Mr Skeptic

This seems like it might have a better chance of working, especially if leaking some of the electric charge would be acceptable, though to keep with the spirit of the post it could be used on the surface of the balloon instead of as a gas. But then the weight of the insulator would become an issue.

Yeah, especially if we then have to worry about edited quotes.

People should know how to figure that out from the error message their compiler gives, and that should be far quicker too. Having a whole forum for asking about syntax errors is like begging for people to let us do their work for them. There might be an occasional syntax error that might be worthy of being discussed on a forum, but really most are quite trivial.

I think that A) Some of our text-only lists need fixing, specifically the second item using capital letters, and B) This smiley has to go.

There can only be one Cap'n

Our new Statue of Liberty:

dumb [duhm] adjective, -er, -est, verb –adjective 5. disagreeing with a politician on one or more issues. Depending on the circumstances, slightly more polite words might be used instead, or the accusation done only indirectly such as contained within a joke. 7. mute, silent -verb 3. To attempt to mute or silence by calling a person dumb.

Well there's the "active content", all the latest posts of the day. Hard to find though, it is way at the bottom. Or, you can log out, click view new content, and then log in or bookmark the page. Yes, we do need better lists of our content.

http://www.hol.com/~mikesch/tetzel.htm After Tetzel had received a substantial amount of money at Leipzig, a nobleman asked him if it were possible to receive a letter of indulgence for a future sin. Tetzel quickly answered in the affirmative, insisting, however, that the payment had to made at once. This the nobleman did, receiving thereupon letter and seal from Tetzel. When Tetzel left Leipzig the nobleman attacked him along the way, gave him a thorough beating, and sent him back empty-handed to Leipzig with the comment that this was the future sin which he had in mind. Duke George at first was quite furious about this incident, but when he heard the whole story he let it go without punishing the nobleman. Source: Luthers Schriften, herausg. von Walch. XV, 446.

The bolded parts contradict themselves. Something is unfalsifiable if and only if it makes no real predictions, which precludes it being tested or empirically validated. In any case, I too have a theory of everything but it does not fit in the 140 chara

Various DNA similarities can only be explained by having the creatures be modified copies, unless you are a believer in absurdly unlikely coincidences.

Yes, from well before we were human. This is why the same pattern is seen in other species, as unlikely as that would be to happen were they not modified copies.

I would suggest not breathing chlorine since it can and will kill you.

You can always rinse the stuff off the eggs, no? Rinse and centrifuge? I don't think any of those you listed will affect the DNA, and the other parts you need to remove anyways.

A good point, and one of the many reasons that we are not rational (or at least sometimes appear not to be). In part this is because the game of life has multiple rounds. If this one game was all there were, rejecting a proposal on the basis of unfairness might not be rational. But in a multi-round game you can make it clear that you reject "unfair" proposals, logic be damned. In the end, this sense of fairness can benefit you, as others fear to offer you an unfair proposal.

Not quite. I think that if keeping one's job is the primary motivation, then the top exec will want to bribe the lower execs, since all the top execs are afraid to lose their job. While #2 might like to fire #1, doing so puts him on the chopping block. If you assume superrationality (that everyone reaches the same conclusions), then #2 considers that because a majority would want to get rid of #1, a very similar majority would want to get rid of him as well. In this case, (let's assume that the money is essentially worthless), #6 and #7 are guaranteed their jobs. #5 can't reject #4's proposal because of that, since #6 and #7 will kick him out. So #5 is fairly secure in his job, as are all the others below him. I guess that means that these four will have the majority and outvote the others.

