Phi for All

Arrr, absolutely. And many of us could sail her but does anyone know how a ship is put together so it won't sink? There are rules for such (not just guidelines, arrrr). Think about this: you know this apocalypse is about to take place. You have just enough time to get your household members to safety *and* put together one backpack (approx 20-25 kilos or 50 pounds) worth of *stuff* you currently have in your house. What do you bring?

Why post like you're going to be banned again soon? Continued posts like this will just ensure it. It was unnecessary and it's been fixed. Can we move on, please? Perhaps we can chalk this experience up to Science and Politics not always mixing as well as we would like.

I think I would want YT (and family) and insane_alien nearby when it all happened. I could mobilize and manage any people we came across but I have little expertise in practical applications. Just some carpentry and other various trade skills that assume I have materials and tools at hand. Not sure if I could make a good 2x4 from a tree (we still have trees, right?). Again, it makes a big difference what kind of apocalypse we're talking about. I just saw a History channel episode on how many prophecies mirror the Mayan calendar's prediction that the world will end in December of 2012. One speculation was a magnetic pole shift occurs and earth's lithosphere turns around it's molten center like the skin of a balloon will shift around the water inside. With that sort of cataclysm earthquakes and storms would flatten everything but not necessarily burn everything up. There would still be tools and remnants of our old life available if you can dig them out. In this scenario I think we stand a better chance of progressing even within the first generation after apocalypse. We'd need to burn a lot of bodies and figure safe ways to move debris to find what we're looking for but at least we'd have The Resourceful One working on building a radio transmitter out of silverware and chewing gum while insane_alien figures out how to purify water for us all. And of course I would be there to supervise and mitigate disputes....

If we've survived (we = those of us who post in this thread) I assume the radiation levels are acceptable. Has civilization merely been knocked down or has it been burned beyond usefulness? Can we salvage much or do we start from scratch? Do we have a way of communicating or are we just small independent roving bands? One thing I can anticipate is people with lots of knowledge but little practical experience or application, like knowing how to fix cars but cars don't exist anymore. Or like knowing all about electricity except how to extrude wire and build a generator or motor. I think morality would suddenly become very important. With no police or military to rein in people's urges honor and good reputation would become valuable commodities. I think you need to set more parameters. Are we talking Mad Max where salvaging the old way of life is possible or are we emerging from caves to find the old world completely gone?

Any other reasoning I could put down to opinion and be cool with it but this argument just doesn't work at all. Think of the ramifications if the baby is in danger late in the pregnancy. If the choice is between saving the mother and saving the baby (assuming you can't do both) you would choose to save a baby that will have no mother. You condemn a person with life experience and mature thoughts and feelings who is most likely a productive societal member for the longer *potential* life a baby might have. Mothers make a choice to be a host. If the baby they host has more rights than the mother how long do you think having babies will be a sound choice? Every miscarriage would need to be investigated to ensure the mother didn't violate the baby's superior rights. What a nightmare! The *potential* life of a baby shouldn't be a factor. Babies aren't guaranteed 80-90 years of life and the mother has already proven herself as a vital human being. Most parents would sacrifice themselves for their children anyway but setting a legal precedent that gives the kids more rights than the parents absolutely wouldn't work.

Your flooring could be loose near the bag as well. As you walk by the floor moves up and down, causing the bag to shift each time until it falls.

Most likely the dosage recommendation errs on the side of caution. For some people a cup of coffee too late in the day would ensure sleeplessness that night so the NoDoz could have the same effect. People like you that have a higher tolerance for caffeine may have to adjust your intake accordingly, but I don't think it's a good idea to slam three of them with a scone like you might with java. Once it's already in your system it's harder to correct too large a dose.

This site has plans for sale for US$100 (large format plans, cheaper if you get 11x17), and says it costs $500 to make. I haven't done this or endorse it, this is not a staff recommendation, and is merely the result of a quick search into the subject. One of my fantasies is to own a lot of land and travel from site to site on it in ultralights and gyrocopters. They are simply too cool.

I think this is very important. If someone else has a site started that is close to what you're looking for then perhaps you could offer your help and save yourself 80% of the work. Starting from scratch is tough and it doesn't guarantee a better chance at success. Or perhaps you could offer to help with AS level chemistry revision for an existing science site that lacks such help. An existing site almost always means an existing user-base. I'm always amazed at the number of people who come to SFN looking for advice on starting up some kind of science forum where people can go to talk about their favorite subject with like-minded sophisticates. Why is it so hard to find?!

