The Lounge

Me and my science "buddy" are building a catapult for science class and I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions for a basic design. (dimensions should be about 3' high and 2' x 3' for a base. All Suggestions are greatly appreciated...

It's about time for some SFN Crackpot Bingo. You can get a card here and an explanation of terms here.

I get the general gist of it, and even studied up on the various theories within on wiki, but there are some things I don't understand: I have seen tables that show the embodied energy for standard things like bricks and sheets of plywood, etc. There seems to be a certain amount of consensus, but I seriously have to wonder if this is because they are all just copying from one source. Does anyone know of a reliable, peer reviewed source that breaks it down further, showing where they get these figures? I need to know, when they calculate, do they account for other factors such as transportation, storage, the amount of waste produced, ease of disassembly and disposa…

Just wondered what everyone's thoughts were about corporal punishment in public school. I've been utterly frustrated with the ineffective disciplinary techniques used by public schools today - which has degenerated to sending them home for a vacation (ususally called suspension), or tattle telling to the parents. Because they are impotent and can only utilize the carrot - no stick to be found. I find myself contemplating military school for my oldest teen, guilty of chronic suspension (well not quite that bad, but this is the 3rd time this year). But then I'm also contemplating the fact that he's not half as outrageous as I was in school. The things the…

While a sea rescue of a shuttle crew is the most complicated, the Mode VIII is just one of several emergency rescue drills conducted regularly at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

I found this strangely funny... thought you might enjoy the concept too http://theybannedme.com/ The forums themselves are predictably crappy, but the concept is amusing. ~moo

Is it really necessery with absolutely everything i say? Its just that it gets tiresome from my behalf, when i want to just talk about the subjects without any other ditsraction. I understand i should have some references, and i will make a point with that. But no offense to mooey, but he's draining the utter crap out me. He quite literally wants a reference to nearly anything i say.

Whenever I reply, my post disappears! What's going on?!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24629066/ http://www.goveg.com/feat/foie/ I have to admit complete ignorance to foie gras prior to this recent removal of the ban. I think this is an easy case of animal cruelty for no good reason if I ever heard of one. If these stories are accurate, dog fighting is better than this, IMO.

A few years ago I needed to buy a piece of microsoft software. I had the part number. Went to MICROSOFT's web site and typed in the MICROSOFT part number into the MICROSOFT searchengine................. about a min later I got back a message saying that what I was looking for did not exist... Hmmm I thought.... lets try google... OK, I went to google and typed in the MICROSOFT part number.... less than 2 seconds later i was directed to a page on the MICROSOFT website showing a picture of the software, a full description and an option to 'buy it now'. Microsoft are apparently offering cash incentives to get people away from google to use their search engine...…

Here's mine: Hey baby, let's go to my place and make an F1 generation hybrid.

I thought swansont, Klaynos and others would enjoy it.

"A little over a year ago, the Fermilab Office of Public Affairs received a curious letter in code (image here). It has been sitting in our files all that time and we haven't had much of a chance to look into breaking the code, nor are we particularly expert at this!" Part of the letter was decoded about 2 days after Fermilab put it up on the internet. The first stanza decodes to "FRANK SHOEMAKER WOULD CALL THIS NOISE", and the second stanza decodes to "EMPLOYEE NUMBER BASSE SIXTEEN". If I'm reading correctly, there's still part of the letter that has yet to be decoded. Now people are trying to figure out what it means. Frank Shoemaker is a physicist who worked on the…

My exams for third year finished yesterday. They were also the reason i was banned, SFN was too much of a distraction . Overall i think i did pretty well in Separation Processes 1(diffusion and solid/liquid separation) & 2(Distillation,absorbtion/stripping) and Heat Exchanger Networks. Biochemical Engineering was a complete disaster though, i don't even know if i did enough to pass that one. The whole class feels the same, the exam was nothing like the past papers or any tutorial questions in the notes. some of us even ent through it afterwards with the notes(which sucked ass) and couldn't get anywhere with it. who else is finished/finishing exams now or s…

The definition of slavery in my title I learned from Abraham Lincoln (1809-65), 16th President of The United States, signer of the 1833 "Emancipation Proclamation" to free African-American slaves, Lincoln said it in the Seventh and Last Debate with Stephen A. Douglas, Alton, Illinois, October 15, 1858, the famous debates that put Lincoln on the road to Presidency: "That is the issue that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles -- right and wrong -- throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time…

It's kinda weird that I have still not "met" any female here at SFN. All are males! Is there a policy about that (just joking:D) or no interest in the kind of science it is discussed here?

http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/1041/1041_01.asp?wpc=1041_01.asp&wpp=a Jack Chick obviously has a few bones to pick with things like secular humanism and post-modernism. But, of course, he drags evolutionary biology into it and declares it equivalent to the two. That's not to mention eugenics! Oh, did I mention that science proved there is no heaven?

How do I make a blog?

http://www.godtube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=70de402de83dc11609bd It's every creationist argument compressed down to a few minutes. You can't create "new genetic information" (oh wait, polyploidy). Radiometric dating is so inaccurate that scientists don't use it anymore, and they use circular reasoning to date the ages of fossils! Dinosaurs were so too mentioned in the Bible! The missing link between man and ape has never been discovered! REPENT!

On my way to PCU George H W Bush, I drove by the Creation Museum. I seriously contemplated checking it out. I even had my digital camera(with video capabilities, so YouTube possibilities) in my pocket. Gah, I even had legitimate questions about their particular cdesign proponentsist model( such as "After the Flood, how did animals get to all of the continents?") in case I saw someone I recognized like Ken Ham. Unfortunately, I decided to just drive past it.

I'm not sure if this belongs here. If not, it'd be cool if a mod could move it. There is kind of a spectrum of scientific disciplines. On one end you have the hard sciences and on the other the soft. Physics and mathematics are definitely hard sciences. Political science is so soft that it resembles black magic more than anything...free verse poetry is arguably closer to the scientific method. In between you have archaeology, anthropology, biology, psychology, chemistry and so on. Obviously, some are harder sciences than others. All are useful though. Some, especially those with increasingly vague subsets (er, archaeology and Egyptology, for instance) range…

I thought you folks might be interested in reading An Atheist's Creed, by physicist Mano Singham. It's a remarkable piece.

Hey... Is there someone who lives in any country which does not speak English? I'm thinking of applying for a scholarship in U.S. or UK. I live in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil o/\o I'm wanting to be an undergraduate student in some good university abroad to expand my knowledge and life experience

The ‘I have a dream foundation’ was formed in Dallas to ensure education opportunities to children coming from low income areas. The foundation empowers children in low-income communities to achieve higher education by providing them with tuition support and equipping them with the skills and knowledge to gain entry to college. The foundation has a long-term, comprehensive approach which is driven by the goal of college matriculation. In Dallas, the ‘I have a Dream’ foundation was started by Bill and Late Elaine Farrell with the help of the foundation’s founder, Eugene Lang. Ever since, the foundation has enabled millions of students to graduate with top honors from …

I've found a video on youtube! I guess you all will like it! Check it out.