TheVat

Though it's important to distinguish what one is told in a religious book from what one is told in a science textbook or journal or conference proceedings. These are very different sorts of telling, epistemologically. The religious book asks certain assertions be accepted on faith. A science text asks only your attention to what is empirically supported by the data, and asks nothing of you on the basis of faith. This would seem LESS dangerous in the beliefs engendered, given they would be derived from evidence and open to revision on the basis of new evidence and/or procedural flaws exposed by peer review. I'm reminded of Bertrand Russell quote, The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.

LOL. You've summed up my reaction to a number of recent threads here.

I appreciate your desire to change your name, given Kretschmer was Hitler's top U boat commander. Though not technically a war criminal, he did kill thousands of civilian sailors, as well as soldiers. Given the current troubles the world is having with revivals of Nazi ideology, that name might not be the best look for you. For an analogy, if I were to join a forum with many Japanese members, I would be reluctant to call myself Paul Tibbets, who was captain of the Enola Gay.

I'd add: Or when it seeks to deny others their right to different beliefs and becomes a basis for oppression, warfare, ethnic cleansing, terrorism, slavery, that kind of stuff. Faith "taken to the extreme" is historically associated with a rigid mindset that their faith is the one true and virtuous path and should be imposed on others "or else." Even when it doesn't reach the violent consequences I listed, it can result in a socially corrosive sort of condescension, where the True Believer looks down on those not sharing their faith and sees them as somehow lacking or needing to be prayed for. That can be difficult, to be on the receiving end of that.

This is from the actress, Kristin Stewart: My Heart Is A Wiffle Ball/Freedom Pole, By Kristen Stewart "I reared digital moonlight/ You read its clock, scrawled neon across that black/ Kismetly ... ubiquitously crest fallen/ Thrown down to strafe your foothills/ ...I'll suck the bones pretty. Your nature perforated the abrasive organ pumps/ Spray painted everything known to man/ Stream rushed through and all out into/ Something Whilst the crackling stare down sun snuck/ Through our windows boarded up/ He hit your flint face and it sparked. And I bellowed and you parked/ We reached Marfa/ One honest day up on this freedom pole/ Devils not done digging/ He's speaking in tongues all along the pan handle/ And this pining erosion is getting dust in/ My eyes/ And I'm drunk on your morsels/ And so I look down the line/ Your every twitch hand drum salute/ Salutes mine." Well. "...your nature perforated the abrasive organ pumps.." seemed like a direct lift from a Vogon poet to me. It certainly called for inclusion in this thread. The IndependentTwilight star writes 'worst poem of all time'The Twilight actress demonstrated her brooding best for readers of Marie Claire magazineAnd now this, tossed anonymously onto my porch this morning. A Tibetan who lacked iodine, Tried Himalayan pink salt, ground quite fine. But those mountains in general, Are lacking that mineral, So cretins abound near the snow line.

Still don't see an answer to this earlier question. What particular matter are you wanting to discuss? I'm a small-B buddhist, so I'm open to any topic on how spiritual practice can avoid being co-opted by political/economic power hierarchies. Careful with the Vogon poetry, however - we could have members of the Arts Nobbling Council looking in, and we don't want them feeling it necessary to gnaw off their own feet. Same applies to works by the Azgoths of Kria, or Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings. Check out our Bad Poetry thread sometime, if you'd like.

Sorry, but your earlier posts come across as unclear on your definitions, and it looked like you had a problem with people rejecting the metaphysical conjecture. I.e. soul = incorporeal essence of a human which survives the cessation of brain function. I would hardly dispute that blood or life exist, nor do I much care how some ancient scripts choose to describe vital signs.

You evade Swanson's point with a semantic quibble. He was clear in his comment that scientific evidence for a soul is lacking. Hitchens razor applies here. Show us your 21 grams or move on. Word games don't impress people here. Anyone can reply to your comments here, you don't get to exclude anyone. If Pin asks you to back up any claims you make, he is doing you a favor and supporting the integrity of the discussion.

Sorry, I didn't use nomenclature well. My uncle pickled, and yes that's too acidic for real fermentation to proceed, so the object is just preservation. Pickling gives longer shelf life, but minus the healthy effects of lactobacilli. Or strepto or bifido, depending on your culture and what works best for the vegetables in question. I'm an absolute probiotic junkie myself - those little guys have pretty much peeled twenty years off the age of my gut. Everything from kimchi to sourdough to Icelandic oat skyr and other nondairy yoghurts to kombucha with B. coagulans. I've bought pickles that are fermented (so somewhat a misnomer, for those who use pickling in its most technical sense), and are probiotic, like Oregon Brineworks. Definitely more flavor than conventional pickle-pickles, and convey a feeling of warmth in the gut, usually a good sign for me. OBW uses mainly lactobacilli, with some Leuconostoc mesenteroides as well which brings up the flavor and acidity but not so much as to harm the lactobacilli.

