insane_alien

If you were to look up at the moon and observe the flash of light caused by a meteorite striking the surface, it actually happened a whole second before you saw the light. the CMB was emitter a long time ago true, but it was also emitted ~13.7 billion years ago. if you would call seeing the flash of light on the moon a direct observation then picking up the CMB on your TV and radio must also be a direct observation. SOMETHING emitted it and that something must also have emitted it from every point in the universe at the exact same time. there aren't many ways to do that. one of the simpler ways to explain it is if all the points in the universe were the same point at time zero. or at least very close to it. just because the light has travelled so far doesn't mean we are observing fictional light.

surely you could just make a factorial function for your C64, right? thats the beauty of programming, if there isn't a function for it, just program one! computers are turing machines so they can perform any process (at more or less efficiency than others) if you really really wanted to you could run global weather simulations on a C64. they'd be so slow as to be useless and the hardware would probably fail before the second iteration completed but you could get the exact same results as the super computers they run it on.

because marriage is not monopolised by christianity. also, you have a little thing called separation of church and state. the opinions he expresses as president may not be the same as his own personal opinions. of course, he could also be displaying that christian trait that is prized above all others: tolerance.

http://www.niro.com/niro/cmsdoc.nsf/webdoc/ndkw6u9cjh is this what you mean? I've used this to determine hygrocopicity at my work many times (with a few modifications so it reflected the working conditions rather than the lab setup.) If it isn't then you'll have to explain, because thats the closest thing to an index that i can find or have heard of.

Well, we know they'll lose energy and eventually reach a very low temperature on the order of the background radiation. they'll also stop spinning as well again on suitably huge timescales. after that, as far as we can tell, nothing. there may be periods where it absorbs extra matter in the form of interstellar dust, hydrogen and possibly even planetary or star sized bodies. taking on the extra mass could push it over the limit and it will collapse into a blackhole. if it survives that, then it's possible that it'll hang around until the accelerating expansion of space rips it apart nucleon by nucleon.

you've only seen hacking in hollywood movies haven't you?

Funnily enough the object causing those things WAS a spacecraft. But its identified so it hardly qualifies as a UFO. basically, it was a leaky tumbling upper stage of a rocket launch. it was spraying out two different substances from different parts of its body. the heavier substance caused the spiral and the lighter the fuzz. The reason it expands so fast was due to the low pressure at that altitude and the brightness because it was still lit by the sun. no aliens. just some russians with a dodgy rocket.

Thorium-232 breeds U-233 which could potentially be used in a nuclear device. sure, it won't be as good as plutonium, but it'll get the job done and could be used as a primary in a multistage device.

CAD (Computer Aided Design) is used in the design of very nearly all products these days. from nuts and bolts right up to buildings and aircraft carriers. It is probably quite difficult to find something that hasn't had a computer involved in its design process these days. With the obvious exceptions of antiques and art.

we already do use computers to design robots, what makes you think we don't?

I didn't think it was as high as that. I've been told a number of figures but they've all been below ten for only basic training. But still, any chance is better than no chance.

yes, it can. but it's pretty damn rare. its absolutely nothing like in the movies. It's not completely useless, it will raise the survival chances but only slightly, it's a 'this is the best you can do without equipment and experience' measure and shouldn't be relied on. The movies don't portray how long you'll actually have to do it (They always seem to give up after a few repetitions which could be compared to letting the patient die in some cases) and people certainly don't come back if you've left them alone for a few minute and then suddenly thump them on the chest and cry a lot. The movies fudge it beyond all belief.

it's nuclear chemistry. although thats really more physics than chemistry.

yes, it would be lithium hydride with the tritium isotope of hydrogen. Incidentally, Lithium Deuteride (Lithium Hydride with the Deuterium isotope of hydrogen) is used as nuclear fusion fuel in thermonuclear bombs.

its trivial to do from linux with ssh but i have no idea about windows. These days the only time i ever use windows is to interface with some machinery at work and thats an old win98 laptop. I've convinced IT to getting it running on virtualbox though because i don't think its going to last much longer. so yeah, asking me about windows these days is like asking a particle physicist about the types of fertilizer used in paleo-indonesian farming. Don't have a clue.

No I don't condone this, I thin kit's wasteful and inefficient. However, this is not an issue of 'organic' and 'non-organic' farming. That is an issue of business practices. I'm quite sure that even if all farming was organic we would see the exact same behaviours. It is rife amongst all business sectors. Limit the supply so that the price remains high. I personally don't like it. same as above. nothing at all to do with the method of farming. nothing to with the farmers themselves even. everything to do with the people who pay the farmers though. This is very far off topic and is no longer about the merits or lack there-of of 'organic' farming. thread split?

corporate malpractice does not have any impact on the usefulness of a technique. There are all sorts of skulduggery in the medical sector. Should we all go back to praying for a cure rather than taking a medicine? The major benefit of farming is that it produces food. various alternatives can be judged on the desired qualities of said food. So lets compare: quantity/land efficiency: modern farming can produce far more per acre than 'organic' farming consistent production: modern farming is less susceptible to disease, drought, weather and a plethora of other conditions that ruin whole crops for organic farms. crop health: crops from modern farms tend to be healthier than those from 'organic' farms due to better pest control and plant nutrition. etc. and your point is? modern farming uses ideas that work. we still plough fields are you going to argue that was organic farming too? we also plant seeds so crops can grow, will you argue that organic farming is better because of this? I thought you wanted unbiased discussion but you seem to be going all anti-corporation on us despite none of us actually bringing up corporations. I smell an agenda.

you're not going to bork you system just by copy and pasting it to the other system and trying to run it. at most you'll get an error message that will give you clues on how to get it running i.e. XXXX.dll not found the most probable reason you don't see it is because it works. nobodies going to write detailed instructions on how to copy and paste some exe

but if you're really really worried then you can do a handstand.

