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Moderation note: This is the original post that lead to the creation of the FullDive Technology” subforum. Posts have been moved from it into other threads, according to subject, to make them shorter and more readable. This thread is for discussion of how to make an actual brain-computer interface like the NerveGear shown in the Sword Art Online anime If you have seen the hit anime Sword Art Online (or S.A.O for short) you most likely know what the nerve gear is and what it does. Going into this though i will explain what it exactly does as if no one has ever heard of it. The Nerve Gear is a VR device (or virtual reality device). I have posted pictures as to what it looks like . Through the device every sense is being used. When you are in the game you smell the things around you, you can taste everything you eat. You can see and hear everything around you in a photo realalistic enviroment. You can feel everything as if it were in the real world right in front of you. (Please note the sensation of touch and feel is not to the of the real world though.) When i say you can feel things i mean each type of feeling, mechanical reception the feeling of contact, thermo reception the feeling of hot and cold, stretch reception the feeling of muscle compression, kinestesia the sensing of body movements, proprioception the sensation of a body's place, and equilibriaception the sensation of balance. So i will break down what we have and what we will most likely have in the near future if everthing goes right that has to do with these five senses. Photorealistic graphics are expected to be around by the year 2020 as predicted by the scientist Michio Kaku. (thats two years before S.A.O is even released in the anime). Headphones are already great and will only get better with time. With taste and smell finding the answer will exponentially help the as the two senses are so closely related. touch is the big one here, there are many devices to simulate each type of touch i described but it would need to be all in one and need to all fit with in the helmet used as it is the only peice of equipment used in the show (though it is connected to a strong pc). the device would only need to touch your head and still give you feeling anywhere on your body. As for the controls they are completly controlled through the brain. You have the full range of movement that you have in the real world in the game, (without ever actually moving in real life). I would imagine this would be done through an EEG (electroencephalogram) that could take the brain's electrical signals used to move and redirect them into a computer that would us them as movement commands. By the way none of this is invasive so nothing has to connect into your body. So give your ideas to how far along we are to doing this and new tech that would make this possible. i personaly plan on going to college to create such a device so please lets start a discussion about this. i believe this is all possible because if humans put there mind to it anything can be created. An example of this is the atom bomb, everyone thought it was impossible to split an atom but we did it and now we have nuclear generators and reactors.

Welcome to hypography jacob2mitts! Please feel free to start a topic in the introductions forum to tell us something about yourself. How Long Until We Could Make A Real Sword Art Online (sao) Nerve Gear Type Device? I’ll approach this question by break down what the Nerve Gear helmet in SAO and the SAO MORPG computer program is shown doing: Simulating a realistic world for many (on the order of 10000) simultaneous usersReading brain states with sufficiently high spatial and temporal resolutionAnalyzing in real time the read brain states to create input data for #1Writing brain states with sufficiently high spatial and temporal resolutionIMHO, #1 could be done now. Note that the simulated world doesn’t need to be a truly accurate simulation, modeling very complicated things like weather and biology, only accurate enough to give the appearance of a real world. Such simulation parallelize well, so the computer hardware necessary to run them scales well – the size of the simulated world and number of users can be increased to within reasonable limits by adding hardware. #2 and 4 are harder questions, both to state precisely and to answer. Notice my use of the wiggle-word “sufficiently”. To the best of my knowledge, we don’t at present have a good guess as to how high a spatial resolution is necessary to capture the data needed for #3. However from well-known brain data, we can estimate a resolution that must be sufficient, though the actual needed resolution may not need to be so great. The number of neurons in the human brain is about 1011, its volume about 0.0012 m2 (source: this 2013 Nature Article). From this, you can calculate the spatial resolution necessary to image individual neurons: about 0.00001 m (10 microns). For temporal resolution, we know that the fastest changes in nerves - their “action potentials” – is on the order of 0.001 seconds (1 milisecond) Present day fMRI brain imaging machines have a maximum spatial resolution of about 0.002 m, and a temporal resolution (how long they take to capture a full brain image) of about 1 second. To the best of my knowledge, the temporal resolution of fMRI could be increased by a factor of 1000 without undue difficulty – there’s no great drive to do so, because its current performance is good enough for its primary use in medicine. The spatial resolution, however, I understand has a theoretical maximum of about 0.0001 m, 10 times to course to image individual neurons. (source: this 2000 conference paper draft) The conclusion I get from this is that, unless the actual needed resolution for #2 is much less than individual neurons, MRI technology isn’t feasible. MRI has the highest resolution of present-day non-intrusive brain imaging technologies, so either an entirely new approach is needed, or an intrusive one. My best guess is that an intrusive technology is needed – many fine insulated wires inserted into the brain. So, rather than the neat helmet in SAO, something like the wiring implied by the “brain plugs” shown in 1999 film The Matrix, though I imagine the connectors could be made nearly invisible, rather than the ugly industrial looking spike and socket shown in the movie. It’s possible that hardware could be implanted in the brain along with the wires, allowing a magnetic or radio rather than a hard-wired connection to the outside. Once function #2 has gotten the brain data, is has to transfer it to a computer for fuction #3, analyzing the data. Taking the above, this requires a transfer rate of at most 1014 bits/second. This rate, though about 1,000,000 times higher than in commonplace hardware, has been achieved. The actual rate needed would be much less, because all of the neurons in the brain don’t fire in the same millisecond. Compared to #2, imaging the brain in sufficient resolution, I don’t think #3, analyzing the brain data, would be terribly difficult. For a single user, it would, I expect, require more computer than running the MORPG, though, so in present-day technology, a top-of-the-line supercomputer would be needed for each user. #4, writing to the brain, is so far beyond present day technology it’s hard to sensibly speculate about. There are some present-day devices that stimulate the brain non-intrusively, using magnetic fields, but they are very low resolution, affecting whole brain areas on the order of 0.01 m in diameter. Though useful in medicine for treating some brain diseases, they can only “write thoughts” in a very crude manner, such as causing temporary reduction in thinking or memorizing ability, or the perception of vague flashes of light. Again, this leads me to conclude that a true “read-write” brain interface like the one suggested in SAO would need some sort of wired brain connection. Function #2 – reading brain states – is also needed to “upload your mind” into a computer, a dear goal of extropians, transhumanists, and others of this ilk. 9 years ago, we had the thread Upload your mind into a computer by 2050?, discussing futurologist Ian Pearson prediction that this would be possible by 2050. This seems a not unreasonable guess for when at least the “read” part of the Nerve Gear from SAO might be possible –more likely, I think, than 2022, the Reki Kawahara (the novelist that wrote SOA, starting with the first light novels in 2002) prediction for a complete read-write one. An important question to ask before going too far in trying to duplicate a fictional nonintrusive, direct brain read-write device, is whether this is really the best approach. My hunch is that it’s not, and immersive VR that “writes” to our existing sense organs – eyes, ears, and skin, etc. – while “reading” our motor nerves, is. Another good question to ask is, given that pretty good virtual reality systems (eg Virtuality, a line of home and arcade systems) existed in the early 1990s, why wasn’t it popular, and why is so little of it around now? Given that consumer electronics technology is driven in large part by what proves popular, we’ve decades of evidence that gamers don’t want VR, preferring systems with keyboards, handheld controllers, 2-D displays, and speakers or headphones. I’m looking forward to seeing how the latest, and perhaps best-funded forays into VR, the Oculus Rift and Sony’s Project Morpheus, do commercially. Recent reports are that some very good games for these systems will be available late this year or early 2015. If these games are very good, but are not popular, my suspicion that VR itself is not popular will be bolstered.

I doubt it. Science is empirical, religion is dogmatic. At best, science can view religion as a failed hypothesis. The argument goes that the two operate in different spheres and should each be able to do its thing in peace. But that's exactly where the problem lies, because religion makes claims that interfere in science's domain. Religion makes claims that their god, or gods, are responsible for people recovering from illness, for physical occurrences like rainfall, etc. And to expect a failed hypothesis to be respected for no other reason than the sheer number of people who take it to be the truth, is disingenuous. The Truth is not a democracy, and should not be held as such. It's immaterial if there are 2 billion Christians world-wide, or only five. Without any evidence apart from the self-referential Bible, it is not worthy of any more respect than the notion that the moon is made of cheese. For that same argument, Hogwarts must be a real place, because it is written about in the Harry Potter books. So, to make a long story short, I don't see how religion and science can peacefully co-exist and why religion should expect any respect other than the same passing glance a scientist will give any other failed hypothesis. Why would it be deserving of respect, in any case? Can I demand of you to respect the color green, because I believe that it has magical properties? That's roughly how ridiculous religions' expectation of undeserving respect is to the non-religious.

Sorry to disappoint, but check out his wiki. William Kininmonth (meteorologist - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) Science and Public Policy Institute - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Quote any more of these fellows and I'll just laugh. All these sad old accusations have been answered. The 'outsiders' are often sincere, but get cranky and are prone to seeing conspiracies where only good science has been offered. They don't like the peer review process, but that's science. Tough. If they don't like the way science is conducted, or the scientific method that checks their silly claims, then maybe they should take up Sci-Fi novel writing? Oh, I forgot, they already are. EG: The 'blanket' strawman attack took the metaphor used by the IPCC to explain the process to laypeople, and debunked that as if it were a scientific claim, and the apparent 'confusion' with the basic radiative forcing equation is a technically worded slight of hand. Really, are we to believe that the 30 major climate institutions around the globe... the real peer reviewed ones that is... ALL made the same mistake on the BASIC PHYSICS? Give me a break! Check this list of complying organisations... Scientific opinion on climate change - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Oh, and that "# 3 Statements by dissenting organizations"? Statements by dissenting organizations The reason your dude and his "institute" are not listed? Well, they're more of a lobby group than a credible scientific organisation. If they don't like the scientific method... let them have their silly parties and rants to the already converted in scepticism. If the subject wasn't so serious I'd be less annoyed and more amused by them, but the trouble is people BELIEVE these guys based on a mishandling of the data, and EVERY one of their TIRED old objections has been handled repeatedly... but they simply will not recant. Got any more? Come on... quote something from the list of 26 myths. You know you want to.

Moderation note: This thread is for conversations by people seeking to volunteering to work with others, and people seeking to recruit volunteers. Posts of this nature made in threads discussing neuro and computer science will be moved here. Please help maintaining the readability of our science threads by refraining from posting volunteering or recuritment offers in them. Craig and Jacob I am Simply Commenting to say i look forward to a nerve gear being here shortly and I too have decided that would go to college specifically to learn exactly what to do and what is needed to create a nerve gear or amusphere gaming headset i hope one day ill get to meet you Jacob since you decided to do the same maybe we can work together on it in the future. Thank you Craig for your insight but i will dedicate my life to making this even if it doesn't turn up to be very popular. Once again Thank You guys.

