alt_f13

Yah, that was kindof stupid. The statement following it still stands, though. One example doesn't form a very good pattern.

I'm sure you meant "I think we'd have more of a chance finding organic compounds based on carbon and containing sulfur than of something based entirely on sulfur." Well, we really don't have much to go on, so I wouldn't be counting my carbon-based chickens just yet. That would be akin to saying "there's no other life in the universe because Earth is the only living planet we've found." I don't see any reason to speculate either way. Who knows, maybe David Grinspoon is just a crazy, and Sulfur based life is a stupid idea. I just like keeping my mind open to the possibilities.

You wouldn't consider "a god" (whatever that means in context to this thread) an extra-terrestrial form of life? And how can you consider one completely invisible immeasurable concept over another completely invisible immeasurable concept? In one post!?! As far as I'm concerned, gods and aliens are the same thing until we find evidence of either. At the risk of sounding like a complete hypocrite... I'm all for religious and philisophical discussion, but I tried my damndest not to let my last post steer the thread away from the subject at hand, and I think it would be beneficial for you to consider thinking about this before posting. Someone let me know if I'm out of line here... preferably not in this thread.

Ha! Not sure if that was sarcasm or not. Most BCers would say it wasn't.

You're making assumptions.

Thoughts on the forum devoted to logic and critical thinking? Would it be beneficial? Would it help this particular problem?

Your links are broken. Solaris 2002: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0307479/ Solyaris 1979: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069293/ 1950/1979 whatever, same century.

Lol. 2001ASO = Solaris + A Clockwork Orange - 20 years I wonder how the old Solaris compares to the new one. Look it up. It's Russian. You'd like it. Its from like 1950 or something.

Agree many lots of dem tings der. I don't believe Solaris had anything to do with the afterlife. Yah, maybe it was boring, but no afterlife. The ball thing was generating copies of people by reading people's minds. The end Clooney character was a copy of the real one, and was able to remake his wife in the end, as he was of the solaris ball. Nothing about afterlife. It merely raised the same question as Star Trek did about the transporters: When you're deconstructed in one place, jumbled all around and reassembled somewhere else, are you really the same person that was taken apart? In Solaris' case, no. The Clooney character died. His copy was just that, a copy. In Star Trek, they don't go into that much detail, except when Worf is held in the transport buffer in that one episode where he grabs a worm thing, brings it back and it turns out to be a person. I guess they imply the same person is reassembled as was taken apart. But you don't think Solaris was at least an appealing view of what space faring vessels might look like in the future? What about his home? It's all beautiful and rather contemporary. I think the set designers where awesome, and should have received all sorts of accolades. I take it you didn't like "2001: A Space Odysee" either?

Since it is fiction, you obviously have some leeway. Just don't call it pseudo-mathematics (This thread just might belong in pseudoscience though :S) At this point, you're beyond me. The singularity bends space quite drastically so it's conceivable that you could use it to bend spacetime for your Alcubierre drive. If your story allows the technology to create singularities, I would have them be very unstable and collapse after small fractions of a second, temporarily warping spacetime. Though I don't know what happens when a 'micro-singularity' collapses (supernova?) you could just write it as collapsing into nothing (perhaps as the negative and positive timespace distortions in the field converge?). Who knows, this is where the fiction comes in I guess. I would use a non singularity source of energy though, as I doubt the energy you could retain from the singularity being created/maintained could anywhere match the power draw of whatever brings them into existance. Otherwise, it sounds akin to free energy or a perpetual motion machine, and I think that's something people would pick up on rather quickly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Americans_in_Canada#History This isn't the full story. The major problem wasn't the Spanish going hog wild or anything. A combination of foreign viruses, whisky trade and forced integration were what really hurt the natives in Canada. Ugh. I don't know what happenned to all the net sources I used during high-school. Anyway, since confederation it's been treaty after treaty after treaty, landclaim disputes, constant commercial/traditional hunting and fishing disputes etc. Basically they were never integrated at all with society, largely due to the racist views of the European settlers, partly because they wanted to retain their ways. It was a doomed operation because they were naive to how the Europeans operated, and the Europeans took advantage of that. One of the more disturbing occurances was the institution of the so called "residential school system" where native childred were taken from their families and "Canadianized." Mostly this consisted of molestation and physical and psychological abuse. This pretty much disrupted an entire generation of native children. The "residential school system" was aventualy abolished, and the children were returned... Jesus... makes me rethink my whole stance on the subject. [edit] Took the happy winky face and canada joke out of the top of this post. ****in depressed now. Screw Canada.

