I don't think temperature is a problem. You just adjust your energy barriers to be appropriate to the temperature. So proteins would be much less stable than earth ones, but then they'd be much colder, so their stability would come out the same. Just like extremophiles have much more stable proteins than other organisms, so they don't fall apart at high temperature.

A bigger problem is DNA and RNA. Those would instantly precipitate out in methane. So you'd need a different molecule to serve that function, something that's nonpolar.

Agreed about life being easy to spot, at least if you're free to do whatever experiments you want. Look under a microscope, and it'll be obvious that something is there.

I wonder what sort of chemistry any organisms living in those lakes would have. The whole concept of hydrophobicity would be reversed. Polar groups would be "methanephilic" and nonpolar ones would be "methanephobic". They could still have cell walls made from lipids, but they'd be flipped around with the polar part on the inside.

A former cowboy became President of the United States. Oh, that was in 1901. And the U.S. overthrew the government of Guatemala to help out a fruit company. Oh, that was in 1954.

You can make anything sound crazy if you just say it in a silly enough way and leave out most of the important details. Heck, conservatives are fond of pointing out that Obama is a "former community organizer." Also a former senator, but who cares about that?

Why do you say that? If the whole universe is deterministic, then of course every part is deterministic. A scientific apparatus is incredibly simple compared to the universe as a whole.

Perhaps what you mean is that you want to know what mechanism creates the appearance of randomness/entanglement/free-will in a fully deterministic universe? Why does it appear that your actions have an influence on distant events, and that influence takes the form of a certain type of correlations between observables? It would be unsatisfying to declare, "It just happens, and there's no reason for it. It was just predestined that you would make the choice consistent with those correlations - for no reason." That would be incredibly improbable. Clearly there must be a mechanism.

Fortunately, we have very good ideas about what that mechanism might be. There's increasingly strong evidence for retrocausality and/or non-locality, either of which provides a straightforward mechanism to produce those correlations. And, not surprisingly, either one of them would be very hard to reconcile with a non-deterministic universe.

MuseScore does support SoundFonts. It comes with a really low quality set of instruments, but that's just to keep the download size down. Download the FluidR3 SoundFont and it sounds a lot better.

:)

From the article:

Where did you get the idea it isn't rechargeable?

Yes, these people are partly responsible for creating these programs in the first place. But at least now they're opposing them. That's something I agree with. We should let them know we agree with it. And just as import: tell the Democrats we agree with it. Tell them they'd better get behind this, or they'll be on the losing side of the issue in the next election.

And yes, I know that many of the Republicans who voted for this are probably just doing it for political reasons, because they have to oppose whatever Obama supports. But that doesn't change the conclusion. If politicians just do whatever they think will be politically beneficial, then you need to make it beneficial to do what you want them to do. And when they do something you agree with, don't hesitate to voice your approval.

Don't just simulate them. Let them work with real tools. For example, it's really easy to build a telegraph. This could make a fantastic class project. Divide them into small groups, and have each group build a working telegraph key. Connect them up in pairs, give them a Morse code chart, and have them try to send messages to each other. Now hook them up to a central switchboard and teach them the basic principles of networks and switching mechanisms. Finally, explain how "the internet" is doing exactly the same thing as the network they built, just automated and on a bigger scale.

You're confusing two completely different things: laws that take your age into account (which by definition is legal - it's the law), and illegal discrimination based on age (which is illegal because the law says it is). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A... for example.

I'm pretty sure that at least in the U.S., deciding whether to give people a special offer based on their age is illegal. It's called age discrimination.

Let's see, 16 years ago was 1998. Smartphones didn't exist yet. Tablet computers didn't exist yet. Even the iPod wouldn't be released for three years. The very first hybrid car had just gone on sale in Japan, but none would be available in the rest of the world for a year or two. Mining of oil shale in the United States was nonexistent.

Not to comment on this particular prediction, but just as a general comment, a lot more can change in 16 years than you think.

Of course, the SF Bay Area and the greater LA area together contain half the population of the state, so that's not a very strong statement.

I did follow the link. You're misinterpreting it. This is a data coverage map, that is, a map of how much data they have in different places. It has nothing to do with cell phone coverage.