Moontanman

Jackson, I withdraw from this discussion, I generally try to stay out of discussions i am less than knowledgeable about, i apologize for giving you a rough time, an apology is meaningless if it's not public and I hope you will accept it in the spirit it is offered, your knowledge base on this is far beyond mine, I hate politics and i should probably stay out of most discussions about it.

Research Predicts Future Evolution of Flu Viruses ScienceDaily (Feb. 19, 2011) — New research from the University of Pennsylvania is beginning to crack the code of which strain of flu will be prevalent in a given year, with major implications for global public health preparedness. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110217171336.htm

Oldest Fossils of Large Seaweeds, Possible Animals Tell Story About Oxygen in an Ancient Ocean These images are part and counterpart of a macroscopic Lantian fossil, probably a seaweed, with differentiated morphologies including a distinct root-like holdfast to secure the organism on sea bottom, a conical stem, and a crown of ribbon-like structures. Scale bar is 1 centimeter. (Credit: Photo by Zhe Chen) ScienceDaily (Feb. 19, 2011) — Almost 600 million years ago, before the rampant evolution of diverse life forms known as the Cambrian explosion, a community of seaweeds and worm-like animals lived in a quiet deep-water niche under the sea near what is now Lantian, a small village in Anhui Province of South China. Then they simply died, leaving some 3,000 nearly pristine fossils preserved between beds of black shale deposited in oxygen-free waters. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110216132032.htm

Is the property of spin the same thing as a spinning top or a spinning ball? I though the property of "spin" was a way to describe something that has no real world counterpart like "Color" and "Charm" when dealing with sub atomic particles.

UV rays do not cause heat in the way you suggest, yes it is important to wear sunglasses in the winter, if anything the cold causes you not to notice the sun as much but the UV is still there.

You are correct, i was wrong, i recived stock options twice, the first time was in late 80's or early 90's I sold them in 1995 just before they expired and made money, the second set was in 1996 or so but had a more limited life and the stock never rose enough to make any money off them before they expired, niether time was I in a finacial position to actually buy the stocks, finances has never been my long suit. I am very lucky i gave 25 years of my life to DuPont instead of some fly by night company. Possibly wonderful for you, not for most people, and not because they are lazy. Being poor then was a bitch, if you rolled everything back to then the economy would tank just like it did in the great depression, socialist programs brought us out of that not unbridled capitalism. I'm not even going to bother to tell you how bad labor conditions were at that time, I know you don't care, but we would have to go back to similar population size for there to be any possibility of that working for any reason. If you went back to that time with the population we have now all you would have is anarchy. in some ways compared to today, "back then" was not as good as you seem to think, crime was rampant, women were not much more than chattel and so were children, the poor were taken advantage of by greedy Capitalists, no thought was given to workers, if one was injured he could be replaced in an hour with some other poor sap who was hungry. yes it would be wonderful, for heads of industry, the perpetually rich who inherited their money, and those who owned large tracts of land they could work people on and make money from. Every one else was pretty much cannon fodder for every one who had money and power. The situation is so radically different today i cannot understand those who would take us back. You cannot have a purely Capitalist society any more than you can have a purely Socialist society, their has to be a happy medium between the two, the richer and more advanced, not to mention more populous a nation become the more it is the self interest of every to keep people from starving in the streets. It's your definition of the truly needy i have a problem with. Your contempt and disgust of anyone who is in need is really sad, your ideas are just as bad as those who do their best to keep everyone in that cycle of dependence, welfare is much like a drug, it's difficult to get off once you are rooted deeply in that type of culture. Doesn't make those people any less human but throwing them to the wolves is wrong and doesn't help the problem in any way, I think it would make it much worse, much worse... It's one reason i never oppose giving help to people in need who want an education to help them get out. This is true, most parents are, do i have to give examples of parents who were not before you cared to protect those children? Without laws to protect children all the parents have to do is tell every one it's none of their business if little johnny works 80 hours a week instead of school. Parents, even today can teach their kids almost anything and their is no over sight what so ever, i wonder what will happen the kids from the West Borough Baptist Church, how about parents who teach their kids life is nothing but a series of handouts, that is a big part of the problem right now. parents should have to live up to certain standards, the only way to do that is to limit their powers in some way. As I have said before there is already precedence for this, we protect children from lots of things already and rightly so. All i want is for kids not to be worked against their will or in a way that interferes with their school work because with no education what you get is an idiot like me. A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

