lemur

I don't mean a classification of certain types of atoms/elements. I mean atoms that are bonded with other atoms in molecules. I.e. I'm talking about a situation, not a type. I'll check out your link and see if it gives me some insight, thanks.

What happens is that people come to think of themselves as children of their parents, and they think about what they would do in their parents' shoes, so to speak. Then, when you have children it is like getting the chance to test your own parenting theories in practice. So you're not looking at it as a risk-analysis of things coming out good or bad - more you're looking at it in terms of whether you think you can provide good conditions and opportunities and deal with problems effectively. It's an active orientation toward what you can do and how rather than a passive orientation toward something you deem beyond your influence. I have noticed a pattern with people who argue for suicide that they are usually bent on promoting it until they get the person they're arguing with to validate it. I think this has something to do with the sense of completion that comes with death and the Freudian death-drive. This might be relevant with regards to the recent jubilation regarding bin Laden's death, since it may fulfill a sense of completion to a war on terror proclaimed to be eternal. I don't know why people have trouble dealing with non-terminating, semi-controllable things but termination seems to be a general approach to negativity that can get very popular very easily. The problem with it is that if you start destroying everything that is bad, how long will it be until you discover something sufficiently good to exempt it from destruction? What amount of suffering is low enough to legitimate life?

I think it would be good to start an ego thread in psychology, but I'll just say here that I think for you to go from enjoying the weather and nature to translating that enjoyment into feelings of "gratitude," or "being very small" involves a shift of focus from your objects of perception to yourself. I think if you felt "one with nature" as the expression goes, you wouldn't think about your relationship with nature or yourself at all because you would just be absorbed in your experience of what you were experiencing, like when kids are immersed in a video-game or a worker in their labor. Often people can go for prolonged periods in such activities without any thoughts about themselves or what their relationship with their work or other people is. They are not feeling pride, shame, humility, grace, etc. just focus on the task at hand; ego momentarily forgotten. I think Hollywood has produced such horribly terrifying imagery of "demons" that people have trouble imagining them as simple messengers of temptation or provocation. Logically, if angels are messengers of goodness, enlightenment, strength, etc. then demons would be the messengers of evil, obfuscation, weakness, etc. They wouldn't have to scare the pants off you by flying through the air in nightmarish ways with strands of torn clothing trailing behind their sunken-in faces. A demon could be just a stylish and attractive human figure that seduces you into wordly desires, tempts you with riches, fame, short-lived pleasure, etc. Whereas angels are purely interested in helping you and feel only love, demons would be more interested in seducing you into self-destructive or other-destructive activities and feel either malice/contempt or indifference for you. They might also get some twisted pleasure when you fall for their tricks but they would never empathize or care for you. All my interpretation, of course, though I believe there is logic in it.

I think you're confounding ethnicity with language proficiency. Ethnic identification serves as a motivator for people to develop high levels of language proficiency for various reasons, but that doesn't mean it is a limiting condition. Plus why can't someone read and interpret a text just as well in translation? It is silly to think that literary analysis is a skill that's directly tied to language-familiarity. Do you think that someone reading Mein Kampf or Das Kapital in English has less access to the author's meaning than if they read it in German? What's more, what if someone is Jewish but only speaks English or Russan, etc. Would their Jewishness still make them better at interpreting the OT and, if so, how?

I suppose it is the case that molecular atoms are never without bonds to other atoms in molecules. Nevertheless, it seems to be the case that in forming such a bond, electrons must shift from one configuration around an atom to another. My question is during such a shift, do characteristics of the pre-bond configuration carry over into the behavior of the bond(s) themselves? Also, since the bonds seem to be the result of electron-sharing between atoms, how does the formation and behavior of the bond affect the other electrons that do not "participate" in the bond?

