swansont

I just finished "Devil in the Grove" by Gilbert King, and won the 2013 Pulitzer for nonfiction. It's about racism and justice (or lack thereof) in the south, just after WWII, and recounts the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund's involvement, with a large dose of Thurgood Marshall's career up through that point, as well. Excellent book — a very compelling read. (Gilbert King was a high school classmate of mine, and if you told me someone from our class would eventually win a Pulitzer he wouldn't have been particularly high on the list of my guesses. A good example of people hitting their stride later on in life, and how high school is not necessarily a good predictor of one's future)

barfbag has been banned for his apparent inability to post without insulting people nor follow moderator direction to not respond to moderator notes.

Upon further review, joshgreen's seat has been upgraded to permanent ban.

JebediahK was banned as a sockpuppet of TJ McCaustland. TJ has been suspended 7 days. ——— Tim the Plumber has been suspended 7 days for topping off his continued trolling via persistent fallacies, and personal attack, with an abusive PM.

Since it's come up Why was my post moved to Speculations?

As an expansion of "vocabulary" in post #3: you can't co-opt terminology from the branch of science you're discussing and have any hope of communication without causing an immense amount of frustration with your audience. If the terms you are using are already defined, using the term with some new, custom definition simply isn't going to work. Learning the standard nomenclature is your burden, it is not incumbent upon the scientific community to learn your unique definition of words that are already in widespread use. As a reminder, while certain announcement threads like this are locked, discussions of them exist in unlocked threads you can find by searching, or you can start a new thread.

A question about having to provide links when an opinion was offered has come up, and not for the first time. It's been added to the FAQ

Relative has been suspended for a week three days for continuing to steer his discussions back to speculations discussions which have been closed.

Popcorn Sutton has been banned for being a chronic pain in the moderator. There is a long list of offenses; many of the posts have been hidden from view for being inappropriate or not conducive to discussion. Enough is enough.

! Moderator Note Possibly truer than you intended. The word cited is an issue here. You cited nothing in that post; you made some assertions. A citation in this context is a quote or link to some kind of substantiating work (preferably a scholarly work, but that depends on the circumstances), and that is generally lacking in your posts. Without some kind of reference, nobody can assess whether what you've stated is indeed factual. Unless you are claiming personal expertise (which you have already disavowed), then such citations are necessary. Otherwise this is simply soapboxing. It is what all crackpots are up against, and sadly, a hurdle they never seem to be able to clear. To all: let's tone down the rhetoric. (as an example, accusations of lying really have no place in the discussion) Do not respond to this in the thread

chemistry student has been suspended 3 days for personal attacks in threads and trolling/harassing people via the PM system. another chance pls has been banned as a sockpuppet. 3 days means 3 days

And if it has a big cross-section, you don't need much of it. But if it has a small cross-section, you need a lot of it, and then the statement that 60% of the core is Helium doesn't mean it's all He-4, which affects your calculation. You have a section where you calculate the He from the outer part of the sun, and use that number in the total. So yes, you do calculate a number for the whole sun:

Two He-3 in the core are very unlikely to collide, which has to happen for them to fuse. The reaction rate is concentration-dependent. It's probably small enough it can be ignored, but I don't know for sure. The abundance you cite is for earth, where He-4 is (and has been) in constant production via alpha decay. There's no reason to assume that the sun (or any star) has a similar composition.

The wikipedia page says that 60% of the innermost region is He, not of the whole sun. I think your outer regions calculation is moot. The core isn't convective, so the He produced there shouldn't get to the outer regions. How much of the current mass in the core is He-3? The wikipedia article doesn't say the 60% is all He-4.

wlad has been suspended a week for repeated copyright violations, specifically copying discussions from elsewhere in order to critique them. No means no.

! Moderator Note Discussion related to purportedly disproving Darwin has been split http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/85066-disproving-darwin/

Arnaud Antoine ANDRIEU has been suspended banned for his recent blatant plagiarism and the subsequent antics which involved posting in ways that did not advance any useful discussion.

How would one show that it's representative? Otherwise it's simply, as you say, hypothetical. As in, a figment of your imagination. How about some real quotes? “Our schools cannot handle this influx, we don’t even know what all diseases they have” is from Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX). That's rhetoric, not fact; the children are likely better-vaccinated than US kids. http://time.com/2991764/myth-diseased-immigrant/ Phil Gingrey (R-GA) wrote a letter to the CDC, and said, “Reports of illegal immigrants carrying deadly diseases such as swine flu, dengue fever, Ebola virus and tuberculosis are particularly concerning.” Ebola comes from Africa, not South or Central America, and Gingrey is a doctor, so he should know better. That's simply scare tactics. Not measured debate. Reasoned discussion can't include Fox News lying left and right. Reasoned discussion might include the House actually coming up with some kind of legislation, which it hasn't done. So, how about we deal with facts rather than fantasy?

Are those actual quotes, or even close paraphrases? Because I've missed those kinds of exchanges. The liberal response you've given has been, from y observation, in response to a much baser statement of protest. (I especially like the protesters whose signs imply that Jesus would deport children) So, absent any evidence, I am just going to provisionally assume this is a straw man argument.

barfbag has been suspended a week for repeated thread hijacks and abusive behavior

How does me ignoring the Republican party affect whether other people pay attention to Ann Coulter? Also, Ann Coulter is a pundit, not a politician, so ignoring a political party will have no effect on this, either.

There's one in the works but no release date yet.

Recently finished The Woman Who Died A Lot by Jasper Fforde. Currently the last book in the Thursday Next series.

Unlike the "Coulter-approved" sports?

I am amazed that anyone gives a rat's ass what Ann Coulter thinks. She doesn't like soccer, so nobody should like soccer. I'm sure it resonates with her target audience, because older white folks in the pro-homogeneity crowd probably don't enjoy soccer. My view is that it's not worth the effort to rebut all that's factually wrong or small-minded about that screed.