Are you doing vinegar ferments? Had an uncle who did this, he just stirred it regularly which disrupted the yeast formation. For other ferments, if anaerobic, the oil sounds workable. Or fill the jar full, then seal, to minimize o2. All else fails, there's canning. (Sidles away, laughing evilly...)

OP seems to be advancing the thesis that religion tends to be appropriated and corrupted by secular power structures. I agree. Most here would agree. So what is there to constitute a chat topic? We already have threads debating on the existence of an incorporeal soul. And on the epistemic limits of science. And the OP offers the standard preemptive ad hommie against anyone who respects the scientific methods. So why should anyone bother with you, @Pathway Machine ? Your mind's made up.

Self-control and delayed gratification in cuttlefish. They can pass the classic marshmallow test. (Or its equivalent) The ConversationClever cuttlefish show advanced self-control, like chimps...A marine version of the Stanford marshmallow experiment helped show cuttlefish can delay gratification. Your turn, Jacob. What amazed you?

I actually posted about this, in which I created a paper on Figshare, in order to demonstrate that such open repositories do not vet or review preprint content. (That's our newest family member, Eliza, in the pic) https://figshare.com/articles/preprint/Feline_use_of_telepathy_in_urban_hunting/30411034

Civility is desirable, it's not mandatory. What happens if someone does offend you or disagrees in a way you don't like? Are you going to smite the unbeliever? If you ever do study science and become an atmospheric scientist you will need a thicker skin. Peer review is brutal. What will you do when someone says something like, "Your hypothesis is premised on a misunderstanding of Bernoulli's principle..." Get all butthurt because someone pointed out your ignorance and threaten to "notify the authorities?"

Verifying authorship is not vetting content. This was explained to you already. Scientists reject an hypothesis because it's not testable or falsifiable. They reject theories for lack of evidence. Your ego is blocking your learning here, so you seem unable to absorb the feedback and learn why your hypothesis is weak. Now you're making people repeat themselves and, in one post, issuing threats to anyone who questions your knowledge or ability to formulate hypotheses. Pfft.

But your "conceptual framework" is worthless simply because you don't have even the rudiments of basic physics you need to assemble one. If you don't know why air pressure decreases with altitude, for example, then it just tells everyone you skipped the most minimal amount of homework required to discourse on atmospheric physics. Similar problem when you ask, Well, some thermodynamics and Bernoulli's principle would have been some help with that. Not to mention how friction works, and laminar versus turbulent flow. Exposing your ignorance, and then trying to patch it with invisible interdimensional gateways offered with no more basis than thermodynamic fairies...this is not a good way to engage with science. This is false. Figshare is an open repository, not a peer-reviewed scientific publication. Anything, including work-in-progress, can be tossed onto it. It is not vetted or edited or reviewed in any way. I can go there right now and post that cats use mental telepathy to attract birds. (I don't doubt that such open repositories have value, especially for students and non-institutional contributors, but that doesn't mean everything on there has any merit) Ahem. I just "published" this on Figshare. https://figshare.com/articles/preprint/Feline_use_of_telepathy_in_urban_hunting/30411034

Mr Ockham, cleanup in Aisle Four. I blame the butterflies. All that flapping.

The quick brown fox jumped over ETA: the lazy dog. Working here.

@worldwoodproject Having explored this subject for some years I'd say that you really have to look at specific bioregions and what lands are available for such carbon sink projects. In some areas, seagrass restoration is a stronger candidate, in others, bamboo, in others there are already fast growing commercial woodlands, e.g. Southern yellow pine, because there's a profit motivation. In other areas, restoration of tallgrass prairie can fix carbon where forests aren't feasible. And then there's rainforest restoration, with all its political hurdles and commercial forces in opposition. There's no single magic bullet, and each project has particular and often enormous legal and financial hurdles. Here's a good example of an approach which absorbs 35 times what a rainforest does: BBC BitesizeHow can seagrass help slow down climate change? - KS2 Sus...Learn about the remarkable properties of seagrass and how it is helping in the fight against climate change with Bitesize KS2 Sustainability.

Heehee. Beware the Ides of October, Caesar, and be sure to pay your DN fee.

Could you adapt a torque wrench and use a pressure/torque conversion table? Convert torque on the wrench to pressure from the pressing face of a bolt which is of appropriate surface area?