Again, it's a plainly visible, literal hard-line I was referring to. [edit] Like you say, taking it further in this way would prove to be destructive. Of course, but a forum on the topic of developing or using these skills would be beneficial in promoting them too, no? Besides, those of us still struggling with circular logic and the like would have a place to ask what's what from what, rather than just being told off and served a link. There isn't really a problem with that, but alone it doesn't change the fact that the particular offender still can't sort his arse from his elbow. Like I said, it's hard to predict whether it would be used properly, but some other address of the specific issue could be helpful.

You guys are obviously from the USA. From what I've seen up here in the great white north, views are so torn you can barely tell they're from the same country. People seem to oppose the caste separation, and yet they still get all the amenities one could ask for. Welfare checks, tax exemptions, free healthcare, free post-secondary education and even gun ammo and booze checks! I'm all for helping the down and out get back on their feet, but at this point it's just lunacy! They aren't even down and out! They get more money than I do, and I still have to pay for school! Frankly, I'm for reintegration, whether they like it or not... and obviously not; who'd want to give up free money?

Yeh, I read it - but I feel that even having that thread in the EvMEx forum kindof promotes discussion about Creation in that forum. I know the guidelines are to meant to prevent the irrationality and false logic that enevitably rear their ugly heads when a creationist involves himself with evolution, I don't think the title "Welcome, creationists, to Science Forums and Debate!" quite rams the concept home. Yah, I'm slowly changing my mind on wanting to allow religious bents into the EvMEx forum. An issue concerning the acceptance of evolution as a religious person is a philisophical issue, not one of evolution.

Haha. I thought you were serious about that option, sorry. I probably should have guessed that knowing how I like to make polls . I'm going to read those nonetheless.

First of all, you cannot contain a singularity without using an enormous amount of energy, without some sort of exotic matter that doesn't exist; if you wish to invent that matter, that's up to you. Secondly, a constant velocity means that you stop accellerating, meaning either, you need to conserve fuel for the decelleration period, or you are travelling near the speed of light, where furthur accelleration is nearly impossible. And slingshotting around a black hole would accellerate you to incredible speeds, if it didn't rip your ship apart. The problem afterwards would be stopping your ship.

LOL. Here it comes.

It's evident that "Religion vs Athiesm" and Creation vs Evolution debates are beginning to run rampant on SFN, and although I am not directly opposed to these debates, I fear SFN is in a bit of danger of becoming known to the science forum community for the amount of topics with this debate becoming a footnote of their closed threads. Then again this could be said about almost every other science forum. But that's not really what I am concerned about. My concern is that this debate not only exists in the religion forum (where I believe it belongs, as it is not a debate about science, but about theology, as Creation has yet to be proven as science, and religion debates are a no-brainer) but has spilled over into the evolution forum repeatedly. I'm wondering if a new rule prohibiting discussion or debate on the subject of creation in the evolution thread might be prudent. I believe the discussion of evolution needs to be based around the merits of the theory alone. Debates about Creation vs Evolution usually degrade into one-shot exchanges on rhetoric and semantics anyway and rarely yield any new ideas. I doubt that promotes healthy scientific debate, and just don't think it has a place in the evolution forum. I realise it's not uncommon or harmful to discuss two or more subjects of science in a topic that relates them directly; I want to emphasise that Creation theory is unscientific, and its inclusion in the evolution forum has impeded scientific debate in some cases. I would like to iterate that I do not oppose the discussion of religion or creation in the religion forum, or even oppose the discussion of religion in regards to evolution, as that is an important topic to many people. I just don't think Creation has a place in the evolution forum. I'm curious to read the views of the moderators.

Could someone please explain to me how the mind could be a quantum effect, or how this idea even came about?

This was the definition I was going by/referring to.

I was going to suggest the color gradient, but I like the idea of a 3D representation, so I went with the warped grid. Perhaps a series of points with either varying densities in distribution, or same distribution but varying size would be more appropriate. I just don't like the idea of the concept being used to describe the concept. Like I said though, there's hardly an analogy that you can express verbally that can match the bowling ball analogy as far as how easy it is to visualize. I just wish there was.

How did you come up with that?

Heh, perhaps so for me too... I think that without the mechanisms used in the storage of short, and long term memory, the part of the brain responsible for conciousness is of no use, so I would take that into consideration.