If you do find anything definitive about this subject be careful of generalizations. Jerkiness is in the eye of the beholder. You may think someone is being rude to you when they are merely being abrupt due to lack of time. One person's pride is another person's arrogance. And insults can be perceived from an infinite amount of sources. We tend to want to categorize people into groups, like jerks, idiots, drunks, helpful, nice, skillful. It helps us quickly make judgments but makes it difficult to get beyond first impressions. Remember that everything we do is done in context. There's a whole story behind the actions of every person.

Not according to a study by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. But maybe they make more money from bone grafts for aging starlets.

There's a skin-type layer on the outside of the bone, then the compact bone (the dense stuff), then the spongy bone (more porous), then the blood vessels and marrow. Most of your bones is not marrow. Bones do change shape as we age and can make us shorter. I don't think this is due to erosion as much as gravity and weakening. Facial bones alter and it can give us wrinkles and sags we didn't have before.

I've always suspected something like this was happening. The monkeys in my keyboard tried to tell me....

You'd have to have something inhuman to do the flipping. Humans can't regulate the muscles in the hand to the degree required to flip a coin *exactly* the same way each time, especially over a period long enough for accurate sampling. This is your element of chance in a vacuum. Slight differences in the way you flip the coin will provide differences between the two tests.

Sorry to wait so long to respond, the tree, but my momentum got lost amongst the other posts, which were much more interesting than my thoughts at the time. I don't know if you're being serious here, but what I thought was subtle (at least for the intended audience) was that being "manly" in the sense these two guys are talking about is really stupid and pointless. Like the pain of pulling out a handful of chest hair can compare to the pain of giving birth (no one calls living through that pain being "womanly"). So their reaction to accidental kissing is a stupid and pointless one, which should suggest that it's really no big deal if two guys kiss each other. _____________________________________________________________________________________ I would still like to point out that two guys kissed on one of the most-watched sports programs on US television. Reform takes small steps if it's going to be effective and I can guarantee that, even though the ad was pulled, it set a precedent and sent a signal that two guys kissing is a little more acceptable on prime-time TV. GLAAD should be thrilled that a taboo barrier has been broken. And they get some free press to express their indignation. On TV during the 60's, if a man and woman were in the same bed one of them had to have one foot on the floor to show they weren't having sex. Some people were offended even still by a married couple being shown in the bedroom. A line was drawn and television moved forward and has been trying to move the line a little farther every few years. As far as the "gays can't be manly" inference, didn't the guys in the commercial qualify what their idea of "manly" was? They ripped out chest hair, they didn't pump iron or fight a fire or help children into the lifeboats of a sinking ship. None of the gay guys I know want to be "manly" if it involves being stupid and pointless.

In the 2.5 years since anyone posted on this thread we Americans have repented and have sold all our speedy guzzlers. Fafalone now drives a Prius.

I get that completely. You are the Devil's Devil's Advocate and that's cool. I think you're caught up with the idea that adults don't get any protection from life (reality) as it comes to us so why should kids? It's not so much shielding them from reality as feeding them palatable bites instead of shoving the whole turkey down their throats. And the reason they'll get hurt is because no amount of explaining at that age is going to mitigate the effects of that poison should they ingest it. We'd have to explain too many complicated concepts to get them to understand why they shouldn't put *this stuff* in their mouths. Not me. First off, my eight year old doesn't see any sex scenes beyond a PG-13 rating so we don't need to cover her eyes. And secondly, violence is *not* perfectly fine, not the way you put it here. Again, we talk about concepts as they occur and if I see her emulating something violent then we have a talk. If by "perfectly fine" you mean she can watch any violent thing she wants or act violently then I definitely disagree. Sexuality and porn have very little in common, imo. We do talk about sexuality as it affects her eight-year-old life. Right now kissing and hugging is all she really cares about when it comes to sexuality. She knows the technicalities of intercourse but rarely asks anything about it, which tells me she's not ready to know. Porn glamorizes a few aspects of sex and doesn't give a very realistic view either (much like assuming the lady in the OP's video is typically religious). It also tends to show that men want only one thing and that a woman needs to cater to that need to be attractive. I don't believe that so I hope to be able to get far enough in her sexuality development to express my views before she gets to watch porn and assume it's normal. Um, no to the sex-is-dirty and another no to the violence-is-kick ass. Maybe I'm an anomaly but I'm not big on violence as a problem solver. I think I know what you mean about sexual hang-ups, especially in the US, but that's not why I don't want my daughter to watch porn until she understands more about normal sex. Your children must be older than mine, or you must watch more grown-up television in front of them than I do. My daughter does *not* watch the news. Adaptability? I think it's the filter I've been talking about. Don't understand it, blank it out. But if it's traumatic they take a mental snapshot and it disturbs them because they have no context. That would be nice, but now we're back to the utopian world you were arguing against. Unbalanced equation. They have other things they're all messed up about. They drink warm beer. With this I agree. It's human nature to want what you can't have. But it's up to parents with more experience to know what their kids can handle. Why is your 10 year old watching a movie with you that *has* a nude scene? I have no compunction against telling my daughter that certain movies are just for grown-ups. Again, severed heads would come under the heading of grownup movie and my daughter wouldn't even have to be sheltered. She'd be in bed asleep before my wife and I started such a film. Wait while I compile a list of studies from various psychiatric sources. This may take a while.... You're extending the picture further than I did. I was only talking about porn and you're including all movie sex scenes. With this I can agree. Most of *you*. Some of *us* give it lots of thought. It's flowery when you say it that way and it appeals to the truthfinder in all of us. But reality is not necessarily reality and none of it is necessarily the real world. Ask yourself this: do you want to want to help your children accept reality or help them make reality?