Early 90's my share options were for $50 a share if I remember correctly, (really don't remember the actual prices from the early 90's), the actual price was $5 over the current option share price, i decided to let it ride, shortly there after it began a fall it never really recovered from and the option ran out before it climbed back up. (btw, i grew up that way too) I agree we need to cut out the socialism roll it back to the late 18 early 1900's I mean almost no one is hungry these days, people need to starve so they will work for nothing, far too many paved roads, who needs em, mud was good enough for our great grand parents, fire department? crap, by a fire extinguisher, police? who needs em, EMT's just socialism, Jackson you wouldn't know socialism if it jumped up and bit your testicles off.... wow no cussing..... and you don't know jack about children or what they need or how to motivate them.... Yeah, keep em hungry and cold, that will stop those new fangeled video games and evil TV's out of the hands of the poor. Well except in Missouri.... Why are reasonable rules agreed on by the majority of the people so frightening to you Jackson? “Never use a big word when a little filthy one will do.” ~Johnny Carson

They do make a device that used propane from a grill type propane tank to make CO2 for the purpose of forcing plant growth in confined spaces.... I suggest you by a High Times magazine, lots of ads for those "Home Growing" supplies.....

Wasn't he called Og?

We never had a union, the pay and benefits were so good no union could ever get a foot hold. I honestly never questioned it, my plan was to invest in the company and work till i was 58 and retire with 40 years with the company and a benefit package that would have been unreal but as the say the plans of mice and men.... I honestly didn't think i was capable of doing that my self and I have seen several people who thought they could invest and retire are now walmart greeters or the equivalent, I honestly know of no one who actually did better than they could have by sticking with the company, the stock market is evidently not exactly a sure thing... Rather rule in hell than serve in heaven huh? Good luck with that, as I said I've seen more disasters than good times come out of doing that... I at one time held options on several hundred DuPont shares, the value of these options fell to the point of being worthless and never really recovered...

I have to agree with you on this, people do tend to micro mange their children more now days, kids never learn how to make decisions, my wife and I both agreed way before we had kids we would not program ours in any one direction and allow them to make as many decisions as possible and allow them to deal with the consequences, (we were both raised by extreme authoritarian fathers who couldn't deal with the idea of a child making any decisions) once you get that going work ethic seemed to follow. One of the things that amazed me when i was raising kids was the number that had no clue as to consequences of their actions, it was almost scary. That's all I am really saying, parents should have the power to make most decisions but they cannot always be trusted to make the best ones and there needs to be some limits, not total limits but limits none the less. I often think of that too. You are correct, this is an emotional argument and I let my emotions get the better of me. (I am a very emotional person, i cry, laugh, get angry, and I let people know when these emotions are coursing through my head) I am lucky in that i worked for the DuPont corporation, generally they treat their employees quite well, especially their retirees but they have made cuts to the benefits i worked for over the years, nothing I can really do about it but it seems less than fair. You do hear about people loosing their pensions at a high enough rate to see why there are so many Walmart greeters who are also geezers I have heard the idea of how the younger generation is being coddled my whole life, i never understood it, saw very little of it anywhere but in kids who's parents were rather well of finacially and substituted money and things for love and encouragment, the real problem is that children are being raised in a way that cripples their ability to make decisions not to mention leaves them clueless as to the consequences of their actions... My thoughts on this are clouded by things that happened in my life as well, i was rather badly abused as a child, i am all about protecting children from this, nothing enrages me faster than to see a child being abused.... it's one of the few things i could easily hurt someone over and yes there are degrees of abuse and not preparing your children for life might be one of the worst forms of abuse in the long run...

