Mr Skeptic

I think that you only think that your body performs functions. I'm pretty sure you can look at the world from a perspective where the real world doesn't exist, and where your mind creates the world and can affect it slightly following certain rules (eg by moving your body, which you could also consider imaginary). In fact there seems to be some evidence that a person's view of reality is simply their fantasy that most closely matches their senses. In this study, it seems a person's sense of reality seems to be like a fantasy that is more personally relevant: http://www.physorg.c...s157029052.html

What's the relation between the price of something and its eco-friendliness? If you calculate in the government subsidies (and I count free right to pollution as a subsidy), will the cheapest product be the most eco-friendly? Will very expensive to produce products be bad for the environment?

And once again, France surrenders. No, wait, they're the first country with enough balls to formally recognize the Transitional National Council, the main opposition force to Col. Gadhafi, as the "legitimate representative of the Libyan people," a move which I believe will save many lives. The rest of us pussies have for the most part just been waiting to see what happens before speaking up. France first to recognise Libyan rebels as "legitimate representatives of the people" France became the first country to formally recognize a newly formed Libyan opposition council as the "legitimate representative of the Libyan people." The office of French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Thursday it will send ambassadors to the rebel stronghold in Benghazi, and in return the Libyan opposition council will set up an embassy in Paris.

These? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_ant

Each person has their own idea of what people ought to do or to strive for, and none of them can prove to the others that they are right. Look deep in your heart, find what it is you want to be, and then get off your ass and start doing it. Or if you aren't the type to independently decide what to do, follow someone else's lead.

The reactor generates heat only. The heat is used to boil water and run a turbine, same as in a coal plant. I assume the main turbines are too big to be powered by the steam now that the reactor has been shut down, or maybe damaged by the 8.9 magnitude quake or tsunami. Ouchie!

The same is true with evolution. Eukaryotes remained eukaroytes, vertebrates remained vertebrates, mammals remained mammals, primates remained primates. Each later category is but a specific variety of what already was. (oh, and unless you can make falsifiable predictions from your creator theory, it doesn't really explain anything and just gives that illusion) Incidentally, it is interesting you bring up design. What designer builds everything from just about the same parts but with seemingly random variation of irrelevant details? Why not change the parts, or leave some out? Yet it makes sense when considering this as mutations of a common ancestor. Consider for example the viper genes in the cows; if creatures were designed would we not see large quantities of horizontal gene transfer replacing vertical gene transfer? Yet such examples are extremely rare and more consistent with a rare insertion by a trans-species retrovirus than intentional design by a creator. Some species however do bear the mark of intelligent design. For example "golden rice", bears the genes for psy (phytoene synthase) from daffodil (Narcissus pseudonarcissus) and crtl from the soil bacterium Erwinia uredovora; and both these genes just so happen to be involved in the synthesis of beta-carotene (a precursor to vitamin A). I don't think this can be explained by coincidence considering that horizontal gene transfer is so rare in eukaryotes and both those are in the same metabolic pathway; it would almost seem like these plants were created specifically to provide us with vitamin A. However, such organisms bearing a clear mark of design are very rare, and evolution explains the others very nicely.

Nonsense; we just increased our evolvability. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolvability

If I point a gun at your head and offer to let you live if you would give me some money (otherwise kill you but not take your money), and you voluntarily give money, is that fair? If you're dying of thirst in a desert and I offer to give you some of my extra water for $100,000, is that fair? Unfairness happens when one party has a better bargaining position than the other, even with voluntary exchanges. A voluntary exchange happens when two parties have items that they each value differently, and improves their total happiness by the difference in value. However, there is nothing that determines who gets the majority of that value. Generally, the person with the better bargaining position gets the better deal from the same exchange. This is why we strive to reduce any individual's bargaining rights, such as in the case of a monopoly. In the case a union has a monopoly of a company's labor, the same applies. In general, rich people have the better bargaining position than do poor people, so they get better deals. In the idealized free market, everyone has an equal (and negligibly small) bargaining position. Unless you coerce them, right? People don't always get to do whatever they want. Some people don't have the knowledge, and others can't take the risk of failure. Some might be unable to take the time off work to start a new business. I do think it would help if independent job creation were taught like an academic subject at school, and loans made available for new small businessmen. I think that would greatly improve fairness, independence, freedom, and the economy in general.

Do animals ever have nocturnal emissions/wet dreams?

I agree. I think an awful lot of signs that should have been yield signs were replaced with stop signs or lights. In fact, the only place I've seen yield signs is on entrance ramps to highways, where putting a stop sign would be too stupid even for politicians. But why all the stop signs? Why waste all that time and gas? A stop sign has very clear enforcement: you stop, yield, and go. This is easily measured quantitatively: your speed must go to zero. But "yielding" doesn't really have a clear measure, and is partially subjective. I suppose an objective measure could be designed based on not going so many seconds (at the other car's velocity) in front of them, but that would be hard to measure both for the driver and for enforcement. Without a clear measure, there are much higher costs for enforcement both because it is harder to do and because it is likelier to go to court. And on top of that, the people are likelier to "ignore" the law because of different subjective judgment, or because enforcement is so much harder that they can get away with it. And so, our result is overly harsh laws that get frequently ignored both by the people and by the cops, but that can be enforced at a whim if deemed necessary. Unfortunately, that also means progress toward a police state.

