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Intent is very important when it comes to prosecuting someone, but should that be enough to overcome giving advice that costs someone their lives? Day after day I see people posting articles against vaccination, or promoting cures for cancer that either do nothing or makes things worse. For this I’m going to assume these individuals believe they are giving good advice, and their intent is to help the individual they are giving the advice too. For years, I’ve used this example. If I have a fly on my chest and your intent is to help me and kill the fly, but instead you kill me. This is an exaggeration, but the concept is still the same. Should good intent supersede harmful advice/action. Just this year Michelle Carter was sentenced to two and half years for encouraging her boyfriend to kill himself. The law seems to finally be moving in the direction of the results rather than the intent. So at what line do you believe anti-science need to cross before the intent can be ignored, and the individual is punished for the results?

Tub, I think that is a good start. It deals with "the self" which I think is actually crucial to life. I am thinking of the first cell, like a bubble, creating an inside and an outside. An identity, that separates one small part of the universe from the rest. And then there is the existence in a human of a "memory" of all the things that touched it from when it started recording such things, or from perhaps the point when it became a separate identity from the rest of the place. I have this scar on my knee from when I fell in some grass and dirt in the school yard onto a shard of glass. You don't have this scar, nor the memory of falling and getting taken to a classmate's father (a dentist) to get the gash sewn up. It is part of MY identity. This particular consciousness, identified as TAR. Regards, TAR

Although i agree with Gee that it is more important to understand consciousness rather than try to define it, i'll act as a guinea-pig and, just for arguments sake, offer-up this short attempt at one subjective definition: The content of my consciousness is all my life-experiences: my upbringing, my education, my environment, and all the other influences brought to bear on me, and this creates my sense of identity. Without that content there is no self-consciousness, and that content is my consciousness so, at the risk of being ridiculed, i will here define consciousness as identity. Be gentle with me.

The angular placement of the two blades imparts a sideways motion. Unless you were unfortunate enough to hit it when negotiating a very tight bend, combined with an equally unfortunate independent velocity of the buffalo, this would be very unlikely. Babbage was English. There are more cows in England than buffalos or bisons. As Babbage himself may have said in his Engish accent, "What's the difference between a buffalo and a bison? You can't wash your hands in a buffalo."

Today I learned that the cowcatcher device fitted to the front of railway locomotives to displace any objects blocking the line was invented by Charles Babbage, the same Charles Babbage who designed the first (mechanical) computer. "A well made cow-catcher could throw a buffalo weighing 2000 lbs some 30 feet." Source: The Historical Atlas of North American Railroads ISBN 978-0-7858-2781-8 page 44. Prizes on offer for whomever comes up with the best "on-line" pun!

Am I right in thinking the original matter in the universe, appeared out of an expanding space, then coalesced into stars and possibly black holes before exploding more dense material throughout the universe.? The original matter which formed after the expansion of space was hydrogen and helium and a little bit of lithium this is all made up of subatomic particles, which would have been entangled pairs. These entangled pairs would consist of both virtual particles and real particles, quarks, fermions. The energy of these entangled pairs MAY have been greater than the none-entangled equivalent pair of particles. (Swanson) Energy can not be destroyed, what happens to the additional energy of a entangled particle pair when entanglement is broken? Does this result in low energy photons or radiation.? theoretical axioms perhaps? what energy level do axioms have? Virtual particles are known to behave more like real particles the longer they survive, can virtual particles in the stillness of space at or near 2.75K become real particles under any circumstance, perhaps through some Feynman type interaction. Am I right in thinking a wormhole is more like the absence of space between two particles, and a black hole is a very dense object, which creates sufficient gravitational distortion to bend light back into it. ie a blackhole has nothing to do with quantum entanglement or theoretical wormholes. Can entangled particles appear at the opposite side of the universe, or do they need to appear adjacent to each other.?