I am so tired of this Bullshit, i am 56 years old and I have heard all my life about how the young kids are being coddled and given everything by old farts who live in the damn past and have no clue about anything but the past. i remember being 13 and being hired out to clean out an old farmers barn, i shoveled shit and put up hay for three days and the whole time i got a constant spiel about how young kids today were being coddled and how we didn't know the value of work then the bastard stiffed me for half the money he promised and told me it was a learning experience. I raised two boys, they both worked as they grew up from chores to odd jobs for neighbors, i think the oldest got his first job picking up pine cones at around the first grade. They both worked hard worked their way through college and graduated and almost all their friends who were in the same or lower social economic class pretty much did the same thing. most of those kids would do almost anything for money if it was honest work. But yes there were some of the kids who were just lazy, never raised their hand to do anything. Guess where those lazy little bastards came from, yeah, the wealthiest kids in the schools. They drove $40,000 sports cars went to the best schools and had no responsibilities at all. Their parents gave them everything, forbade them form working and the little bastards would then go to the places of work of the other kids and harass them because they worked. Fuck this elitist bullshit, kids are no more coddled now than they were when I was a kid or when you old farts were kids, the rich kids were always coddled and the poor had to work, it's life but the idea that all or even most kids just sit around and pay video games and ask for handouts is so disingenuous it's difficult to deal with emotionally. Should kids be able to do appropriate jobs? Of course they should but there should be limits and parents cannot always be trusted to be the decision makers in this. I say the kids of today are just as industrious as they ever have been, the idea they are not is just old farts bullshitting each other about how hard they had it.... Oh yeah, some of those 55 year olds have no choice but to work at fast food joints, when your pension has been stolen by greedy companies sometimes you have to go back to work....

Fear and Guilt are why religion exists, fear of death and fear of punishment for things you feel guilty about and of course religion gives you plenty of things to feel guilty about. Religion uses these things to promote it's self, religion says we will never really die, if you believe and do what religion tells you to do you will never die and be rewarded with paradise, if you do not then you will never die but be punished forever in a horrible fashion. Some people just can't deal with non existence, my feelings are that the universe is neatly partitioned into three parts, before i existed, while i exist, and after my existence, I see no reason to fear the last one any more than the first one... When people under stand what an oxymoron life after death is and that death is not the beginning of anything but accept it as simply the end i think religion will totally disappear....

I would guess excrement would be the closest smell....

UV light is very energetic, it causes sunburn and can kill you, it burns the back of the eye and destroys the tissue that detects light and send the impulses to your brain, this tissue is very sensitive and does not heal when burned. UV also destroys the tissue of the lens causing it to become cloudy and and blocks out the visible light. Good sun glasses are not necessarily expensive, look for the UV protection rating , it is supposed to be on all sunglasses. No connection between UV and neutrinos in the way you suggest. Your eyes are not capable of detecting UV light, UV light is too damaging to living tissue to be used as a light source (actually the very near UV is visible to some people, UV has it's own spectrum too, it's just shorter than visible light) UV is more penetrating due to it's higher energy compared to visible light. It clouds the lens of the eye because the lens is not as transparent to UV as it is to visible light, it absorbs some of the UV and this absorption of energy is what clouds the eyes lens. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_spectrum

Light is Electromagnetic radiation, from red to violet, is the EM radiation we can see, longer wave lengths are felt as heat, even longer wave lengths are microwaves, radio and other even longer waves. UV is short wave lengths, then it goes to x-rays then to gamma rays. Short wave length EM radiation is more energetic than long waves and is more harmful to the human body but if it is intense enough even long wave EM radiation can harm you, microwaves are used for cooking is an example. Reflected light from the moon is far too weak to harm you but reflected light from snow is almost as intense as the direct sunlight. This happens because the moon is so far away and snow is right under your feet, also snow reflects far more light than the much darker moon does... Actually, the lens thing is misleading, green plants use basically red and some blue light, plants absorb red and blue light (there are exception in algae and such but green complex plants use mostly those two wave lengths) they reflect the other colors and so appear green. The effects you see caused by the lenses has more to do with hormonal triggers than by the plant actually getting energy from the other wave lengths. Red light tends to cause different growth patterns than blue light and as the season change the amount of each a plant gets changes, day length also plays a big part in plant growth. My answer to the rest of this could probably be answered better by some one else but I'll try. Photons are vibrating, their energy content determines the vibration rate or wave length. I think you have this reverse, A south facing window should receive more light and heat than a north facing window, the photons cause the molecules to vibrate, this is what we feel as heat. The UV light doesn't reflect as well as the visible light so a North facing window should get less UV but more blue since the sky is blue, north light is always shifted toward the blue slightly.

