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Interesting pedantic discussion, but I don't believe Americans hate a government concept that has never been tried or achieved. I think the OP is referring to the form of government most Americans think of as communism as practiced in countries such as China and the Soviet Union.

Hmm. Could be. Do you have any references to back up these assertions?

I am not suggesting the cost or loss of innocent life due to the war on terror is justified, or that we are completely successful, however we can do something about terrorists. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Terror http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_attacks_in_Pakistan

The economic impact the last time four jets were used by terrorists was significant. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks

I understand why many people get frustrated by the level of time and effort that goes into fighting terrorism. The amount of money spent for each life saved is ridiculous. I also understand why many people are happy with the level of time and effort that goes into fighting terrorism. It is more than just the number of lives lost to terrorism. If three airliners full of passengers are blown up in the air in a short time, there may very well be a significant impact to the economy as people limit their travel and tourism. I think there is also a big emotional impact. I for one would be much more upset if a terrorist randomly chose to kill my child, than if he died of cancer. But I don't understand why it is a waste of time discussing terrorism for those who want to, whether or not we can do anything about it, and whether or not there are far bigger problems. First, I doubt that very many problems are solved because they are discussed in this forum, certainly no far, far bigger problems. Second, I am sure many people on this site like to participate in discussions because they enjoy the topics and learn a lot (like me!). No matter the importance of the topic or how trivial, people should be able to discuss what they like, whether it meets the approval of others or not. If someone feels a topic is a waste of effort they can just move on to something more worthy of their time. No need to criticize others just becasue of the subject matter, or to decide for others what is worthy of discussion. We may have gotten to ideas on how to stop/limit terrorism if we hadn't been sidetracked by a discussion of whether or not we should have the discussion.

If we are not going to waste our time discussing a topic if there are far worse problems to discuss, then perhaps we can cut out these recently discussed posts: What is the opposite of love? I'm looking for a word. Rain What is your perception of Germany? Anything in Brain Teasers. Ether model. Are CANDU reactors safer? Why use the Wankel engine? Evidence of human common ancestry. Anything in Homework Help. This place is going to get real boring if we limit discussion to only the REALLY BIG problems.

If you want to respond to multiple people, you can also click on the "MultiQuote" button found in the right hand corner of each of their respective posts. When you have finished clicking MultiQuote in each of the posts you want to respond to, you click on the "Add Reply" button at the bottom right of the thread. (Not the reply button that is part of any individual post.)

Not me. You had previously made the point that freedom of religion was essentially 'man made' and not 'god made'. I just made the observation, because I thought it interesting, that none of the founding fathers who defined that right for Americans were atheists. I try not to be too subtle because it often leads to misunderstandings. I only meant what I said, nothing more. Nicely constructed argument to refute Brainteaserfan's question. Very respectful. I was going to continue in this conversation but I don't want to run the risk of being barked at if I question something you feel so strongly about. I'm out of here.

I think you need to reread my post. I said: Again, I must have missed it. Where have I or anyone else said anything about what my assessment of God is, much less that someone who disagrees with it is an atheist? Oh, or is this statement just because of the misunderstanding of what I said originally?

Ok, so I opened your first link and found this: So which is correct? My site, that said none of the founding fathers were atheists? Or your site, that said none of the founding fathers were atheists? I'm afraid I don't see your point.

Even the US and state Constitutions wouldn't stop citizens from killing. I'd hate to drag up gangs and mass murderers, but there are also examples of these in US history. I never claimed the 10 commandments would stop Jews from killing. I simply said they were additional limits on behavior. There will always be people who do not follow any given set of rules. However, let's not fool ourselves into believing that secular law will control all behavior either. Interestingly enough (in regards to the US), none of those men were atheists. And given the large number of religious affiliations it is no surprise that they created the right to religious freedom. They never would have reached consensus without it. http://www.adherents.com/gov/Founding_Fathers_Religion.html

Are you talking about belief in any God? For example, if you believe in the Christian God then aren't you, say in the case of the 10 commandments, under additional limitations, in addition to any secular limits to behavior? Civilization fails? I would think that most civilization developed with most people believing in God with no evidence to back it up. This seems to be a bit of an overstatement. Can you expand on it some?

