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I think a distinction can be drawn between religion and pseudoscience. Astrology and crystal healing are pseudoscience, in that they make claims about observable physical phenomena, based on theories for which there is no evidence and which conflict with science. Attacking pseudoscience is fair enough, I would say, for anyone with a scientific education. Religion, at least in its more reasonable manifestations, is something different from pseudoscience. It is mainly a guide for living one's life, inspired by stories and ideas that don't make testable physical claims. However one can certainly dismiss these ideas and stories, and anyone in a liberal democracy is free to do that. Your objection seems to be that figures who rely on the support of the wider public tend to refrain from ridiculing religion. That's a pragmatic choice they make, so as not to alienate believers. It is not forced on them. In fact, the same applies to pseudoscience, in that a politician who ridicules crystal-healing, or homeopathy, risks losing the crystal healers' vote or the homeopath vote. (I recall the elder Bush made the error of saying how much he disliked broccoli, causing consternation in his campaign that he had lost the broccoli farmers' vote!) So I don't really see that "fairness" comes into it.

Beautiful little shark babies have been hatched out of eggs laid at the aquarium.

Seems like it was yesterday. Promise of jobs for physicists, a new era of almost limitless energy, and what not. The goose that laid the golden eggs died without a bang, and after months-long whimpers. And the world never recovered from it. Or did it? We lost a lot of our former innocence anyway. I did. Very interesting Nature article on it: Lessons from cold fusion, 30 years on https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01673-x Reflections welcome. Sorry that the topic is a bit old. It's not the anniversary that I'm interested in.

My condolences to all my British friends, on the passing of the Queen's husband, the Duke of Edinburgh.

What else can I say ? You two are well-experienced guys here in these scienceforums. . . . . . I would have been just too glad to sit down with both of you , especially with joigus , and re-read some good informative textbook(s) on all that vector and tensor and curvature stuff.

Question for researchers. Do you jump to conclusions, and possibly ruin your reputation ? Or do you wait for independent confirmation, get 'scooped', and never get a reputation ?

This part I understand ( and agree with ) The rest, not so much.

Don't expect too much from me... Ethics never was a main topic for me. I would say, as any sensible person, just the risk of giving capital punishment to an innocent should be reason enough to refrain from it. And AFAIK deterrence seldom works. So I think incarceration might be the best solution, in the first place simply because we put somebody away who has proven to be dangerous, in the second place we, i.e. society must attach consequences to people who do not want to play by the rules. However, if a society does not take the chance to rehabilitate the offender, it is not much use. Just putting somebody in jail, specially when it is overfilled, you create offenders and possibly more radical ones too. In this respect, it seems to me that there is a huge difference between prisons here in Europe, and in the USA. Most of the times rehabilitation is the aim. Therefore we might take some risks, letting out somebody who will still act criminally (which hurts extremely when its is murder on innocent people), but I think a lot more crimes are committed by ex-inmates who were radicalised by their life in prison. To get a glimpse of the difference between the USA and Scandinavia, there is a short series about 'the Norden'. This is the episode about prisons (the others are just as interesting): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfEsz812Q1I To get back at capital punishment: there are also examples of murderers who felt much remorse about their killing, and ended up meeting the family of the victim, or became meditators, even meditation teachers to their fellow inmates. These are pretty extreme examples of course, but just killing a criminal, or putting him/her in jail purely as punishment I find useless, and not something a civilised society should do. Punishment yes, but for the betterment of offender and society. A loose-loose is the last we want, no?

Everything I've read suggests the mining waste would only be marginally radioactive, so I'm more concerned about the phosphate than radioactivity. We already have frequent algae bloom problems. Biscayne Bay National Park is right there too.

An attempt at humor since your profile photo displays your glasses on top of your head, every time I see ya.

First amendment of the US constitution: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. So the "right of Freedom of speech" pertains to the limits the US government has in this manner. It does not matter if the term "freedom of speech" already existed or who first coined it.

Agreed. In the US people are referring to their Rights guaranteed under the Constitution. The claim is frequently made by the same people who discuss their Right to bear arms. "Freedom of Speech" is a direct quote, and people in the US know the phrase from the Constitution. It is taught beginning in early elementary school. There are certainly other legitimate uses of the phrase, but if asking how it is generally used in the US, the answer is as a violation of a Constitutional Right.

It's a recession, not The Omega Man or Soylent Green ( I liked Charlton Heston before he became involved with the NRA ). And there won't be any zombies either ...

Here's the Global Trends website for the report: https://www.dni.gov/index.php/gt2040-home/introduction

This is the part I do not understand: And this is the part I do understand:

This is in today's AP news:

Much of the instability is already priced into the market anyway. The traders tend to make money on both the upside and the downside and it’s only massive unanticipated system shocks that cause huge crashes.

Yes. Very definitely. And they may continue for some time.

Economists have successfully predicted 10 of the last 4 market crashes

But that’s not the sole goal of the justice system. Protecting society, rehabilitation and impacts on the aggrieved (i.e. “closure”) are factors, too.

A marketable skill for sure in the looming post-crash economy.

Am I the only one who's wiped his arse with a dockleaf?

Beyond this, it gets rather more complicated when we consider them indoctrinating their children or legislating and putting laws in place motivated by said beliefs. Some might consider it “parenting” and instilling values, while others might see it as a form of abuse and harmful to our collective future.

! Moderator Note "Let's do an experiment and it shows I'm right" is not a prediction or something that can falsify an hypothesis. Closed. Don't bring this up again, in any thread

! Moderator Note "Read the attachment" is not compliant with rule 2.7. However, I did read it and it falls well short of the level of rigor we require (which you acknowledge when you admit you don't have a theory) A better approach might be to learn the physics by asking questions, in order to propose an actual model.

Two books I found very very useful in the past and still contain useful stuff. They are good because they both contain much practical info and examples eg breadboarding interface circuits and so on. I don't know where you are in the world, but if you can get hold of an old Open University Hektor trainer you would be laughing. I built one and learned machine code and assembler on one. Also you can get some pretty sophistic 'logic trainer breadboards' second hand these days. These can be adapted for use with micros.

Hi starchaser137 The site I pop into from time to time is https://opencores.org/ There you will find open designs you can look at and make contact with others doing this. I'd suggest you start with something fairly simple (6502 type design maybe) and popular. That will give you a better chance of both getting a leg up and finding people to help when you get stuck. I'm personally a Xillinx fan but would warn you that if you get into FPGA's the learning curve is both long and steep - not for the faint hearted. On the other hand you don't have to spend much to see what its all about - I'd recommend you download and install Xilinx vivado (still free I think) and take a look at the examples. Thats a comprehensive toolchain for general FPGA design and you will get to see the complexity very quickly. Alternatively there are a number of people building such processors with discrete components (even on breadboard!) - a yahoo search will pull those up - try a search for "6502 open source" and similar:- what has been done is quite amazing. Do not be tempted to buy books for college students as they tend to be too dense for self teaching - and stay away from overly cheap tools - work with the best you can get. I would avoid mswindows for xilinx - linux is much better for this. The basic concepts are easy enough - its learning what you need to learn and doing it that takes the time. People will suggest you learn verilog - if you only expect to work in the amateur field that's ok - the alternative is more precise and trusted by bigger institutions and no harder to learn - so if you want to work in the field someday use that (I'm not naming it in hopes of avoiding pointless flame wars) I hope thats some use to you.