It is the Ultra Violet light that you cannot see that damages your eyes when you look at the sun and at a welder in action. The actinic (UV) light from a welder will give you what appears to be a sun burn if you are exposed long enough.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the human eye is a very poor judge of light intensity, look into a light bulb indoors and it might make you squint but take it outside in the direct sun and you can hardly tell the bulb is lit. Your eye adjusts to the ambient light level making dim light appear as bright as possible and bright light dimmer.

Not soon enough?

Tardigrades are certainly tougher than rotifers as adults anyway.

As usual i couldn't watch the video but I do know enough about magnets to know that why they do certain things like stick to your fridge isn't easy to explain in terms most people really can really get a grip on. But I will tell about an incident that happened where I used to work. (just for fun) Long boring nights working the 12-8 shift when we weren't working like dogs we were bored, spit shine an polish only go so far and eventually you wear out the metal (literally) so some times we would invent games and such. We had an engineer who seemed to really enjoy giving the workers puzzles or tasks that were "interesting" One night he came in with a magnet, it was about a half inch thick and maybe an inch in diameter, he stuck it on an i-beam and bet anyone $10 they couldn't pull it off the metal, no to be fair he did stick it in a location that made it difficult to grip and it's small size also made gripping it difficult. After about 10 people had failed to get the magnet i stepped up and got it off with almost no problem. I didn't pull on it, I slid it off the edge of the I-beam. Again to be fair i was already familiar with the really strong magnets but I love magnets!

Is speculation in multiverses as immoral as speculation in subprime mortgages? By John Horgan | Jan 28, 2011 05:50 PM I'm becoming a moralistic prig in my dotage. Someone dear to me just proudly told me that her son, a freshly minted Harvard grad, is training to be an investment banker. This privileged young man, I grumbled, should try to make the world a better place rather than playing in a rigged, high-stakes gambling racket. I apologized later—and vowed privately to be less self-righteous in my judgments of others' career choices. After all, I ain't exactly Gandhi. But then I read Brian Greene's new book, The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos (Knopf, 2011), and my moral hackles got all quivery again. (Weird coincidence alert: In 2006, the publisher RiskDoctor, Inc., released a book titled Options Trading: The Hidden Reality.) A physicist at Columbia University, Greene is an immensely talented science explicator who has brought physics to the masses through his smart, witty bestsellers, The Elegant Universe (turned into a television series narrated by Greene) and The Fabric of the Cosmos. http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=is-speculation-in-multiverses-as-im-2011-01-28&WT.mc_id=SA_SA_20110216

Rigney, you seem to be saying that if we or one of our loved ones was a victim we would feel differently about crime and that if a few innocents have to suffer then so be it but I wonder if your attitude would be different if you were wrongly convicted. Imagine for a few minutes that long walk to the execution chamber knowing that your death is ok because it means a guilty guy won't have to be coddled in prison his whole life? Ehhhh, i don't know if it's ok with me that me or one of mine are executed wrongly just to make sure no guilty escape. nah! I can do with possibly letting a bad guy go on living in prison, lots easier to take me out of prison down the road than dig me up, i don't think my wife would like having my corpse dug up and sent home....

Yes, a right that adults have, not children. No, i think it's to protect children from being exploited Minimum wage is set in stone for workers who are of age, it's under age workers that need to be protected. In some places children as young as 6 are working in fields, not on family farms, but as workers just like their parents. No one is saying that anyone should make any more than minumum wage, children under 16 have no business being worked in dangerous jobs they cannot refuse to do for money they never see for people who don't care what happens to them. I agree this is probably not true, but a 16 year old is legal worker now, do you really think children of any age should be required to work in jobs that adults do? Deal with the same dangers adults do? I really don't. I honestly think there should be limits to how old a kid can be when he works most jobs.

Good example skeptic, there were so many examples that disprove this i didn't know where to start, hard to think of an animal that does not use male attractiveness to attract females.... almost any animal with good eye sight?