Generally I had the idea that lower levels of electrons couldn't communicate energy to other levels in the lower levels where emission/absorption is less likely. This seemed a logical step from the fact that metals are better conductors because of the conduction bands being able to absorb/emit lower thresholds of energy quanta. So does "cusp" describe the gaps between orbitals that prevent the electrons from being anywhere except in the specifically allowed orbitals? Is there any reason why these cusps form? Also, does "cusp" describe an actual spatial region where the electrons don't go or is it a description of an abstract curve that represents something indirectly? I don't know what them being "the result of electronic oscillations directly" would mean? I.e. when the conduction-band electrons oscillate between slightly higher and lower bands, this is not what is going on in the bonds? The conduction-band is a tight concept theoretically because it correlates the quantum-threshholds of electron-level jumping with distance from the nucleus and thus positive charge interaction. It makes some intuitive sense that when an electron is closer to a proton, it would behave more digitally and as it gets farther away, in a more analog way (i.e. with less intense level-jumping). I guess I should just start a new thread on how atomic electrons reconfigure into molecular bonds, because it seems as though their orbital patterns shift in a logical way and that the behavior of the bonds would reflect characteristics of the shifted electron-patterns, but this may be a more complex phenomena than I first thought. What are "non-electronic degrees of freedom?" Do interatomic bonds have quantized energy-levels or are they relatively continuous conductors? Actually, do the conduction-bands of metal generally have spectra as continuous as a black-body, or do they just have spectral lines that are closer together than other levels of electrons? BTW, am I conflating absorption/emission spectra and conductivity in a way that I shouldn't be? Is it correct to think of conduction as occurring in spectral bands the same as emission/absorption?

I should have known that, since it's logical, but thanks for pointing it out. How do noble gases behave as liquids/solids? I should go google noble gas behavior, but before I do I should just say the reason I'm wondering is because it seems like the bonds are a special variation of conduction-band electrons that get concentrated between the atoms - because the bonds seem to conduct energy relatively easily like the conduction-band electrons. It leads me to think that bond expansion/contraction (spring-like motion) is a variation of conduction-band level oscillations, only with those conduction-band electrons accumulated and concentrated between the atoms.

Just mix some potting soil with water in a pot and put the seeds you bought into the soil, just deep enough to be sure they stay moist. Then keep the soil moist about like a sponge that has just been squeezed empty but is still wet. In fact, it's not that important exactly how wet the soil is as long as it stays wet. After a few days, you should see the seeds sprout and if you keep them watered, they may bloom at some point. I don't know if they're fickle enough not to bloom because of the seasonal issues you mention, but it's hard to imagine they won't. The only thing I think you should watch out for is if you're keeping them outdoors and it's hot, keep them in the shade as direct summer sun tends to kill plants, in my experience. edit: now that I think about, whenever I grow vegetables my concern is usually that they WILL flower and seed too fast instead of continuing to produce edible leaves so I think your flowers are going to bloom one way or the other - it's just a question of how long they'll grow before blooming.

It just depends on whether you consider suffering loss or not. For non-existent children to lose something by being born into suffering, you have to assume that non-existence is something you can lose. Otherwise you might look at suffering as a means of gaining the potential for relief or relative joys amid the suffering. In many ways, the problem for many modern people living with excellent health care and welfare guarantees is that they have been sensitized to such a degree to any form of loss that their lives can be very painful because of just the little minor traumas that many other people globally consider mere everyday struggles to overcome. Likewise, these people have often developed a practically level response to relative luxuries because they've become such a common everyday experience. Just think, for example, how available things like refined sugar, chocolate, coffee, etc. have become since the advent of colonialism whereas these things might only be reserved for elite classes in earlier centuries. Anyway, the point is that joy and suffering are relative in many ways and the human experience relies on juxtaposition to some extent - so to think of life's suffering as purely loss to be avoided ignores the fact that it may be an inevitable condition for having positive experiences that provide relief. The best measure, though imo, is to ask someone who is suffering if they would prevent someone else from being born into their situation. My guess is that in most cases, people would not say that their suffering makes their life a complete waste. Nevertheless, positive life experience may also be a product of struggling to overcome suffering, so it also makes sense that people criticize and struggle against suffering, even to the extent that you suggest preventing it by preventing life itself. It's almost as though what you're saying is that life's joy is so great that it is worth preventing life to protect, but that is obviously self-undermining.

