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Showing content with the highest reputation on 08/20/17 in all areas

  1. "CSA monument with the inscription "to honor the sacred memory of the pioneers who built Orange County after their valiant efforts to defend the Cause of Southern Independence" in Santa Ana Cemetery. Installed in 2004" "Traveler, the name of Robert E. Lee's famous horse and Traveler, mascot of the University of Southern California" "Fort Bragg (town): A US Army garrison was named in 1857 for then US Army officer Braxton Bragg who later became a Confederate General." "There are at least four remaining markers of the Jefferson Davis Highways in the state of California including the following: Berkerfield in Pioneer Village, installed in 1942 and rededicated in 1968. Hornbrook installed in 1944. Lebec at Fort Tejon dedicated in 1956 and rededicated in 1976. Winterhaven at Fort Yuma, installed in 1931." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_monuments_and_memorials_of_the_Confederate_States_of_America Unfortunately it is not accurate to say they are ALL in other states. There are Monuments and Memorials to Confederates in 30 states which means the majority of the country has them. Even some states that weren't officially states during the Civil War have them. If one group wants option "A" and other groups wants option "C" than many people automatically assume option "B" is an acceptable safe position. By created a protracted discussion about whether Nazis and KKK members are any different than other standard political advocacy groups like BLM and obfucating the underlining issues I think the argument for "keeping history" has become that safe option "B" squeezed between calls to denounce hatred and united the whites. The compromise is to denounce hate groups but keep history. I think some people don't get any deeper into it than that.
    2 points
  2. Apologies, i obviously missed it. But now i'm more confused: you insist that Christians must follow the bad bits (stoning an adulterer), and presumably the good bits (turning the other cheek - forgiving the adulterer in this case), but insist they must follow both to be classed as a 'true' Christian. Your definition leads to the absurdity that there are no Christians on this planet, since it is impossible to do both of these contradictory things. If even the Pope is not a Christian by your definition you've got to start questioning your definition surely?
    2 points
  3. Stop cherry picking? As you seem to be struggling with this simple concept, I will just point out that it also says "don't kill people". In other words, you can't blame the words in the book. It is the attitudes of the people you need to address. (Unfortunately, that sounds a bit like the "guns don't kill people, people do" line.)
    2 points
  4. There is something interesting that points to a causal relationship between energy (mass) and entanglement. " In stark contrast to transport experiments, absorption of a single photon leads to an abrupt change in the system Hamiltonian and a quantum quench of Kondo correlations. By inferring the characteristic power law exponents from the experimental absorption line-shapes, we find a unique signature of the quench in the form of an Anderson orthogonality catastrophe, originating from a vanishing overlap between the initial and final many-body wave-functions. We also show that the power-law exponents that determine the degree of orthogonality can be tuned by applying an external magnetic field which gradually turns the Kondo correlations off."https://arxiv.org/pdf/1102.3982.pdf This wiki concerns Electronic correlation, interesting stuff.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_correlation#Mathematical_viewpoint Maybe, If it's true that the breaking of entanglement creates energy or mass then that might be related to the way the observable universe is created...but it's a very big 'IF'. According to big bang cosmology there was a thermal equilibrium. Regions which today are out of causal contact were once in equilibrium with each other...https://arxiv.org/pdf/1205.1584.pdf Matter is any substance that has mass and takes up space. Mass is a property of a physical body. It is the measure of an object's resistance to acceleration (a change in its state of motion) when a net force is applied.
    2 points
  5. I think it is worth noting that real pieces of history are removed all the time. Original homes, buildings, parks, forrests, and etc are bulldozed to make way for freeways, shopping centers, mines, crops, and etc all the time. Local efforts and national efforts like the national regristry of historical places managed by the national parks service attempt to preserve history but are often labelled as over reaching and harmful to business. These confederate monuments are not historical pieces that date back to the Civil War. They are pieces of art erected decades after the civil war by those enamored with the confederacy. I find the charge that removing these confederate art peices erases history, being made by Trump and various other Republican and conversative groups, very disingenuous considering Trump and GOP leaders in congress are seeking to slash the National Parks Service's budget to pay for tax cuts. Same national park service that manages he national regristry of historical places.
