Doom Shepherd

The answer to "why?" is "that's what happened." The answer to "how" is "science," or "science... eventually."

Not to mention that he is an american product both literally and most likely due to american decisions back in 1980. That myth is tired.

A dozen generators on a single human joint? Would kind of impede the functioning of the joint. I don't buy this. Show me even a half-dozen of these generators working simultaneously on someone's knee, and I'll take it back. Nope. http://www.backup-power.ca/portable_solar_tents.html This is enough energy to power up to 66 laptop computers or 260 cell or satellite phones. Yeah, the sun needs to be shining. But you know, it does that a lot, especially in the desert. Actually, the company that makes them is now talking about producing a 3kW version soon. And it's already paper thin, I imagine they'll be weaving it into clothing before long. Then all you'll have to do to charge your cellphone is put it in your pocket. Then we can put it on electric cars, as a convertible top...

Gravity is a fact. Newtonian and Einsteinian Gravitation are theories. Evolution is a fact. Lamarckian and Darwinian Evolution are theories. "Atomics" isn't a thing, so we'll skip that until you can better explain what you think you're talking about. The fact is, all evolutionary theories excluding Darwinian Evolution (and its modifications) have been discredited, and ALL of the components of Darwinian Evolution (Mutation, Natural Selection, Speciation, etc.) have been verified through observation. What you are trying to do is identical to attempting to argue that Mathematics isn't real because we can't calculate Pi to the last digit.

Insomnia sux.

To quote the mighty Bender: "I want to live! There's still too many things I don't own!" Also, there's still too much coming that I want to see: The next episode of Freeman's Mind, Pluto's surface, the first discovery of an actually Earthlike planet around another star, the Avengers movie, the rest of this season of Dr. Who... when those things happen, I'll set new goals. It's the little things that make it worth it. Also... I've accumulated way too much XP just to waste it like that.

My response:

I think both should be taught in school, and we as sentient beings should be allowed to choose for ourselves what to believe and respect each other's philosophies. I think the big problem with teaching "both" is that it's not just two options ("God" and "Evolution"). There are literally thousands, if not millions of "alternative theories" of creation and how we came to be and if we taught ALL of them, it'd take the rest of our natural lives to scratch the surface. Case in point: The Flying Spaghetti Monster. I don't believe that school should be teaching these kinds of philosophies as science because, well, it's not science. Science should remain in science class and you can put philosophy in the philosophy class. Exactly. SCIENCE should be taught in science class, and non-scientific creation guesses (they still aren't theories) should be taught in Comparative Religion or Philosophy. (I never had a Comparative religion course, and I wish I had, I had to do it all on my own, and that was a lot of work. I did get Philosophy in college, though.)

Too bad they're still stuck messing with solar power for soldiers when they should be trying to make bio-energy extraction techniques (using the human body as a generator) usable, or just adding a series of kinetic watch style generators (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_quartz) at the soldiers elbows/knees/other joints. Ha-ha! You can wind a watch with human-generated kinetic energy. You'll never be able to power a tank with it. The US military already has solar tents, though, with collectors that generate 2 kilowatts of power per tent. Not huge, but enough to recharge stuff like night-vision equipment, cell phones, and other tools. means less batteries/generators carried in the field.

I don't see how being taken over by Brazil improved Petrobras any. Sure, Brazil is now running a lot of things on ethanol instead of oil and gas, but we've already seen that ethanol really isn't as good a solution as had been claimed. Oh, and now Petrobras is going to do even more deepwater drilling... in the Gulf of Mexico. Far deeper (and hence, more dangerous) than that well that blew last year. And the US is loaning them the money ($2 billion) to buy the equipment to drill with.