Do you see any horizon to the pursuit of power to limit resource-access? Even the most generous social-welfare states vehemently restrict access to their social benefits. Do you really expect governments or women individually to guarantee that they will service any and every man's sexual desires upon request? This could actually be accomplished by the elimination of rape as a taboo and crime. I have actually heard that there are some cultures where rape is simply viewed as a cultural norm that can't be controlled, like the village where children are taken by tiger-attacks from time to time but parents have nothing to do about it except pray to the tiger god to have mercy. Once all anti-rape rights have been dismantled globally, there may no longer be the means to resist and control sex, but until that happens it makes sense for people to practice sexual fasting for those periods when it is not voluntarily available. The same is true of food and money. Until there is a global social-welfare guarantor that ensures no one has to endure budget cuts no matter what, it behooves people to practice budgeting, saving, and going without so that they aren't caught off-guard when recession claims their job or reduces their wages against their will. You seem to have the idea that there are ways to guarantee resource-access to everyone all the time regardless of how other people want to treat them, but how many people in this world are immune from access-restrictions where resources like food, sex, and money are concerned?

Having children is probably ultimately a totally irrational choice involving multiple high risks. Still, people do it all the time and the outcome is only as bad as the child's life turns out. Yes, life is never devoid of suffering and never will be, but does that make it not worth living? That is a question that each individual can answer for themselves. Those who believe the suffering of life outweighs its joys will choose not to have children and possibly to end their own lives. Those who believe that suffering cannot eclipse the immutable joys of living probably would choose to continue living and reproduce the opportunity by having children. edit: the irony is that even the poorest, most oppressed people choose to have kids and will tell you that life is worth living despite all the oppression, poverty, discrimination, etc. so what does that say about the human condition?

I'm surprised there's not more expansion of distance between the electrons in the conduction band, free(d) electrons, etc. as energy transmissions among them intensify. The strange thing about the bond-vibrations causing distantiation between the molecules is that the outer (conduction band) electrons would have to mediate the collision force between the vibrating molecules, right? So wouldn't they have to be moving around quite a lot as the atoms vibrate against each other? btw, are there any metals that don't have bonds; i.e. they exist only as unbonded single atoms, yet still expand when heated?

Ok, so there are different interpretations. You could view it as an evolutionary step forward for humans to develop the ability to know good and evil and choose, but you could still see it as a fall in the sense that they become cursed with original sin. Why is it necessary to make it into a Christians vs. Jews issue? If someone would say that if you want to know what Hitler really meant in Mein Kampf, you should ask Germans because it's "their book," wouldn't that seem ridiculous and slightly racist to you? In reality, this debate about how to interpret scripture and who has the authority to do so comes up repeatedly in religious history, as in literary studies. In the 1970s Roland Barthes proclaimed the "death of the author" and the corresponding "birth of the reader" as the determinant factor in the meaning of texts. This was taken as a new idea and described as a cultural turn, but really it's the same thing Jesus was preaching by saying that the Holy Spirit was the ultimate authority - just as it was what Martin Luther was saying when he said that people should be able to read the bible for themselves - just as it was what enlightenment scientists and political philosophers were saying by claiming that empiricism and reason were self-evident and provide direct access to truth. Everyone can interpret a text and argue that their interpretive method is the correct one.

I'm not sure what exactly you mean by this, but it can cause problems to assume collective authorship of a text or body of texts/discourse to a race, perceived as a collective social body. Individuals alive today who identify as Jewish no more authored the old testament than modern day people with Greek citizenship authored ancient Greek mythology. You have to understand that culture is not unified, homogenous, or without variations and conflicts. Individuals transmit culture among themselves but, while doing so, they develop their own personal variation according to how they understand things, what parts of the meanings they focus on or ignore, etc. I saw Pat Robinson talk about divorce on TV recently and while I recognized the Christianity in his encouragement not to give up a marriage and to respect the relationship you have, he didn't mention allowing a spouse to divorce you and forgiveness for the unforgiveness that comes with that. Surely he knows that part of the bible but for whatever reason it was not what he chose to focus on at that moment - so the people learning about Christianity from his broadcast might learn the Christian culture of not giving up on marriage but at the same time miss out on the idea of forgiving a spouse who divorces you and why. This is not to say that they might not learn that culture of forgiveness for divorce elsewhere, but until they do they're Christianity may not comprehend the concept of forgiveness for divorce. So because no human is a perfect transmitter/receiver of culture, culture always varies broadly in practice although much of it maintains recognizable consistency of information and meaning.

