Bill Angel

I realize that you are asking an ethical rather than a scientific question, but I would guess that it would have to be kept in a sterile bubble with filtered air, as exposure to modern infectious diseases would be fatal to the creature.

When I was a youngster I played the violin in the school orchestra. During the holidays we played Christmas music and other seasonally appropriate selections like Jingle Bells. As you suggest, this activity filled a genuine need we children had for group participation in an enjoyable activity. Religious beliefs didn't really enter into it. This was back before Christmas music in public schools became a contentious issue. See: Concerned parents label elementary schools holiday concert a form of bullying http://dailycaller.com/2012/12/20/concerned-parents-label-elementary-schools-holiday-concert-a-form-of-bullying/

I agree with his sentiments, and would add a quote from Richard Feynman:

I would like to submit a question for consideration: The question: Dark matter is supposed to interact with gravity. Does that mean dark matter is sucked into black holes? And are there dark matter black holes?

Is the analysis of dreams something that can be done scientifically? If the brain is a machine like a computer, then it would seem that any activity that it engages in, including dreaming, should be amenable to scientific analysis.

University of Chicago physicists have succeeding in creating a vortex knot, a feat akin to tying a smoke ring into a knot. Linked and knotted vortex loops have existed in theory for more than a century, but creating them in the laboratory had previously eluded scientists. http://news.uchicago.edu/article/2013/03/04/vortex-loops-could-untie-knotty-physics-problems

Does the situation you are examining resemble that of a driven oscillator?See http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/%E2%80%8Chbase/oscdr.html

If the particle [latex]M_1[/latex] appears in the second equation, and it interacts with a particle [latex]M_2[/latex] via that equation, should not the masses of particles [latex]M_1[/latex] and [latex]M_2[/latex] also appear in the second equation?

Perhaps, in the sense that the space traveller's (Jodie Foster's character) testimony was called into question and discredited in the context of a Congressional hearing by a Congressman (played by James Woods). The purported Congessonal criticism could also have been politically motivated as several scenes incorporate Bill Clinton as President lauding the scientists for their success in decoding the message from space and then building the device to transport someone out and back through wormholes. But Jodie Foster's character was supposed to a radio astronomer with a PhD from Cal Tech, who could not explain at a Congressional hearing why scientists were certain that the signals originated from 26 light years away and not from relatively close proximity to Earth.

I happened to recently watch the movie Contact which starred Jodie Foster. I noticed what I thought was an irritating gaffe in the plot. At the end of the story the possibility is presented that the First Contact purportedly established with an alien society was a hoax perpetrated by a wealthy individual to serve his own greedy corporate purposes. The First Contact was supposedly a signal received from a source located 26 light years away in the constellation Vega. If the purported First Contact was indeed a hoax, then the implication was that the scientific community was fooled into believing that the signal establishing First Contact (which therefore was actually of local origin) had originated in a radio source 26 light years distant. But it would seem to be impossible to fool scientists on this matter, as astronomers have very accurate ways of measuring the distance from the Earth of stars and other sources of radiation. A perpetrator of a hoax could never fool scientists on this issue. In the context of most science fiction this issue would be a minor gaffe. But the story and movie originated with Carl Sagan, who would have been expected not to have made such a gaffe, considering that the credibility of whether First Contact was even established becomes a central issue at the end of the story.

One area of public attitudes towards science that may deviate from that assessment is in the area of health care. There are a number of medically oriented internet sites at which people query members of the user community for information about medical treatments for various diseases. For the afflictions I am personally most familiar with (psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis), fellow sufferers are looking for information on what courses of treatments have proven to be most successful. Science is based on "peer group review", and for these sufferers their peer group is other persons that are afflicted with their disease.

I was a graduate student in chemical physics 30 years ago, so I'm uncertain as to whether my insights about education from that period would still be of relevance. But someone else's would be. It's worth checking out the article titled Popular Misconceptions about the Feynman Lectures on Physics Also,here is a picture of Feynman with the undergraduate Cal Tech students.

Vitamin D deficiency has been linked with anxiety and depression. There also seems to be a correlation between anxiety, major depression and criminal behavior. So it seems plausible that if someone improved their diet to eliminate a vitamin D deficiency, it could also have the effect of reducing their level of anxiety and episodes of major depression, factors contributing to criminal behavior. Such individuals that were drug abusers would of course also need to stop drinking alcohol and snorting cocaine for any improvement in their diet to have a positive impact on their behavior.

If one looks at the history of punishments in Europe before the drafting of the US Constitution, it's easy to understand why the drafters of the US Constitution included that clause.

Castration sounds like one of those "cruel and unusual punishments" that would be held to be unconstitutional.

Another class of computer game that remains popular is the strategy game, such as chess. The limiting factor in a computer chess game is how fast the computer can perform algorithmic searches in the background looking for its best move, and not how fast the computer can render the graphics of the pieces.

A basic property manifested in the behavior of matter and energy is the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. I don't see how your model could incorporate this principle, as it appears to be based on the concepts of classical fluid dynamics, which apply to large collections of particles on the macroscopic level.

A a point of clarification, the writer of that quote is a woman.

I came across the following posting at another website, a posting that I wished to respond to. An atheist or agnostic would just laugh at this person's thinking. But besides being unscientific it could be exploited by unscrupulous individuals (and perhaps has been) who couple such thinking with the idea that certain individuals (or members of some minority group in the community) spread or are a source of "negative energy". Here is the statement:

One issue what should be mentioned is what might be the state of the universe billions of years from now. Some cosmologists have speculated that ultimately the accelerating expansion of the universe will rip apart all matter. See the section in this article about "The Big Rip" http://hubblesite.org/hubble_discoveries/dark_energy/de-fate_of_the_universe.php So if a little bubble of an alternative universe appears and expands at the speed of light, it wouldn't seem to matter much if the space in OUR universe is already expanding at a speed many times that of the speed of light. Also, this alternative universe bubble can't wipe out our universe if our universe has already been wiped out by having all of its atoms ripped apart by the expansion of space!

In the article Why We Love Beautiful Things http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/opinion/sunday/why-we-love-beautiful-things.xml The author states If as this writer asserts "beauty is in the genes of the beholder", then concepts of beauty might be encoded in the genome of other primates. It's just another way to say that certain patterns resonate in our minds as attractive, and similar patterns instinctually resonate in the minds of other primates.

Symmetry need not be as simple as that of a flower. There is also fractal symmetry. A lot of the aesthetic appeal in nature, for example the beauty of a mountain range or a snowflake can be understood as an expression of fractal symmetry. In any case I like the aesthetics of this video, which is a rendering of fractal symmetry.

Here is another interesting paper: Symmetry perception in humans and macaques The Summary from the paper is shown below: My belief is that the perception of beauty is closely related to the perception of symmetry. For example, which of these two flowers would the viewer consider to be more "beautiful"? Most people I think would select the top tulip as more attractive, compared to the bottom one. FYI: the second tulip actually grows that way, it is not diseased. Red Tulip This is a Tulip!

Interesting essay on Animal Aesthetics:http://www.contempaesthetics.org/newvolume/pages/article.php?articleID=243#FN54link To quote from this article: In other words, the author is asserting that female peacocks respond to the aesthetic beauty of the male, and select mates based on this criterion.

Every summer Baltimore hosts a Cosplay (costumed roleplay) convention called Otakon. Here's a shot I took of a fellow who attended as the Star Wars character Boba Fett: Boba Fett