Moontanman

When sprouting seeds I worry a bit about fungus and use a fungicide, trying to sterilize the soil by boiling would kill good and bad bacteria but keeping the system stirile seems to be an impossible task. i would think that bad bacteria would be more likely to dominate such a culture. In organic soil good bacteria and good fungi as well as other organisms are an important part of growing. I have to agree with SJ, if you are worried about sterile conditions it's best to go with sterile chemicals. I would think there would be less chance of wayward bacteria taking over a sterile fluid than a fluid with lots of organic matter that will support almost any kind of bacteria and it wouldn't have the good bacteria to suppress what ever began to grow.

Yes I think animals have consciousness, some more than others. I see no reason to assume the origin of consciousness is anything but the brain. Chemical processes in the brain result in the emergent property of consciousness, nothing else is evidently happening but i am willing to consider it if you have some evidence for it.. You keep asserting it comes from outside. Please show why you think this. Not being able to prove it is not coming from outside the brain is not evidence it is.. .

It's really odd but once you see the paper it becomes more reasonable. I have read that non bound planets are quite common in our galaxy, I would have not thought moon sized bodies could be detected that way. Good post...

It makes some sense, a better way to go is to use liquid fertilizers. Boiling could degrade some of the things plants need, I'm not sure but boiling it would remove things like good bacteria and it might break down some of the organics plants need. I often use old aquarium water to grow plants, I never thought of boiling it. Aquarium water and mulm are a black liquid that will settle out but it takes a long time. Plants really grow well in it, the boiling part has kinda thrown me off a bit. I'll have to do some googling...

I have to ask, do you think other animals have consciousness? If so where does thiers come from? I would like to ask you yet again to follow forum rules and give your evidence that consciousness comes from outside the brain. simply asserting that i can't prove it doesn't is not evidence of anything...

You are so full of it, you insinuated those things in your post, if not why did you mention them in relation to liberalism? How was I'm not a communist in anyway pertinent to your rant if not in comparison to liberals? When I say I'm a liberal is it necessary for me to say I'm not a fascist in that context? Why was it necessary to say you have morals in a rant about why you are not a liberal? Tell me what you are, not what you aren't, I am not a great many things, none of them identify me, I only identify with the things i am not the things I am not...

Yeah, liberals are communists, liberals want to take our guns, liberals want to make everyone have an abortion, liberals have no morals... fuck it, not worth my time, go worship your Christian president...

Do you really not see how silly your post was? Do you really think these things are that cut and dried? Can you really not see how claiming a label without any caveats put you squarely into the wing nut zone? Can you really not see how your claims about liberals is no better than liberal claims about conservatives? Good God, we're doomed, the great filter is here and it is us...

You gave us an insane rant, I gave you one. I identify as liberal because I can disagree with liberals, it's a big tent... Sadly there is no "side" I can identify with as much as you evidently can... If you cannot see your own rant for what is was then you are as far gone as any extremist... communism my grandma's but...

So sarcasm is completely lost on you? What does communism have to do with liberalism? Pot meet kettle...

Damn, maybe there is an outside source! https://www.livescience.com/61627-ancient-virus-brain.html

Well lets see, I have no problem being a progressive but blindly following any side is bound to end badly. This makes no sense, how is any of this conservative? It's more anarchist than anything else. Well you'd be incorrect, what makes me feel good is irrelevant and your assertion is just more propaganda from those that want to divide and conquer. And this has what to do with being conservative? More propaganda, is this your "feeling about liberals" or just more of the oligarchy potting us against each other? Bullshit, the government does many things better, from trash service to road building. The private sector always raises the price and lowers the quality of any service... WOW are you going to mention Hitler next? Morals matter? What a joke, see our current conservative party, they have the morals of a rat. Communism? You are equating liberals with communists? Damn you have been drinking way to much kool aid... Conservatism, being on the wrong side of everything from racism to capitalism, making the rich richer and everyone else poorer for thousands of years... Yeah I know what you mean, ending slavery and building a middle class was so wrong... Conservatives learn nothing from the past except they want to return to the glory days of the nobles and surfs... This I agree with whole heartedly... You cannot claim this as a conservative ideal, Yes some liberals feel this way, get used to it... Yeah as long as those other guys know their place everything is fine... And this is not a conservative ideal in any manner. Recently the conservatives deported a man who had spent nearly all his life here, he owned a business, payed taxes, had employees, a wife children, had never been in trouble but because his parents brought him here he is back in a country where he doesn't speak the language or know the customs. a stranger in a strange land because he was brought here when he was young... Yes it should be done legally, pay all that extra money for food harvested by americans who have to be paid a decent wage. paying non citizens slave wages so conservatives can get richer is so wrong... This we can discuss but you are obviously not in step with your oligarch bosses... How about an oligarchy where the few rich capitalists buy our representatives and holding public office is simply a way to get rich by fucking over everyone but your owners... I am a liberal, I think abortion is wrong, i also think telling a woman what she has to do with her body is wrong. It's interesting that your christian value do not match the laws christians are trying to pass to take rights away from some to make others feel good about imposing their moral views on others.. Then why would you write such a silly post about how you are a conservative? Do you think that there is only two paths? get with the program, stop allowing others to tell you who to oppress. Your statement is neither conservative or liberal, it's called middle of the road where reasonable people make reasonable decisions based on reality instead of political party... Why didn't you just say this instead of trying to tell me what liberals are and why conservatives are better? anytime you blindly follow the herd you are sheep... No you are towing the party line, our government is owned by the few at the expense of the many due to people not thinking and following nothing but propaganda.. Stop allowing your self to be labeled by people who are just trying to dominate us all by creating a false dichotomy. There is far more than just two sides and the extremes of both sides are just stopping the rest of us from being able to fight the bastards...