    1 point
  6. First, the racist history of California is long and deep. LA in particular. A significant number, if not a majority, of Hayden Lake Idaho Nazis who used to march annually in Coeur d'alene, where transplants from California. Second, remember that every one of those Confederate monuments are not only memorials to racists, are also memorials to traitors of the United States. Robert E. Lee in particular, who was offered command of the Union Army at the start of the Civil War. Had he accepted, the war may not have even occurred or would have been short. The man swore an allegiance to the United States at West Point. The man has no honor. 620,000 Americans died in the Civil war. Third, there are more history books written about the Civil War than any other subject in world history so I don't think there is any worry about forgetting Civil War history if every one of those memorials were destroyed. Finally, any memorial that is left up should be required to include a predominate plaque that reads that this person (or group) fought to continue the practice of owning human beings as property. Perhaps additionally, if approved by the African American populous, all memorials including human likenesses left standing should be painted to resemble lawn jockeys.
    1 point
  7. Thread, There is another way, that reality exists in the large grey area between random chance and sure thing. When one considers a system, or an entity, or an event, one defines a subset of reality, and usually only certain descriptive characteristics of the event. Like when you consider flipping a coin and only having two possible ways it will wind up settling, one does not record where the coin landed, or whether you caught it and flipped your hand over and placed the coin on the back of your other hand and whether or not you missed the coin and it fell to the ground and showed a head or tail "that did not count". That is, the particular arrangement we are attempting to find the odds of, is a very closely considered system, entity or event, where the rest of the world around the thing, in space and time, could be, and always is in a new arrangement, every nanosecond. That is, in the strictest definition of all of reality, it NEVER repeats itself. It can't because you can't wind everything back to the moment of the big bang and do it again, and see how it turns out the second time. For instance, let's say I am counting heads, while it is 9:41 on Sunday the 20th of August,2017. Once it is 9:42, fulfilling one of the conditions becomes impossible. Never again will the conditions be right, to flip a head at 9:41 on Sunday the 20th of August. So one of the ways you can define anything as impossible, is to require conditions that will never line up again in the same pattern because of the nature of space and time. Here the odds are not very small, they are actually non existent. You would have to posit alternate universes, or multiple universes which are, for all intents and purposes, not available for study and recording repeating conditions. And one of the ways you can define something as a sure thing, is to limit your time frame, and limit your special area, and loosen you allowance for small difference that of course had to happen between the first measurement, and the next. So I can consider the railway bridge being in the same place tomorrow, as a sure thing, even though the Earth has turned on its axis, the Earth has proceeded around the Sun and the Sun has proceeded around the center of the Milky Way and the Milky Way has proceeded toward the great attractor, to where, in actuality, it is NEVER possible that the bridge be exactly in the same position in the universe as it was when I was on my way home from work...ever again, and the universe, every component of it, will never be in that exact orientation, as it was on my way home from work when I went under the bridge, ever again. So the chance event has some many consistently repeatable aspects to it, and the sure thing is nothing of the sort, depending on how you define stuff, and the reason for your argument. Leaving of course, that large grey area between for us to live our lives in. Regards, TAR Thread, And yet another way to consider that reality exists in a large grey area between two things, is to consider that we each have an analog model of the entire universe, built in the large grey matter area between our ears. Regards, TAR
    1 point
  8. 1 point
  9. That's right. As per exercise, could you give me all possible combinations that 2 parents could have, if you'd want a child with blood type O (ii)? EDIT: OP felt the need to solve exercise in PM; answer is given: ii (O) + ii (O) Ai (A) + ii (O) Bi (B) + ii (O) Ai (A) + Bi (B) Ai (A) + Ai (A) Bi (B) + Bi (B)
    1 point
  10. Most people already do. (Reject the message, anyway.) If they are not going to believe him for that reason then they are not going to believe him when he appeals to national pride, or the superiority of their race, or whatever. If they are going to act for that reason, then they would act on appeals to nationalism, racism, or money or whatever else motivates them. If religion was really as powerful as you think it is, then presumably we could solve the world's problems by just telling people that "it is god's will". But life and people are not as simple as you seem to think. ("Oh, the book says so. OK, I will set aside my doubts about this insane leader spreading words of hate, and risking the lives of all my family and friends, and follow his lead" I don't think so.)