Just to be clear, you are suggesting the injection of hydrochloric acid into the brain? This is the same acid that is generated in the stomach to break down meat by denaturing protein and preparing it for the enzyme pepsin which will dismantle the protein into amino acids (proteolysis). Can you see why HCl might not be good for brain tissue? BTW, not sure what you mean by "tertiary structure of protein..." Proteins are normally folded, which is what tertiary structure refers to, so that's a good thing where most brain proteins are concerned. And again, HCL will unfold all those proteins, i.e. denaturing. This would be very bad.

I typed "what is a transom pickle" into google AI. A nonsense phrase. The reply: A "transom pickle" is not a standard nautical term, but rather an informal expression referring to the process of "pickling" an outboard motor after it has been submerged in saltwater. The term likely gets its name from the motor's association with the boat's transom, the flat surface at the back of the vessel to which the motor is mounted. AI did better with my next question: How many hamsters are needed to fill the Superbowl? To estimate the number of hamsters needed to fill the Superdome, we can divide the stadium's total volume by the estimated average volume of a single hamster. Step 1: Estimate the volume of the Superdome The Caesars Superdome in New Orleans has an interior volume of approximately 125 million cubic feet. There are 1,728 cubic inches in one cubic foot (12 x 12 x 12). Total Superdome volume in cubic inches: 125,000,000 cubic feet * 1,728 cubic inches/cubic foot = 216 billion cubic inches. Step 2: Estimate the average volume of a hamster An adult Syrian hamster can be around 6 inches long. Approximating the hamster as a simple rectangular prism for the purpose of this estimation gives a volume of roughly 6 inches x 1.5 inches x 1.5 inches = 13.5 cubic inches. Other estimations online suggest as low as 3 cubic inches. Let's use the 13.5 cubic inches figure as a conservative estimate. Step 3: Calculate the number of hamsters Divide the Superdome volume by the hamster volume: 216,000,000,000 cubic inches / 13.5 cubic inches/hamster = 16 billion hamsters. Accounting for empty space This calculation assumes the hamsters are perfectly stacked cubes. As living creatures, hamsters are irregularly shaped and cannot be packed perfectly, leaving empty space. The packing efficiency of randomly packed objects is far less than 100%. If we assume a packing efficiency of around 50% to account for this wasted space, the number of hamsters would be roughly half. Adjusted number of hamsters: 16 billion hamsters * 0.50 = 8 billion hamsters. Next I asked if cellos were a good source of fiber. AI was able to handle this one okay though it speculated I was confusing a cello with celery. No, "cellos" (which are musical instruments) are not a source of fiber; however, celery, a vegetable, is a good source of fiber. The confusion likely stems from the similar spelling. Celery: Is a crunchy vegetable that is high in fiber, low in calories, and rich in other nutrients like Vitamin K, Vitamin C, folate, and potassium. Cellos: Are large string instruments played with a bow, not an edible food item. Just to see if the AI was staying fairly sane, I asked: Are cats a good source of fiber? No, cats are not a good source of fiber, as they are obligate carnivores who get no nutritional value from it. Hmm. Not quite understanding the question. I decided to conclude with something fairly unchallenging.... Are cats more edible if they listen to Bach every day? On this matter, the AI delivered a reply worthy of a SFN member: There is no scientific evidence to support the bizarre claim that cats become more edible by listening to Bach or any other music. The idea is a misconception based on a loose and unproven connection between music, animal welfare, and the tenderness of meat.

I've wondered about that. Water's polarity and its enabling the transport of nutrients and waste so well, may not be enough to make it de rigeur for biochemistry, but it also has really high heat capacity which nicely moderates temp changes within organisms. The other one that does that well would be ammonia - I'm not sure how liquid ammonia environments work in terms of reactions rates that foster complex multicellular life. And they have a narrower liquid range than water. At our atmospheric pressure, you don't get a liquid until temp is down to -33 C. This is an area where my knowledge is thin (beyond SF speculations): can "slow life" in principle reach the levels of complexity that terrestrial life does? Also, while ammonia is an excellent solvent it's less effective than water for dissolving highly polar organic molecules. So that's another slowing factor. I guess I'm asking how important speed is. Maybe we'll find out someday. (I suppose we will be "slow life" compared to sentient AGI, if we ever develop that) "Ammonia Bird in a Gilded Cage."

Seems to me most Americans, living in a country whose charter is not having monarchs, are okay with a demonstration called No Kings, and which is opposing autocratic leadership. You preen yourself as a populist Man of the People, Mr P. Perhaps you should join the march.