NOTE: I am in the process of reworking this, it is still a decent reference, but i will be working on it, so expect changes Intro: This has been a long coming, endless traps have been setting the math evolutionary progress back throughout time, and you, Physics and Math people have been forced to use simple text equation display techniques to show complex math. Well, be that no longer, as i am about to introduce you to the world that no longer follows the standard text rules, it defies the normal thought, depends only on how far you are willing to take it and has no rivals in the realm of Microsoft /forums/images/smilies/devilsign.gif . I will attempt to teach you how to block the evil force from taking control of you, make you free as in freedom, to be what you want to be and know no limit. And when the forces of evil can no longer hold you down (and i am referring to M$ IE support for CSS 2 and 3), you will enter the new realm of Latex. how's that for an intro? /forums/images/smilies/banana_sign.gif Actually, it is quite sad that this hasn't happened any earlier, we are a scientific community, so the need for something like this, has bound to be around from very early on in the game (back when Uncle AL, TeleMad, FreeThinker, Gahd and Tormod ran the "Math and Physics" show). But i do have this to say, the software really hasn't caught up with this until early last year, so i guess it's just been ignored or something. Latex itself is a language, similar to HTML, but with major differences; it is a typesetting language made to be able to generate files that will be printable on many different types of printers. Latex is actually a dialect of Tex that was created by D.E.Knuth, it includes many plugins to the original Tex, including the one that i will describe to you today, one created for math. So what is the major difference between Math v1.0 and Math v2.0? Well its simply this, say you have an expression, and in Math v1.0 you would write it like such: f(x)=integral from -infinity to x of (e^(-t^2))/(radical(pi^x))dt uh, yeah, its kinda hard to follow, and some people would actually need to write it out to understand what is going on.... Wouldn't it be easier if you said just: [math]f(x)=\int_{-\infty}^x \frac{(e^{-t^2})}{\sqrt{\pi^x}}dt[/math] So, finally arching your attention? I sure hope so, because i am excited as well, and it is not that difficult to write this expression, in latex it looks like this: f(x)=\int_{-\infty}^x\frac{(e^{-t^2})}{\sqrt{\pi^x}}dt It may seem a bit much, but trust me, this will be a breeze once you get it. Basics: BB Tags Hypography uses a [math] tag to signify the beginning and [/math] tag to signify the end of a latex section of the post. Tags are surrounded by square brackets such as [tag] and respectively [/tag]. I strongly urge you to not forget to close the tags, it is not vital, but it is a good practice, even if you only plan to display an expression Tex Characters: Most characters in latex are rendered as the regular characters, such as a-z 0-9 () {} [] * $ % and so forth [math]a-z 0-9 () [] * \$ \%[/math]. Some need escaping, such is the case with $ and % in our previous case, escaping means putting a \ in front like \$. But latex introduces some characters that have a meaning and render things differently (for math purposes) such characters would include the underscore (_) and the carat(^). Those characters are used to identify sub and superscript, respectively; for example a_b renders as [math]a_b[/math], a^b renders as [math]a^b[/math]. Latex also has a load of characters that are not defined by regular keyboards, they are special characters and follow the following syntax: \name. Things like \alpha, \beta, \gamma, \delta, \pi and many many others are included ftp://tug.ctan.org/pub/tex-archive/info/symbols/comprehensive/SYMLIST Those character commands are case sensitive, so \delta [math]\delta[/math]is different from \Delta [math]\Delta[/math]. to be continued... Continued Size: Latex supports many size options, the new software lets us support all of it, but for simplification reasons, any text you type, enclose it in the \text{} tag, you can actually control color, font and size from within those, but to simplify the size for you: \tiny [math]\text{\tiny{tiny}}[/math] \small [math]\text{\small{small}}[/math] \normalsize (default)[math]\text{\normalsize{normal}}[/math] \Large [math]\text{\Large{large}}[/math] \LARGE [math]\text{\LARGE{even larger}}[/math] \huge [math]\text{\huge{huge}}[/math] I highly recommend using the default size... its just text You have probably noticed, but latex in math mode also removes spaces thus not making it ideal to write normal text. Another thing to notice is that it outputs an image, however it is partly so, this image is dynamically generated and actually does not get saved on our server; it only exists in your browser, hence linking to it from other websites may be a bit harder then you'd expect, and if the outside traffic picks up too much, i will have to block anyone from the outside domain to be able to use this program... Spaces and Styling: Spaces are not mandatory, however i encourage my readers to use them to avoid confusion, for example you can write \frac{2}{x} and it will render as [math]\frac{2}{x}[/math], however this is fine it still presents a problem, if the fraction is x over 2 then \frac{x}{2} will not work, latex will render the command as fracx and that is not a valid command and hence a problem is due. To avoid confusion i recommend sticking to a good syntax style, such as using popper curly braces and spaces, you can either write that fraction as \frac x2 or using the prototype you should really get used to writing \frac{x}{2} that way you will not have to remember the braces when a complex fraction is due and the fraction or any function for that matter will come out right the first time. On the topic of spaces, i can see that people will ask about newlines and things of that manner. You can actually write text and use newlines and things of that nature. A new line is represented by a \\ and if you needed to write text, you can use the \text{} mode to write it and spaces and such will be used. For example y=\left\lbrace\begin{array}{c c}{2x+5} & \text{if x is less then 1/2} \\ {\pi{x}}^e & \text{if x is more then 1}\end{array}\right. [math]y=\left\lbrace\begin{array}{c c}{2x+5} & \text{if x is less then 1/2} \\ {\pi{x}}^e & \text{if x is more then 1}\end{array}\right.[/math] Latex actually provides spacing commands \, \: \; \quad \qquad, those take no arguments and (a\,b\:c\;d\ e\quad f\qquad g) renders as [math](a\,b\:c\;d\ e\quad f\qquad g)[/math] Latex has a couple of fonts, here's how to use them: \mathnormal - default - [math]\mathnormal{A B C d e f 1 2 3 \delta \Delta \infty \lceil \rceil}[/math] \mathrm - default without italic lower case - [math]\mathrm{A B C d e f 1 2 3 \delta \Delta \infty \lceil \rceil}[/math] \mathit - italic -[math]\mathit{A B C d e f 1 2 3 \delta \Delta \infty \lceil \rceil}[/math] \mathbf - bold - [math]\mathbf{A B C d e f 1 2 3 \delta \Delta \infty \lceil \rceil}[/math] \mathsf - sans serif - [math]\mathsf{A B C d e f 1 2 3 \delta \Delta \infty \lceil \rceil}[/math] \mathtt - mono space - [math]\mathtt{A B C d e f 1 2 3 \delta \Delta \infty \lceil \rceil}[/math] \mathcal - caligraphy - [math]\mathcal{A B C d e f 1 2 3 \delta \Delta \infty \lceil \rceil}[/math] \mathfrak - fraktur - [math]\mathfrak{A B C d e f 1 2 3 \delta \Delta \infty \lceil \rceil}[/math] \mathbb - blackboard bold - [math]\mathbb{A B C d e f 1 2 3 \delta \Delta \infty \lceil \rceil}[/math] you can also choose to bold a symbol (such as a greek symbol) \boldsymbol [math]\boldsymbol{\Delta} \Delta[/math] also there are times when latex does not render something quite to your personal spacing specifications, sometimes you need to add or subtract a small space to "nudge" things into place, for this they created a set of spaces for "nudging" \, 3/18th of a quad \: 4/18 \; 5/18 \! -3/18 the negative space is handy for places like this: [math]\left(\begin{array}{c} n \\ r \end{array}\right) = \frac{n!}{r!(n-r)!}[/math] it looks good, but it could look better :) [math]\left(\!\!\!\begin{array}{c} n \\ r \end{array}\!\!\!\right) = \frac{n!}{r!(n-r)!}[/math] Brackets, Braces and More: Ofcourse latex supports every imaginable and unimaginable bracet and brace you can ever imagine, from the simple [] () to over and under braces, and more. The curly brackets have their own symbol, as they are used in the syntax, \lbrace and \rbrace will render as [math]\lbrace\rbrace[\math]. Also braces brackets and such render as their default size unless they are specified to do differently, so if you have a complex fraction that you need to be bracketed, say [\frac{(\frac{x+3}{7})+5}{3x+8}] will render as [math][\frac{(\frac{x+3}{7})+5}{3x+8}][/math] however to actually extend those brackets you can use \left and \right flags to do the job, so with the addition of them \left[\frac{\left(\frac{x+3}{7}\right)+5}{3x+8}\right] [math]\left[\frac{\left(\frac{x+3}{7}\right)+5}{3x+8}\right][/math]. Now as promissed the unimaginable stuff. These things are referred to as math accents, and they include vector signs and things of that nature. So tags like \vec{} \hat{} \tilde{} \dot{} \ddot{} will output as [math]\vec{x} \hat{x} \tilde{x} \dot{x} \ddot{x}[/math]. If you need an expression under the sign, the developers have also thought about you, the \widevec \widehat \widetilde do just that [math]\vec{xyz} \hat{xyz} \tilde{xyz}[/math]. Not done yet, also available are \underline{} \overline{} that underline and overline text, as well as \overbrace and \underbrace that make horizontal braces as such [math]\overbrace{x+2}[/math]. There's more to add though, as the sub and superscript come into play here, using it you can explain expressions such is that a1 a2 .. an are just referred to as ai in the matter, you can write that as \overbrace{a_1,a_2...a_n}^{a_i} [math]\overbrace{a_1,a_2...a_n}^{a_i}[/math] with the underbrace remember that you are trying to put stuff under the brace, so use the subscript sign (_) to accomplish the task. Also once again, notice that proper use of brackets is the key, it is easy to make a mistake in the expression, so use the advanced mode preview fearute. Also available symbols: \langle and \range [math]\left\langle xyz\right\rangle[/math] \| [math]\left\| xyz\right\|[/math] Common Math Needs: Matixees, use the \begin{matrix} and \end{matrix} to display one \left[\begin{matrix} a1,1 & a1,2 & ... & a1,n \\ a2,1 & a2,2 & ... & a2,n \\ ..... & ..... & ..... & ..... \\ am,1 & am,2 & ... & am,n \end{matrix}\right] [math]\left[\begin{matrix} a1,1 & a1,2 & ... & a1,n \\ a2,1 & a2,2 & ... & a2,n \\ ..... & ..... & ..... & ..... \\ am,1 & am,2 & ... & am,n \end{matrix}\right][/math] matrix uses no relimiters pmatrix () bmatrix [] Bmatrix {} vmatrix | Vmatrix || || example: A_{m,n} = \begin{pmatrix} a_{1,1} & a_{1,2} & \cdots & a_{1,n} \\ a_{2,1} & a_{2,2} & \cdots & a_{2,n} \\ \vdots & \vdots & \ddots & \vdots \\ a_{m,1} & a_{m,2} & \cdots & a_{m,n} \end{pmatrix} [math] A_{m,n} = \begin{pmatrix} a_{1,1} & a_{1,2} & \cdots & a_{1,n} \\ a_{2,1} & a_{2,2} & \cdots & a_{2,n} \\ \vdots & \vdots & \ddots & \vdots \\ a_{m,1} & a_{m,2} & \cdots & a_{m,n} \end{pmatrix} [/math] like matrices arrays allow you to space your content horizontally as well as vertically, they also allow you to define the lining for it: \begin{array}{c|c} 1 & 2 \\ \hline 3 & 4 \end{array} [math] \begin{array}{c|c} 1 & 2 \\ \hline 3 & 4 \\ \end{array} [/math] similarly [math] \begin{array}{c|c||} \hline 1 & 2 \\ \hline 3 & 4 \\ \hline 5 & 6 \\ \hline \end{array} [/math] or if you get really creative with them: [math] \begin{array}{|r|l|} \hline 7C0 & hexadecimal \\ 3700 & octal \\ \cline{2-2} 11111000000 & binary \\ \hline \hline 1984 & decimal \\ \hline \end{array} [/math] There is more then a dozen common math symbols recognized in latex: \arccos [math]\arccos{\left ( \frac{\pi}{2} \right )}[/math] \arcsin [math]\arcsin{\left ( \frac{\pi}{2} \right )}[/math] \arctan [math]\arctan{(1)}[/math] \arg [math]\arg{\left ( \frac{-1-i}{i} \right )}[/math] \cos [math]\cos{(\pi)}[/math] \cosh [math]\cosh{(x)}[/math] \cot [math]\cot{\left( \frac{3\pi}{2} \right )}[/math] \coth [math]\coth{(x)}=\frac{e^{2x}+1}{e^{2x}-1}[/math] \csc [math]\csc{(y)}[/math] \deg [math]f_m([X])=\deg{f[Y]}[/math] \det_ [math]\Delta_{\overline{a}} \det(A)=\overline{a} \times \overline{c}[/math] \dim [math]\dim{X}=-1[/math] \exp [math]\exp{(x)}=e^x[/math] \gcd_ [math]\gcd{(a,b)}=2 \sum_{k=1}^{a-1} \lfloor kb/a \rfloor +a+b-ab[/math] \hom [math]\hom{(X, Y)}[/math] \inf_ [math]\inf{\{1,2,3\}}=1[/math] \ker [math]\ker{T}:=\{ v \in V: Tv=0_w\}[/math] \lg [math]\lg{(2)}=\log_2{(2)}[/math] \lim_ [math]\lim_{x \to \infty}{(2x+1)}[/math] \liminf_ [math]\liminf_{n \to \infty}{(x_n)}[/math] \limsup_ [math]\limsup_{n \to \infty}{(x_n)}[/math] \ln [math]\ln{(2)}=\log_{e}{(2)}[/math] \log [math]\log{(2)}=\log_{10}{(2)}[/math] \max_ [math]\lim_{0 \to 1}\max{(x, 1-x)}dx=\frac{3}{4}[/math] \min_ [math]\lim_{0 \to 1}\min{(x, 1-x)}dx=\frac{1}{4}[/math] \Pr_ no clue when this is used, if someone figures it out, let me know, i will post example \sec [math]\sec{(20)}[/math] \sin [math]\sin{\theta} = \cos{\left( \frac{\pi}{2} - \theta \right )}[/math] \sinh [math]\sinh{(x)}=-i \sin{(ix)}[/math] \sup_ [math]\sup{(X_n)}[/math] \tan [math]\tan{(x)}[/math] \tanh [math]\tanh{(x)}=\frac{\sinh(x)}{\cosh(x)}[/math] \infty [math]\infty[/math] Stuff that didn't fit anywhere else \not can be used with other symbols \not\in [math]\not\in[/math] \cancel [math]\cancel{ABC}[/math] \overset{a}{=} [math]\overset{a}{=}[/math] \underset{a}{=} [math]\underset{a}{=}[/math] \overrightarrow{abc} [math]\overrightarrow{abc}[/math] \overleftarrow{abc} [math]\overleftarrow{abc}[/math] \widetilde{abc} [math]\overwidetilde{abc}[/math] \widehat{abc} [math]\overwidehat{abc}[/math] \overline{abc} [math]\overline{abc}[/math] \underline{abc} [math]\underline{abc}[/math] \subtrack [math] \sum_{\substack{ 0<i<m \\ 0<j<n }} P(i,j) [/math] more math stuff: roots: \sqrt [math]\sqrt{2}[/math] root of another power \sqrt[#] [math]\sqrt[5]{2}[/math] \exists - [math]\exists[/math] \forall - [math]\forall[/math] \neg - [math]\neg[/math] brackets: () \, [] \, \{\} \, || \, \|\| \, \langle\rangle \, \lfloor\rfloor \, \lceil\rceil [math]() \, [] \, \{\} \, || \, \|\| \, \langle\rangle \, \lfloor\rfloor \, \lceil\rceil [/math] You are free to practice latex in this thread: http://hypography.com/forums/test-forum/6620-latex-practice-ground.html PLEASE ASK ALL YOUR QUESTIONS HERE I will try to answer them as well I can, and eventually others will be able to answer them as well as they can, but it will create only one thread to go to for answers about latex synthax. Here is a good reference, and this is my reference for some of the things on this page: LaTeX/Mathematics - Wikibooks, collection of open-content textbooks Thanks for your time, use math v2.0 wisely, and become free in your expression of math... Peace /forums/images/smilies/banana_sign.gif