You better not let the corporations find out about this brilliant discovery of yours. If they did, they might all get together and start demanding that they pay higher taxes and have their wealth redistributed so that they can get more. Or they could just get together and do it themselves, throwing money at everyone so that the corporations can get it all back and more.

Why don't you acknowledge what happens to the wealth before it is redistributed?

We could try subsidizing it more and more until it's all gone and then wondering why we're not prepared with alternatives.

I think first cousin marriages are a bad idea and should be discouraged -- but it is not so bad as to be worth ruining someone's life over if they're really hopelessly in love. Note: breeders purposely use some inbreeding, to eliminate bad recessive genes. Not sure that's applicable to modern humans though.

And that's kind of the point -- fundamental research will almost certainly turn out to be vitally important, to change everything we do... but we won't have an idea how until long afterward.

Yes, another problem we have is that our country is designed for cars and very poorly designed for biking/walking. This further contributes to obesity.

Maybe you have and didn't notice me. Re-read what my criteria was.

Perhaps, perhaps not. Our body has a limited ability to metabolize fructose. The remainder must go to the liver to get processed. Similarly, glucose levels are also a problem. Foods with a high glycemic index cause a spike in insulin levels, but that eventually causes the blood glucose levels to fall below fasting levels, and you get hungry. In addition, insulin causes your body to store energy and is an inflammatory hormone. Chronic low levels of inflammation lead to all sorts of disease.

Each of those steps is separate but depends on information from the previous steps. To get started, just start any of the steps, but include for calculations the info you will need from the previous steps.

Perhaps we could look toward one of the sources of our health problems rather than throwing more money at the consequences. Obesity has all kinds of nasty medical consequences. And the corn we're subsidizing probably has a lot to do with our very high rates of obesity.

Can we really? I'm pretty sure that poverty increases both religiosity and social health problems, which would complicate linking religiosity causally to the social health problems.

Congratulations!

Have a look at this video. I don't think either pepper spray nor the sort of taser you can buy would protect you from someone with a gun though. the page also has some discussion on it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwbt9wvCuDw&feature=related

Consider the statement, "If the moon is made of green cheese, then I can fly." Many schools of logic consider that statement to be true, since the only way for it to be false would require that the moon in in fact be made of green cheese and yet me being unable to fly. For these purposes, the statement If A then B is equivalent to (Not A) or B. Other schools of logic consider implication to be a stronger statement than as above. These people translate "If A then B" as In all possible worlds, either B is true or A is false. However, nowhere will you find that (Not A) ever logically proves false the statement "If A then B". Perhaps what you mean to say is, "Without a materialistic explanation for abiogenesis, there is no materialistic explanation for the origin of life". That would be true, but evolution still has nothing to do with it. Wrong. Do you also think that science claims that your brothers and sisters and cousins are your ancestors? You confuse "having a common ancestor" with "being the common ancestor". Just because your siblings share a common ancestor with you (you parent), does not make your siblings your ancestor. Why? On what basis? And what do you mean by "remain a lemur"? Are we not still eukaryotes like the first eukaryotes, animals like the first animal, mammals like the first mammal, primates like the first primate? We don't look the same but we still fit the description. And we've acquired additional descriptions along the way. If you can't explain every possible method via which the eye could have evolved, then you can't credibly claim that the eye couldn't have evolved. You are so ignorant in this subject that no reasonable person could take your ignorance about it as proof that it could not have happened. In fact, you don't even know how the eye develops from the DNA sequences coding for it, and yet you propose that your ignorance about how the DNA sequences could have changed from what it was before to what it is now proves it couldn't have happened. Some are and some aren't. If they're similar at the detailed level they're homologies, if they're similar at the superficial level and not at the detailed level they're called convergent evolution. Most of the time, what is observed is homologies like how the arms of bats, birds, whales, horses are all similar. Occasionally, convergent evolution happens like how the eyes of the squid and human are different. Then you cannot have a creator as part of a scientific theory, and must by necessity believe in a materialistic cause for everything. No specific (falsifiable) predictions = not science. So are you ready to accept that science cannot have a creator, or that science can speculate as to what the creator would do, or do you prefer to not do science at all? Not only must you be able to speculate what the creator might do, but claim to know for a fact what the creator might do, what properties it must have, etc. Otherwise you can't make falsifiable predictions. A falsifiable prediction is a prediction based off your theory such that if the prediction fails than your theory cannot be true.