I'm not a biologist, so shoot me down if you like. There are many species of animals where there is a dominant male who mates with a lot of females and thus has many offspring, Presumably he is dominant because he carries genes which are positive for the species, so there is an evolutionary advantage that he mates and others do not. If births are 50% male and 50% female, that leaves a lot of males with nothing to do (the stag party), but who have the same sexual urges as the dominant male. It follows that homosexual behaviour of the inferior males would have the advantage that the alpha male can carry on producing, with less hassle from competing males. If so, then homosexual behaviour would have an evolutionary advantage, albeit indirectly. How's that for a theory?

@Moontanman Probably.

iNow; Responding to your post is going to be difficult and probably lengthy, so try to be patient while reading it. I knew I was going to get in trouble when I wrote that line, but was just too tired to deal with it then. The problem is, in my opinion, that the brain does equate to consciousness, or at least it equates to what people call their consciousness, which is the rational aspect of mind. The rational aspect is where we do our thinking, our planning, our decision making, so this is what people think of as their consciousness, and I doubt that it could exist without a brain, or processor. On the other hand, every cell in our bodies is also conscious in that it is aware. This is a lower degree of consciousness and is called sentience -- all life is sentient. Every cell in our bodies will maintain itself, do it's work, and reproduce or duplicate itself to ensure its continuance -- this activity is the same as the activity in life forms that we call survival instincts. This is how we know that each cell is alive, because this activity indicates sentience. A virus will only activate this way when it is within another life form, so it is at best quasi-life or parasitic life and does not qualify as life. Yes, this is established knowledge. I got it first from a neurologist and then from a microbiologist -- every cell is sentient. So does this mean that every cell is conscious and has a rational aspect of mind? I don't think so. (chuckle) I have seen no evidence to support that idea. Although some theories of consciousness seem to lean in that direction, I can not go there. What I can conclude from this information, is the idea that consciousness evolves along with life forms. My take on this is that the first life was sentient. It was aware of the need to continue and exhibited this by eating, growing, and reproducing in some manner. This means that it could perceive and accept whatever was needed to feed it and had some knowledge of what was good to absorb. So sentient life can sense things and has some knowledge, but it had no mobility except for the environment which would buffet it along with wind or water. Next came plant life, which set itself down in an environment that was capable of sustaining it, but it also had no ability to move. Eventually, mobile life evolved, and this life started to navigate its environment. In order to navigate the environment, senses were needed to be able to perceive farther than the simple ability to feel because as speed in navigating increased, so did the need to perceive obstacles further away. So things like vision and hearing evolved to resolve this problem, but vision and hearing are useless without some central place to dump the information -- hence a brain evolved. I could be wrong, but I think that actual brains are exclusive to mobile life. This brain not only gathered information, but also began to make choices -- "that is water, should I go through it or around it? or that rock looks too big to climb over|. So this would be the very beginning of the rational conscious mind, which would eventually evolve into what we have today. It is clear to me that the rational aspect of mind (Freud's Ego) is designed to relate to physical reality, and I doubt that it could exist without a brain to process the thoughts and impressions that we receive. Sentience, which is the earliest known form of consciousness does not require a recognition of physical reality outside of it's body and only needs to know how other things feel in relation to its body. Sentience does not require a rational aspect of mind, the Ego, so I suspect that sentient life experiences something like the unconscious aspect of mind, the Superego. The unconscious is not very well known, but there are some things that we do know about it. One of the things is that it does not give two hoots about time and does not even acknowledge it. In my mind, this implies that if it does not acknowledge time, then it does not acknowledge space and physical reality, so this is another reason for the evolution of the rational aspect of mind. Yes, it appears in the nervous system, but in other systems as well. Consider that our immune system can actually learn; if it could not, then vaccines would not work. Also consider that hormones control homeostasis within our bodies, much like pheromones seem to cause it within ecosystems. What a wonderful compliment!! Some of the greatest minds known to man have struggled with this definition for thousands of years, yet you imply that I might have the answer. How flattering. (chuckle) But seriously, it is a reasonable request. The best that I can do is give you an explanation of my understanding of consciousness, but warn you it will probably be lengthy. Right now, I am tired as MS (multiple sclerosis) has a way of kicking my butt, and consciousness is a headache inducing subject. I will get back to this question either later tonight or tomorrow, depending on how well I feel. This should give you time to consider my above comments Gee Area54; Thinking of a Venn diagram is very appropriate, but this problem is even more complex than that. If you study the various theories of consciousness, you will find that every one of them has some truth in it, but many do not even overlap, they conflict. I am resistant to saying that consciousness is this or that because I think that is the mistake that others have made -- to jump the gun and define it before we really understand it. Instead I try to stick to simple truths, small things that I can be relatively sure are true to build my understanding. Hopefully my explanation to iNow that I will produce later, will also answer some of your questions. But I should state that I think of consciousness as a thing. I do this because it is the only way to study it without corrupting it with other ideas like "God" or the brain. Much like Freud did when he studied mind, he saw it as an object that he could take apart and examine, so he could analyze the components, I study consciousness the same way. But mind and consciousness are not really things and have no physical presence, so I think one of Freud's biggest mistakes was to try to match what he learned about mind with the brain. I do not intend to make that mistake. In the meantime, consider this: I often relate my ideas about consciousness with water because I think they share properties, and it makes a good analogy. Water can burn us in the form of steam, it can also kill us in that form; water can freeze us in the form of ice and snow, and can also kill us. It can crush us in an avalanche or destroy everything we own in a tsunami. It can drown us or knock us down in the form of slippery ice. But it can also clean us, reduce a fever and heal us, and floating on it in a small lake (if you learn how) is blissful. It is a liquid and a gas and a solid, so how does one describe it? It is in everything (like "God" is everywhere) and is necessary to life. When mixed with other things it can be anything from a nourishing soup to a dangerous bog that will pull you down and kill you. So imagine for a moment; if we could not be aware of water, if we could not see it or hear it or smell it, if we could only know how it affected us and made us feel, what would we think of it? How many ways would we try to describe this powerful, dangerous, but necessary and life giving thing? I suspect that long ago, we would have worshipped it and called it a "God". Gee