Am I the only one here who sees the irony in someone who has an opinion that forums have no credibility, posting that opinion on a forum? Is this an example of an Epistemic Paradox?

The genetic code of life really is digital, like the code underlying computer software. I’ve always been compelled by the analogy: The genome as the software instructions for embryology. But I think it’s telling where the analogy breaks down. Computer programs are replete. Instructions are concise & there is very little waste. Repetitive code is consolidated & channeled through subroutines, even where space is available. Anyone attempting to analyze or reverse-engineer any software today can unfailingly follow the principle that any bit of code that presents itself must do something - else it wouldn’t be there. The genome, OTOH, is chock-full of repetition, as well as genes that are never expressed, genes that are expressed but do nothing, genes that turn on genes that do nothing, genes that turn on genes that have already been turned on.... et cetera, as well as great valleys and “deserts” of non-coding material. The genome is, IMHO, not only some of the best evidence that life is not engineered, but a strong message that not all digital coding is the result of engineering.

It takes a longer time, and more space, to explain the nuances and resolve ambiguities. From a chemistry/biochemistry point of view, it is just about the balance of fossilized carbon and airborne carbon--or stored carbon and released carbon. Is the carbon in the air or the ground? That carbon balance can affect temperature by several degrees, relative to a background of conditions that set the planet's radiative balance. === It is important to answer your question, about CO2 levels, differently depending upon which scale of time--as well as the planet's evolutionary status--you are looking at. Multiple of 5 are convenient, since the planet is roughly 5 Billion years old, and life on land started roughly 500 Million years ago--10% of planetary time--and the dinosaurs were "gone" by 50 Million years ago (Mya)... and humans arose by 5 Mya--the last 1/10 of 1% of planetary time. CO2 levels were 6 times each of those numbers you mentioned--either 280ppm or ~350ppm--probably ranging from lows of 1000 or 1200 ppm up to 2000 or 2500 ppm during various eras of those Dinosaur Times; and since life first came up onto the lands, ~500 Mya, and the continents were positioned very differently. === Throughout most of the past 500 Million years, nutrient-poor (and carbon-poor) Tropical Soils predominated globally. But for the past 50 Million years, Earth has been on a fairly stable (cooling) course; a path where Temperate Soils finally were able to evolve and dominate--soils that could support productive agriculture. So before the last extinction event, 65 Mya, Temperate Soils only existed near polar latitudes. After much recovery and the rise of the mammals (especially herbivores) and the grasses, the past 50 million years have cooled enough to allow Antarctica to ice over. The Temperate (carbon-rich) Soils moved into the mid-latitudes (aided by the grass/dung/soil cycle) and continued drawing CO2 levels lower as fossil soil resources (carbon rich) developed and increased. The Atlantic grew to favor a global conveyor of cold deep water, as other ocean currents developed when the continents came to approximate their current position, over the past 20 to 30 million years. The Arctic also developed during this more recent half of the past 50 million years, when Temperate Soils became predominant, and the planet continued to cool--and the four seasons were finally able to evolve--consigning the tropical world to the equatorial latitudes. During the past 5 million years, after the planet cooled enough for Ice Age conditions to predominate, humans developed. And then at ~500 kya we came to use fire as a tool to better manage our resources. That enabled tool use (~50 kya) and finally agriculture (~5 kya) to intensively and extensively manage those fossil soils (which had brought CO2 levels down to "pre-industrial" levels). Even today, agriculture creates 1/3 of greenhouse gas emmisions globally. Humans are shifting that long-evolved balance between airborne carbon and carbon stored in the ground. If we want to survive as a civilization, we shouldn't shift the balance too quickly or too far. Management of that carbon balance would be a good goal for humanity. We have succeeded in preventing the return of global glacial conditions, but we also now need to prevent the return of global tropical conditions, which will degrade our precious arable soils and reduce crop productivity and agricultural yield. === So comparing Cretaceous CO2 levels with today is like comparing something on two different planets. Limit your comparisons of Quaternary conditions to those of the Tertiary--the last 1% of planetary time--at most, unless you add some significant adjustments and qualifications. If you want to see how CO2 affects climate today, you should probably limit the comparisons to times when other conditions more closely matched current conditions--to between 5 and 50 million years into the past (or look at the PETM ~55 Mya as a cutoff). The closer you get to current geologic time--looking at the past 5 million to 500,000, or even the past 50,000 years--the easier it is to compare historical CO2 levels. Also, many of CO2's effects take from decades to centuries to be fully manifested, as with melting ice sheets. Recently, the levels have changed too fast for an accurate comparison with past levels (and the effects of those past levels), since the past levels changed more slowly and maintained the same level (or fluctuated around a mean) for much longer periods of history. Check into the Miocene and Eocene climates if you want a long-term benchmark for comparison with currently projected levels. Thirty million years worth of change, within a century; wow. That is before honeybees, earthworms, we, or our cereal crops evolved. That will counteract the effect of the Milankovitch Cycle on global glaciations. I wonder if there will be any consequences to biodiversity and evolution. ~ ;)

I think the correct response to this question is the same when answering a child as when answering an adult, any difference being just phrasing and added explanation to compensate for the child’s smaller vocabulary and knowledge. An honest response depends, of course, on who’s making it. A devout religionist who truly believes it may honest answer “she’s gone to dine at the right hand of Jesus in heaven” or any of myriad religious depictions of an afterlife. I don’t believe in such things, so an honest answer from me (which, as a rule, I endeavors to be the only kind I ever make) is very different, and a bit more complicated. I pretty much agree with the views Douglas Hofstadter wrote in “I Am a Strange Loop”, which hold that who “I”, or “mum”, or any other human being, is, is essentially a program for being who we are, a collection of data and rules for using it that determines what we know, how we behave, and more intangibly, how we feel. Though most of this data is “hosted” in the brain of the person it defines, small bits of it are hosted in other brains. When I say “I know mum”, what I mean is that I have much scaled-down version of the “who am I?” model hosted in her brain in my own. If I “know mum well”, my model and hers agree most of the time – I know most of what she knows, know what she’ll do in a given situation, and can accurately empathize with how she feels or would feel in a given situation. When mum dies, her brain stops “running the program” that is her. It’s irreversibly wrecked – in short time, no imaginable technology could get it running again, in its original, now decomposed hardware, or extracted into something else. However, the smaller versions of the “mum model” program in my brain, and those hosted in the brains of others that know her (I’m intentionally avoiding using the convention tense of “knew”) continue to run. That’s how I’d answer the question: Mum’s in me, and in you, especially when we think “what would mum do?” or do the things she once did. As long as we remember her, she does, in a reduced but not entirely different way than when she was “remembering herself”, still exists in essentially the same way she every did. I’d end the answer to a child in this specific scenario here. Sadly, Hofstadter notes, and I agree, you and I too will likely die someday, and while people who never met mum when she was alive in her own brain may host small “mum models” formed from our describing her to them, these models will be smaller and less “knowing” than ours, so someday, in all likelihood, her model won’t be hosted in recognizable form in any brain – she’ll be almost or entirely forgotten, as someday, will be you and I. However, I can’t help but go on to wonder if some people aren’t somewhat exempt from being forgotten in a generation or two. For example, when a passionate musician performs the music of Beethoven or Jimi Hendrix, trying to evoke the feel of it, they may be truly “running the same program” Ludwig and Jimi were when they performed it. If we believe that these parts of the Ludwig or Jimi model programs their long-decomposed brains once hosted were important parts, then in an important way, they’re alive in the musician – especially ones who’ve studied their biographies in an effort to “know” them. And as, at any given time, hundred of musicians are playing Beethoven and Hendrix with empathic passion, they are actually hosted on much more “hardware” now then they were when they were alive. This gets more complicated when we consider that many of us “get” our Ludwig and Jimi models second-hand, from orchestras and other musicians, say Stevie Ray Vaughan. Ludwig and Jimi had influences, so their models are built in part from others’. Far enough down this road, one starts to wonder where the ideas that influence us end and the “us” that is us begins, and how important this distinction really is. The tentative moral I offer here is: be great, and you may live a very long time, or if greatness is beyond you, be part of something great. The boundries that separate the “I”s of us from one another and from the “it”s of ideas may be less important than we think.