Well, it all seems very interrelated so I'm trying to sort out what is what and how they affect each other. The conduction band electrons are pretty clearly conductive because they are relatively free. Their liberation may be a different phenomena than the promotion of electrons from lower-energy bands but it seems more like there's a gradient of relative freedom of movement as they move away from the nucleus. It also seems as though energy gets generally absorbed and expressed by electrons as kinetic motion and radiation, so the conduction-bands of metal molecules, while they're heating up, would vibrate more, liberate and become fluid more, and emit higher frequencies (according to blackbody emission logic). I also still can't help wondering if these relatively free electrons don't expand somewhat due to the energy increase among them, but I take it the reason you say that the effect is unrelated to the expansion of the material at the observable level is because the bond-vibrations cause much more motion, i.e. between atoms instead of just between electrons.

What happens when behavior grows increasingly compulsive is that people may have reasons to choose not to engage in the behavior but their compulsion to pursue and engage in the addiction overrides their desire to do other things. So you may want to get other things done, but if you are compelled to seek and have sex constantly, it may make it more difficult for you to engage in other pursuits that you would also like to devote time and energy to. That is why some people try to think up ways of making it easier to resist sexual and other urges, i.e. reduce people's addiction to them. It's also no fun to be so addicted to something that other people can use your addiction to wield power over you. Imagine you go to your prostitute or drug dealer and they tell you the price just went up from $100 to $1000. If you're smart, you will say, "thanks but no thanks," and walk away but if you are addicted, it can be quite painful to walk away. So gaining control over addictions facilitates greater freedom of choice, while accepting the inevitability of addictions allows yourself to be subject to greater power over your free will. Using food or water as an example, yes you need these things to survive so ultimately you will probably choose to obey some unreasonable command(s) rather than die of starvation/thirst, but if you have practiced fasting, you could potentially resist the choice of paying $100 for a sandwich because you're hungry and it's unlikely that you will find any other food until tomorrow. The same is true of prostitution. If you're so sexually starved that you are willing to pay money for sex, you are allowing yourself to be exploited in a way that you wouldn't have to if you had practiced sexual fasting.

I don't think this is the case at all. What happens is that the president/government sets an agenda for development and then people start coming up with ways to maximize the amount of money they can milk from funding initiatives. No one wants to produce/sell themselves out of business. Also, you get a lot of initiatives that promise the stars (specifically the sun in the case of solar) but they conveniently leave out practical concerns (like the fact that their particular solar technology is only going to generate a few watts at first and only hopefully one day grow to higher levels of efficiency). Then, the media/public gets excited about the buzz concept of each new technological lead, which is of course intended to stimulate more investment in the technology, which means more money to spend and more jobs doing the things that people spend money on. Since there's not yet extensive availability of renewable energy, this amounts to more fossil-fuel usage. The only thing the president/emperor/government could do that would really make a difference would be to convince people to conserve energy and be happy with the lifestyle activities they are limited to as a consequence of conservation. However, since people are 1) in control of their own desires, tastes, and happiness and 2) have freedom to continue using energy at their own discretion - no top-down authority has power to stop them from doing whatever they do. There is lots of effort put into influencing their thinking and decision-making, but many if not most are simply obstinate when it comes to complying with authority when what's asked of them simply doesn't appeal to them.

I don't want to distract from your specific intent with your post, but it raises the issue, imo, of whether such a thing exists as absolute absence of particles, since particles don't really have absolute boundaries but only various forces that extend from them. So, if you presume that some region is enclosed by particles in a way that excludes any other particles from being inside that region as "content," then the question is why the boundaries of the container themselves do not extend into the interior of the region you've used them to create. E.g. you have constructed a container out of metal and pumped it completely empty - are the outer electrons of the metal walls of the container then filling the interior of the container or are they adhering more to the nuclei of their respective atoms?

I took the conduction band to mean that there were relatively "loose" outer electrons in metals because 1) they are very far from the nucleus and 2) the outer shell is relatively empty, which causes them to more easily absorb, re-emit, and liberate. Is this incorrect? So when you say the average separation of the nuclei increases, do you mean that the nuclei are bonded separately from their conduction-band electrons and that the conduction-band electrons behave relatively independently of the bond-electrons? Does the increase in thermal energy of the conduction band electrons result in volume-change of those electrons and/or change in the viscosity between molecules?

