Moontanman

The first thing that comes to my mind is that it's a long way to beam energy, losses from the beams would be enormous.

wouldn't infinite density make a black hole? Even a single atom at infinite density would be a black hole.

So far some pretty good ideas have been presented, no one has tried to give reasons they are not true, do we win?

Ok, if we are going to tease the tiger how about this one. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16026-humans-may-have-prevented-super-ice-age.html

pangloss, jackson, i find myself in the unenviable position of having to come in on the side of the opposition here, while I have no respect for Fox News i have just as little respect for people who do the opposite. BS supporting the party line is just as bad as BS detracting the party line. If the news cannot deal in the truth i loose interest in it quite quickly. you are both correct that CNN using less than scientific reporting is just as bad as Fox doing it. It makes nether one correct and makes news organizations in general look bad to me. I don't want to be told what I want to hear, i want to hear all is well in the world, no terrorists, no disasters, no economic problems, full employment, no hunger, no poverty, no disease. But hearing these things does not make them true. i need to hear the truth, unvarnished by politics or the desire for ratings. I am honestly not sure where to get the truth these days so i search, high and low, it's not easy. But to be lied to by people who claim to be telling the truth just pisses me off no matter what side they are on, ultimately there are no sides, sides is an illusion and it will destroy us all if we keep clinging to the concept of being loyal to a side.

Blood_pardon, (real slick user name, wow i couldn't figure that one out) is just trying to full fill his Christian duty to convert us heathens. i am sure the goddess will forgive him. The real problem with religion is not whether or not god exists it's how does god contribute to science, can you snip a piece of god off and test it? is there any evidence what so ever that god is real? God cannot contribute to scientific inquiry simply because she/he is defined by belief and or faith not evidence. If god ever decides to come down and show her/him self I am sure the evidence will be conclusive but until then there is no point in invoking god to solve any real world problems in science.

I see no need for the supernatural, invoking the supernatural is always a mistake, it's like saying i cannot possibly know that so it must be God, so far every time that has been said it eventually becomes apparent god is not the answer. There are lots of answers to how and why the universe is how it is that do not need anything but math and the human mind to explain it. Of course you are welcome to believe anything you like.

If their ass was news Fox couldn't find it the dark with both hands and flashlight:doh:

That is a good question, my understanding is that in the colliding brane scenario both branes are the same laws each time but that doesn't explain why they are the way they are. I guess it's possible each collision rests the laws at random but this seems counter intuitive to me at least. Depending on how far up the dimensional ladder the bulk goes our whole universe would indeed seem to be very compact in comparison, at least that how I see higher dimensions in my mind. Another way to look at it is the Bulk can easily contain an infinite number of branes of any and all configurations, some branes might not be anything we would recognize as universes at all.

I like the idea of colliding branes as compared to sheets hanging on a clothes line, the sheets are branes in a 5 or more dimensional bulk. Gravity between the two branes attracts them to each other as they collide you get a universe wide big bang. The energy released causes them to spread apart, energy condenses back to matter the same way as what we think of as the big bang. Wrinkles in the branes might cause pin point "big bangs" all through our space/time but the result of the collision would still be the same and gravity eventually draws the branes back together for a repeat performance. From our point of view the universe is expanding from each collision but most of the colliding branes are forever out side our experience because of the infinite size of the branes in our view of space time but from the stand point of the bulk they would still be finite.

I have to admit that in the scenario of a Rage type virus or other real threat to my personal safety any of the "infected" coming after me would find me completely comfortable fairly low on the hill of moral high ground. Now if I could easily get away I see no reason not to climb as high as possible but when it comes to defending your own or some else's life I see no reason to allow anyone to take me out because someone else says it's wrong to kill. (think about that if you ever decide to rob my house:doh:) Now going out and hunting them down is not a part of what I am saying, but self defense is well within my moral limits.

We are supposed to get snow tonight, it's been more than a decade since we got any real snow, 30 years ago with a very similar weather pattern we got 24" nothing like an ocean effect blizzard in the deep south at the beach! lightning and thunder and gale force winds and 24" inches of snow and they didn't predict it all , it was a complete surprise, at least this time they are tentatively saying it will snow.

A super soaker? I think I'll let you man that gun, but you are of course correct, the human ability to cobble a weapon together from objects at hand will come out to most people.