    1 point
  11. Yes. You can't "clone" quantum states. The moving one would run at a different rate. This is moot for most clocks, since they are measured at intervals much shorter than a trip around the world would take. The measurement would destroy the entanglement. If you entangled e.g. a pair of atoms or ions in the clock transition state and transported one, it makes for an interesting question. It's possible the entanglement would be broken. Or it could just be that you just add an overall phase to the correlation. IOW, if you had a superposition of ground and excited state, if your proper time shifted the right amount, the correlation would change so that they were both excited or both ground when measured. Wait longer, and it's back to one of each.
    1 point
  12. If you consider that the rhesus factor is dominantly inherited, consider the possibility of one parent having genotype Rh +/-, thus he will produce the rhesus factor, and will thus be considered "Rh+", but it is very well possible that he has another allele that "is" Rh-. If he pairs with a person with Rh- (who can only have genotype Rh -/-, else this person would have Rh +/- or Rh +/+ and would undeniably produce the rhesus factor, thus "be" Rh+, which is not the case), the following combinations are possible: Rh+ / Rh- = Rh +/- = Rh+ Rh- / Rh- = Rh -/- = Rh- So you're not going to base your answer on rhesus factor. Do you know something on the inheritance of blood cell antigenes (A, B) and plasma antibodies (anti-A, anti-B) and what role O plays in there? Neglecting the rhesus factor, someone with blood type A can have 2 different genotypes. Do you know which?
    1 point
  13. We're not allowed to give straight answers here. You're supposed to give your line of thinking and what you think is the answer and why and people will guide you to the right answer. You're supposed to give it, though.
    1 point
  14. Science and religion would need a complete rewrite to reconcile them. People are sent to prison in some countries for speaking out against religious atrocities, or not believing some nonsense. All religions are constructed from many contradictory stories, and as such for a world religion would need a rewrite. Most religious folks are aware of the many contradictions in their religions, and so just select the bits they believe in that suits there purposes. Example love your neighbour versus reject anyone that does not believe your nonsense. How can anything be reconciled without some flexibility. Many people who are religious claim that religion gives them their morals, without which they would be drug users, or kill people etc, The Barcelona bomb is a fine example of religious morals from Islam, the 13th century crusades or more recent IRA terrorism are more examples of Christian religious morality. Religion is a tool used by leaders to control people or guide people like cattle through wide gateposts. The tool is religiously misused to turn easily lead people against each other. If a moslem decides to become an Atheist they can be sent to prison or even killed. How would people rewrite religion to offer proper moral guidance to people that seem to require leadership, and who decides what those morals would be? Most sentient people don't need religion, but religion has served a role in some societies for creating diverse cultures, it has also been used to destroy other cultures. How would a rewrite of world religions avoid destroying cultural diversity in the sense of the arts.
    1 point
  15. Yes, most signal switching electronics ( in the KHz, MHz and GHz range ) has to be shielded so as not to induce EMF in nearby equipment. If not shielded it is classified as a transmitter. EM radiation, however, falls off in strength very quickly, so a little separation goes a long way in reducing this effect.
    1 point
  16. My .02 An education in science (hopefully) teaches a person a particular style of critical thinking which makes a person much harder to convince of things using populist arguments. Appeals to common sense, or tradition, or popularity, or conspiracy theories are less likely to strike a common chord. And, resultantly, Alex Jones's rants, or a vacuous anti GMO argument. are more likely to be summarily dismissed as non-evidenced wild speculation by someone with a trained, ingrained level of critical thinking than the average person off the street. Of course hampering this is the backfire effect (there's a great oatmeal comic about it) In which humans are neurologically adapted to reject information which does not fit into our existing worldview. THis means that for eg when Al Gore gets up and tells people that climate change is real and we need to do something about it, people with an entrenched, conservative worldview have a huge degree of innate resistance to that message, and the facts Al Gore presents may actually reinforce their beliefs that climate change is not real. Importantly, all of us have this type of confirmation bias built in - it can be overcome of course, but it's there in all of us. If you actively pursue scientific research, your research is going to (at least in my experience) thoroughly kick your confirmation bias in the balls. Your data will almost always show something different from even your most confident;y held a priori expectations. Doesn't this mean scientists have perfectly overcome their backfire effects and only and always accept evidence based premises? Hell no - I know plenty of scientists who have thrown years of funding out the window chasing ideas that the data repeatedly demonstrates is wrong, there have been several instances of scientists making up or falsely manipulating data to support a flawed idea. THey also compartmentalize to allow for evidence free beliefs, hell I know an accomplished geneticist who regularly sees a homeopath.... I think, what often happens is that when an average person hears an idea/ideology that seems to make sense, they accept it. A scientifically trained thinker is more likely to consider it critically, require objective support for it, and if that support is not found, is more likely to reject it. Unfortunately, when the two encounter each other, the critical rejection of the idea appear elitist and condescending to the average person, which triggers a backfire effect. The person leaves more entrenched in the idea than before they encountered the contradictory evidence. This behoves the scientifically literate amongst us to approach an average person with a bad idea congenially, respectfully and with tact, if any changing of minds is gong to occur. Of course if it's a prothletising troll, this approach is probably acceptable:
    1 point
  17. You should. I would say we have a good definition, mathematically speaking. It is just impossible for our minds to grasp or visualize the concept of infinity. Just like 4dimensional space-time ( or even higher dimensions ), it is easily described mathematically, but impossible to describe using common, every day analogies. ( my apologies, in the previous post it should be temperature to 1 part in 10000; what happened to post numbering ? )
    1 point
  18. Because science doesn't assume things. It looks for evidence. Because we have good evidence it was hot and dense (but not infinitely so). Because it is still the best explanation for all the evidence.