Let's keep score. The fraction indicates a n-way split but not necessarily evenly. Score: Exec #1: loss of job Exec #2: loss of job Exec #3: loss of job Exec #4: loss of job Exec #5: loss of job Exec #6: 1 mill, -5 competitors Exec #7: -5 competitors Score: Exec #1: loss of job Exec #2: loss of job Exec #3: loss of job Exec #4: loss of job Exec #5: 1/2 mil, -4 competitors Exec #6: -4 competitors Exec #7: 1/2 mil, -4 competitors Score: Exec #1: loss of job Exec #2: loss of job Exec #3: loss of job Exec #4: 1/2 mil, -3 competitors Exec #5: -3 competitors Exec #6: 1/2 mil, -3 competitors Exec #7: -3 competitors screwed if it gets down to #3. Score: Exec #1: loss of job Exec #2: loss of job Exec #3: 1/3 mil, -2 competitors Exec #4: -2 competitors Exec #5: 1/3 mil, -2 competitors Exec #6: -2 competitors Exec #7: 1/3 mil, -2 competitors Score: Exec #1: loss of job Exec #2: 1/3 mil, -1 competitor Exec #3: -1 competitor Exec #4: 1/3 mil, -1 competitor Exec #5: -1 competitor Exec #6: 1/3 mil, -1 competitor Exec #7: -1 competitor Exec #1: 1/4 mil Exec #2: Exec #3: 1/4 mil Exec #4: Exec #5: 1/4 mil Exec #6: Exec #7: 1/4 mil If -1 competitor is worth 1/4 mil, then this proposal will be rejected by #7.

I think it depends on how much value there is to removing competition, and how much value to losing one's job (although that last bit may not matter if you assume pure rationality).

The trouble is there are multiple possible interpretations for that. For example, it could mean that the atmosphere is protected from being damaged, so that we can't pollute it. It could mean that we can't "climb" the atmosphere, ie fly. If someone says something vague enough then there is almost certainly an interpretation that happens to be true. The Nostradamus folks do this all the time; fortune tellers do it professionally.

"If my dad ever finds out what I've been up to he's gonna crucify me" -- Jesus's character, in Hamlet 2

The above was an entirely secular post. Please consider it from a philosophical or scientific perspective.

But can you confirm one of the very few premises that science has? For example, can you confirm that the world is objective? Or consistent? Or do you take this on faith? If I publish a paper describing an experimental setup and the results, and it is interesting so a few people repeat it but get different, boring results, then will they not claim that I made a mistake? This is because they assume the world is consistent and objective. If I claim my experiment was correct and evidence that the world is inconsistent, or subjective, they will laugh at me. --- As to the respect issue, one of the big pluses for having our own religion forum is that we can be different than other religion forums, in adhering to higher standards for discussion, and also a different perspective.

(If the above has copyright issues, a link to the website is here: http://www.cartoonistgroup.com/store/add.php?iid=44382)

We get more delicious irony in that now we get the person who wants to go around insulting people, complaining about implied insults to himself. Pots and kettles everywhere! Scientific belief is worthy of rejection because it is all based on faith in materialistic explanations, and often that belief is held in direct opposition to Biblical evidence due to the fact that faith is prioritized over evidence. In logic class, unless we are proving a theorem, we always always always have to start with premises. There really is no proper way to tell what the correct premises are, so they have to be assumed. Starting with different premises usually leads to different conclusions. If your best argument against some position boils down to "my premises are better than yours", fine, but do remember that your premises are all assumed as well. They have different premises. Given as evidence arguments from different premises and reaching different conclusions, theists and atheists alike remain unconvinced of each others arguments. Each thinks to themselves that they have proven their case, while each thinks the other has not. But then you wouldn't take it very well if the few premises you held, and therefore everything based on those premise, was dismissed simply because you take those premises on faith. So the double standard definitely goes both ways. Or did you think you can get anywhere without starting from certain premises?

There are two notable differences between astrology and religion: 1) Belief in astrology is weaker; hardly any people base large parts of their lives on it. For comparison, people often base their morality on their religion, are willing to die for it, etc. 2) Astrology is much clearer; it is current and continuous rather than largely historical. This makes it much more amenable to the scientific method, and so it can also that much more easily be dismissed. Religions such as Christianity rely on a holy book thousands of years old, and each individual may have their own interpretation of it, and it does not make day to day predictions here and now, other than some vague something or other about god's plan.