seems like the closer you get the more beautiful the flower is

Science fiction has always played host to the idea of having large structures in space. From Dyson spheres to Death stars, these structures lay firmly in the realm of fiction, but will it always be this way? Human technology is growing at an alarming rate, now with the dawn of the space age behind us the sky is no longer a limit. If our technology continues to grow exponentially it seems logical that we will eventually be able to build such structures, but even logic must give way to physics in extreme cases. While it may follow logically, it will be physics that has the last say, whether it is physically possible to build these structures depends on a wide range of factors. Some of these factors include: size, material composition, availability of materials, stability etc. One of the most famous of these large structures would have to be Dyson Spheres. They where first put forward by Freeman Dyson in 1959, in "Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infrared Radiation" in Science. Freeman Dyson was a Cambridge graduate where he did his bachelor degree of arts in mathematics; he then went on to become a Professor of Physics at Cornell University. Dyson himself admitted that the idea was not entirely his own, he was inspired by a book called ‘The Star Maker’ written in 1937 by Olaf Stapleton. It is even thought that Olaf may have got the idea from J. D. Bernal. There is some confusion concerning what a Dyson Sphere is actually meant to be like. The original proposal was that by having many individual satellites orbiting about a star it would be possible to collect a large portion of the stars energy output. There are some other more fanciful theories that take a Dyson Sphere as a solid continuous sphere, which can even be lived in. The idea of a Dyson Sphere comes from the constant need for more energy. It is theorised that as humanity continues to grow it will always be in need of more and more energy. To demonstrate the progression to using solar energy, these calculations have been included. - The sun puts out 3.827*1026 Jules every second. - The Earth has a radius of 6,378km this gives it a cross sectional area of: Ae = 2*pi*(6,378x102)^2 Ae = 2.556*10^14 m^2 - The Earth orbits the sun at a radius of 1.496x10^11m, this makes the surface area of a sphere at that distance: As = 4*pi*(1.496x1011)^2 As = 2.812*10^23 m^2 - Earth makes up a percentage of this sphere: Ae/As * 100 = 9.088*10^-8% - Hence Earth can only capture a small amount of the suns total energy output: 9.088*10^-10 * 3.827*10^26W = 3.478*10^17W Albeit this is a tremendous amount of energy, but the entire Earths surface must be covered to get this energy. Even then there is looses from the atmosphere, clouds and our equipment. One day in the future we may have the need to get more energy than this and a Dyson Sphere is one such solution. For the purpose of energy collection a great many solar collectors surrounding a star would suffice as a solution. Though this solution is also going to be fraught with difficulty, imagine navigating swarms of satellites, thousands of them, each with their own individual paths. This would make maintenance and energy collection very difficult, though it remains the more physically plausible solution. There are other uses for a Dyson Sphere that would require it to be solid, or at least continuous. For example if a civilisation wanted to hide themselves for security reasons or needed more space to live, a Solid Dyson would be required. The resources required to create a solid sphere would be truly enormous. If you wanted to live in the sphere and it was around a star that is like our sun, it would have to have a radius of one astronomical unit. For a sphere of radius 1Au and thickness y meters would have an approximate volume of: V ≈ 2.812*10^23y m3 This means for a Sphere of just 1cm thick the volume of matter would be 2.812*10^21m3. This is twice the volume of the Earth. As you can imagine a 1cm think cube couldn’t be very strong, but if you increase this to even 10cm the volume quickly becomes more than that of all the matter in the terrestrial planets and asteroids in the solar system! This fact doesn’t make a solid Dyson Sphere impossible, just impractical. The impossibilities may lie in whether or not such a structure would be stable or not. The effect of the spheres gravity on the sun is not a worry, since the net gravitational force of the sun due to the sphere will always equal zero. This can be thought out logically. If the sun was at the center of the sphere it would have equal amounts of mass distributed at the same distance from it in all directions, this all cancels to a net force of zero. While if the sun was off center then the side it is closest to would have a stronger field strength due to less distance, but at the same time it the opposing side now has more mass behind the sun and though it is further away these effects perfectly cancel each other out. The suns gravity has no such cancelling effect and hence will have an effect on the stability of the structure. There have been theories that the gravitational force due to the sun on the sphere could be negated and the sphere essentially held up by radiation pressure and the solar wind. This is not to be confused with the solar wind, the solar wind is made up of high speed particles emitted from the sun. While it may have some effect and help hold up the Dyson Sphere, it is negligible, only 1% of what radiation pressure will do. It may sound absurd that light could hold up the sphere, but it may be possible for very low density materials. Radiation pressure is stronger the closer you get to the sun, this is a problem as gravity also gets stronger the closer you get, so this means it doesn’t matter how close or far away, no distance is at an advantage for this purpose. For an object that absorbs the incident radiation, which for a Dyson Sphere made for energy production it will presumably absorb most light, the force per m2 (or pressure) of the sphere due to radiation is: Fr = L/(4*pi*r2*c) N/m^2 Where L equals the luminosity of the sun (3.827*1026W) c equals the speed of light (3x108ms-1) and r equals radius of the sphere. The force per m2 of sphere due to gravity is: Fg = (Msun*Ds*x*G)/r^2 N/m^2 Where Msun equals the mass of the sun (1.99x10^30Kg), Ds equals the density of the Dyson Sphere, x equals the thickness of the sphere, G equals the gravitation constant (6.67x10^-11m^3 kg^-1 s^-2) and as before r equals the radius of the sphere. Hence the net force of the sphere would be: Fnet = L/(4*pi*r^2*c) – (Msun*Ds*x*G)/r^2 N/m^2 = (1.02x10^17)/r2 – (1.33x10^20*Ds*x)/r^2 N/m^2 = (1.02x10^17 – 1.33x1020*Ds*x)/ r^2 N/m^2 For an Fnet of zero, ie forces balanced: 0 = (1.02x10^17 – 1.33x10^20*Ds*x)/ r^2 1.02x10^17 = 1.33x10^20*Ds*x Ds*x = 7.65x10^-4 Hence if we where able to make a Dyson sphere out of aerogel - the least dense substance know to man at just 1.1kg/m^3, the sphere could only be 0.000695m thick, that’s less than a millimeter! Clearly a solid Dyson Sphere would not be able to support itself with radiation pressure alone! This means that it would have to rely on the materials own structural integrity. Whatever the material is it would have to be something with a very high tensile strength, relatively low density and also be very abundant in the solar system. Another Large Structure is a Ring World or a Halo. It is a large ring that is habitable on the inner side. This idea is most famous from the recent video game series ‘Halo’ from which so far three books have sprung. The main reason a civilisation would want to create one of these rings would be for habitation. For one reason or another, a civilisation may find that they are out of space on their home planet, or perhaps due to climate changes their world is becoming inhospitable to life. They will then need somewhere else to go. Some systems may have another planet to go to, while others may not. If travelling to another star system all together is out of the question – either due to not having the capabilities to travel the vast distances in between star systems, or not having enough ships to move a large part of the civilisation – a ring world may become an option in such a crisis. The ring could be constructed in an orbit around the sun matching that of the planet, or even perhaps in orbit around the planet itself. The ring could be inclined to the sun at such a way as to have half in darkness and half in light, so that if it is set rotating at the right speed it would have a normal day/night cycle. The concept of a ring world is much different from a Dyson Sphere, while inhabiting the inner side of a Dyson sphere was only a late addition to the theory; a ring world is solely intended for that purpose. This means that one way or another, the ring is going to have to supply its own gravity. Doing so by mass is out of the question, so we must look to more artificial means of creating gravity or at least simulated gravity. Since we have no means By far the easiest way of doing this would be to spin up the ring. The spin creates an centripetal force that makes objects stick to the inside of it, much the same way that a bucket of water spun around on Earth will not spill. The gravitational force can be calculated thus: F = (mv^2)/r ma = mv^2/r a = v^2/r Where r is the radius of the ring and v is the velocity at which it is spinning. Hence to have Earth like gravity of 10ms^-2, a ring of radius r would have to be spun at: V = √(10r) If you want the ring to resemble Earth like conditions and have a 24 hour day, then: Period of one rotation = 24*60*60 = 43200 seconds Then: V = (2*pi*r)/86400 From above: √(10r) = (pi*r)/43200 10r = (pi2*r2)/(1.866x10^6) re-arranging: r = 1.890x10^9m v = 1.374x10^5 m/s This velocity may well prove to fast to implement in practice. It may be necessary to have longer days so the ring is allowed to spin at slower rate. When building one of these rings for habitation, one of the main factors will be useable living space. Assuming that all of the operating parts can be stored within the ring, and that the inner surface is totally useable, then the habitable area would be: A = 2*pi*r*w Hence: A = 11.88x10^6*w km2 Where w is the width of the ring in km. If the ring was just 10km wide it would have 80% of the land area that Earth does. This leaves plenty of space for farming and living space; water can be stored in the ring itself, with small lakes for aesthetic purposes. Basically if you want more space to live in you have to increase the width. If you increase the width then the mass is going to go up. With increasing mass means an increasing amount of energy will be needed to make it spin. The rotational kinetic energy for a hoop is: Kr = ½mrv With the values found previously that is an energy of: Kr = 1.30x10^14m J This is a tremendous amount of energy and it may or may not be available to the race at that time, but the function of the ring depends on it, or else no gravity, no day night cycle. This amount of energy could be achievable through the use of antimatter. It could be set up to have many thousands of boosters around the outside of ring where antimatter is annihilated with normal matter. During an antimatter/matter annihilation all mass is turned into energy in the ratio of E=mc^2, since c^2 is such a large number (9x10^16), these reactions allow a high energy yield from a small amount of mass. That said for the purposes of spinning up the ring, you would require 0.72g of antimatter per kilogram of the mass of the ring. To produce such a large amount of antimatter the civilisation would have to have quite an efficient means of creating it. Recently released data by CERN stated that when their facilities are fully operational, they will theoretically be able to produce 10^7 antiprotons per second. So to produce that 0.72 grams of antimatter it would take us approximately 1.44 billion years! And that’s not even considering how the antimatter would be stored until use, that in itself could prove quite a feat. There are yet still even more problems that need working out, problems that conceivable solutions are yet to be found. For example I have not addressed how the atmosphere of such a ring would be maintained. Earth has an atmospheric pressure of 101kPa at sea level, but we can survive in much less – astronauts only have 30% of that when they go EVA but then the oxygen level is increased to compensate. This would become a problem for metals that are susceptible to corrosion. Even then, trying to maintain the atmosphere at 30% of Earths could still prove difficult, if not impossible. As one possible solution to overcome the problem of leaking atmosphere, some designs have the ring enclosed and like a giant tube, this is plausible but would require a lot more materials. In order for a ring world to be constructed many engineering feats would have to overcome. The stresses on such a structure would be enormous. It may be necessary to have supporting spokes like that on a bicycle wheel. Just like a Dyson sphere, to provide the strength needed it would probably have to be constructed out of some exotic form of matter that we are yet to discover. A fictional large structure that is also worth mentioning is the Death Star for the famous Star Wars saga. The death star has a much different function than that of the previous two I discussed; the death star is a weapon. It is a weapon of far greater power than any ‘weapon of mass destruction’ that we know of. The death star is able to destroy a whole planet, reducing it all to a floating mess of asteroids. The first death star constructed was 160km in diameter, large enough to be mistaken for a small moon. It was constructed to enforce the Imperial’s totalitarian rule over the galaxy. There is not much insight into how the weapon and manoeuvring systems, only that they are powered by a hypermatter reactor. Since there is no such thing (as yet) called hyper matter, the death star remains firmly in science fiction. However the concept that one day a weapon of this magnitude could be constructed remains evident. Isaac Newton once wrote “to myself I seem to have been only alike a boy playing of a seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” Newton had only scratched the surface of what science would one day be able to do. These days we may have lifted our head slightly and started uncovering small parts of this vast truth, but there will always be more to learn. Taken with what we know right now, these ideas of large structures may seem impossible, but with what we may know one hundred or even a thousand years in the future, these structures may become a commonplace. The sky is no longer a limit. By Jayden Newstead

