Velocity_Boy

But you don't need the math. Or 500 words or more to prove that it's ludicrous to believe that imagining something is tantamount to conjuring it into reality. I can clearly and concisely and irrefutably prove that claim wrong by asking the claimant one six word question..... "Have you ever imagined flying unaided?" Game...set...match. LOL And of course I could come up with three dozen equally brief and bulletproof questions that would equally damn this pipe dream of bringing vivid imaginings to reality. Itd take about twelve minutes. Or just mentioning past wild things I've imagined that are totally unfeasible. I imagined I walked on to the Boston Red Sox spring training camp and made the team as a 33 year old rookie who never even played high School baseball. I imagined I totally demolished a concrete and steel commercial building with my bare fists. Like the Hulk. When we beging inventing logic and math equations innorder to deal with absurd notions that are unworthy of the time it takes to formulate them, I feel we are giving undeserved consideration and possible credibility to the silly idea. It's overkill. It's a sort of Rube Goldberging, to use an advert I'm not sure exists. Cheers.

Pretty comprehensive list, Swanny. I especially am digging #14.

I learned that the Earth's actual magnetic North Pole is located at the southern extremis of our planet in Antarctica. And that..... yeah....the true magnetic South Pole is up very near the geographic North Pole. WTF? I knew the poles flip every few hundred thousand years or so, and even how we discern this fact. And that the Pole flips are not even that high a deal. Other than remaking all those compasses. But how I never knew the noth-pole-is-magnetic south thing is kinda humbling. I learned this from a book I'm reading about our solar system when it mentioned Jupiter having it's magnetic and geographic poles at the same locus. Then the author mentioned us. Wow.

American Gods by Neil Gaiman. And I must say...that thus far its a big "meh" I'm having s little trouble figuring out what all the hoopla about this book is about. A popular TV series.....and if you Google Best Fantasy Novels of the 21st Century, I can promise it will be on virtually every single list. Why? Maybe it gets better? I'm about two thirds through. Cheers. Actually...Koontz could be correct. Nobody knows for certain what the final outcome of universal expansion will be.it may end in a void where distances have become so great and the stars become extinguished from old age to where gravitational machinations are no longer a factor. In other words...a cold and lifeless void. The discovery of Dark Energy probably rules out the old notion of a possible Big Crunch ending. As Hawking thought might happen. It also..to me..increases the possibility of the expansion-to-cold death scenario. Hope this helps! A must read for whom? electrical current is measured in amps. volts is a measurement of potential. hope this helps!

Today I learned....but still have trouble believing.... That the entire population of this planet could be packed into a cube that is a mere one cubic mile. Further....and a bit humbling...said cube could be dropped into the middle of any ocean and the corresponding sea levels would not rise even one inch. Feel small yet? Cheers.

Really? That surprised you that some accidents are caused by operator error? Or not paying attention? No reason it should. In this regard it's the same for us motorcyclists as it is for car drivers. I've been riding for over fifteen years and still use a cycle as my primary transport. I can offer you some more info on this topic. The most common type of bike v auto accident is when the car turns left in front of the bike on a two way road. The bike t-bones the auto and the cyclist either flies into the side of the vehicle or he clears it over the top. This sort of accident accounts for almost half of all bike wrecks. The second most common scenario in bike v car is when an auto just rear ends a cycle stopped at a red light. For bike accidents with no other vehicles involved the most common is when the cyclist simply takes a corner or s turn too fast. And just runs out of road, as we say. Thats gotta be a typo. Thirteen million bucks from the fecal output of one million humans? So, in your typical BM from today there was $13.00 worth of minerals in it? Pardon the pun, but bullshit. Gotta link?

50 tspns./day is no big deal for many folks. Remember that your oaverage 12 oz. can of coke has about 12 tspns. So....two cokes a day and you're halfway there. And sugar is in everything! Ketchup...mayonniaise..salsa...chips....french fries...let alone the stuff we eat that we KNOW is sugar-laden like pastries and candy. We just don't realize how much sugar gets dumped into our processed foods. But people who come here to the US from somewhere else notice it straightaway. Just theother day my Brit friend who is here on a Sabbatical threw down his french fry with ketchup on it and asked, disgustedly "why do you Yanks insist on dousing everything with sugar?" LOL