You missed my point, a small fusion or fission device detonated in low Earth orbit would destroy the electrical infrastructure of the US. Replacements are difficult to come by and not kept in large numbers to replace destroyed equipment. From transformers to entire electrical grids the destruction would be extensive and very slow to repair due to lack of replacement parts being since they are not stockpiled. Manufacturing replacement parts would be slow and slower still since the replacement parts need an intact electrical grid to be manufactured. I've seen estimates of more than a decade to restore electrical service to the electrical networks destroyed in this way. Everything would stop, a vast majority of cars, computers, phones, and nearly everything that is electronic would be rendered unusable. Hospitals, banks, heating and air conditioning, most of what we need to produce food, medicine, clean water, sanitation. All from one medium sized nuke detonated in low Earth orbit over the target. One such nuke could take out most of the US mainland... Even a counter strike could be hampered, if we struck back in the same way many small countries do not depend of electronics as much as we do and a counter strike would affect far more than just the country that attacked us. Fallout could kill millions of people in friendly countries and give enemy countries a reason to strike in in retribution for the poisoning of their lands.

This design is the result of 45 years of aquarium building, fish husbandry, plant cultivation and live food cultivation. A full size version of this, actually the one pictured here is just a proof of concept, but a significantly larger version could be a self contained ecosystem (not a closed ecosystem) and the plant, fish, mollusc, crustacean, infusoria, and algae would be similar to a natural pond or stream with little input. The reversing current would increase productivity significantly over a square box or even a single round cylinder. You would have to have inputs like other aquaria but that would be limited to light, new water (about .1% per day) and some replacement of biomass to make up for natural inputs like insects. A food pyramid consisting of small fast reproducing fishes, molluscs, and crustaceans would allow for an almost natural system with smaller fishes and then small predatory fishes. The constant stirring of the water back and forth to imitate an estuarine system would allow for higher bio output per square foot of living space. This would be a very interesting system to keep in of itself but the construction also allows for a larger more diverse population of display fishes although the upkeep would be similar to normal fish display. This design allows for more varied habitat and would allow a larger number of fish being kept in a smaller space without the sad look of fish simply swimming back and forth against the glass. This would allow fish to be kept that would normally not due well confined to a square glass box and allow for more varied and normal behavior of the captives. I also assert that a larger, adjusted to the size of the fish, version of this could be used to keep pelagic fish that normally need a huge habitat to allow them to survive without killing themselves against the side of the aquarium. I think I could keep fish like mahi mahi, cobia, mackerel, and even fish like marlin and swordfish under these conditions. Sharks husbandry would benefit greatly from this design. I can go into detail about specific species and estimates of numbers and to what extent this design could be used to imitate natural habitats or used to keep a larger diversity of fish under normal aquarium conditions.

It's an interesting question, currently the Soviets are bragging about some sort of super bomb that can take out huge areas (personally I think it's just posturing). Smaller bombs are actually more destructive per megaton than very large nukes. A MIRV with 9 one megaton warheads is far more destructive than one 9 megaton warhead. I would hope that the fear of nuclear bombs extends far past their explosive potential. A small bomb still creates fallout and that is arguably more dangerous than the explosion alone. Something like a 4th generation nuclear bomb, a pure fusion bomb, possibly triggered by antimatter, would be far more dangerous due to it having very little fallout and it's use wouldn't be deterred by the fear of poisoning a large section of the biosphere and making everyone suffer for many years afterwards. Such weapons would be a wrench in the cogs of MAD and allow for hot heads to use them against far more targets with less blow back from the general population. Currently I think the major danger is for a small country to get froggy and detonate a bomb in low earth orbit over another country and take out it's electric and electronic infrastructure. such a strike would be devastating to a 1st world country.

Who says there is no purpose to life? Why would a material world preclude purpose? Actually yes the evidence currently available does indeed point to the brain as the source of consciousness, unless of course you have a source that isn't simply a baseless assertion... Again with the totally unsupported assertions... No, in fact self replicating machines have indeed achieved sentience and intelligence not to mention consciousness with no outside help... Would you admit that other animals show all those emotions and create art? This last is nothing but technobabble nonsense... It's just as entirely possible that aliens visit me at night and take samples of my aurora to power their spacecraft... The way i see this is that you either need to show a possible source of consciousness or admit that you are just engaging in magical thinking.

