swansont

Declared? Who declared it? Please post a link to this declaration. According to Realclimate The amount of simply made up stuff is also impressive - the GISS press release declaring the October the 'warmest ever'? Imaginary (GISS only puts out press releases on the temperature analysis at the end of the year). The headlines trumpeting this result? Non-existent. Hansen is personally responsible for data glitches? Ones that get corrected as soon as they are brought to the attention of the appropriate scientists? The standard to which one generally holds scientists is not "never makes mistakes," and you have provided absolutely no evidence that "enthusiasts will accept any report that supports their enthusiasm" or that this is an example of such behavior.

You aren't the one who needs to clean up the thread when things go astray. Your disagreement is moot, since we've settled on a definition. Saying something is incorrect is not, in and of itself, being close-minded. If you don't know what evidence has been considered it's a flawed argument.

Yes. I also considered infractions. I chose neither. All of the sudden I feel like it's the scene in My Cousin Vinny where Pesci refuses to say "Not Guilty." How about we focus on the physics?

Derailments such as this. Inquiries about attitude and motivation. One can ignore them and get on with the proof. Or not. I prefer the former.

Mod note: Duplicate thread has been merged with this one.

No, that wasn't agreement. If one considers the average speed of a molecule at room temperature, which is comfortable, with the average speed of a molecule at water's boiling point, which is painful, the speed increase is only 13%. I don't think the picture of an angry stream of atoms slamming onto you jibes with that. You aren't feeling the impact, per se.

On the contrary, I have heard the term, and I've seen it used in different ways. And I've already given my example of how the term is misused Emailing specific people is different than posing a question on a discussion board that has the occasional crank show up, eager to stir the pot. Ironic, because they, too are often reticent to define terms in hopes of generating a flurry of discussion.

The reason hot things are painful to touch is that you are damaging cells, and pain is your body's way of telling you to stop doing whatever you're doing. An atom with room-temperature thermal energy will be moving at a speed of order 100 m/s, which is significantly faster than a strong wind.

Show me the calculation.

Basically saying the same thing. Mass/energy bends space, and light follows a geodesic.

I imagine it's because Severian thinks it invalid. Can we dispense with the melodrama and stick to the physics?

Not good enough unless somehow I'm assured that everyone is using the dictionary, and as scientists we generally realize that scientific and lay definitions are not synonymous. By defining it, one avoids the possibility of another poster coming along and playing the equivocation "gotcha" or derailing the discussion. So let's start with Aristotle's definition that D H has provided. That you can entertain a thought without accepting it; acceptance requires valid evidence to be presented. In that sense I think most scientists are open-minded.

USe the existing threads to discuss this. iNow has provided a link.

The problem with this critique is that one needs a mechanism by which the brain interacts but detection equipment does not. The optical vs. x-ray analogy fails because people have scanned with a wide spectrum of detectors; it's not a matter of looking in the wrong part of the spectrum. You need an entirely new interaction. In a broader view, the reasoning behind this is backward. Scientists use equipment for detection rather than human senses because the latter are so easy to fool. The detection is nonlinear, and the interpreter (the brain) fills in gaps based on expectations or calibrations set by evolution for survival rather than scientific inquiry. If your eyes and/or ears say something is there, but the equipment continually says otherwise, it's probably not because of faulty equipment. All you are left with is an irrational, invalid conclusion.

"Open minded" needs to be defined. The term is often used by cranks to mean the opposite of skeptical, i.e. acceptance of hypotheses without any valid evidence or rigor.

You can have an ensemble of photons that have the distribution of a blackbody. One can talk of their temperature, which is really the temperature of the object emitting/absorbing them, in thermal equilibrium. We speak of the 2.7 K temperature of space, which is determined by the distribution of photon energies.

Which definition of "censorship" are you using? I see absolutely no evidence of any censorship going on here.

OTOH, it's been my observation that people who make more money generally tend to rank higher on the cheapskate scale.

There's about a dozen users in the banned/suspended list, over the course of more than 7 months. You can see that with rare exception, the banned users appear multiple times, and suspensions generally don't occur until several violations have been made (except for the unforgivable infractions). There are users who believe the staff are too lenient in handing out the infractions and sending abusers to troll-heaven. As iNow has guessed, the purpose was to both inform the users that something as being done about posters that were disrupting threads, and to lend some transparency to the process, lest anyone think the actions were arbitrary or unwarranted. You can look up users, read their "contributions" and judge for yourself, should you be so motivated. If anything, newbies might get the impression that I'm the Bad Cop™. I can live with that.

Butter-flavored gelignite?

Or we color it with language to spin it the way we want. You could have said "… like Boy Scouts," or "… like fraternity/sorority members" ————— There was a time when people in the US did service for their country, as tvp45 has mentioned. You got compensation, but it was less — possibly far less — than what you might get for two years at a job in the "real world." Other people have made, and continue to make significant sacrifices to allow people of today to enjoy what they have. The amount of squawking about requiring community service, not military service, and certainly not two years' worth, is just sad, IMO.

You really can't play the insulted card if you call someone a jerk, with or without the smiley. And the threat to leave the board carries little weight — either you do or you don't. Bringing it up multiple times quickly becomes unpleasant noise. Stick to the physics, please.

The deduction is up to $4000, and is "above-the-line," i.e. in addition to your itemized or standard deduction, according to the link I had provided. So can be about $1000 off your tax bill if you qualify. Then there are the two tax credits. Anyway, I looked at the IRS pub, and the current deductions/exemptions cannot be taken simultaneously. Why would the new one be any different?

Wow, even Nature has the ability to post almost-content-free material. I expected better of them. The mention "Hogan's ideas" without explaining what they are, like a few paragraphs are missing from the article. Now, what does this have to do with Rovelli's article?

I had come to that conclusion even before this.