Nobody believes this. First off, it's not "magic," because the proccess of evolution is essentially understood, as the cumulative effects of mutations plus natural selection plus a couple other minor factors. We KNOW the basics of how humans arose. No belief is required, just an understanding of facts and the capacity to apply logic and reason. Secondly, monkeys did not "turn into" humans. Monkeys and humans share a common ancestor, further back but in the same way that it has been shown (via studies of mitochondrial DNA) that blacks, whites, asians, et. have common ancestors, despite looking quite different. There aren't any middle steps today for essentially the same reason there aren't any native speakers of Classical Roman Latin or Old English today. They were supplanted. But there is enormous evidence of an abundance of in-between steps on the ladder, another fact only still denied by those in the "a wizard did it" camp. What?? You mean millions, or possibly less in the case of Neanderthal. Recent studies show most humans (except Africans, whose ancestors never left) have 3-5% neanderthal genes, from interbreeding (in places where the distinction between species and subspecies is blurred.) I generally reject "magic" (as opposed to stage magic, which I know is tricks.) The only "auras" I believe in are the electrical ones that have been photographed around the human bodies. I don't belive they are the manifestation of anything spiritual. I doubt that souls exist, and if prophets or psychics existed, I'd expect to see a LOT more lottery winners.

Albatross!

I looked at the story and did a quick search on google. Your article is dated Feb 13' date=' 2008 and mentions soon the USGS will release a report regarding the amount of oil. Well I think this is that report: http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911 They're saying it's closer to 3.5 - 4.3 billion and it's questionable how much of that is really recoverable. Even at 4.3 billion barrels, that's a little under 7 months' worth of oil based on the USA's current rate of consumption. So that's good news, but not a fundamental game-changer.[/quote'] That's just the Bakken, right?

I remember seeing that in SimCity 2000. I didn't realize it was anywhere near doable. The military is already looking into doing it to power soldiers in the field where it's hard to get other fuels. I figure we could probably kick-start the same sort of program to provide energy for the public with... oh, about what it cost to build the fleet of stealth bombers, in today's dollars. At least, that was the estimate I read a few years ago.

Plutonium makes excellent spacecraft fuel. It is, in fact, what we've used as fuel on every space probe we've sent beyond Mars (and a few that went to Mars.) When Obama promised to fight to end the world's production of Plutonium, only a few of us space geeks realized that he was inadvertently (we hope) dooming future unmanned exploration of the solar system or beyond. Fortunately, it looks like that's going down in the annals of unkept political promises.

We know exactly how the Pyramids were built. The only people who still dispute that are the ones who desperately want to believe that aliens or wizards did it. (Kind of exactly the same way the remaining people who dispute evolution believe that aliens or a wizard did it.) When your only alternative "theories" are aliens and wizards, you're not talking about science anymore.

I used to think I was 100% guy. Then I watched "Torchwood" and dropped a couple percentage points.

"He could kill us all. For him... it'd be easy." --Batman, on the subject of Plastic Man.

<*))))>{ There's always a bigger fish.

I can sometimes lucid dream, but not always. It started when I was in third grade, and had a series of dreams where people I knew (teachers, family members) were turning into vampires and killing me. The last dream I had, my little brother was the vampire, but in the middle of the dream I just suddenly realized "this is one of those damn vampire dreams" and instead of dying I punched him out. I "refined" this ability by doing something like what Raicuparta suggested - I would test to see if I was dreaming or not. Biting my thumb proved most effective, in dreams. At first I used it to wake up from nightmares, but later I could realize I was dreaming and change my goals. I could imagine I had weapons, or Wolverine claws, and fight off enemies in dreams. Of course, being a guy, I mostly used it to try making out with dream-girls (though mine have an annoying tendency to evaporate just as things are getting interesting.)

I know a guy who's a member of the Flat Earth Society. It's not serious. As for the paranormal... color me "indeterminate," but I've known some people who take it really seriously. I knew this one guy, who claimed to be able to see auras and such, and he was afraid of me because, and I quote, "I see flames leaping from your hands, and your aura looks like the glow from a blacklight poster, and that's a color that human beings aren't supposed to have."

Seems true everywhere. Some people will steal anything that is not nailed down (and anything they can pry loose, is "not nailed down.") I once brought in a small bottle of wine from my brother's wedding to share with my co-workers. I put it in the EMPLOYEE refrigerator, in a big bag with MY name on it. One of our students stole it.

Screw the birds, we have rockets.

I want the government to get off their butts, fund a search program to locate 100% of Earth-approaching asteroids and short-period comets (the odds of any long-period comet hitting the Earth are less than that of my being elected Dictator of the US), house-size or larger, and a space tug to go grab any threats, and then MINE the buggers for precious metals. Thar's gold (and platnum and iridium and tungsten and molybdenum - about a trillion dollars per cubic Km) in them thar astee-roids!