Let me try... (BTW, by surprising I don't mean everything in it is brand new information. I'm just contrasting it with what was believed a few years ago.);) Here it is: Starting from the left, the first branch to split off (Q) is the ratites, or “primitive” flightless birds like ostriches, rheas, emus, kiwis, etc. This group also contains the tinamous, South American birds that can fly. The composition is not a surprise, but it is a surprise that the Australasian flightless birds are more closely related to tinamous than to non-Australasian ratites. The second branch (P) contains the Anseriformes (“primitive” waterfowl such as ducks, geese, etc.) and the Galliformes (gamebirds, such as pheasants, guineafowl, etc.). No surprises there. With the third branch and its two main branches (M and N) things get really messy (and has an ornithologist or two in a tizz). Columbiformes are pigeons, the next three families in N are mesites, sandgrouse and tropicbirds, and the last two orders are flamingos and grebes respectively. The relationship between the last two has long been suspected, as has that between pigeons and sandgrouse, but until recently no-one thought N formed a clade. Tropicbirds were thought to be related to pelicans, frigatebirds, gannets and other shorebirds (order Pelicaniformes) while mesites were placed in Gruiformes (see later). In M the relationship between Apodiformes (swifts) and Caprimulgiformes (nightjars) was expected, though their placement and closeness to clade N was not until recently. The two Gruiformes (traditionally consisting of cranes, crakes, rails, etc.) are the sunbittern and kagu. The Gruiformes has been gruesomely dismembered and its parts scattered all over the tree. (At least ornithologists were puzzled by the above two birds; some of the scatterlings they were not even thinking about.) J has also raised eyebrows. Opisthocomus at the base of it is the hoatzin of South America, which has variously been considered a cuckoo, a chicken, a turaco, a rail, or a seriema. Truth is, taxonomists didn’t know what to do with it. (They still don’t.) Group I, surprisingly, allies some of the Gruiformes (ones mentioned here include cranes, limpkins, finfoots and rails) with the cuckoos (Cuculiformes). Even more surprisingly, bustards (Otididae), groups with cuckoos, rather than with Gruiformes as expected. H makes rather a mess of the waterbird orders. Shorebirds (Pelicaniformes) were thought to be quite distinct from waders (Ciconiiformes), although a relationship was suspected. The first 11 genera are: Anhingas, cormorants, gannets, frigatebirds, great herons, boatbilled herons, American white and scarlet ibises, shoebills, hamerkop, pelicans, and storks. Procellariiformes (tubenoses – marine birds such as albatrosses and petrels) seems to yield no surprises. A few years ago, however no-one would have thought their closest relatives were penguins (Sphenisciformes). Another surprise is that, at the base of this huge waterbird clade, are the distinctly terrestrial turacos (Musophagiformes), which were thought to be closer to cuckoos. The long branch going to G is for convenience, not an indication that the next group is very distant from the first. The “higher” waterbirds order, Charadriformes (waders, gulls, auks, plovers, jacanas, etc.), remains fairly intact - though Turnix (buttonquails) and Pedionomus (plains wanderers) were once considered either Galliformes or Gruiformes. The two families of E are (1) the eagles, kites, kestrels and (not usually included, but close, the secretarybird) and (2) the condors and New World vultures. The last were at one time thought to be related to storks. Mousebirds (Coliiformes) end up as sisters to owls (Strigiformes), which is surprising – but, to be honest, no-one knew where they belonged anyway. C contains the hornbills, hoopoes, toucans, woodpeckers, kingfishers, etc. The only mild surprise is that trogons seem to belong here. The placement of Falconiformes (falcons) is surprising, as falcons were, until quite recently, considered members of the eagle family! Psittaciformes (parrots) as sister group to the passerines is a huge surprise. Not too long ago it was thought that their closest relatives were pigeons, right at the other side of the tree. The Passeriformes is by far the biggest order, and contains most of the dinosaurs in the average garden – finches, canaries, crows, etc. It is a natural order that goes undisputed. I just wonder what the poor rifleman (Acanthisitta – a very ordinary-looking little New Zealand bird) did to be cast out so far on a limb?

Made ya look. Perhaps im an ***, but this is sex nonetheless:hihi: Some cacti are flowering! most are now ID'd, have to admit, cactus classification sometimes makes me hate taxonomy alltogether!!!!!! :esmoking: [image]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v478/kada/id-1-6.jpg[/img] EDIT: i guess i did not show the actuall sex, as i am no pervert! i will say, however, there was a baggy, forceps and a little blue paintbrush involved. :cup: on a side note, does that smiley look like "agree"? Enjoy the flowers :esmoking:

Evolution is an observed and documented fact, there is less reason to deny evolution in favour of creationism than there is to think sardines live in tins.

Yes, the members of the academic clergy are very scared of it, not because it will destroy their cherished beliefs, but because they will lose their reputation and authority and then they will have to tear up their diplomas. My explanation of how the light produces the colors is so true that even a 12-years old kid can understand it. Remember this and remember it very well: "The truth is understandable, the untruth is not understandable. Consequence: if something is not understandable, suspect its truthfulness." All the theories of the contemporary physics, including the Einstein's crap, are not understandable. Consequence: it is all crap. But new theories are born due to my hard work and they will change the world of science and thus the world in general. Maybe I won't live to see it, but it will happen for sure. My theories are not fables as the fables of the contemporary physics. They are based on very easily verifiable experiments.

But please, don't . City people always bring their troubles with them and the countryside vanishes. First they complain about the dusty and muddy roads and demand pavement, then they complain about the noises and odors from the farms and the farm machinery on the roads. Then they want sidewalks and bigger, fancier schools, and it goes on and on. City people are not cut out for country living!

I have thought for one second, and one second was enough for me to ask why have we not yet banned this person? Maybe someone can come up with a good reason. Then again, maybe not . . .

HouseKnight, I admire and appreciate your spirit and passion on this subject, it's a very important, albeit never-ending issue. However I think you would garner better conversation and get your point across more clearly if you consider some changes to your posts. Before I go into my suggestions to help you get more interests in your posts, I'd like to comment briefly on the posting above. Specifically section 3, which seems to suggest that Miss Portman viewpoints are a product of her Palestinian dominated entertainment industry's inner circle she is subjected to. I have no hard data, but I would venture to guess that Miss Portman spends more time in her chosen profession in Hollywood and other places with people from Jewish descent. As I admit to claiming ignorance on this subject I would have to surmise that those with a Palestinian heritage are not shaping most of the actors in the entertainment industry. Getting back to your post here and my suggestions to better get your message out. 1. Post or respond to other topics. although it's obvious this issue is very important to you, I'm sure to meet you in person our conversation would be more that one dimensional. I'm sure you have other interests and opinions on other subjects that many of us would be glad to hear from you. When you only post on one topic over and over again many members will see the name and the subject then skip over it. They will do this because the same wordage on the same issue with the same viewpoint from the same person gets tiresome. 2. Make some of your posts a bit smaller and to the point. Many readers to the site sometimes only have a few minutes a day in their busy lives to review new or ongoing topics. Extremely lengthy post cause some readers to skip the post for one or two that may only have a few paragraphs and a link or two to check out. 3. No matter how strongly you view the issue consider giving credit where credit is due to the other side. Try to present both sides instead of your posts being all one sided. Giving acknowledgement to the other point of view on the issue keeps it interesting for the reader and helps the readers to consider all sides of the problem. As an example, I'm a staunch opponent of Donald Trump and deem him childish and dangerous, however, despite that there are things he has changed the dynamics of pertaining to stalemated world problems. Most of these situations may still become disastrous, but did telling North Korea we have a bigger "red button" than they do cause a breakthrough? I hope these suggestions help you get your important view on this complicated issue easier to get across. One last thing, I asked you before, but you never responded to it. You are very good at describing many things about this problem, but I rarely, if ever, see you offer what the world must do to make the issues of your view on this issue ​​disappear? What would have to occur to give you the sense that every country involved with this are dealing with it in the most ideal way as a better for Israel and the region? What's the solution....?

Yes, I know what this thread is about. Sometimes we discuss tangential things that just happen to spring up, like date formatting. Because you start a thread, that doesn't give you control over everything that will get discussed here. Did I earn a place on your ignore list yet? I would consider it an honor to be included with exchemist and Dr Kretin.

The key problem with your logic here is that there is absolutely no justification for limiting the "inferences" we might be making solely to what you put in the OP. All of your other posts are fully relevant to my and other's assessment of your intent. Can you make an argument that people should evaluate your behavior solely upon what you decide is relevant? And quite frankly, how are we supposed to know? Yes, I've been called "dangerous" and many other things as well. Although never a "Likudnik." But I have been called a "Self-hating Jew," a frequent epithet among folks like Shapiro and Horowitz. When you're given a warning by an admin about your behavior, you'll find that on most sites the admins pretty much fall into a Thin Blue Line. You've been here for all of 2 days and you're already telling us how we should run our forum or what things our members should and should not say. I assume that your behavior here is pretty much what people experience of you in real life. How's that working for you? Given how quickly people end up on your ignore list, I assume that within about a week there will be nothing left for you to read here. We're happy to have new members join and contribute, but this is an existing community of people drawn together by common interests with accepted conventions of interaction, and it's up to you to figure out whether you fit in with us, not scold us for not fitting in with your view of the world. Does that make any sense to you? You never know who's going to become your friend. Friends are always chance meetings, :phones: Buffy

Same here. Nor, more perhaps to the point, seeing as I am a Londoner, do I do anything special on the anniversary of so-called "7/7", the 7th July London bomb attacks. And nor does anyone else. This practice of commemorating terrorist attacks seems to me to play into the hands of terrorists by enabling them to feel they have permanently scarred the community, it cultivates an unhealthy sense of victimhood and it can all too easily be used by unscrupulous or politically motivated people to whip up emotions - in this case anti-muslim prejudice. We should just get on with our lives as normal.

Monopolies are rare because they're much more obvious than oligopolies and it makes you a target even in situations where there is corporate capture of the legal system. In fact, oligopolies provide monopolistic power to the few entrants in the market who then engage in "co-opetition" wherein practices such as price fixing can be made to occur even without explicit collusion. You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant, :phones: Buffy

I am pro-DP, but many things must be taken into consideration before I would agree to execute the execution. The suspect may have already spent time in prison. This may result in not only the patient not getting the counseling he/she needs, it also may have subjected them to be influenced by very bad people. Other facets would have to be examined too, was the person exposed to a living hell by parents who did all kinds of heinous acts against them for years? Did this negative mental conditioning influence the action of the suspect? As NTG pointed out this is a touchy subject. If we keep them alive to study them, what kind of experiments would be deemed humane? This also presents the problem of possibly mislabeling someone a killer before they have actually done anything wrong. How can we be sure they will carry out their threat? Many suicidal people may consider and threaten to end their own life, but never go through with it. Would we put someone in prison for the rest of his or her life because they show the traits similar to previous serial killer? One thing is for sure though, neither the mentally ill or hardened criminals are getting the rehabilitation they need in our prison system.

I think just about everybody would get it, but only an engineer would find it amusing.

Who remembers Euell Gibbons? "Ever eat a pine tree?" :lol: Anyway, I have been using the following site for the last 10 years or so to check edibility and other uses of the plants I photograph and/or collect for the herbarium. Most entries are native to N America, but a few early introductions were used by Native Americans and are in the database. Database is sponsored by University of Minnesota - Dearborn. Best results are obtained using binomials, but common names also return results. Native American Ethnobotany: A Database of Foods, Drugs, Dyes and Fibers of Native American Peoples, Derived from Plants. Genus Taraxacum, i.e. dandelions, returns 81 records: > Taraxacum And speaking of Dandelions, did you know they produce latex? Taraxacum@ Wiki

I think you've got this a bit twisted. I would phrase it as such: One of the founding principles of science is that theories can only be disproven, because we can never know that we have all of the pertinent information. This is known as the problem of induction. Science avoids the trap of claims of "truth" by seeking to describe and explain only that which can be observed. In science, there is never a situation that a theory can be proven to be correct. Many religious claims are falsifiable and can be disproven. The biggest though, that a god or gods exist, can not. It is the case that an omnipotent god could also be an ******* and construct our universe in such a way that would require us to reject logical observation of our surroundings in order to accept the ultimate creator's existence. If such a thing occurred, then it would be impossible for science to lead to the truth. Faith has no place in science, since faith is the acceptance of a claim without and regardless of testing. Religion and science are not even describing the same thing, so claiming that religion has no place in science is similar to saying that blue has no place in the square root of 12.

Stem cells are undifferentiated biological cells that can differentiate into specialized cells and can divide (through mitosis) to produce more stem cells. They are found in multicellular organisms. In mammals, there are two broad types of stem cells: embryonic stem cells, which are isolated from the inner cell mass of blastocysts, and adult stem cells, which are found in various tissues. In adult organisms, stem cells and progenitor cells act as a repair system for the body, replenishing adult tissues. In a developing embryo, stem cells can differentiate into all the specialized cells—ectoderm, endoderm and mesoderm (see induced pluripotent stem cells)—but also maintain the normal turnover of regenerative organs, such as blood, skin, or intestinal tissues. - (Wikipedia and Google.com) Fetal Stem Cells Can Repair the Mother During Pregnancy [sPAMlink removed] One of the benefits of pregnancy is increased regenerative ability in the mother, a fact observed in a number of studies. The underlying mechanisms are illustrated in recent research, and is one of [sPAMlink removed] that might inform future research directions in regenerative medicine: "Scientists are devoting countless research hours to treatments based on embryonic stem cells, differentiatingthese blank-slate cells from embryos into brain cells, light-sensing retinal cells, blood cells, and more to replace damaged or destroyed tissues in the body. Now, a new study in mice shows such that nature has arrived at just such a solution, too: When a pregnant mouse has a heart attack, her fetus donates some of its stem cells to help rebuild the damaged heart tissue. ... The researchers started with two lines of mice: normal mice and mice genetically engineered to express green fluorescent protein (GFP), which glows a distinctive green when exposed to blue light, in their cells. They mated normal female mice with GFP-producing male mice. This meant that half the resulting fetuses had the GFP gene, too, making their cells glow, too. Twelve days later - a little less than two-thirds of the way through a normal mouse pregnancy - the researchers gave half the pregnant mice heart attacks. When the scientists examined the female mice's heart tissue two weeks after the heart attacks, they found lots of glowing green tissue - cells that came from the fetus - in the mom's heart. Mice who had heart attacks had eight times as many cells from the fetus in their hearts as mice who hadn't had a heart attack did, meaning the high volume of fetal cells was a response to the heart attack. ... Doctors have observed that women who experience weakness of the heart during pregnancy or shortly after giving birth have better recovery rates than any other group of heart failure patients. This study suggests that fetal stem cells may help human mothers, as well as mice, recover from heart damage." Link: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2011/11/21/helpful-mouse-fetuses-naturally-send-stem-cells-to-mom-to-fix-her-damaged-heart/ Comments

I think my first post at hypography was this one in Turtle’s 2005 Katabatak Math-An Exploration In Pure Number Theory. I’ve long considered him a large part of the heart and soul of hypography, not to mention a mathic, master gadgeteer and fine photographer. Pyro’s a real spaceflight scientist, and for many years one of hypography’s best zookeeper moderators. We’ve had years of great conversations on more subjects than I can recall or even imagine. You two are standouts of my personal internet renaissance. It’s great to see you back at hypography!

