Mr Skeptic

There's some who think there should not be intellectual property (it belongs to everyone), and some who think people shouldn't modify genes (playing god). And there's some who just don't care.

Religion has some secular values. I'm not seeing the problem here.

No. Anyone following the majority will be sitting at home watching TV like everyone else, not protesting. And why would the majority need to protest? They usually already have what they want. When the majority is protesting they usually get rid of their old government and get a new one. Is that the sort of protest you are talking about?

So how does that compare to the person who doesn't want to go to the doctor because it is too expensive? People always do a self-diagnosis first. And if the doctor is expensive and they think it is a minor sickness, odds are they won't go. So the absence of the cheaper, if less trained, practitioners also makes things worse -- and more expensive besides.

Mold is very hard to get rid of. Be sure to throw out your food when it gets moldy before it can start spreading spores (preferably outside the house or at least in a closed trash can). Humidity helps fungus grow. There might be mold elsewhere in your house that is sending spores onto your food. Bleach will help kill the mold but it probably won't be 100% effective. If there was a lot of mold in your refrigerator it will probably need emptying and cleaning.

They'd get laughed at, and then if they actually acted on that they'd be thrown in jail. Why? What did you think would happen? We consider that government derives from the consent of the governed, and that it a right of the people to abolish their government and form a new one. Oops.

According to this study, not only has human evolution not stopped, but it has sped up: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/12/humans-evolving/

Consider modern breeding techniques. We can do rather fancy things, but it helps to have lots of genetic variety to work with. The wild varieties, which have to survive on their own and without relying on humans, have a lot more variability than the species we have selectively bred to the point they have little variability. Hence interest in wild grain species for their pest resistance, or such.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background_radiation

Nice find. I guess this explains why people are so fond of comparing things they don't like to Nazis when there are far better metaphors.

I think that one was a scam.

I think all you need is to throw some muons into a deuterium/tritium mix. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon-catalyzed_fusion

My guess is that he'd likely die. People aren't really very likely to appreciate someone who had been repressing them 30 years and who they just forced out of office trying to promote his own political opinions -- again. It would probably depend on what "honest political opinions" he was voicing. Though I'd say he should have that right so long as it is not promoting insurrection against the new government. In any case, if the opinions he expresses are what he was doing while in office, that's what he got kicked out for, and if it is different he is basically condemning himself ("I wasn't acting in your best interest before"). So he'd probably be best off keeping his opinions to himself.

I've not seen any convincing evidence that the total energy of the universe is non-zero (when including potential energy as negative energy as is usual).

I think it's more a question of unity than of authority. But it is also a question of authority. No one ever has the unanimous support of every last person. Rush Limbaugh, for example, has a large following. He has no government authority and yet people do listen to what he has to say and his words influence their actions. Similarly, when one candidate from one party loses the nomination for president against another candidate from the same party, it is expected of him that he renounce his intent to run for president so as not to split the party -- even though he could still run. More sinisterly, a crime lord has followers that can and will kill at his command, even if he has no government authority. Just because someone lost power doesn't mean that suddenly no one cares about them anymore, nor that everyone suddenly accepts the new leadership as legitimate.

Ah, going back a little towards how it used to be. Part of the reason we have so few doctors is that the AMA worked really hard to eliminate the competition. This was done in the name of improving patient's lives, but it seems it included some components such as requiring a limited number of students. http://www.healthe-l...id_history.html http://reason.org/bl...he-ama-monopoly

Combine that with showing him how the various appliances always generate heat. Hm, come to think of it, depending on the resistance of the appliance, perhaps a slightly different proportion of the energy ends up heating cables outside the house? Anyone know what sort of effects, say, a transformer with no load might have? In particular, the sort of current it draws and its resistance?

I'm not sure we can allow this sort of discussion. At least I'll put the obligatory warning label. ! Moderator Note Warning: Flamethrowers can burn things. Not intended for indoor use. (now don't sue us if you burn yourself or your house)

It looks like a bunch of hype over not much. You can make a propelled boat by putting a little soap on the back, but no one would consider that alive, nor as having an ability to sense their environment, nor metabolism. Even worse, its entire existence is unnatural -- you won't see this in nature. Let them do this with naturally occurring chemicals and gradients, then I'd be impressed. It would probably also help if they went towards food rather than towards the nastiest base they can find. It is somewhat interesting for its simplicity though.

It's more like "go away or die". And you're asking what's democratic about a people selecting their leader? As for why people might want an ousted leader to formally abdicate their position, think about what someone who rebels against their government is doing. It's called high treason and the usual punishment is execution. Abdicating formally gets rid of that, and it helps to legitimize the new government in the eyes of any still loyal supporters and to unite the country. And it's about the only thing the former leader could still do that his people would appreciate.

If you're sufficiently unpopular, the choice is between abdicating and being killed. Either way you're out of power.

To me, 43 hours seems like roughly 53 less hours than 4 days, but maybe it's just me. And I doubt that those 43 hours were all discussion. And furthermore, it matters what time there is in between since that can be used to study and consider the effects of something individually before discussing it as a group. In short, I'm sorry for having made the amount of time seem larger than it was.

Can the quality of health care in the US be increased by lowering the qualification requirements to provide medical care? It might seem counter-intuitive at first, but not if you think through it carefully. Of course, a better doctor would provide better treatment. However, a doctor is limited in the number of patients he can treat, and furthermore even having to wait for treatment can exacerbate any harm. Furthermore, with a shortage of doctors it becomes necessary to ration out care or to increase the price to the point where people forgo treatment due to the price. Thus, conditions could worsen or go untreated altogether. At some point, even if the fewer doctors can provide better treatment, the waiting and expense of such care would overwhelm any such benefit. For example, if you take things to the extreme -- suppose we will have nothing but the best, so that only the very best person in the US is allowed to practice medicine. He'd have to take care of millions of people, at least tens of thousands of patients per day, which would be ridiculously impossible for him to treat. The point of this example is that it must be true that quality of care can be increased by reducing the qualification requirements. My question, then, is: Is the US past that point? Would we be better off with more, less qualified, doctors? My suggestion: replace certification requirements to perform medicine, with requirements that the patient be informed if any practitioner is not certified and given the choice to opt for a certified one. Me, I don't really care whether my doctor has a doctorate degree if all I need is a few stitches, or something like that.

How inefficient of you

Deleting accounts would mess things up for everyone in discussions you've participated in, so is only done with spammers. You can erase your profile information and request to be banned, but that's about as close as you can get to having your account deleted. From the sounds of it your idea is more well-developed than most of the crackpottery we usually get, and you seem to be more polite. You can post it in the Speculations forum. Please keep in mind that this is a discussion forum, so if you don't intend to participate in discussion then that would be considered soapboxing. Please read the Rules. Especially relevant for this are 4, 8, and 10 in Section 2. We also have a thread titled So, you've got a new theory.. which you might want to read.