Sisyphus

Specifically, it uses arsenic where all other known life uses phosphorous, in its DNA. (Or is it still DNA?) Since it's otherwise the same, it seems very unlikely that it had a separate origin, but then, I don't really know what I'm talking about.

Well, two problems. First, even if that worked, you wouldn't be simulating an atom, you would be simulating what sounds like the Rutherford model. Electrons aren't balls literally orbiting the nucleus. They have not orbits but orbitals, which are better envisioned as "clouds of probability" (scare quotes intentional) described by a wave function. Second, as Cap'n said, you can't create an object with the same polarity in all directions, which would basically amount to a giant magnetic monopole. The "north" parts and the "south" parts on the surface of the object have to be equal. What would likely happen in the scenario described is not a single north and south pole, but a north pole in the middle of each component magnet and a south around the edges, and the whole thing would be neutral from any significant distance. It might help to picture magnetic field lines, and remember that they all form loops, extending through the magnet, out one side, curving around, and back in the other, like this:

Stop. The existence of culture may be instinctive. Specific cultural behaviors are not, which is what makes them cultural as opposed to instinctive behaviors. Everything else is pedantry and semantics. You can use a different definition of "culture" if you want, but it's clearly not what is being discussed, so why bring it up in this thread?

It fits the observational data, though, and an explosion outwards from an origin point does not. According to whom? Spacetime is not really a "fabric" analogous to tectonic plates. What is increasing is simply the sum of the distances between objects. Alternatively, you could say that the density of the universe is decreasing. I don't know what you mean by parts growing into each other or leaving holes. The big bang is not an explosion, and was never conceived as such except in popular misconception. What data is that?

I agree. Wikileaks publishes whatever is leaked to it. When criticized for "not leaking documents from the Taliban," their response was basically to say by all means, give us some legitimate documents and we'll gladly publish them.

The expansion of the universe is not motion. It is an "increase in distances." Newtonian physics has no way of describing it. There is no "origin point" of the universe, because the origin is everywhere.

How would you go about abolishing it?

It's not so much changing the mood as discovering new information that allowed them to correct inaccuracies, mostly based on genetic analysis, which is relatively new and constantly improving. Before genetic analysis, all they had to go on was the fossil record. Originally species were classified according to superficial resemblances. Now they are classified by degree of relatedness. You might look more like your 3rd cousin (or a total stranger) than you do your brother, but you are still more closely related to your brother. Changing from a system of classifying individuals by appearance vs. by family relation would mean a lot of reclassification. (But it wouldn't be totally different, either, since we tend to resemble our close relatives.)

If C is constant in all reference frames, then the length of an object in a given reference frame changes with its velocity. What your example describes is a situation where C cannot be constant between reference frames (like it wouldn't be in classical physics), and is therefore non-physical, as the constancy of C has been thoroughly demonstrated.

You're just describing the classical situation. i.e., "if relativity doesn't exist, then it isn't true." Let the speed of light be constant in any reference frame, and times and distances no longer are.

So in other words, no, it isn't a left vs. right issue?

I don't see why Julian Assange and whatever his personal politics may or may not be needs to be a part of this discussion. What's at issue is pro vs. con on this degree of transparency. Do you think that's a right vs. left issue, Pangloss?

You misunderstand. That different groups behave differently is not what makes it culture, but it does prove that it is. It would still be cultural if all crows did it, but it would be difficult to distinguish that from instinctive behavior. I disagree. Culture is group learned behavior. But I guess that's just a matter of differing definitions. But the way you seem to be using it seems broad enough to be basically meaningless, i.e. it's just whatever happens, e.g. rust is the "culture" of iron.

To me culture is the ways of living, fulfiling needs, thinking, feeling, acting that are learned from one another, as opposed to being biologically determined or learned from one another. In other words, populations that behave differently despite being biologically the same, because of the memes they pass down. Crushing nuts under car wheels at pedestrian car walks would be part of the culture of the crows in that area of Japan.

No, I hadn't. Thanks. No, they were not trained by humans to do any of these things, nor was it pure trial and error: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090805144114.htm However, they do train each other, passing down techniques and making improvements: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/04/0423_030423_crowtools.html Is it fair to say that crows have "culture?"

I'm putting this in The Lounge because I don't really have any comment besides, "look at these awesome crows," but I'll move it to biology if people have more intelligent things to say. (Sorry about the URLs, forum software won't let me embed this many videos.) Anyway, here is a crow making a tool, bending a wire into a hook and using it to retrieve out of reach food: www.youtube.com/watch?v=fijuwTeoBt8&feature=related Here is a crow using three different tools in sequence, using a short stick to retrieve a medium stick, then the medium to retrieve a long stick, then the long stick to retrieve some food: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZE4BT8QSgZk Here is a magpie proving that it can recognize itself in a mirror: www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRVGA9zxXzk&feature=related Here is a crow fishing with bait: www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_8hPcnGeCI&feature=related And here is a rook raising the water level in a test tube by dropping stones into it, in order to retrieve a floating piece of food (it purposely chooses larger stones, and attempts this trick with a tube filled with water but not one filled with sawdust): www.youtube.com/watch?v=riqtFvZg1mI&feature=related I know humans who couldn't figure out how to do these.