Religions with tenets stating that some or all of their documents (such as Christianity’s Bible) are “inerrant” – that is, beyond doubt true – have histories of struggling to reconcile scientific discoveries with this inerrancy. Most (for example, the Catholic church) have eventually (though often after long periods of arguing against threatening scientific theories and discoveries) done so by concluding that past interpretations of these documents, not the documents themselves, were incorrect, or that the language of their human authors was inadequate to describe later scientific views. Some religions, however, follow a doctrine of literalism which holds that their documents must be accepted as literally true. In the case of the first books of the Jewish Torah and Christian New testament, “Genesis”, the literalist position can lead to great difficulties, because a straightforward reading of it describes a universe consisting which looks something like this , as described in this webpage, excerpted from N. F. Gier’s 1987 God, Reason, and the Evangelicals. If one believes in this, then one cannot believe in spherical planets, let alone life on other planets. I’ve discussed with people who believe in literal interpretations of the bible the contradictions between their belief and observations of other planets made with telescopes and spacecraft. They resolved the contradiction with the explanation that, when we use telescope or space probe, evil supernatural beings – the Devil or demons – fool us by sending false images, or invading our minds and making us hallucinate. A minority of religionists are literalists. Most religious authorities, I think, take an “agnostic” position on the existence of aliens – they’re not sure if the exist or not, and conclude that their religion is not threatened in either case. Recently, the current current head of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis, stated that, were an alien (specifically, “a Martian”) to ask to be baptized into his church, he would do so. Similarly, in 2010, Jesuit monk and astronomer Guy Consolmagno stated he’d baptize an alien, because “Any entity – no matter how many tentacles it has – has a soul” (source)

Are we supposed to discuss what makes an adult (the title of the thread), or what makes a person mature (the OP text)? Some adults are mature, others not, and some very mature persons I have met are not adults.

I disagree. With a very few exceptions, our clock hasn't even started yet. None of our broadband radio, television, or microwave transmissions would be detectable by an Arecibo size radio telescope beyond our solar system. I've long lost an excellent technical article from the Seti@Home forum that explains why this is, but quick googling led me to an appropriate sci.astro faq that spells out why our typical RF communications are not at all detectable outside of our solar system. http://www.faqs.org/faqs/astronomy/faq/part6/section-12.html

I was reading this article the other day and it got me thinking about a topic that's been touched on in the True Ai, Are We Getting Close Yet? thread: a lot of the heated rhetoric in the community concerning AI really has everything to do with a lack of a common understanding of the word "Intelligence", and maybe even the word "Artificial". Two of the biggest names in AI/Learning, Noam Chomsky--who needs no introduction--and Peter Norvig--Director of Research at Google and well-known author of AI textbooks--have been debating about their favored approaches with increasing acrimony, as is detailed in the linked article ("Norvig vs. Chomsky and the Fight for the Future of AI" by Kevin Gold, tor.com, 11Jun2011). To oversimplify, their positions are: Chomsky has spent a half century building an ever more complex universal grammar for how languages are put together as a mechanism for "understanding" language, and argues that humans (at least) have a mechanism for utilizing this grammar to enable language and learning by being able to map the parts of the language onto concepts and information. Norvig has--quite successfully--shown that ignoring grammar and simply using neural network technology along with massive amounts of data (like what Google Hoovers up on the internet) can be used to map anything in one language into any other. This approach has been used not only for language translation, but to create the quite impressive Jeopardy-playing contraption "Watson" at IBM and many other technologies that seek to allow machine "understanding". The crux of this debate and analysis of "who's winning" has really come down to the apparent success of the Neural Network/Statistical Learning approaches versus the general lack thereof from grammar-based approaches, which have been in development for a lot longer. To quote the article: What occurred to me in reading this, is that the two sides are really talking right past one another, mainly because they lack agreement on what the *goal* of all this is. Chomsky is closer to understanding this (which is no surprise to me because he's a cognitive scientist, not just a computer scientist): Norvig is obviously arguing for "going with what works": When I think about how to translate these two points of view, I see a huge difference in the two combatants goals: Chomsky is looking for a way to get a base of code to logically describe knowledge about the world: something that you can actually learn in an abstract way and then apply *precisely* because it is described in an abstract manner. That is the software actually "understands" how things work and can "use" that knowledge in new and creative ways. Norvig is looking for a way to gather together enough data, such that programs produce "correct results" but "understanding" is really irrelevant: no matter what you want the software to do, there's an analogue out there that's close enough that you'll get the right result a percentage of the time that is proportional to the amount of modelling data that you can get your hands on. That sounds to me like two guys who are living on different planets. As a fellow computer scientist, I certainly appreciate what Norvig and others are doing so successfully, in getting computers to perform useful jobs that do indeed seem "intelligent". But while Chomsky is being derided as being "old guard" promoting solutions that "don't work", in my mind those people are completely missing the point of what Chomsky is trying to do, which is to understand the nature of "intelligence" in the sense of being able to make leaps in adaptation that might indeed be solved by doing enough munching of enough data, but do it in a way that is fundamentally more efficient. When I think about Norvig's argument I can't help but think of the old saw about if you have enough monkey's typing on enough typewriters, eventually one of them will type the entire works of Shakespeare, the problem being the definition of the word "enough". Norvig's logic really completely depends on--to quote Shakepeare--there being (almost) nothing new under the sun. Unless you have something "close" to a desired result in your learning set, your neural network is unlikely to produce that result. This really points at the more limited definition of "intelligence" that we get from Turing: if an observer cannot distinguish between a human and a computer, then we can call it "intelligent". Watson playing Jeopardy was an excellent example of this, and we all marveled at how human Watson could be *in real time*. But given enough time spent observing, enough of those hilariously off answers would creep in and start to allow that observer to fail Watson eventually. All that Norvig's approach of "just get more data to have it learn from" does is increase the amount of observing time necessary for it to hit the hilarious failure. Moreover it cannot be overemphasized that projects like Watson require huge amounts of time and resources to solve an *extremely limited problem set*. Yes, Ken Jennings no longer even has to think because of all the money he won on Jeopardy, but just knowing how to play Jeopardy would not allow him to write his autobiography or be the producer of another game show. It is exactly that inability to *use* all that "knowledge" that is the limitation of the statistical approach. Now the other important point here is that it's not that Norvig's preferred technology is any more of a dead end than Chomsky's: remember that the brain is a huge neural network and it *does indeed* implement the more sophisticated form of intelligence that Chomsky is seeking to harness. But the point is that the neural network in the case of the brain is used to *implement* a conceptual framework for that intelligence. Once you start to think about the fact that silicon-ware vs. wet-ware is a *platform issue*, you realize it has nothing do with the program that's implemented on top of that hardware (in either silicon or neurons) designed to implement "generalized intelligence." Norvig is using the neuron model directly to sift through data to simply ensure that within some well-defined problem set that "reasonable" answers are obtained. Going outside the problem set runs into the same problems that the grammar/logic folks ran into decades ago with the recognition of the need for "world knowledge" to achieve "generalized intelligence". That is to say, having neural networks is not sufficient to achieve such generalized intelligence, there's got to be something programmed in to the network that actually implements a system for dealing with abstract concepts. Since a brain could do it, it could indeed be all neural nets, but it might take 200 million years of trials to develop, just as it did to get to our brains. Chomsky is in essence arguing that if we can figure out what that "system for dealing with abstract concepts" is, we could short circuit the process and maybe get it done in our lifetimes, and deal with a nagging hole in the "pure neural network" approach that is coming not from the computer or cognitive science fields, but that other favorite topic of Chomsky's: pubic policy which I will get to in a second. Having spent quite a bit of time with both technologies, I have to say I get really tired of the debate, because as I see it, any true generalized intelligence is going to require BOTH approaches. Neural networks are excellent for tuning and optimizing behavior using real-world feedback loops to implement solutions for limited problem sets. But if you're going to put the big pieces together, you absolutely are going to need logical/semantic programming. The Public Policy issue that has flared recently has to do with how we deal with "robots" that are autonomous. The two most notable examples are self-driving cars and military drones. With both there is an increasing desire to have these operate without human intervention, either because the human cannot be trusted (e.g. a driver who's had too many to drink), or human intervention is increasingly impractical (military drones needing to be able to do without human input due to communications delays). The question becomes, as a legal and moral and optimized outcome, when can we ENTIRELY trust the computer to "do the right thing?" Issac Asimov famously posited that we needed to logically program in his Laws of Robotics, but it's not entirely clear how its possible to merge such logic into a black box neural network with any assurance that the logic would be obeyed, when the network could have some data that simply avoids all the tests for adherence to that logic. Unfortunately, it seems to me that that breakthrough of merging logical/conceptual frameworks with statistically based modules is what we really need before we have "real artificial intelligence." People locked into such scientific battles like to hear "you're both right" even less than "he's right and you're wrong." But lets hope for (and lobby for!) just that sort of change in thinking. Opinions? Colorless green ideas sleep furiously, :phones: Buffy

I don't need to , but I do want to, so I hope you will indulge me. It was not my intention to be offensive. It was my intention to point out to you that your own post was rather aggressive in places. I did so by mimicing your own style. Perhaps you may wish to reflect on that. In your earlier post you remarked: "Somebody, dunno who, said there is a problem there and I wanna see if it IS there.Ok?" When somebody says something and we do not know who that person is we describe that person as anonymous. So the answer to the first part of your next question is obvious: Based on the information you had cared to share to that point, the assertion of a problem originated from an anonymous person. Was the problem ill-defined? Very definitely. It hinges upon what is meant by complex. Based upon the information provided by you to that point no attempt was made to define complex. I gave you some insight as to issue of complexity, explaining that contrary to popular (but not scientific) opinion, prokaryotes are complex. Further, they are complex to a degree that could not likely have arisen contemporaneously with the first life. In short, the supposed problem does not actually exist. That was the way in which I was seeking to help you. (You say "I prineted in her to get help".) I have provided that help by explaining that your premise was faulty. More accurately, the premise of an unknown author, as remembered by you from many years ago, is faulty. There is no problem to address. I do not imply it is a crackpot notion. I state that, as presented, it is simply mistaken. There is nothing crazy about suggesting that life arose rapidly, but complex life took almost two billion years to arise. It is simply wrong. That only becomes a problem if you insist upon the correctness of the statement after its inherent error has been explained to you. I have explained to you that the source is an anonymous person. Stating so does not dishonour you. Stating so was not intended to dishonour you. May we move on? You have presented problem. As presented, by you, from your recollection, that problem is ill-defined. That is the problem you have asked us to help you solve - an ill-defined problem. As originally stated the problem may have been defined with exquisite grace and profound precision. However, what we have to work with is an ill-defined problem. In other words, to answer your question, I think the problem is ill-defined because you have not given it clear definition. It is ill defined. That is an accurate description of it. I have given you an explanation. It is very likely the correct explanation. You are free to reject it if you wish. Yes, I take what you say at face value. The alternative would be to put words into your mouth. Are you encouraging me to do that? For the record I did not supply any of those negative votes. It might be worth your while to consider why you received them. I suggest it is because you wholly misinterpreted a sincere attempt to provide you with an answer to your 'problem'. At present you give the impression that you have a belief that will remain unshaken by anything anyone may say to the contrary. That is not objective and that is not scientific. It is, however, the only rational conclusion one can reach by taking the face value of what you have posted. If there is a more subtle message imbedded or implied in your words I recomment bringing it out into the open and stating things more directly. Finally, if one searches for your name one finds that you had asked this question on at least one other forum. It is interesting that you received much the same reception there. You could consider two major explanations for that: 1) Forums are frequented and run by short-sighted, dogmatic, ignorant individuals with power complexes. 2) Your understanding of possible problem is faulty and you are placing too much importance on a dimly recollected reading of a remark taken out of context. Obviously I can't choose between these two options for you. I'll be happy to address any technical issues arising from your percpetion of the problem, but I should prefer that we now cease discussion of alleged motives for replies, etc. Thank you.