Assuming that, then a flame thrower would indeed be a good defense, but they are difficult to buy in a hurry. I've never seen one in pawn shops but lots of shotguns and pistols. We have how ever completely gone off the original topic, sorry Yodaps. The morality involved is tricky. do you shoot someone you suspect of having a super flu? How far you could go and be on the moral high ground has a lot to do with how low you are comfortable on that particular hill. Do you refuse food and water to anyone and stay inside your house (or bunker) and let the rest of the population suffer or do you try to help and risk infection? Would you kill to keep someone with obvious symptoms away or do you shoot anyone who simply shows up because they might be infected?

This is true but contrary to popular belief rabies victims do not chase down people and try to bite them. Dogs with rabies do become irritable but they do not chase you down to bite you, they become fearful of light and sounds, irritable and prone to bite if messed with but they do not roam looking for more victims to infect.

Good point about the shotgun but flame throwers are ineffectual, zombies don't feel pain or care about flames. A man with a flame thrower would be quickly overwhelmed.

World War Z is a follow up book by the same guy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_Z

Oh! You mean like in the book World War Z? Damn things were difficult to get rid of, they almost took down a nuclear sub underwater! Great book if you're into zombies, I would prefer to avoid them if possible but a good twelve gauge pump with sabots and a nine mil with a 14 shot clip should do the trick. I'd want the bands that go around your shoulders and hold shells for the shot gun (I can't remember what they are called), two one of each shoulder and a back pack full of cartridges for the nine mil but avoiding them is the best defense as you find out in the book.

I would think "the vignette zone" would be a place of constant storms as the air from the cold and hot sides mixed, possibly permanent hurricane like storms, lots of tornadoes, rain snow, heat and cold as the two completely different air masses mixed.

Both conservatives and liberals us NASA as their whipping boy anytime they want to pretend to be saving money. The budget of NASA is a drop in the bucket when compared to the rest of the money the gov spends. We wasted enough money on the Iraq war to colonies the moon or Mars or even build real space colonies in orbit around the sun. We bailed out greedy bankers to the tune of many times the budget of NASA. Go ahead and pretend that NASA is a significant part of the budget. NASA has done some amazing things with so little money. Space is not the final frontier or some pie in the sky thing that doesn't matter, space is the high ground of the next war, the source of many new technologies that will boost our economy (if we are the ones developing it) So much of our civilization depends on space, so much in the way of natural resources, unique manufacturing possibilities, it's criminal to not fund NASA or some type of space exploration and or exploitation of space. Some one mentioned shutting down NASA to feed sub-Saharan Africa, that is just so much bullshit, completely eliminating NASA would make no difference what so ever in feeding Haiti or Africa or anyone else but it would have a huge negative impact on the world at large and on the USA. We could increase NASA spending many times over with no impact on government spending. It's like me refusing buy three boxes of girl scout cookies and going back to two boxes to save enough money to pay the interest on my house. Cutting back NASA is just politics for the thinking impaired, a way for politicians to show their constituents they are serious about cutting back spending and then spending many times that much on bullshit. Exploitation of space is the next step in our civilization, so far we keep trying to crawl up the steps with our limbs hog tied. It's time to untie our civilization and walk up the steps, no one knows what is at the top of the steps but we know what is at the bottom and there just isn't enough for everyone there.

Blood_pardon, what would you expect to see as a transitional fossil species? Exactly what would a transitional fossil or transitional species look like. I think it's fair to ask what you would see as evidence of a transitional species.

Ooops, maybe my athiesm is a bit off centered on this, I seem to have jumped before I looked!

Many billions of flies eat shit, they always have they always will, doesn't make me want to, The numbers of people who believe in something has no bearing on it's basic truth or lack there of. Such a sad individual so full of self hatred and hatred for all who disagree with him, but of course his God is love...

Don't ask don't tell is a cruel joke, my oldest son who is gay but not the least bit infeminant like most people think gays are was kicked out of Air force ROTC because he refused to sign a document swearing he was not gay. Later his buddies some how found out and beat him to a pulp. Homophobes are criminals, my son was on what they called a fast track to being a pilot, he was not enfeminant, he didn't troll for sex among his fellow class mates but due to his honesty and me telling him his whole life that real men do not lie he lost his scholarship, his dignity and almost his life at the hands of homophobes who due to the current gestalt of thinking about gays thought him less than human. I am sure that many of his class mates weren't really threatened by his sexuality but they followed the crowd that said gays are less than human. Anyone who thinks gays should be treated as less than human should spend a few days in their shoes, it will open your eyes to how unfair this really is.

Nostradamus is bull butter, just one more way to delude the gullible.