assassin_696

And no offence, but since you're not even spelling his name correctly i'm less inclined to take you on your word. I could give you a mini-lecture about how just because Stephen Hawking is a visible scientist doesn't make his theories infalliable (indeed, his major theory about information loss in black holes has conclusively been disproven) but i'll spare it. I know Hawking's work reasonably well at least in the abstract, so if you could put me towards your source for that claim i'd appreciate it.

Damn Oxbridge term times :P Going back (for the last time, weirdly) on the 8th. In that weird kind of way i'm looking forward to it, seeing everyone again and getting stuck back into new topics should be interesting, but i'm sure i'll regret it as soon as I get my first piece of homework.

I love them, but my parents don't so I only go to them now and again with friends. That said I went to Disneyland Paris at young age and just remembered it being so special and magical, and went to the one in California slightly more recently and thought the same. I'm a complete sucker for Disney, it's easy to be cynical but I think they're such amazing places and if you just let yourself get carried away in it it's great fun. I've only been to Ligh[bleep]er Valley (mediocre apart from The Ultimate) and Alton Towers in England. Alton Towers was great fun despite the rain, Oblivion was pretty intense for a first ride there and Nemesis was probably my favourite.

That's pure speculation, little/nothing is known about what happens at black-hole singularities.

There is an inherent problem in using scripture to show the cruelty of the Bible because Christians who genuinely have read it more than some of us atheists insist that we're taking it out of context. But as warri0r said it's a complete non-sequiter when the Christians say that because until they do put it in the logical context it's just an argument from authority, a fallacy. So i'll counter that fallacy with one of my own. In the late 19th early 20th century the Catholic Church pushed for a new kind of theological stance, modernism, whereby the claims of the Bible were examined under close scrutiny and their literal truth and worth assessed. However this lead to so many of the Vatican scholars realising the absurdness of parts of the Bible that the Vatican had to completely ex-communicate many of the scholars and ban many of their books. There are leading scholars on both sides of the debate with far more knowledge about the Bible than any of us. I find the arguments from my side of the debate more convincing but don't have the time nor training to examine each of their claims, so I trust in the methods of rational historical analysis that have been applied and take their claims at face value. I'm less inclined to trust the claims of the scholars on the other side of the debate because there is a massive incentive for them to want to keep their faith, so their judgement might be clouded. It's a complex issue.

Robot Rock / Oh Yeah - Daft Punk

Not possible for an omnipotent God? And i'm sorry, taking your argument literally was just an exercise in reductio ad-absurdium, I didn't mean it as a knock-down critique. As Lateralus said, the problem lies in trying to rationalise the actions of a God who either has the power to end suffering and chooses not to, and doesn't have the power but does want to. Even if you get subjective about what constitutes perfection, I think we can still both agree that this world is a long way from it. I found a news article about a man who accidentally missed the Lockerbie bombing flight telling of this sort of mentality. Afterwards he said God had given him a second chance, a new start in life. Gave him a second chance, but not the other 269 presumably equally innocent people who didn't miss their flight? You can always find examples of 'miraculous' rescues and salvations and attribute them to God. But it does a great disservice not only to the people who were actually responsible for the saving (the human beings) by saying they needed help, but also to the thousands of other people who aren't being miraculously saved for every one that is. What did they do wrong?

I finished The Portable Atheist yesterday, a collection of essays and readings put together by Christopher Hitchens on atheism. It's an excellent read, although some of the selections are more readable than others. Probably a more comprehensive critique of various aspects of religion/belief than the big four atheist books thanks to the breadth of authors. Last night I started The Emperor's New Mind by Roger Penrose. The book is about AI, and about how in his opinion current AI research will not be able to create a conscious robot since mathematical intuition is non-computational. But the book also touches on lots of aspects of physics and mathematics. It's Penrose, so it won't be an easy read, but the first few pages have proved very interesting and thought-provoking so far.

Never had depression then?

Working out to pull girls is a terrible reason to work out. Especially since the girls who go for that kind of thing are normally about as vacuous as they come. Work out for the endorphin rush and the way it makes you feel. Of course the extra self-confidence is great, but try not to play to the trend of being judged on physical image.

I'm not American, and Britain hardly has the best track record when it comes to drinking either but I think it's more to do with culture than at what age it becomes legal. In France the drinking age is 18 but kids are brought up having a glass of wine with their meal with their parents. Drinking isn't stygmatised so people don't drink to rebel since it's not being rebellious. As a result there's virtually no drinking culture. Until you can change the mindset where you draw the line is fairly arbitary. Kids still get the drink even if it's not legal, the only ones you're probably deterring are the ones who'd drink responsibly anyway.