I shall try very hard - and probably fail - not to bring a negative vibe to the discussion, for I see that you are a sincere and alert person. Also you have clearly struck a favourable chord with Under the Rose and McPhee, so my view is apparently not only a minority view, but a minority of one. Here is my concern, from my perspective you are doing what a cockney might describe as "stating the bleeding obvious". I am not clear why you did not say something like this: There are things of which we have no concept and currently no evidence for that nevertheless may have enormous impact, direct or indirect, on our lives. In the Middle Ages Europeans had no concept of germs, yet germs killed them in their millions during the years of the Black Death. Nuclear fusion was still powering the sun and providing us with life long before we knew that was the source. Will Shakespeare nailed it "There are more things in Heaven and Earth Horatio than are dreamt of in your philosphy." How should we approach this ignorance? Through vigilant observation, energetic questing and sceptical analysis. What do you think? That would have delivered, I believe, a crystal clear message, in minimum time. As it is I feel somewhat manipulated in having been strung along through a lengthy metaphor to arrive at a trivial conclusion. But thank you for eventually setting the record straight.

STARVED A new Army Captain was assigned to an outfit in a remote post in the Afghan Desert . During his first inspection of the outfit, he noticed a camel hitched up behind the mess tent. He asked the Sergeant why the camel was kept there. The nervous sergeant said, 'Sir, as you know, there are 250 men here on the post and no women. Sometimes the men have urges. That's why we have Molly The Camel. The Captain said, 'I can't say that I condone this, but I can understand about the 'urges', so the camel can stay.' About a month later, the Captain starts having his own 'urges' Crazed with passion, he asked the Sergeant to bring the camel to his tent. Putting a ladder behind the camel, the Captain stands on the ladder, pulls his pants down and makes passionate love to the camel. When he's done, he asked the Sergeant, 'Is that how the men do it?' 'No sir. They usually just ride the camel into town. That's where the girls are."

The first photoreceptors were essentially a flat arrangement of cells that were chemically alterable by the presence or absence of light. They have been variously called light spots or light sensitive patches. The detection/non-detection of light is best understood as a digital coding signalling light on or light off. The amount of useful information increases as the number of detectors increases IF there is some mechanism that differentiates between active and inactive receptors. To detect movement from right to left would require at least two receptors in horizontal alignment and some means of determining which was stimulated first. You can increase the number of receptors in a light spot but you don't get much increase in information beyond better movement detection and the gain in information is off-set by the reduced surface area for other functions. There are only two ways that you can increase the number of receptors without expanding the surface spread of the sensory organ - build up or build in. What you get is either _____n____ or ------u-----, i.e., receptors covering the surface of a bulge or receptors covering the walls of an indentation. The first arrangement, with receptors on the outer surface of a bulge, is termed a Compound Eye while the arrangement of receptors on the surface of an indentation is called a Simple Eye. You have to be careful with these terms since the most successful eyes are highly complex Simple Eyes while the Compound Eyes never achieved similar levels of data detection or analysis. The Compound Eye is a relatively efficient motion detector, with more precise detection directly related to the number of individual receptors (Ommatidia). It's efficient because each ommatidium has a direct "line" to the (rudimentary) nervous system of the organism. Essentially the ommatidia work as a binary-coded system, either On or Off. Lacking much in the way of signal analysis or interpretation to slow things down, the incoming signal produces an extremely rapid response sequence. This works well whether the organism is a predator or prey. The alternate evolutionary branch was to line an indentation with receptors. Under some conditions this was successful in survival and higher survivability was related to the depth of the indentation. Some of that success was due to the optics of the situation where the wall of the indentation, or pit, served to eliminate extraneous movement in much the same way that blinders reduce visual distraction for horses. The challenge for a pit visual system is by providing more detailed information about the external movement, that information is wasted without some increased neural analysis of the data. Two features were selected by the environment for increased survivability - deeper indentations and more complex neural systems. The last step in the pit-type eye came with a small Cephalopod, the Nautilus, which has been viable for millions of years. The pit walls curved in forming the equivalent of a pin-hole camera. The tiny aperture created an optical system without a lens. The result of that adaptation is the incredibly high resolving power of some Simple Eyes, with Avian (bird) eyes having amazing power to resolve minute visual differences. So, to answer the primary question - insects and arthropods have compound eyes because environmental pressures served to select those adaptations which eventually led to that form. The Simple (in name only) Eye followed an alternative evolutionary path, one which led to adequate motion detection and highly enhanced detail detection.

Over this past weekend, there was a small segment on a new show (whos name escapes me now) on Icelands intent to begin/increase commercial whaling. So I googled it: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6059564.stm "There is no market for this meat in Iceland, there is no possibility to export it to Japan; the government appears to have listened to fishermen who are blaming whales for eating all the fish." But apparently, the ban on importing whale meat (rather than an exporting ban) will not deter Japan from entering into this: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15418174/ Why is Japan looking to import whale meat, when the demand is dropping due to the lack of Japanese interest in eating whale meat? No worries! Japan has decided to push for whale education in the schools to try to create a market for whale meat. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/18/AR2005061800890.html http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4106688.stm Rather than admit the whale meat is not necessary to Japanese culture, lets re-educate the children. Apparently there was a problem so Iceland has taken a different approach: "Iceland recently announced plans to export meat from its scientific whaling programme to the Faroe Islands, whose government maintains it is exempt from Cites regulations." Faroe Islands maintains a small traditional whale hunt of Pilot whales as is the tradition. But even now we see there are potential health problems for the peoples who ingest such meats. "The recent discovery of high levels of mercury, insecticides and other toxins in pilot whales means that whale meat consumption may have to be reduced. Pregnant mothers on the islands have been counselled not to eat it." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/3104494.stm http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000D97EE-31FF-1EC9-8E1C809EC588EF21 http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2362 http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/13/1052591789427.html Some days I cannot help but look forward to the potential of a pandemic...

Before making a new post on Hypography please read this very prudent comic: "I mean, what's more likely -- that I have uncovered fundamental flaws in this field that no one in it has ever thought about, or that I need to read a little more? Hint: it's the one that involves less work." Thank you for your time, please continue if you deem necessary. J

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I am going to quickly run through this article and respond/comment because I haven't done this in a while, and it's nice to give the anti-creationist module of me old noodle a good flexin' every once in a while. He is universally identified as such by layfolk and creationists with an agenda. Both the idea of a universal common ancestor and the idea that life evolves predate Darwin. Darwin's accomplishment was to synthesize many of his findings as a naturalist into a cogent argument that lineages change over time, and that natural selection was the primary agent responsible for biological adaptation. Darwin never publicly professed a belief that life arose from molecules through a process of chemical evolution, although he did in private state that he suspected this to be the case: Charles Darwin and the Origin of Life Indeed, Darwin found the idea of Hell to be distasteful and doubted the existence of a benevolent deity because of the suffering in the world. The author is implying that Darwin believed his theory to be true because it was comforting, not because the evidence was convincing. This is a highly dishonest tactic and the author is clearly imputing motives to Darwin that no one could ever possibly know about for rhetorical purposes. Nonsense. Stalin's head geneticist Lysenko was an utter failure who wrongly believed Lamarckian evolution to be true(his basic mistakes about genetics cost a lot of lives through the failed agricultural projects of the USSR). In fact, geneticists who believed in a Darwinian conception of evolution were persecuted in Russia for their scientific views at this time. I'm not sure if Mao was familiar with Darwin's work at all, but I'm willing to bet the author did as much research for that assertion as they did for the one about Soviet Russia. Teaching facts about the universe is not a violation of the Establishment Clause, and evolution(and natural selection as a mechanisms thereof) are both established scientific facts. This is simply a falsehood. Speciation has been obsereved, and Louis Pasteur determined that entire maggots and flies don't spontaneously arise(kind of like being created) from older rotting animals. That has zero bearing on the question of whether or not primitive life arose from non-living molecules in a process of chemical evolution. Scientists may or may not determine how chemical evolution, abiogenesis, or the origin of life occurred. They have already determined that evolution happened and that we evolved from ape-like hominid ancestors. I wrote up this entire reply without having read this far down in the article, and I kind of feel ripped off now! There will be no getting through to someone this dogmatic. The stories from genesis are obviously mythology to anyone who isn't a victim of brainwashing or severe self-deception.

I read an interesting article in the "Beeld", an Afrikaans newspaper which won't make any sense to you guys - in Afrikaans, that is. So, I'm gonna make an attempt at an abbreviated translation, so as to share the love... Sorcery and magic in general plays an important role in childrens' stories and fables, world-wide, through the ages, and across all cultures. Often, there's a magic formula or an enchanted object with which the hero can avert some catastrophe. Usually, the object is hidden and the finding of it forms the "quest", the gist of the story, to make sure the "good guys" get the power, and deny the "bad guys" access to it. Also, a common feature in these "quests" is an old man or woman, who gives our hero valuable information as to how to get to this magical object, information without which no progress can be made in the "quest". Sorcerors, magicians, witches, magic objects and the like didn't come into existence all of a sudden because JK Rowling wrote about it. These kind of stories are a universal reality, spanning the ages. Centuries-old stories from Arabia will have people flying around on magic carpets. Magical lamps produce a spectral inhabitant which will grant you three wishes, if rubbed the right way. In oral traditions world-wide, magical axes chop down trees in a single swipe, geese lay golden eggs, magical beans grow overnight to the realm of the giants above the clouds, and a magical cat changes a poor man's fate. These kind of stories have enchanted humanity for ages, probably because its possible in these stories to instantly change the hero's fate with magic. Whether all these stories that humanity have been living with over the ages can be ascribed to some sort of "Magic Mentality", won't be easily established. The "Magic Mentality" implies an expectation and mind-set that needs and wishes can be satisfies instantly, cutting out all the long steps between cause and effect. And right here lies the enchantment of "magic". Wealth doesn't need to be built up over years of hard work, it can be spun overnight from straw. It's not necessary to build an elaborate coach and break in a team of horses, the wave of a magic wand turns a pumpkin into a ready-made coach, and a few mice into horses. With magic, you can progress directly from cause to effect. Utter a few strange syllables and instantly change a poor beggar into a rich lord. Use a magic mirror and see what other people get up to somewhere else. Drink the right potion, and become invincible. No elaborate work-outs, no digging for gold. Nobody has to know how it happens. Actually, the elimination of all the elaborate steps between cause and effect is precisely where the enchantment of magic lies. Ironically, it doesn't seem as if people's belief and hope in the power of magic is any less today, in the age of science and experimentation. People still have a deeply-seated desire for the elimination of all the steps between cause and effect. And for that they turn to technology: Press a button and your message is in Australia; drive in your car and talk to somebody in another continent; watch your television (your magic mirror?) and see what's happening in Beijing. These everyday examples of technology deletes, like magic, all the steps between cause and effect: Most computer users have no idea how the internet works - all they know is that if they press a button, their email is sent. Very few people know how a strangely shaped piece of plastic makes a little arrow move on a computer screen. And we don't have to understand any of this in order to productively use it. The difficult development of all these technologies, to make the press of a button do something "magically", is all lost to the consumer. The distance between cause and effect have shrunk to virtually zero. One result of this is a blind trust and hope that a new technology will always arrive to solve the next problem: a pill that will stop ageing; a drink that will give you rippling abs without any sweat. The problem is, of course, that the average Joe completely forgets everything that exist between cause and effect. Science, however, doesn't work like this. Through long processes, hypotheses are formulated and put to the test in elaborately planned and carefully controlled experiments. Progress is slow. Experiments must be repeatable. If the results are negative, the hypothesis is scrapped and even this contributes to a slowly growing knowledge base. That's why people get so excited about alternative medicine that promises an instant cure for cancer, AIDS, and a host of other diseases, whilst science will still battle for many years to slowly develop workable cures for it. People want nothing to do with the long distance between cause and effect. They would rather eliminate all these steps between cause and effect by putting blind trust in these "magic" cures. The media also contributes to peoples' belief in "magical" technology. They would rather report on sensational breakthroughs with clear and immediate technological applications, than report on all the failed experiments which have lead up to that point. This "magic mentality", which is always on the hunt for the elimination of steps between cause and effect, is bad for science. Finance for research is cut down, because the specific research to be funded won't lead to an overnight breakthrough. Kids don't want to study science, because its not exciting enough. The expectations of science as created by the media, is seated in the "magic mentality" and the reporting of scienctific research often leads to a spiral of false promises and destroyed hope. The nett effect of all this is even more resistance to science. It is therefore critical that scientific knowledge, and the understanding of the scientific method, be popularised so that the average man in the street can have a more realistic understanding of the slow progress made by science. It seems, however, that the "magic mentality" of today reaches further than merely a blind trust in technology. Every now and then there's a mass-excitement (hysteria) over the discovery of a magical document that will change lives (the Bible Code, for instance), a new astrological observation, a crystal to be hung around the neck which will cause all sorts of good things to happen to the wearer, or a magical prayer that will change your life overnight. And every time, more and more people get excited over it. And when it comes to religion, it seems as if people are willing to follow each new maker of promises, each new prophet. Because a sudden change is promised: Attend a gathering and your life will change; touch the hem of his robe and be healed. It's a "magic mentality" that blinds people to the long process between cause and effect. It's a "magic mentality" that gives people false hope, just to leave them disappointed when those false hopes get dashed. ...and there endeth the loose translation. I just find it very interesting that humanity's love of religion might come from the same source as our love of technology: We want to skip all the steps between cause and effect. We want absolution of our sins right here and now, so that we can say we are "good people". We don't want to go to all the effort of actually living like good people, I mean, come on! That sounds like a lot of hard work! So we steeple our fingers and chant a few lines and our sins "magically" gets washed away, because some Old Guy in the Sky made it all right. We believe in God for the very same reason we'd take a pill to give us rippling abs (instead of working out). And that reason is... ... we humans are inherently lazy. Therefore we invented God. Interesting spin, dontcha think?