Yeah, the brain craves sugar and needs it more than any other organ. It'll use a good 1/5th of the sugar you eat while only comprising around 1/50th of your total body weight. Now then...On the topic of brains and sugar, I learned that whole idea about how little kids get ramped up after ingesting too much sugar is a myth. Repeated observations by impartial observers ..Not parents! ...Show us that little Johnny or Tabitha isn't affected behaviorally by guzzling a large coke and a bag of Twizzlers. Not to say we Americans don't eat too much sugar. I also learned that the average American gobbles....Get this...About 150 lbs. Of sugar every year. And guess how much we are of it back about 150 years ago? Three to five pounds. Or..About 1/40th of today's yearly average. So much for any needed further speculation as to sugar being a prime if not most pernicious culprit for our obesity epidemic, eh?

I learned that the science of Acoustics does not deal exclusively with sound. Seems it deals with the far more broad subject of the propagation and behavior and characteristics of ALL types of physical waves. So, like the vibrational waves on a steel girder in a suspension bridge that were caused by traffic would be an acoustical engineering problem. Or..If you wanted to see how hard you needed to tap your dining room table with a hammer to get that salt shaker balanced on the edge to fall off....That too is a problem for Acoustics. I learned this from my friend and former classmate in undergrad school who is now in the process of getting his MS in Acoustical Engineering.

Really? How so? I'm interested in why you think it a lie? Especially since, you know, it's been proven and documented many times. I'll wait for your explanation. Meanwhile​, here's my first volley...... http://www.physlink.com/education/askexperts/ae433.cfm

In IT and networking P2P is peer to peer.

My wife is Nisei. And she's a Sudoku goddess! In Japanese it's called "suuji wa dokushin ni kagiru. She pronounces that better than I do. LOL My Japanese is improving, though.

Hey Sis! Well I'm compelled to comment on your excellent list for a couple reasons. One, the ironic one, is that I was going to offer a philosophy book for this thread that actually had your username in its title...Yes, that one! The Myth of Sisyphus by the great Albert Camus. Also, you mentioned my favorite philosopher, well, along with Socrates, that is, and he is Baruch Spinoza. Who has been called by many The Father of Pantheism. I consider myself of that same belief. And you're correct about Einstein. Christians and other Theists often like to throw some of Einstein's God quotes at atheists as proof that this great mind of science was a Theist. Well, you and I and anyone who is familiar with Einstein's works knows that is totally wrong. Einstein WAS a Pantheist, at least, he subscribed to many tenets of that ideology. His God...Is we can even call it that...Was Nature. The Universe. The exquisite appearance of Intelligent Design, that really is just the Laws of Nature and Physics and Cosmology doing their stuff. I also agree that one should first get familiar with the Classic Greeks like Socrates and Plato, Aristotle, before delving into the rationalists and the empiricists that came along later...Like Descartes, Kant, Kierkegaard, and those fellows you mentioned. The Greeks with their emphasis on Ethics will set a good base, or cornerstone for the newcomer to philosophy to build upon. I mainly dig Socrates for his sheer chutzpah. LOL.

Hence my saying the Chinese wouldn't know what you're speaking of if you "mentioned" the words "pot stickers" and not "jianjiao." *Sigh*

Folks in China do not routinely eat canines. That is a myth. Rather, this practice is done in only a few small provinces. The equivalent, geographically, of, say, a few small towns in the Appalachian region here in the USA as compared with the entire country. So, for the vast majority, eating dogs is as frowned upon and even appalling to them as it is to most Americans. And the Chinese food we are fed here in most Chinese restaurants bears almost no resemblance to what they eat over there. If a Chinese person came here and was fed, say, General Tso chicken, they would have no idea that it was considered Chinese food. They also would have no idea what we were talking about it we mentioned mu shu pork, pot stickers, or fortune cookies.

I'll offer one I learned when I used to do tech support for a large national ISP. "PBK" this means that the problem the client called us about was not really one with his service, or his pc. But rather, was due to his own mistakes or ignorance on the issue. IOW: operator error. I PBK stands for "problem behind keyboard." we would actually use this acro on our log books. LOL

The Amazing Kavalier and Clay, which won a Pulitzer for fiction, by the sublime Michael Chabon. But we cannot really call Trumps election to be a minor blip, now, can we? As, the night is young, he is only about two months in office. There is still lots of time for him to do enough damage to our nation and its standing in the world do as to elevate from minor blip to momentous flashpoint.

