Phi for All

... aaaaaaaaaand we're done.

I voted Both or Other. To say we definitely will or definitely won't survive either or both is far too conclusive at this point. Having come as far as we have technologically in the last thousand years, who could definitively say for certain what we might be able to accomplish ten million or a hundred million or a billion years from now?

And since your buddy and plenty of others are spending $12 each for lunch, how quickly do you think they're going to do that? Plus McNasty's and others get to hide behind that wonderful illusory phrase, "natural flavor". So much of why fast food has an appealing taste is due to company's like IFF (International Flavors & Frangrances) that put a "natural flavor" into the cooking oil used in fried foods. All the big fast food chains have proprietary formulas of chemicals used to give the proper flavor and smell. And chemicals occur in nature, so they're "natural", right?

Wow. Just... wow. I'll have to run a report and see just how many members put theMaharajah on their Ignore List today.

If you could get the backing of the medical community as a safe product that really worked, I'd say you could give Bill Gates a run for *his* money in the next 15-20 years. In the US, if it's a medication formula, a utility patent in your name will protect you for a period of time, but you are responsible for enforcing it. A utility patent gives you the legal rights to your formula but it's not like the Patent Office or the courts are going to hunt down transgressors for you. If you think you have something that can meet the requirements for a non-provisional utility patent, you should see a patent attorney. It's expensive, but worth it in the long run if you're serious. One of the ways you can raise capital to afford not only the patent but start-up costs as well is to find an investor and sell the foreign rights. A US patent will only protect you in the US, so you're not really giving anything up. Or you could present your ideas to a venture capital partnership and, for a big chunk of the pie, they will raise the money and set up a board of directors and off you go. [/simple version]

Most definitely. I love hiking through the woods. Another factor is that age and experience hopefully makes you smarter. You learn to put things that need to go back downstairs in a pile and take it all down at once instead of making five trips up and down. You learn to keep the remote controls in a basket next to your chair so you're not popping up to search for them all the time. You learn to put the coffee filters and the coffee in the cupboard *above* the coffee maker to save yourself some steps in the kitchen. As you get older and wiser you figure out lots of ways to save energy. Add all those little things up and you're expending a lot less energy, you're being super-efficient, but you're also not getting as much exercise. Unfortunately, you usually end up rewarding yourself for being so smart with an extra scoop of ice cream.

But dimensions are not worlds or universes. They merely give a perspective for measuring what already exists. Theoretically, you could use a fourth spatial dimension to travel from here to another galaxy with a single step? but you couldn't live on that dimension any more than you could live on length or width. Perhaps I misunderstand dimensions. That's entirely possible.

A big part of the fast food dilemma is that it's *too* fast. It's eaten so quickly the body's normal "I'm full" responses don't have time to kick in. Flavor enhancers like MSG help this process as well.

Oh, yes, no doubt about it, you've hit the nail on the head, you're spot on, that's exactly what I mean.

This thread is so off-topic it's pathetic. And the topic, If man is in God's image then who's image were the dinosaurs in, was pathetic to begine with. It slipped back into man in God's image and now we're into the afterlife and reincarnation. Even for Speculations this is a weird thread. Pretender, as the thread starter we look to you for direction. Please figure out where you want this to go, rambling doesn't work for me.

There are so many factors here. Restaurants, trying to increase per ticket sales, increase the size of the portions so that every meal is like two meals (look at the people leaving, most every party is carrying a take-away container). Food is grown and processed with consumerism, distribution and profits in mind, not with health in mind. For instance, Iceberg lettuce is more profitable to grow and sell for several reasons, but it contains a lot less vitamins and minerals than green leaf lettuce. Stress is a factor because so much marketing is out there telling you your day is hectic and stressful so you need all these products to relax, relax, relax. We relax so much we don't get enough exercise. There are too many interesting things to do that are sedentary. Western medicine ends up fixing symptoms rather than causes. Any doctor worth his licence will work with you on good nutrition and best health practices but most realize that people just want the quick fix of a pill or a shot rather than investing in the behavior modification they really need.

If a class III society relies on energy collected from the galaxies, wouldn't the Big Freeze be and end to that energy? What could possibly feed our need for energy if there is none?