I have the idea of the center triangle being made as an island of volcanic rocks with layers of wood chips and hay between layers of lava rocks. The idea is to made a refuge in the middle where things like amphipods, isopods, crayfish, ghost shrimp and other small invertebrates can live and reproduce while being partially protected from predation. The apex of each triangle would be the site of a swamp tree trimmed back somewhat in the manner of bonsai. Cattails and other swamp plants would also root in this island and allow for the protection of small fish, egg scatterers, and live bearers. A flow through drip of about 1 to 2 drops of water every second would be introduced and allowed to drain out as the level rises. 2 drops per second should be near 2.25 gallons of water per 24 hours.

You nailed that one dude!

Don't be so quick to assume they are rotting, have you changed the water for new water every day? Mine looked like they were rotting before they began to sprout.

He did not say that science universally asserted or accepted these things, he was saying that science, as universally accepted, does not accept the idea of a supernatural cause for anything much less consciousness. How many? You can find scientists that think almost anything but the consensus of most is what we are talking about. This is an interesting comparison since religion has no empirical evidence and is all at best baseless speculation. No in fact "Relativity Theory" as you put it has been put to the test many times and as it passes these challenges it does become more likely to be true. You are playing with the definition of words here. No, the viewpoint is not rigid, the scientific method does not stifle free inquiry, but science does need an actual mechanism or effect to be considered. Saying that there is no evidence for visiting aliens is not the same as saying there are no aliens. If you have evidence supporting the supernatural then you should show it, if you can't show it then you don't know it.. All the following are arguments from authority, if there is evidence of your position show it, don't try to use the words of others as proof. That way leads to the sifling of scientific inquiry... More from Heisenberg, after being asked about Neils Bohr's remarks about positivism: The magic of thinking is that it can probe into the depths of the unknown and begin to fathom what was once unfathomable. This is the pioneering spirit of science which originated from Natural Philosophy, which was decried at that time as being "overly metaphysical". It was these same Neo Kantians who leveled the first criticisms of the theory of relativity, due in no small part for it's implications to their own philosophical perspective. One such early pioneer was Johan Wilhem Ritter, who discovered ultraviolet light, among other things. He was a student of natural philosophy. What if Ritter has foregone his experiments because there was "no evidence"? Such a positivist mindset would have precluded more or less all the great scientific breakthroughs. To Ritter the possibility of the "force" of ultraviolet light must have been within the realm of his comprehension, but what if you suggested the same thing to Archimedes or Plato? Surely these great men would reject the notion of different spectrums of light as "magical thinking", as they did not possess the instrumentation to measure or test for them, or would they perhaps entertain them in the realm of philosophy? Similarly, we do not yet possess a means that is capable of truly analyzing consciousness. Perhaps in the future we will, when scientists look back pityingly on CERN as quaint and primitive. In lieu of the positivist approach, which is limited, understanding consciousness requires instead a noetic approach: From Douglas Hofstadter's book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid regarding: So at some point there must be a departure from the "known" to the "unknown", from the fireside of comfortable evidence to the abyss of potentiality that may overturn that evidence. David Bohm's theories on the nature of consciousness and the "implicate order" address this point of departure, however, he rejected a dualistic approach, preferring to see the mind and body being involved in one continuous movement of an unfolded universe: He continues: In other words, the true nature of consciousness is ever-present, but immeasurable. Thus, to rely on understanding the material components of something like the human brain as the full spectrum of what consciousness actually is is an incomplete approach. This isn't evidence to support your hypothesis, that consciousness originates in the brain. This statement merely recognizes that for human beings a brain is necessary to inquire into the question of consciousness. It doesn't address the question of origin. The universe may in fact be conscious, objectively speaking, with or without our existence. Yeah, there could be invisible pixies holding the Moon in orbit around the Earth but to say not including that idea stifles inquiry is absurd... You are again twisting words here, there is no presupposition that consciousness originates in the brain, there is only the fact that no evidence supports anything else. If you have some I would suggest you tell us instead of using logical fallacies to obfusticate the discussion...

If you are still looking for ways to kill time here is another series that might help you figure this out. He goes into considerable detail about the jaw in several episodes and in fact jaw structure is one of the ways we differentiate between groups of animals... https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXJ4dsU0oGMLnubJLPuw0dzD0AvAHAotW

The difference is that we know that a material source is possible because we have access to materials and it is at least hypothetically possible to falsify this. No known immaterial source exists and there is no known way to test for this. In the face of a total lack of evidence the default position is there is no immaterial source for consciousness... I can hypothesize anything, I hypothesize a basketball is in orbit around Uranus, you cannot show it is not so I must consider the basketball as real or even possible? Then the invisible pixies must be considered as equal... Magical thinking is not science, an unknown supernatural source for consciousness is nothing but magical thinking..

I'm pretty sure France uses them as well. Their lack of popularity at least in some respects, has to do with them not being good at producing weapons grade material...

I could not have said it better, Galveston Tommy, what mistermack said...