Your magenetism analogy with god is flawed. Why? Well, because magnetism is a proven occurrence. It is a Law. We have seen it work millions of time and it is used everyday. Probably millions of times. It can be seen and witnessed and felt and touched and experienced. We have mathematical proofs and equations outlining its process and methodologies. Several pretty famous scientists--Gauss comes to mind--have made it a central work of their opus. God? LOL. Not so much. In fact, that idea has NONE of those things. As far as declining church attendance, here's a bit more.......http://www.churchleaders.com/pastors/pastor-articles/139575-7-startling-facts-an-up-close-look-at-church-attendance-in-america.html

I don't think the Believers "try to invent" that conflict. I believe it is a very real one. And many of our more strident and vocal atheists, like the late Chris Hitchens, along with Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, have exacerbated this conflict. They claim that religion has had it too easy for too long and the time is nigh for it to be eradicated as the harmful viral plague it is to Science and Progress. I personally agree with that view, BTW. Religion has no choice but to conflict with science if they continue to believe in some of their absurd dogma and fables like we find in the bible. Where unicorns exist; serpents speak and seduce; sky gods stop the sun in the sky so as to allow more time for slaughter; seas divide to allow people to walk through them; and plants were created before the Sun. Wow. Yeah the more I think about it the more I totally disagree with you. In fact. I think religion has lamely TRIED to help close the gap between itself and science. Like with ID. Which is nothing but old Creationism gussied-up with some psuedo science in an attempt to get it snuck past school administrators and be taught in schools. Religion HAS to concede to science like this, and do more, really, if it wants to survive. As it is, as every decade passes religion is swept further and further into the dark corner of superstition where it so rightfully belongs. People are leaving the churches in droves. Evolution gets more evidence and proof every single year. It is all but a LAW! Soon it will be. "Science flies us to the Moon. Religion flies us into skyscrapers." I don't think the Believers "try to invent" that conflict. I believe it is a very real one. And many of our more strident and vocal atheists, like the late Chris Hitchens, along with Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, have exacerbated this conflict. They claim that religion has had it too easy for too long and the time is nigh for it to be eradicated as the harmful viral plague it is to Science and Progress. I personally agree with that view, BTW. Religion has no choice but to conflict with science if they continue to believe in some of their absurd dogma and fables like we find in the bible. Where unicorns exist; serpents speak and seduce; sky gods stop the sun in the sky so as to allow more time for slaughter; seas divide to allow people to walk through them; and plants were created before the Sun. Wow. Yeah the more I think about it the more I totally disagree with you. In fact. I think religion has lamely TRIED to help close the gap between itself and science. Like with ID. Which is nothing but old Creationism gussied-up with some psuedo science in an attempt to get it snuck past school administrators and be taught in schools. Religion HAS to concede to science like this, and do more, really, if it wants to survive. As it is, as every decade passes religion is swept further and further into the dark corner of superstition where it so rightfully belongs. People are leaving the churches in droves. Evolution gets more evidence and proof every single year. It is all but a LAW! Soon it will be. "Science flies us to the Moon. Religion flies us into skyscrapers." I will go along with us scientists not attacking religion and doing our damndest to keep it (and it's show pony, ID) out of the classrooms, so long as they stay where they belong. Which is in the arena of literature and Mythology and Superstition. And NOT in any real discussions about how the Earth or the Cosmos came into existence. Genesis as a guide to the Creation of the Cosmos is about as useful as reading "Lord of the Rings" to learn about Geoscience. What really irks me about the religious zealots and biblical literalists is their continued hypocritical refusal to hold their own holy book up to the same level of criticism and analysis they try to do with science. Never mind that we can explain 95% of how the Big Bang or Evolution work--they take the remaining as-yet-explained 5% and say, "Aha! You can't explain it because god did it!" Jeez that ticks me off. OK I better quit, I get too worked up on this topic! LOL

I'd go with Python. And if you ever want to do a webpage learn Java and Java Script. Python is easy, it's a high-end object-oriented language and its syntax is closer to real written language and vernacular than any other program. The easist programming language to learn would be Microsoft Visual Basic. It's almost all like a GUI OS, with point and click. But it's limited in what it can do, and the snobbier of us coders don't even consider it a real language! LOL. The answer to your question would really depend on why you want to learn to code, and what you hope to accomplish with your new found coding skills. A great place (the best?) online to learn ANY language, for free, is the Code Academy. (www.codeacademy.com). Hope this helps.