Mr Skeptic

I certainly don't. The rules are sometimes dumb and I can get away with ignoring them while on a bike. I still respect right of way, so the only people getting mad at me would be those who are jealous, not because I get in their way or something rude like that. If I can ignore the rules without anyone having to change their course in the least, screw the rule. Mainly, I treat stop signs and and red lights as yield signs.

What I'm saying is that you can't have real democracy without freedom to think. Voting is meaningless if you do not have the information needed to make an informed vote. Or if you are not allowed to vote in the way you think best (keep in mind that the "beloved" Mubarak won his elections with over 90% of the votes). What's wrong is that it removes the freedom of a person to think for themselves, of which freedom of religion is just one aspect. Hence, almost no one gives a rat's ass that Sweden has a state church, but people get quite upset at states that don't have freedom of religion. Islamic law requires the execution of people who turn away from Islam, for example. Death to the heretics! Can you really have democracy if people can be executed for disagreeing with you? Thus I maintain that a people will be more free if religious and other freedoms are imposed on them than if they by majority vote outlaw freedom or dissent.

But is that really freedom? If the government can tell you how to think, and the result is that you vote for them, isn't that just autocracy under a facade of democracy? We here have freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom to congregate -- without these freedoms, I don't think we could truly have democracy. We could vote, sure, but probably not make an informed vote. From my history class I recently learned that one of the things in the proposed constitutions for Latin American countries fighting for their independence was having Catholicism as the only allowed religion. And some countries throughout the world do have a state religion.

"In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!" In this case the First Law of Thermodynamics, also known as conservation of energy. Energy goes in, so what happens then?

The heater is designed for heating. All the electricity will get converted to heat eventually. However, the heater might distribute it differently than electrical appliances. That might make a difference. What would make a difference for sure is if your electric heater is like an air conditioner running in reverse -- these actually draw thermal energy from outside in addition to the energy from the electricity.

Perhaps. There are two closely related meanings for "why". One is an explanation of purpose or a reason, as in "why were you late?". The implication of reason can be applied to inanimate objects, as in "why does a nail stay stuck in the wood?". It seems a reasonable enough question, but one that cannot fully be answered. Of course, the nail is held there because of friction and the compressibility and elasticity of wood. And each of those has a reason. But if you keep asking "why?", you eventually get to a point where you must simply accept that things are such. As for science, it really isn't about "why?" although many seem to think so. Science is about "how". This can be seen most clearly from Newton's description of gravity, which was essentially "This is the formula that will give you the gravitational force. But don't ask me why the objects attract each other." Quantum mechanics is even worse -- the formulas work, but in most people's view none of it makes sense. All science is like that, even the example of the nail -- what science can do is explain how the properties of the nail and wood allow the wood to hold the nail, not really why it ought to be so. Ultimately, science can only answer "why" questions by giving "how" answers.

Do you know why doctors are worse at "repairing" humans than refrigerator repairmen are at repairing refrigerators? Because people throw out refrigerators and get new ones. Seen any 100 year old refrigerators around have you? Do you think we should just throw out "broken" people and buy a new one?

The environment has changed, as it has before and will again. The temperature changes, the rainfall changes, the species change, and now we have technology as part of the environment. The rules have not changed. The environment has.

Me, I ride my bike on the shoulder of the road. Why? It seems to me the safe and sensible thing to do. There's room enough for cars to pass me, and I certainly would not like to be in the middle of the road since I go slower than the cars. I'd feel a) like a jerk, blocking traffic, and b) unsafe, blocking traffic is unsafe because someone might not notice you.

About the protest, it seems someone managed to prank call Gov. Walker while impersonating David Koch. You can listen to the conversation here. He didn't say anything particularly damning though, despite of course what the excerpts would suggest. But I think you get to hear what the guy honestly thinks. Now, according to this, the reason the Democrats fled was to allow the bill more exposure. Now I'm not too familiar with this, but introducing the bill and wanting it passed 4 days later seems a bit rushed compared to the glacial pace the government normally works. I mean, the bill seems to be quite important, but not really urgent. How long would it be reasonable to be discussing the bill? Of course, I'm sure the Democrats are gaining themselves some political capital by allowing for more media coverage of the protests. Anyhow, here is the bill in question (SB-13): http://legis.wiscons.../data/SB-13.pdf Honestly I can't make much sense of it at first glance. Anyone know what the problem is? The bill seems to be modifying some of the statutes. Here is the first of those: http://docs.legis.wi...es/111/V/84/2/c What is really odd is that I never saw anyone mention the bill by its proper name. I had to looke it up for myself in the Wisconsin Senate records.

Of course not, it's from my home country -- Paraguay. Though you can find similar (and probably worse) elsewhere.