In another thread, the relative merit for funding different kinds of scientific research was being discussed as if funding is little more than a system for validating some research and de-validating others. In the current economic situation in which unprecedented budget-cutting is going on, one may wonder what the overall economic purpose(s) are of funding science and other human activities that aren't directly resultant in the production of basic necessities. That is to say, if recession were to continue indefinitely, funding for ALL non-essential activities would be continually reduced. Presumably, within the logic of capitalism's invisible hand, such reductions have the function of inducing greater conservation of consumption (rationing) as well as stimulus to produce something whose value is high because of its scarcity (thus reducing the need to ration). So the question is what could scientists whose funding gets eliminated do to produce more economic value? Is there some demand that they could be supplying? If not, I'm not sure I understand the purpose of eliminating their funding altogether? Reducing it may have the effect of stimulating greater conservation through stricter rationing of consumption, but totally eliminating funding just drives them to seek new means of income that may not be available when recession is the result of economic abundance or other reasons for diminishing demand in the broader economy.

If someone would like to raise a topic for discussion, and they find it already's been discussed in another thread, yet they have more to say about it, why shouldn't they re-open the old thread? Would it be better to start a new thread with the same or slightly altered premise? What I don't get is whether the thread is/was more about the relative value of these two approaches to science generally, or about which one deserves or needs more funding and why? I think I'll start a new thread on the economic basis and effects of funding science.

And would it be accurate to say that the conduction bands of metals are a form of intermolecular bonding that vibrates as well and thereby causes expansion as well as decreasing viscosity?

Good point. I think the offensive thing about cursing is that it feels like someone is intentionally trying to provoke others by using language that is potentially offensive. When people state curse words in quotes or otherwise use them in a way that doesn't express an intent to offend, I don't find them offensive - but it is rare that people are able to use them in that way, imo. Usually there is some level of transgression-intent, if only because they know people could get possibly offended and they don't care. I think the main issue on a science forum is that people should be practicing writing in an emotionally-neutral manner and using the most accurate language possible instead of resorting to poetic license for its own sake - aside from friendly banter in some threads or as an aside to relax an otherwise serious post.

So infrared photons are not the product of electron-levels jumping and falling, only UV? So when metal absorbs infrared-level heat, it does so purely as molecular vibration? Ok, you just said that "for almost all bonds, you need UV light to cause excitation" and now you're saying that IR radiation can be absorbed by molecules in a way that causes their bonds to get excited? So would I be correct to conclude that the overall electron orbit-shapes of the atoms/molecules don't cause the metals to expand but their bond-electrons do expand and move more forcefully and this pushes them a bit further apart?

Abusing the name of God is spiritual obfuscation, so it destroys clarity of reasoning by using words to refer to things that confuse their meaning. Fornication is insincere use of sex to "make love" with someone whom you don't really love enough to empathize with them losing the love you're about to give them. This is why men who love women while planning to abandon them are traditionally called "heartbreakers." Worshipping false idols is more spiritual obfuscation, plus it is a form of egoism because you worship the identity of something instead of the thing itself. The only thing that really honors God is to use the creative power you have - that is the purpose of (the) creation, to use it without destroying it or perverting it to lead it into destruction. Onanism is a sin of spiritual diversion, imo. People are supposed to focus on higher spirituality and loving each other. None of these sins do really immense harm, but I don't think you can say that they are 100% harmless either. I think you just have to acknowledge what harm they do do and by doing so raise your consciousness and try to come up with ways to live a better life. It may not immediately be possible to do so, for example, because you are in a situation where you're ability to sincerely love and devote your energy to another person is constrained - and so fornication and/or onanism occur as a result of stifled attempts to express your sexuality in more productive ways. But even sins that are the result of other sins still have to be acknowledged as sins. E.g. a person who steals because he can't get a job needs to sin to survive, but he can still regret it and seek further for a path out of sin knowing that he's forgiven. Christianity, imo, is mainly about keeping people on a path to redemption and discouraging them from falling into the trap of shame and giving up on hope and the sense that they are forgivable and thus capable of good (i.e. not totally evil people because they've done bad things).