Two hydrogen atoms walk into a bar. One says, "I've lost my electron." The other says, "Are you sure?" The first replies, "Yes, I'm positive..." :shrug:

InfiniteNow, I know this situation doesn't concern me in any way and I'm not familiar with the circumstances that brought it about. I hesitated to even post here. But based on what I've read, the administrators positions are very valid and their intent is obviously to keep these forums under control. I hope you will find it within you to take a deep breath and reflect on how all this has come about. You're better than this frustration that's driving you right now. I've enjoyed reading many of your posts over the last year or so and I have often found that you bring a fresh insight and a wise perspective to the discussion. I would hate to see you let an escalating disagreement, and the way it is being managed by the staff, discourage you from continuing to bring forth the value of your contributions to this site. Sometimes, part of "waking up" is letting go, and starting over. :doh: I look forward to more of your posts, REASON

Part 1 All right folks! the new digital camera arrived by UPS yesterday, so I had some plans to break it in on a bike ride today. Now, the weather has turned rainy and gloomy yet again, but I seized the opportunity during a break in the showers. I am learning how to do all this uploading and transfer still from the camera, to a file, to Photobucket or Imageshack, and then onto the Net! so bear with me. :D My goal is to have some nice thumbnail attachments, and then you can click on the photos you'd like to see, as opposed to having to scroll down. Anywho's, 2 things went wrong already on this bike ride. #1 I forgot to put in the memory card, 1 GB, and subsequently I was limited to 10 pictures. :blink: #2 - when I got down to the historical Fort Vancouver, a brisk 6 miles away, large ominus clouds began to gather again. Plus, I got a flat tire! , and since I was ill prepared. well, I hopped on the bus, and called it a photoshoot. ;) So, live and learn. This is a road I take frequently, and it leads right to school. on nice days I can skip traffic and enjoy commuting instead. This hill is preety steep, and I usuall get up to 35-40 MPH! Its about 15 seconds of true unadulterated freedom! Here is teh College I go to for now. Clark College is nationally renowned for its nursing, culinary, and diesel tech programs. The campus is very green and pretty. Its beautiful in the spring Now down the road abit is the National Fort Vancouver historical site. surrounded by old army barracks, Pearson air museum, and Officers Row, which are historical buildings now occupied by business and government. Again, I still didn't know how to use the flash, and its kinda dark... Then after I got a flat, I made my way to the renovated downtown park... where they have a Glockenspiel! and it rings its bells and tells a story of the native indians and their relationship with the salmon! :evil: And these are pictures I took of my neighborhood after I left. I live down near the end of this road. But, theres been a lot of new subdivisions put in. They have cut down so many trees to build these homes that are squeezed together. Its kinda' ruined the neighborhood in my opinion. More cars, traffic, and assholes to deal with. :cup: But they did just put in a new park only a couple blocks away thanks to the parks measure that got passed :) .. Well, thats it for now! :cup:

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then -- to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn." - from The Once and Future King by T.H. White. We are all here to learn, teach, help and encourage. We are certainly not here to abuse, insult, accuse and disrespect.

Here's a map that shows how the Planet might look like. This just meant to show ocean/landmass relationships and is not meant to be color-correct (things would look quite different under the light of the Brown Dwarf.) Because of the large tidal bulges casued by the larger planet, you will not that there would be two large oceans and the vast majority of the land would exist in a band circling the planet: As netined before, outr planet will slowly circle in closer to the larger planet over time, as it does so, more of the oceans will shift to the planetary tidal bulges. this is what the same planet would look like after it has moved further in. Note that some originally dry land is swallowed by the growing tidal bulges and new land will be exposed in the band. Leaving us with two completely separated oceans and one planet girdling continent.

I'll try to be brief and without emotion... My 19 year old cousin was murdered some 18 years ago. My cousin was an A student. He was active in sports and sponsered the Big Brothers program. He had a scholarship to the U of U. My aunt and uncle still cry alot, even now. His murderer fled to Wyoming. People that befriended him said he bragged about having killed before. He'd sit there with a big *** grin telling them how he'd hit my cousin so hard that his carotid artery had burst...how my cousin had fallen to his knee's trying to beg for mercy, bleeding out his eyes, nose, and mouth...dying. Later it was found that his very same scumbag had also beat, raped and killed a neighboring 12 year old boy. My cousins murderer was murdered himself several months later. He was shot in the back of the head, execution style. Was justice served? No. He died too easily and without an trace of remorse. The most conclusive evidence that criminals fear the death penalty more than life without parole is provided by convicted capital murderers and their attorneys. 99.9% of all convicted capital murderers and their attorneys argue for life, not death, in the punishment phase of their trial. Probability of being executed for committing a murder is less than 1 percent. My questions are: 1. How do murderers justify their right to live but not their victims? 2. Did they hesitate when their victims were begging and pleading for their lives? 3. Did they show any mercy or even an fraction of the mercy we show them? 4. Did the murderer give their victim/s and families the same rights or defense we give them? 5. If there is not a doubt of one's guilt or mental capacity, (DNA, eye witness's, confessions, premeditation, etc.) why should any society pay one red cent, let alone hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars to show them the very mercy they failed to show their victims? 6. How is justice served by victims families paying taxes to keep the very same person that took their loved ones life, alive? 7. How do we justify the expense of providing 3 huge square meals, snacks, an education, tv's, sport equipment, beds, shelter, and security from harm to murderers? (millions of law abidding citizens do not even have money for 1 square meal a day) Imposition of the death penalty is extraordinarily rare. Since 1967, there has been one execution for every 1600 murders, or 0.06%. FBI's Uniform Crime Report (UCR) Of the roughly 52,000 state prison inmates serving time for murder in 1984, an estimated 810 had previously been convicted of murder and had killed 821 persons following their previous murder convictions. "Executing each of these inmates would have saved 821 lives." (Stanford Law Review) Cost of Life Without Parole: 1. $34,200/year for 50 years, at a 2% annual cost increase, plus $150,000 to $500,000 for trial & appeals = $3.501 million Add an additional $61.7 million (54,000.00 each new bed) for new construction due to over-crowding needed per year. Even if the prisoner spent 20 years in prison the cost would be approx. $1,520,000 per murderer. Cost of Death Penalty Cases 1. $60,000/year for 6 years, at a 2% annual cost increase, plus $1.5 million for trial & appeals = $1.88 million Does execution offer deterrence? I believe so. The highest murder rate in Houston (Harris County), Texas occurred in 1981, with 701 murders. Texas resumed executions in 1982. Since that time, Houston (Harris County) has executed more murderers than any other city or state (except Texas) AND has seen the greatest reduction in murder, 701 in 1981 down to 261 in 1996 - a 63% reduction, representing a 270% differential! (FBI, UCR) On Christianity and execution; Though this is the usual interpretation, I don't believe Jesus applied 'turn the other cheek' to capital murder or any violent crime, especially where one is found guilty beyond resonable doubt. Jesus; "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, but to fulfil. Matthew 5:17-22 "Jesus warned Peter that to die by the sword is the punishment proper for those who live by the sword...(take human life.)" Matthew 26:51-52 "If you do what is evil, be afraid; for [ the civil government ] does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is the minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath upon those who practice evil." Romans 13:4. "He that smiteth a man so that he may die, shall be surely put to death." Ex 21:12 For a Christian, the entire bible from beginning to end, offers the clearest and most sustained justification for the death penalty. The purpose of capital punishment is justice - deterrence is irrelevant. A person who takes a human life, without proper sanction, forfeits any right to life. "The death penalty is a warning, just like a lighthouse throwing beams out to sea. We hear about shipwrecks, but we do not hear about the ships the lighthouse guides safely on their way. We do not have proof of the number of ships it saves, but we do not tear the lighthouse down." Prof. E. Haag

Mind if I point out the flaw in your masterplan UncleAl? Here it is. Global warming is caused more due to the retention of heat, not its production on earth. What we get from the sun beats anything we can do. Further, how can you be so sure that third world parasites, as you call them will be all threre is to it? The Other approximate 3X10^9 people won't contribute any heat at all? And there are no other warm blooded organisms on earth? This is a rather offending. It says some things in a way other than in words.

Edella, I respect you veiw, I would like it to be known that that statement is very much a real.ism for me. I find that I can express spirituallty through Mathematics, Laws and Theory. I have a hardtime understand why it is that various people choose to keep these concepts seperate, as extreames are dangerous, and to be used in moderation. As a oddball out, by most of science and religion's standards, with an ecclectic spiritual and factual education, having been in my (short) time here, Baptist, Universal Life Church, Johrei, Buddhist, Taoist, Animaemist, Aethist, Agnostic and Seclular humanist. In no particular order. People often find my veiws on the world to be very odd, but I also find that people's veiws on the world I find very odd. To me it is intuitive that their is some emphermal property, which one might call the "soul", and that there is some guiding force to it all. It gives me comfort to realize that you know, maybe I'm not so deathly alone in this vast universe. Now I'm going to get a little sappy here, so bare with me, as I don't like to talk about my veiws regarding religion, except where I believe it to be benificial. It is in my code of ethics to follow the teachings of Jesus, and the one that often comes up with this subject is: "Pray not in the public, be wailing the glory of god, for their reward is here and now. instead pray in secret, enter into your closet and pray there, where only god may hear you, for your reward will be in the kingdom of heaven." One of my core beliefs is that universe is what we would call god, and that all the things within it are the imaginings thereof. Me and you, we are the children then of god and the tenders of a beautiful garden, of which we have some modicum of control over. Not because we are human, or special, but simply because we are. I suspect that the universe decides on what happens next by something which science can't yet measure. Belief. Not human cognition, but the raw potential of energy, charge, mass, spin and whatever else you can think of. I think that particles dream, that we dream as a result. I think that particles think, that we think as a result. I think and therefore I am. who is? I am.