imatfaal

Lemur - when you are ill, who works out what is wrong with you in order that you can be put on track to the correct level of medical attention? If we all knew, in advance, what was wrong with us then medicine would be a great deal easier. Levels of triage work very well in situations where many of the ailments can be easily identified and most fall into similar categories; but GPs train so that they can spot the outlier, the rogue extreme and that is what makes the highly trained generalist very useful.

Jacques - I haven't read the article, but I know from past experience that sciencedaily can sometimes exaggerate and cherry-pick. I will try and find time, and I should recommend you do as well, to read the actual article; I won't understand half of it - perhaps you will do better, but its much better than a journo's take on the article.

O I dunno Captain - the cascade of events after the tragic act of Mohamed Bouazizi sound much like those of the 'the butterfly that causes the hurricane' much-beloved of chaos theorists. That we mortal humans could not hope to ever come up with such a system to describe such seemingly infinite complexity does not rule out the possibility that such a system could exist

It seems to me that much of science is basically the effort to push back the how/why barrier.

Many concepts that in my youth were documented but not explained are now well understood BUT the underlying causation is now in the state of being measured but it is yet unable to be fully conceptualised theoretically.

 

Since we are in the universe our ruler will also expand.

No. The forces holding atoms in place and together are enormously more massive than those involved in the expansion of space. We are able to recognize and measure the expansion of space only because of the huge distances involved. At a human level, even at a solar system level, the EM force and gravity are far far bigger than any background expansion. Its the space that is expanding and by an incredibly tiny amount; to such a small amount that it does not affect lumpen creatures like us at all, but on the mind-boggling scales of inter-galatic space (with no competing forces) it becomes important.

Blossom - does that really follow? If total energy is infinite how come I am slightly chilly in my office; surely if it was infinite, after everything else was heated up to a mad form of plasma there would still be enough energy to keep my office nice and toasty. I would be more likely to say that on a cosmological scale that total energy is zero - ie everything balances out.

!

Moderator Note

The universe is under no obligation to be understandable by you. Having said that, just because you don't understand something doesn't mean no one does. Things are hard, sometimes you need a lot of fundamentals before the interesting stuff becomes clear.

Klaynos, SwansonT, AJB etc

Does it ever "become clear" - or do you just learn to work around the problems?

I know that some things I understand mechanically/consciously; others I have grown so 'happy' with, that the understanding is more natural/unconscious. Do the counter-intuitive contra-logical ideas of much of modern physics become part of your foundation of understanding that is no longer questioned, or does it always remain a little bit 'out-there' and alien.

Sorry if this is off-topic and too philosophical

And if you can afford that - can we get jobs as advisors?

If you really want to study nuclear/atomic physics then I am sure there are other avenue that you can go down - I don't know what age group you are part of but you can build your own geiger counter. At a slightly easier level - but with great results - what about a cloud chamber? You can get trails from cosmic rays, which is beyond cool (well it is in my tiny mind)

Lemur - what are you trying to say? Your post makes little sense.

Marat - where is all this bile coming from? Doctors spend less time studying than archaeologists? Well - the longest archaeology degree in UK is 4 years full time and the shortest medical degree is 5 years. No medical advances since the 50s - where is this from - better not tell all the people with Heart transplants/bypass surgery, those who have survived cancer, or are on anti-retrovirals. Doctors in the UK are also very well paid - so i don't think any movement to a more socially funded model will make an enormous change

An ABC News story I saw the other day claimed that the pirates have expanded their operating sphere to an area about the size of the continental US. If that's true then it's going to be even harder to patrol those waters and prevent more kidnappings. The international effort thus far has been pretty good, IMO, and an easy sell with national governments looking to give their Navys more experience. But we may be moving beyond a simple enforcement solution.

 

Is there any chance the recent uprisings in various ME countries could have a long-term positive impact on Somalia? If strong democracies arise in those nations, could they decide to help lift their neighbor into a 21st century economy? Or is that a pipe dream?

I think I would argue the fact that the "international effort thus far has been pretty good"; in the last two weeks five vessels were taken, four people killed, and over 80 kidnapped. At the moment well over 600 seafarers are held for ransom, taken with 30 vessels. The area of danger is enormous, most of the Arabian Sea, and the east coast of Africa from Red Sea to Madagascar. I wouldn't go as far as Rigney - but some form of removal from area and punishment needs to be used on captured pirates; at present most are returned to Somalia to be prosecuted there and this really isn't working. I can really only see the solution coming from some form of maritime exclusion zone being enacted along the Somalian Coast - but this is impossible for a country that relies on fishing to a large extent

Yes. The QM folks will doubt be all to enthusiastic to explain indeterminacy and non-causality and how we know there aren't any hidden variables involved. Although in mathematics there are slightly lower standards for randomness, they are to do with information and complexity theory.