Let's see... what if your consciousness is joined with that of others after you die and you inhabit one of the higher dimensions using the gravitational force to communicate across multiple universes of probability? Have you ever considered that the human form, for all it's sophistication, may be simply a larval one? Perhaps this body we have is hindering the development of far greater senses and capacities which are exposed only after we shed it and transform into the next stage in our metamorphisis. Perhaps the next step after this one is also just another phase, and eventually we will join with yet more consciousnesses and become something we might view as god-like. Maybe there is no one, omnipotent God, maybe there are many god-consciousness-fusions who each govern a certain territory of the universe (although access to higher dimensions may make travel across the universe practically instantaneous). To what end, you ask? To keep the universe flowing towards a collective consciousness, perhaps? Or to take evolution to it's highest forms? Or to keep the simmering and stirring a cosmic ragout for the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

What if the memory you retain from a past life is so different from this one that you don't consciously compare it? What if the next life is so vastly different from this one that your memories from this one will also be hard to compare? We know that, if consciousness lives on, the body doesn't. Your consciousness will either have a new body, possibly with a new array of senses, or you will be pure consciousness. I don't look on heaven as some kind of paradise, but rather as a life after this one. For what purpose? What's the purpose of this one?

This is really dumb. The diamonds on a grill can be set in a diamond pattern, but each set can be customized and some diamond patterns have nine diamonds in them, some have twelve. Grills are custom made. There can be no one answer. This thread has one more day of life left, then it gets closed for false advertising. Get a brain, buster!

You've grasped the entire concept in your last four words. You sound plenty smart to me.

That doesn't register with me. Is that like holding your number and flipping your bit? There goes that extra half a creepy point.

Sex is binary. You're either turned on or you're turned off.

If you are concerned about your 11-month-old daughter's health, make sure she doesn't swallow flouride toothpaste. Flouride is very good for your teeth, it's just not meant to be swallowed by children who can't understand why they're not allowed to.

OK, you guys are at about 99.5 on the creepy meter.

Keep her off the flouride toothpastes until she is old enough to understand she's not supposed to swallow it (about the same time you might first give her gum to chew, around 4 years old). Right now anything that goes in the mouth is fair game to be swallowed. The concept of holding the toothpaste in her mouth and then spitting it out is kind of alien. I would throw out the sample you got. Unless you have some sort of magical parental influence no one else knows about, Hannah will be better off with stuff she's allowed to swallow until you can explain it to her.

There are only ten kinds of people. Those who understand binary and those who don't.

I don't think our present system is a deterrent for violent criminals. A lot of these guys say the worst thing about prison is the embarassment of having the toilet sit in the middle of the cell. Public flogging would probably be the worst thing you could do to these guys. I don't know why this would be a good alternative. I believe in consequences and taking responsibility for your actions. I just don't like the idea that death can be atoned for by more death. A man in prison for life has a better chance of affecting others and giving some meaning to the death of his victim. Kill him and he is forgotten, and the victim's family may feel like justice was done, but there was only more death done and society is pushing them to feel good about it, to feel justified, to feel like all the victim would have wanted was revenge on his killer. It's necessary to remove a murderer from society so he has no chance to kill again. This isn't unnecessarily cruel. Life itself is cruel since people can take the lives of others and feel no remorse. For those of us who would feel remorse, why should the state pull the switch? I would feel remorse even if I killed someone in a justifiable situation, like protecting my family from someone intent on killing us. I would not mourn the person I killed forever, but I would be diminished for taking ANY life. I would be glad I saved my family, and they would take precedence in that situation, but I would not smile and say the killer deserved it. No human deserves death at the hand of another human. Punishing isn't killing. Forgiving the crime doesn't mean allowing the criminal to go unpunished. You're confusing forgiving with forgetting. Part of the way I feel about the DP is that it allows society to forget too easily. We need to be reminded that killers are out there, that we make them with unkindness, that some can't be redeemed, that some can be redeemed, that only time will tell, that life isn't fair and just, that you can affect people positively, that there will still be Underwoods, that life is still precious anyway.