Might not be part of what you're measuring but have you tried bouncing the tennis ball with a basketball immediately below it, so they're touching and both get bounced? Pretty dramatic but maybe something for another experiment.

And when that point comes along remember you are being given a second chance. Respect is one of the few courtesies an online community has. We're willing to give you a break but not if this is the way you will continue posting. I don't waste the infraction system on rude newbies; I just ban them immediately.

Sorry, we can't just *give* you answers to your homework. Especially if we don't understand the question. Are you asking when it will be possible for underwater excursions to be opened up to the public in the Frisian archipelago?

You clearly stated, directing your comment at everyone. No one had suggested raising kids in a utopian environment, that's an easy argument to refute, therefore a strawman when used in this instance. Why do you put poisons where toddlers can't reach them? They can't understand some things and it's dangerous to expect them to. Kids at every age lack the complexity of knowledge and experience to handle *every* aspect of the raw, unfiltered world, and they learn best at a measured pace. This seems so simple I think we have a misunderstanding of terms or something. I want to shield them from porn before I can explain sex on a more basic, filtered level. No, *while* she watched him do it. My daughter didn't watch network or cable TV until she was three and a half. Prior to that we watched PBS and videos because I didn't want her to learn about "reality" from commercials and cable TV. Trying to explain in stages as applicable and doing some decent groundwork before full exposure seems like common sense to me. This is what I would call "shielding" or "filtering" and it's what I do as a parent. You'd have to define "sex scene" but if the definition includes what most would consider porn then I think you have a problem. A ten-year-old is not of an age to experiment with that kind of sex, imo. "As it happens" is an important phrase here. Reality shouldn't catch your child unprepared and that's what your original comment sounded like. Reality happens anyway, I just believe in arming and armoring my child so she can make the best decisions. I don't have to hide the poisons now because she's more capable of understanding their effects at the age of eight. But she's just grasping the concept of religion right now and I certainly wouldn't want her to see the woman in the OP's video and consider her typically religious. Well, yes. You asked if allowing your children to be exposed to everything was bad parenting and then said, "Without some kind of damage to point to, I'd have to say not at all". When your ten-year-old misunderstands the sex scene you let him watch it's tough to point to the damage you've done that leads him to abuse his lover when he's older.

Is it your intention to have people in the conference displayed on everyone's screens? If there isn't an overriding reason why that needs to happen you might want to consider something like WebEx or GoToMeeting. The presenter can show his screen for presentations or to view relevant files (I use it for CAD and PowerPoint presentations) or the presenter can turn control over to anyone else in the meeting. And the presenter can turn the pointer over to anyone else so they can point to something on the presenter's screen. Simple teleconference bridges provide the audio. Again, if it's not really necessary to see any people, this may be a more efficient and cheaper way to go.

Strawman. Asking for a lack of certain abuses is NOT asking for Utopia. I may be wrong but you seem to be using "shelter" as in "hide them away from all exposure to". While I agree that kind of "shelter" is wrong, I believe some sort of "shielding" is necessary. Exposure can be gradual until a child has a firmer grasp of certain concepts. We read easy books before we tackle Shakespeare, right? Ouch. No way. Just... absolutely not. This is so wrong my fingers are cramping from typing so hard. Again, a shielding or filtering of the level of exposure is necessary. I'm definitely going to talk about sex with my child first and not just say, "Here, Google 'teen sex' and see what comes up!" And we talk about various religions first so when she sees someone like the lady in the video she has some kind of context and doesn't assume this person is a normal representative of her religion. Some scars aren't visible.

I'll bet it's something along those lines, made for a very specific application. "Fill the tube with X to the 12.5 mark, then heat at Y degrees and measure how much time it takes for it to reach the 25 mark". If it were for more general purposes it would have more varied measurement lines.

The bulb at the end reminds me of a thermometer. Could it measure barometric pressure? The fixed gradients indicate it measures a very specific thing, possibly after being heated?