Yes. There is no such thing as dying "of old age." It's just that as your body ages and every part of you simultaneously gets more decrepit, you get more and more prone to all sorts of diseases and malfunctions, and one of those is what kills you. "Natural causes" just means something internal as opposed to external like a car accident or something. The oldest well-documented person was 122 years old. I don't think they bothered to figure out an exact cause of death. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_person

Making fun of a brand wouldn't be considered libel unless the statements made were objectively false and implied to be true, e.g. not obvious parody, like pretty much anything a comedian would say. I don't think that "verbal terrorism" should be illegal, because it's pretty much the entire point of free speech. Dissent of any kind is always judged by the defenders of the status quo to be "harmful to society," a condition so broad and arbitrary that it could be (and has been/is, in the authoritarian regimes of the world) used to silence anyone, any time.

"Substance?" A photon is something that exists, if that's what you mean. A property of a photon is its energy in a given reference frame. And since energy and "relativistic mass" are the same thing, a photon also contributes to the mass of a system, e.g. a perfectly mirrored boxed with photons bouncing around in it is heavier than the same box with darkness inside. Why would it imply that? And again, there is no such thing as "pure energy." Energy is a property. More or less. It has no rest mass, and it only exists at C (i.e. does not "accelerate"), but yes. It doesn't, as far as I can see. Yes, it can be difficult to conceptualize. The point was that it isn't motion through space, like an expanding sphere with a wave front and a center, etc.

"Mass" is not converted into "energy." Matter is converted into electromagnetic radiation. Mass and energy are the same thing, and they are a property of stuff, not the stuff itself. (e.g. Light is not energy. Light has energy.) The amount of energy in a closed system does not increase or decrease. (But it is dependent on frame of reference.) It sounds like you're imagining the expansion of the universe as an ordinary explosion moving outwards in a sphere, but that isn't accurate. Expansion is not motion through space, but expansion of space. The shape of the universe would not be an ordinary 3D shape like a sphere, and may well be infinite.

My thoughts on this are that it's a random conspiracy blog that doesn't link to primary sources, so I have no idea what the proposed Kenyan constitution is or what the U.S. government's relationship to it is. However, I'm guessing "Obama is illegally pushing eugenics in Kenya" is ridiculously inaccurate. Also, foreign aid is only about 1% of the federal budget, and has been about 1% of the budget for years. So "the reason why US economic has been spiraling all the way down to the bottom because Obama is giving away the taxpayer's hard-earned money to other countries" is also ridiculously inaccurate. Also, abortion is not illegal in the United States. So, again: ridiculously inaccurate.

But then it's not really backed, per se, is it? You've got quantities of money in circulation that can't possibly be redeemed. It's as if the national currency were free sandwich coupons for the deli around the corner from me. They just can't make that many sandwiches, and if they could, we'd all have far too many of them to be useful. Sandwich coupons (or energy credits) could be a medium of exchange, but I don't think it would work as the only medium of exchange. Well, right. So then if that fusion reactor powers half the globe for free, that means half of all existing power production gets shut down, which means they expend half as many resources meeting all demand, which means electricity is suddenly worth half as much. How much you need is only part of the equation. What matters is what its exchange value is worth. I need to breathe the same amount of air whether I'm on Earth or on the Moon. But air is a lot more valuable on the Moon, since it takes a lot of work to supply it. You could buy and sell air on the Moon, but not on Earth.

I'm still not really seeing it. So I have a certain number of "joule credits," or whatever. But that energy doesn't actually exist, yet, in a usable form. Say I want to redeem it. What actually happens? The government is obligated to produce something? In what form? Electricity? How could they possibly produce that much, equal in value to all the currency in circulation? And what could I do with it? I can't store it, like I could gold or something. So what does the redemption consist of? No electric bills for a thousand years? On the contrary, the exchange value would plummet, just like in any other situation where you double the supply but don't change the demand.

Why does money have to be tied to something "concrete" in order for it have scarcity? Just stop printing/"borrowing into existence" more of it. I'm also really not sure how energy is supposed to work as a medium of exchange. How do I buy a loaf of bread with it?

I mean that despite being supposedly so mismanaged, they've still managed to attract a lot of human capital and maintain a lot of wealth. The sorts of problems California has ("Do we have to raise the tuition slightly on the best public universities in the country?") are in many cases enviable, I would think. They're in a position where they can debate the merits of aggressive environmental laws that other states can't even afford to consider, etc. Ok, so it's about fiscal conservatism, not Republicans vs. Democrats. So what does it have to do with asking why Democrats should be in charge? And on what basis are we saying that Democrats are in charge in California, anyway? California has only had a Democratic governor for 12 of the last 44 years (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Governors_of_California), so if we're talking about a decades long problem, then it seems pretty bipartisan. Meanwhile, for the example you're looking for, how about Vermont? Howard Dean (we can call him a liberal, right?) forced a balanced budget every year, despite Vermont being the only state that doesn't constitutionally require it.