I should have stressed generated - sure we can observe and use the non-deterministic nature of qm; what I meant (and didn't explain properly) was "can we ever envisage a mathematical/programming system that creates truly random output". does the 'taint' of deterministic origins remain no matter how small in any human-created system?

Your question seems to rely on the claim that homosexuality and gay marriage are not endorsed by society. Perhaps this is true in some countries, but it is a long way away from reality in others

ooops - foot in mouth feeling. Grammatical has two Ms and ellipses has two Ls

I might try ebaying for one - mainly cos I really dislike my business principals using my pc; I cannot say no when they ask, but with a weird keyboard...

Might I suggest that it is equally as satisfying to see just how thin a smear you can make them? To see a mosquito turned into a large and very, very thin stain on the wall has great therapeutic benefits. Your adversary is not merely killed but virtually unrecognisable as ever being a living entity.

I was given an amazing device - it allows you to electrocute the flying menaces. Its like a tennis racquet but with wires instead of strings and a power source

I was refering to Prof Gilbert and Lady Murray founding Oxfam - both committed and campaigning humanists/rationalists, of the many phases of an organisation we are comparing different parts. CJC was an amazing man - motivated through his faith, he used his enthusiasm, cash and business acumen to start many organisations and put a great number of British charities on a level footing. Actionaid is now avowedly non-religious - but I take your point that this is not the same as atheist. But why would an atheist feel the need to start a charity when there are such great charities already that do not espouse any creed. Atheism (despite what this particular forum might suggest) is not proselytising.

Hadn't read about South Forks Club - although seems a bit of a stretch to lay it at Carnegie's door (based on a very short reading) - and frankly quite a lot of ignominy can be laid at M Theresa's door as well.

to clarify my final point, you said "but I'll line up beside the Salvos any day, for any fight". The SA have some views on personal morality that I find pretty abhorrent; my question is would you line up besides the Salvos to fight against homosexuality?

You object to "all or nothing affair" - and that is understandable and correct; I object to the argument that because some people of religion do great good, therefore religion cannot be bad

It's still a number that isn't existent in reality but still helps you find the results in it which also happens to be the nature of squared negative numbers. It's only mathematically that a circumference has infinitesimal length because a, I could theoretically just cut it into a straight line proving its finite length, or b, it contains only a specific number of atoms.

Steevey - I am trying to help here. Maths and physics use very precise definitions and getting them confused, conflating them, or using them wrongly will totally throw you.

As an example, you use the phrase above "squared negative numbers" - most people would say that a squared negative number is a positive number ( eg (-2)² = 4); the imaginary number is a 'square root of negative number' or alternatively a number whose square is negative.

Just an aside, and because I was curious how this might come about - the dictionary which auto-spell checks our posts doesn't recognize ornery (bad-tempered, stubborn) nor orneriness but does recognize orneriness's (which I am not sure is a word at all).

EDIT

OK - Now I have noticed that the spell checker is across all sites so it must be specific to me, or to chrome

I don't have the time to check nor the details - but I am pretty sure that complexity of solution time will not scale once you have a decent amount of combination. ie if you only have one way of purchasing .com then that massively eases the problem, ditto with .net.

But if you could buy .com with or without .net and with/without mailboxes, and then add in .co.uk (for me!) .org and .ac.uk ;all with various combo plans - then suddenly it becomes an ornery problem

If it is not too metaphysical a question - can anything truly random be generated?

BTW tree that signature

Protip: contrary to belief, elipses have no gramatical place at the end of a sentence and don't make you appear any more profound

is one hell of a good example of Skitt's Law/Muphry's Law - where is it from?

Susskind tells the story of a colloquium / conference when various heavyweights were discussing what it means for a particle to be fundamental with no form of agreement being reached - in the end t'hooft stood up and said "a particle is fundamental when it is useful to think of it as fundamental" - and everyone agreed that was the best they were gonna get in terms of a definition.

So although an electron isn't just a single point, as a wave it sort of acts like its turning and moving in specific ways? Because that really doesn't seem like how virtual particles act at all.

Spin and angular momentum at this level seem more like an imaginary number, like Pi.

And Pi isn't an imaginary number. An imaginary number has a square that is negative and are usually shown by using a multiple of i which is defined as the square root of minus one . Pi is an irrational (ie is not the ratio of two integers) and transcendental number (ie is not the root of any polynomial with rational coefficients)

Agree with the Tree - at the back of my brain I have a memory of a cypher being broken because of the cypher's partial reliance on an internal clock, will try and dig out a reference.

Your update2 enlarged on what I was trying to say - whilst there is only one way of buying .net and .com, there is a very simple solution. You will get real difficulties if you have multiple combinations - with only 3 products I don't think it would ever get too hard to calculate with a fairly simple algorithm, but if you had 20 products and various combinations working out the cheapest plan would be getting close to impossible. Unless I am mistaken this is not a simply scalable problem - the time taken to work out a slightly more complicated problem could be exponentially more than the marginally simpler question.