Not sure about radio stuff, but planes can definitely auto-land and take-off nowadays. I was on a week long aerospace course earlier this summer and one of the guys running it was an ex-commercial pilot who used to fly for Airbus, we had a lecture on fly-by-wire technology and how they can land themselves nowadays (the guy had done about 6 himself). I've done quite a bit of flying for one reason or another. I was in the CCF RAF section at school for about 4 years and we used to go up flying a few times each year in a smallish single prop plane. The pilot would talk you through the basics, even got to do some aerobatics towards the end. And on this course I did some more flying, helicopters as well as smaller planes. Not something i'll probably ever do again though, just doesn't quite appeal to me.

Dimension - Wolfmother This band's just great.

I've had the privelege of seeing many of my favourite bands live, although there are many more i'd still love to see. The White Stripes are probably the best live act i've ever seen.

That would be quaint, even funny maybe, were it not for the fact that it tries to justify the (in)actions of a God who sits by and watches his world burn. In the vast majority of cases of human suffering, there are no state departments sent by God rushing to the aid of people. Instead we have adults and children alike, suffering and often dying alone with absolutely no way out.

Just a heads up, that video seems to explain things beautifully at a superificial level, but it's not really based on any kind of science or mathematics. It's just some aesthetically pleasing speculation on behalf of the author. Don't make the mistake of thinking that's how string theorists conceptualise 10/11 dimensions, because they don't even try, it's impossible. (Surprised I beat Reb to it :P )

It's getting pretty damn ironic how many of you are (rightly) taking the OP down a peg or two for being boastful, but are then just happening to mention in passing what you got on an online test as well.

Like I've already said (along with everyone else), use the sticky. Don't push your luck.

Please use the sticky for advertising, and please don't post in Dutch (?), this is an English board, please cater to the predominant language here.

Locked at the author's request.

If you got 145 in a genuine IQ test then you damn-well know whether it's good or not, so this thread is nothing more than gloating. In that case for all your supposed intelligence you clearly lack wisdom.

I could be flippant, but i'll save it and just say that the bolded part is an impossibility so it's a redundant question. Like asking about angels dancing on pinheads...

Theoretically it is possible to use wormholes for time travel and what not. However, as of yet no wormholes have been observed, and I am under the impression that there are some additional problems that would ensue even if one were to stumble upon a wormhole. The point is that until we are actually able to observe wormholes, they have no practical application. Yeah, wormholes are one of those things that the mathematics of general relativity doesn't forbid, and you can get them out of the equations if you fiddle around enough. The problem for using them practically is that to maintain them you need some kind of "exotic matter", the composition of which is unknown to us but it has to have certain unique properties. Again, the exotic matter isn't forbidden, we just can't make it. Otherwise the wormhole would collapse in on itself as soon as you tried to use it. At least that's how I understand it.

I'm going to plump for some of his really early stuff: was on The Jackson 5's ABC album, a cover of a Stevie Wonder song. The song's great, but just listen to Michael ripping into the vocals in this, it's amazing. He was 10 years old when he recorded this. Puts every pseudo-talented wannabe tweenage popstar to shame. What a talent that guy had. Of course his slightly later stuff was great as well.

@cadbury's Yeah, pretty much. Intriguing probably explained it better than I can but basically the faster you go the slower your time in your frame of reference goes. So if you take two twins, leave one on Earth and blast one off into space close to the speed of light, for say 10 minutes measured by her clock, then when she returned back to Earth she'd find that possibly hundreds of years will have passed on Earth. So one way time travel is very much possible, there's just no going back. What? Are you suggesting a moving telescope that travels faster than light? I think Herr Einstein would have something to say about that. Theories and rules are changed every day, you never know, maybe one day Einstein will be proved wrong. John Nash came up with a theorem on the forces of the market that contradicted more than a century of "proven" theories. And he turned out to be right. Although the wording of the original post is kind of strange, and might have been warped after numerous re-tellings. It doesn't quite work like that though. The constancy of the speed of light (and hence permanent speed limit) is a pillar for pretty much all the physics that's gone on in the last hundred years or so. If a theory was found that said you could go faster than light then nearly everything in physics would fall. I agree that science is never finished, modifications are always made, but even scientists are unusually certain that the speed of light is just the maximum. Of course, there are theoretical loopholes (dragging spacetime with you etc.) but i'd bet a lot of money on special relativity holding true. Why don't you see it?