    1 point
  19. Hello,Dan. The distance of around 13.8 billion light-years is the current limit of the observable size of the Universe, relative to us here on Earth. It can possibly be seen as a sort of event-horizon,and an horizon is just the limit of our sight. Beyond this horizon, also called the Hubble limit, there could be countless stars, galaxies and other astronomical bodies that are so far away that their light hasn't had time to reach us yet - or may never reach us. Hubble's Law also permits sufficiently distant space to expand faster than the speed of light so, again, light from those far, far distant galaxies will never reach us here on Earth. Of course this doesn't mean that the Universe is definitely infinite....but it still could be. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/hubble-team-breaks-cosmic-distance-record
    1 point
  20. There is no evidence that the universe was "created". It may be infinitely old. We don't (currently) know. The early hot dense universe was finite if the universe is finite. It was infinite if the universe is infinite.
    1 point
  21. Because some people say it is and the rest believe them.
    1 point
  22. It isn't. It isn't. Let me help you out by disposing of any excess and valueless gold you have. I'll even refund you the postage.
    1 point
  23. It strikes me that reconciling science and religion is akin to trying to reconcile avocado salad and the internal combustion engine - an amusing intellectual exercise, relatively easy to achieve, but ultimately rather pointless. If we examine the character of science as understood by practicing scientists, or philosophers, with that of religion as understood by serious theologists there is little or no significant overlap. The conflict arises when militant atheists, such as Dawkins, or aggressive evangelicals, such as the ID mob, inappropriately seek to extend the boundaries of science and religion respectively. Some posters here appear to conflate religion with fundamentalist views. All the religions I am aware of are much more nuanced than that. Just as the scientists who claim science has proven the non-existence of God are misguided and unscientific, so to the fundamentalists insisting on a Young Earth are misguided and the antithesis of Christian.
    1 point
  24. Thanks, DrmDoc. You wrote of a "....perceived conscious/unconscious divide or barrier....... against inappropriate responses.. " within total consciousness. Would i be correct in thinking that, in rare cases of what we call " madness ",( severe schizophrenia, for example ), the" barrier " has somehow been breached, and the whole or part of the content of the unconscious has flooded the mind and overwhelmed rational thought? I readily accept consciousness as being a whole ,single movement, but, among the good genies, there must also be many bad genies bottled-up in there that have to be kept at bay. We do need a " Guardian at the Gate ". It helps me if i imagine this whole consciousness as an engine: when we turn it on we turn on the whole engine - we can't just turn a part of it on without the rest starting too.