Basically, "Organic" farming is just growing crops without all the pesticides and chemical fertilizers used by modern day intensive farming. This stems from people not fully understanding the role the pesticides and fertilizers have. They believe that since drinking a glass of pesticide would kill you, spraying it on crops makes the crops similarly poisonous and so on. Also that eating GM crops makes you into a mutant. It's really hard to come to a conclusion other than, they don't actually understand the concepts involved and have reached an incorrect conclusion as a result. Apart from this, all it does is unsolve many more serious problems agriculture has faced in the past. Namely how to prevent your crops getting eaten by pests. Lets say we were to ditch all the machinery involved in modern day farming and go back to the tools that were available in the 15th century. And we pitted a farm using modern day pesticides and fertilizers against a farm using 15th century pesticide and fertilizer technology (namely a scarecrow and manure) The farm using pesticides and such will have MUCH higher yields and crop health while the retro farm stands a non-trivial chance of losing the crop entirely. There is a reason we started using these things on crops. They work well. And there have actually been studies done to determine their safety. I realise this is probably biased as I really don't like wilful ignorance but I put the organic proponents on the same shelf as those who claim to have an allergy to radio waves. A little knowledge is dangerous.

I was doing some experiments for an investigation at work and was using dry ice pellets for cooling and sample storage. Accidentally got a dry ice pellet into on of the sample tubes and it got sealed. took a good few minutes to blow up but blow up it did. thank god for safety specs. Also, not really lab but it fits, i was emptying out ~500L of a solution i was using for a trial. This solution was in a wheeled tank and there is a slight rise to the washing area where there is a suitable drain. as all in all it was about 750kg (it was a denser than just water and the tank adds a bit too) i was having difficulty getting it over the rise. so i took a bit of a run up to see if i could shift it. nope. I took a second, nothing, a third and rediscovered the miracle of resonance. the tank fell over and emptied itself all over the floor. saved me having to wait until it all drained out of the valve though.

it was a two minute bodge of something that was never meant to be used for distances more than 100m. basically all i added was a simplistic atmospheric model where the density drops of exponentially. will it give accurate results? no. will it give you some idea of what's required to do a soft landing, yes, a bit. feel free to modify the script by the way, if you want to add a spherical earth then go for it. I might do it later if the mood takes me but at the moment i can't be bothered.

I was not trying to imply that anti-cancer drugs should not be taken because of the obvious benefits they bring. My entire point was this: you are already at a heightened risk of future cancer due to the drugs necessary for you to beat the current instance of cancer. It would be foolish to expose yourself to extra carcinogens when it can be so easily avoided with no impact to the benefits. I'm sorry if it came across that i was taking it in isolation, i'll chalk that up to poor communication on my part.

I was working on the principle that you want to follow the ALARP (As Low As Reasonably Practical) principle with exposure to carcinogens. Sure, the anti-cancer drugs are carcinogenic, but that doesn't mean you can soak your self in a tub full of carcinogens with no ill effects. If it can be easily avoided, then avoid it. in the case of administering cannabis, the inhalation of carcinogens can be extremely easily avoided.

no, there haven't been reported deaths from smoking cannabis. I never claimed there were. BUT any burning vegetable matter will produce carcinogenic chemicals in the smoke. this is just a fact of the chemicals all living things are made from form (took ages to type this the right way round) when they undergo pyrolysis. The reason i was saying hell no to smoking it is this: If you are trying to cure cancer in a patient, especially if its lung cancer, you don't want them deliberately inhaling carcinogens as part of their treatment. It's counter productive and likely to lead to later cancers. It's especially bad as there are ways of getting the drug into your body that do not carry the same risks. An example, lets say that to treat disease x the patient should be exposed to high wind velocities (this is completely fictional, don't get bogged up on details). Now, you have two possible solutions here, strap the patient to the nose of a 747 or give them a fan? which carries the least risk? it's the fan right? now, that example is admittedly exagerated in terms of risk, but it's the same principle. when treating a patient you want to avoid risk. take the safe option to get get them better if they have equal efficacy and so on. so you option A(smoking) which carries a small risk of future cancers and a certainty of reduced lung function (at least short to medium term, probably limited recoverable if stopped) or option B(almost any other method of ingesting) which carries none of the above risks. I'd go for option B if i were treating a patient. And even if cannabis smoke does less damage to your system, it still does damage. It will reduce your lung function. this is the same with any smoke. denying this just makes you sound like one of the burnout stoners you see ripped apart on a news story about cannabis legalisation. It's a damn silly statement and does nothing to advance the towards the goal of legalisation. Hell, I support legalisation of cannabis and every time I see some guy baked out his mind touting that i think 'its people like you who prevent this from actually happening'.