I agree with what you have said and yet... where I come from, a poor person might have a plywood/sheet metal hut 3X3 meters area (the materials probably scavanged not bought, and I doubt they own the land under it), no shoes (not the kids anyways), probably goes hungry, and virtually no medical care (not the sort that would be done in a hospital). There are billions who would be grateful to be as poor as you. Pangloss, even these people occasionally have a color TV.

Yes. (Except in reality, occasionally the sperm's mitochondria makes it into the egg, but even then is outnumbered by the mother's mitochondria, and might or might not end up in the reproductive organs. And for the Y chromosome, occasionally people get strange things like XXY or XYY or something else, so I wouldn't be surprised if somehow a Y chromosome might in very rare cases end up in a female.)

Seems pretty accurate. Of course we do have some extremists who hate muslims and some muslim extremists who hate us.

I used to do that but have since matured to golden browned skin and taking forever to roast.

Anyone want to look at the US Census's actual reports? http://www.census.gov/prod/2005pubs/p23-202.pdf http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/p23-201.pdf I'm a bit tired for that right now.

The mitochondrial DNA is passed on only* from mother to child, and the Y chromosome only* from father to son. Thus you can track anyone's maternal line, and any male's paternal line. * this being biology, "only" means "only except when it doesn't"

They symbolize what the electrons are doing. Keeping track of the electrons, of course, is pretty much all of chemistry.

OK, let me give a specific example. Let's say we have 3 people, each of which would be willing to spend no more $1 for 1/3 of their favorite pie, but nothing for any other flavor. One wants apple, the other wants peach, and the third wants cherry, and they are at a restaurant that offers these pies for $2 each. Now, you can average these three people together and say that 100% of them want pie and are willing to pay a total of $3 for the pie. However, you can see that is just lying with statistics when you notice that they don't buy the pie and split it 3 ways. They don't want a pie.. they want a specific pie. The people in this example are united in agreeing that none of them wants to buy any pie at that price, yet they are united in agreeing that they would want "a pie". People want to reduce government spending, but not just any spending -- they to have their favorites. You cannot average out disagreement into agreement, it just doesn't work that way in reality. If you pool people who disagree together, you have to cancel out the bits they disagree on. Ignoring the fact the people disagree and then claiming they are in agreement is disingenuous. As you yourself said, they are divided about reducing spending -- and that means not a majority. The flip side is that if there is not a majority for reducing spending, it means there must be a majority for either the current spending or greater. Remember, reducing "spending" is not an option. Specific things have to be cut, not "spending". Wishing to cut "spending" without wishing to cut any program is nothing but wishful thinking. As I said before, feel free to show that the majority really does want to cut actual spending on actual programs rather than just engage in wishful thinking, by showing an example of a budget reduction proposal that is not self-contradictory and the majority agrees on. From your article: No one is in favor of any reductions. In theory yes, in practice no. Read it again. It says 48% oppose cutting or eliminating certain state programs, compared to the only 47% who support such cuts.

And expensive pleasure, perhaps. One that frequently involves huge loans, which of course need to be paid back. The supply of physicians can't just be increased or decreased like that. It takes years to train them, so you have to know years ahead of time how many you need (in each specialty).

Because I write very small, I also appreciate the capacity of mechanical pencils to make very fine lines. Here's an example of how small I can write. I can't write smaller due to limited ability to see what I'm writing. That's on graphing paper. For comparison, a penny is three of those squares wide. Of course I usually write about 4 times larger than that, but still small enough that a .7 mm pencil sometimes is too wide.

On that note, if you want to know something about Christianity, you'd be better off asking the average atheist than the average Christian. It turns out that the average atheist knows more about Christianity than does the average Christian.

You cannot perfectly know yourself, else you would be a counterexample to the Halting Problem (assuming you know enough programming). The consciousness therefore is built from and on top of the unconscious. Studies show that the unconscious can make choices for you and this can be measured before you become conscious of your choice. No. Without the unconscious there is no consciousness. You are unconscious of almost everything, be it vision, sounds, smells, the internals of your body, how it is that you think, etc. These are all dealt with, and have to be dealt with unconsciously. The few things that you unconscious deems important are sent to your consciousness for more detailed processing.

Not necessarily. Doctors frequently rely on self-reported symptoms, and some symptoms can be induced (eg laxatives for diarrhea). However, eventually it would add up to a lying doctor with enough such coincidences. And in any case it certainly shows the employee to be a big liar.

I think that the sphincters that keep food from flowing out of the stomach will also prevent air from flowing in. And there isn't really a low pressure zone in the stomach to draw air in -- if you want something to go into your stomach you have to push it in by swallowing.