    1 point
  25. If I understand correctly, your perspective regards ideas and thoughts that appear to emerge without conscious effort, direction, or interference. That perspective is analogous to being tapped on the shoulder and asked to turn and intake a different view of some focal interest; i.e., take in a new idea. From my perspective, there is no tap on our conscious shoulder by some unknowable influence (i.e., the unconscious) presenting us with a new perspective or idea. In my view, the conscious realization of that new perspective or idea is initiated by merely turning around without that shoulder tap and revisiting an old idea with a fresh, uncluttered perspective. Thoughtful solutions emerge from a conscious intake of all data with components that may have a lingering unconscious affect on our cognitive processes. New perspectives and ideas emerge from that data when we consciously take notice of that data's lingering effects, which involves making conscious connections between this emerging data as its extraneous components dissolve. Our conscious realization of new ideas that arise from accumulated data is analogous to noticing how cream rises to the top of our beverages. As I now understand, your perspective is that "Every gene, every mutation, is not and did not have to be useful." I agree; however, certain genes and mutations that do persist in a population may indeed have previously had a significant survival impact, IMO. Mutations such as cancer are endemic to the nature of cell replacement and persist because our cells have yet to adapt to our increasingly extended life. 60% of all cancers can be traced to natural mutations rather than lifestyle or carcinogens. Cancer persists as a cellular survival influence by compelling further adaptations against that mutation thus extending survival. Diseases happen in nature and sufferers who survive could pass on increasingly stronger genes.
    1 point
  26. I had a dream about topics that give me a headache and it happened.
    1 point
  27. It's quite strange that you continue to quote the scriptures whilst being adamant they have no meaning.
    0 points
  28. Mostly because you keep posting your intolerant, cherry picked, views in the religious section. I've pointed out the good teachings found in the bibles, which you insist is common sense, but even common sense has to be learned; western culture seems to teach revenge rather than forgiveness, intolerance rather than tolerance and loving your enemy is a foreign concept, since the initial reaction is to bomb the shit out of them. You seem to be ignorant of the message here.
    0 points
  29. Ludicrous exaggeration and caricatures are not a great rhetorical technique. I only need one example to show you are wrong... http://biologos.org (And, of course, there are non-religious people who reject evolution.) Whoosh. Or are you just pretending to miss the point. Oh, the irony.
    0 points
  30. I think you may have misunderstood all our posts BeeCee. I suggest re-reading the whole thing ( if you are interested ). The definition of Christian is non-sensical. There are no documented teachings of Jesus Christ ( if he even existed ). Only interpretations , some by people who existed 400 yrs after J Christ. As such Christians follow the ( human ) interpretations of the teachings of J Christ. Those have evolved/changed over the years, and are still evolving as the Church attempts ( doesn't always succeed ) to keep up with modern society.
    0 points
  31. Look at it in terms of "5 steps forward and 3 steps back". That gains 5- 3= 2 m forward and take 5+ 3= 8 seconds.
    -1 points
  32. In a sense Ten oz, your post did go to waste as you conveniently skewed my below statement into implying that I "claim to the contrary" where I am only stating a fact (from my own experience) that American employers ask you for your ethnicity, religion and gender whereas European employers in vast majority of cases don't (unless we're dealing with a US company operating in Europe for example): "I'm curious, which groups are more likely to get hired in the US? I'll tell you this...While looking for a job recently, I applied to probably a couple of thousand job offers in various countries including a 100 or maybe 150 jobs in the US in the last few months. Every single job offer that I applied for in the US was asking for my ethnicity, religion and gender as opposed to other countries where I never got asked about my ethnicity, gender or religion. Kinda makes you think doesn't it. " This kind of shoving down somebodies throat of assertions which are not there is misleading, annoying and uncalled for Ten oz. Please stop doing it.
    -1 points
  33. FFS will you drop your preconceptions and take a moment to consider an alternate point of view. You may have intended it as a statement of fact, but it carries with it real and virtual implications. I know from reading many of your posts that you are smart enough to know this and am bewildered by your intransigence here. You are both behaving like spoiled brats. I'm done with this nonsense. Have a nice day!
    -1 points
  34. Sure Delta, I should have known to not present questions or statements here which are unconfortable to answer. Lesson learned for me.
    -1 points
  35. As a long time student of American History in general and the War Of Northern Aggression, (War Between The States) in somewhat particular and being born in raised in the South, I am amazed and appalled at the lack of understanding and knowledge regarding ANY reasoning demanding the removal of Civil War Monuments. HB ... shorter sentences come to mind also! I kinda doubt most folks today with the average public school education could even pass a simple 50 questionnaire defining the root causes of that most unfortunate portion of our Nation's history. It was a very bad series of unfortunate events that even led up to the first shooting. That War was indeed our Nation's darkest hour. Sad.
    -1 points
  36. I provided a source showing that gold is currently worth about $1,290 per troy ounce. So shut up.
    -2 points
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