I dislike the way your titles differ in intent from your OPs. In the title, you seem to imply that animals know what STDs are, or that there is a correlation between them and sodomy.

Please understand that this isn't a social site, it's a science discussion forum, more akin to a classroom or conference table than FB or Twitter. Our priority rules call for civility always, and we don't attack people who have ideas. We do, however, attack the ideas. This is what science does, the way it stays healthy, relevant, and focused on each step of the process. Nobody is being impolite by correcting mistakes in your idea. They are trying to help. It would be a very good idea for an author to listen to experts in the fields he chooses to write about. Now is the time to fix mistakes, before they creep into your book unwanted.

If you extrapolate back to time 0 (without taking quantum effects into account - because we don't really know how to do that) then everything is "at the same place" (i.e. with zero volume). That is not thought to be realistic. At the earliest time we can plausibly extrapolate back to (the 10-43 seconds, you mention - although missed the minus sign!) the observable universe would have been very small but not zero sized. This is a very, very good question. And one of the unanswered questions. For the universe to be as homogenous as it appears to be, it would be necessary for it to be in thermal equilibrium, meaning light could travel from one side to the other. If the universe was too large the would not be possible. This is the reason that an inflationary phase was suggested: the universe could have been small enough to be in equilibrium and then expanded very rapidly to match the early size we see. (That may all be a bit vague, but it is not a topic I know a lot about.) I think there are two reasons why the explosion idea doesn't work. The distribution of velocities of the matter in space would not match what we see even if we were at the centre of the explosion. Secondly, the theoretical idea of space expanding (and various predictions based on that) came first and then the evidence was found that was consistent with that.

Think of buoyancy as an analogy: as air pressure pushes down on a balloon (or beer pushes down on a bubble) it rises rather than being pushed down. Because it has less mass than the background "field" (atmosphere/beer).

You should be on W10 now. Don't you just hate Linux fanboys and iPhones are for old people and computer neophytes.

Like both the sober detail from Mordred and the tongue-in-cheek soundbyte from MigL. +1 apiece. Long may the double act continue.

Again, I challenge anyone here to provide a single piece of empirical proof or evidence that the universe is not an intelligent design.