for my earlier abominable pun, here are some solar wind related sites that are of good quality or special interest. A good overview, with some nice illustrations, and several onward links: http://science.nasa.gov/ssl/pad/solar/sun_wind.htm This is neat. Space weather summarized by a traffic light system. http://space.rice.edu/ISTP/dials.html (For a more sophisticated approach you could go here: http://sec.noaa.gov/ace/ACErtsw_home.html) The Wikipedia article is concise and offers further links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_wind The role of the solar wind in removing most of Mars’ atmosphere: http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast31jan_1.htm And because I’ve seen no recent mention of it elsewhere, I’m sneaking in this on the New Horizons probe to Pluto – it does mention solar wind. http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/new_horizons_solar_wind.html?962004 .