Not my specialty but I'll take a crack at it. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong. The amount of energy to move the vertical distance will be the same regardless of whether you had a steep or shallow climb. But there is also the energy to travel the horizontal distance. Assuming a smooth descent on both sides that would allow you to coast all the way from the top to the end, the person who had the shorter horizontal distance to pedal during their climb should expend less energy.

You are wasting your time. Since you are after literalists and fundamentalists, picking a science forum to meet your responsibility of correcting those who are not thinking right couldn't have been a worse selection. What next, picketing outside the ACLU to convince them to support the Bill of Rights? You yourself are a fundamentalist, standing on the corner trying to convince any passersby of your position, confident in the knowledge that you are the sole source of objective truth.

The distance of an object from earth does not necessarily coincide with the amount of time light from that object took to reach earth. Due to the expansion of the universe, the location of an object whose light took 1 billion years to reach us, was nearer than 1 billion light years away when the light left it, and is greater than 1 billion light years away when we receive the light.

Actually I think you are the one who added. If you had: CM is Current Money in your pocket SM is Starting Money in your pocket (say, $100, that you had in your pocket at the beginning of the day) Then you spend $10 and McDonalds Then you spend $5 at Subway You could say: CM = SM-10-5 Now, do you shorten that to: CM = SM-15 or CM = SM-5 The question being of course, do you have $95 or $85 in your pocket now?

No, the research should be on the effects of positive or negative feedback from friends. Then again, that seems rather arrogant of me to be telling others what they should do their research on. I have no idea what further studies they have planned, or what others they are working with are covering, or if the research funding covers separate research studies for the effect of fathers, etc. Never mind.

Sounds a bit low... http://commonsensehealth.com/Healthy-Living/Healthy_Percentage_Body_Fat_Chart.shtml

I believe he may be referring to the fear some had at the time (1940's) that if a chain reaction was started by scientists, it may not have stopped until the entire earth was destroyed.

My wife gets ear aches from cold wind all the time. If it is below about 40 (F) and windy she must have her ears covered or she'll get a temporary ear ache. Since both infections and wind (for some people) can cause pain, I imagine it wasn't too big a leap for some to assume that the wind was causing infections.

With all due respect as I am sure I am at the low end of scientific literacy on this site... I don't think anyone is picking on you. It just seems to me that you regularly try to convert their highly specific/technical/supported descriptions of nature into a less precise format/language that you prefer to use. Since your format/language is less capable of describing the nuances and detail of nature than theirs, it shouldn't be a surprise that they can only help to a certain degree and that you get results that are not to your satisfaction or accepted by them. Frustrating for all. That being said I learn a lot watching you work through things.

I didn't follow how allowing torture under some circumstances allows all torture. Governments and military list what type of interrogation is allowed and what type is not allowed. I'm quite sure that in interrogation, like in any other endeavor, rules are not always followed, but I don't see where interrogation is somehow in a class by itself and uncontrollable.

Your description sounds to me as if the only reason we cannot tell where the center of the universe is located, is because we do not have enough data (i.e. the location of all galaxies in the universe.) When the OP said: "this suggests that there is no center or middle of the universe", it sounded as if he meant that a center of the universe did not exist, or that it was a meaningless question, and could not be answered with additional data. I am not sure if you two are saying the same thing and I misunderstood, or if there is disagreement on whether or not a center of the universe exists, regardless of our ability to identify it.

You mean, as opposed to your topic sentence? It is interesting that you don't think that whether or not torture is effective in gathering information has anything to do with whether or not torture is ever justified. It seems pretty obvious to me that if torture does not extract useful information then it will be tough for anyone to justify its use. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that nearly anyone who does justify its use does so because they believe it will extract useful information. And a quick read of the previous posts shows that roughly half of the posts, including the OP, discuss the relative effectiveness of torture in gathering information. Can you please expand on why you don't think the effectiveness of torture is related to justification of its use?

Perhaps the 'center' means the center of gravity of a grouping? I imagine that the center of our solar system would be considered the sun. And I think we have a good idea where the center of our galaxy is. That makes me think we can point to the location of the center of our local group and the supercluster we are part of. Is it wrong to think that we could continue the process (assuming we had enough data to do so) of picking the center of ever larger groupings until we have identified the center of the universe? At what point does this process break down? Is my confusion over understanding why the 'center' of the universe is not meaningful likely because I don't understand things like isotropic intrinsic manifolds?