"Warning: if you subscribe too heavily to these ideas now, you'll be way, way off base later when science starts finding better answers to the accelerating universe and other open questions. "

Every damn hypothesis we have are only good as long as we do not find any better answer. Even the one you call better supported. Heck, 150 years ago you would probably have put newton in your list.

It is the basic reality in physic that we use what we have as hypothesis until a better theory or falsifying data come up and disprove that theory. By *specially* asking us to hold off for dark matter/ dark energy you are specially pleading against those, which is a nono, or you misunderstood science in general which is worst.


Even classical gravity or electromagnetism are a temporary hold on until something better come up. Something better MAY never come up. Or it could next month. This is the beauty of science. Adapting.

What you meant to say in a single sentence , is that you get used to the taste of a shit sandwich after a while, to be blunt. That's all nice of you, but some of us simply refuse to start eating that fare to begin with.

Evolution of species is what we observe. The theory is the theory of natural selection (evolution by natural selection). natural selection is what we use to explain the observed evolution.

TL;DR : observed data=evolution; theory=natural selection. In common parlance it became the theory of evolution. but in reality it should be rightly called the theory of natural selection.

Comic book
Dancing
Movies/Cinema
TV, cartoon/anime etc...


So yeah. Pretty much anything which might interrest a kid and is not school related is seen as a distraction. Call me back when tehy have a peer reviweed article showing it is worst than any other distraction source. Until then : BFD.

Honoring a DNT would mean a high risk that sooner or later the majority of the page served would ask to not track. And that would have meant to return to the old day of "dumb" TV like advertising where they do only lknow statistically who is watching the ad, but not idnvidually. This would mean billions of $ of market evaporating.

From the get go advertised never intended to honor DNT, they simply slowed down any discussion and finally simply pulled excuse out of thin air to not honor it.

And the result is : thanks ghostery, noflash, adblock, and referer check.

When i was in high school back in the early 90ies in France, it was the same : people were trying to remember stuff by rote learning, not only in math but also in physic. With the predictable result that by the next year , for many very little was left of it. I have come to think that the few of us which aced the math/physic, we did it because we understood the problem and how to solve it, rather than learn the solution. And once you understand something, it is incredibly easy to remember how to do it. I don't think this is a special problem from south Alabama or where ever, I think it is a general problem in many country that many student are firstly taught rote learning in small school, and later in middle/high school are never taught to understand a problem properly.

There is always way to glue a carton over the advert screen and cut loudspeaker out.

Not many people liked the cannon of star trek. In fact many young people I talk to find the best episode of all series of star trek, then one without fight and the one with philosophical implication, the most boring. So the two newest star trek were filmed for the new audience , not the old one, as an explosion loaded action flick. Which is why JJ Abrams was chosen for the star trek reboot. It sounds to me that SW7 will be like that : action loaded. Now for SW it is not too bad. The question is : will the protagonist have character development, or will the plot and characters be secondary, and that is the 2$ question.

I first saw star wars I was 20+ (due to a combination of not owning a TV for a long time after I left my parents home, and before that I watched few TV). And they are good film with an arc, comply to standard story telling and film. The prequel do not comply. Check the red letter media review, plinkett bring a lot of good points :
* You can easily tell who is the protagonist and main hero in SW4,5,6. You cannot with SW1 and arguably SW2.
* character ? Character in SW4,5,6 can be described with trait independently of their role. It is much harder with SW 1,2,3
* Plot ? The plot in SW4,5,6 is simple and follow the standard heroic epic there are plot holes but not many Villain actions make sense as a wehole. In SW 1,2,3 the plot makes no sense whatsoever as the villain is givign contradictory order to its goal.

and I pass many other. Look I did not watch SW when I was young , but already an adult. I could recognize it as a nice fantasy (not SF) story with knight in space. The throne room scene still leaves frisson in me. The lava scene is forgettable. Lucas mistook the fight in the throne room for what it was. He then added fighting everywhere to break the boring dialogues.


As a whole the prequel are poor tredning to bad. It is not only rose colored glasses , but simply a fair assessement.

"Driverless cars drive in the most boring, conservative, milquetoast fashion imaginable. They're going to be far less prone to accidents from the outset simply because they don't take the kind of chances that many of us wouldn't even begin call "risky". "

As a user of the road I want people to stop taking risk they think aren't risky, until they generate an accident and by then it is too late. Stop speeding. Respect all speed limit even if it is to your feeling too low, drive lower speed at night because you cannot see as far away, etc... SDo for me jsut for THIS quoted paragraph, I cannot wait to have boring law respecting car on the road.

People fearing MSG because it is everywhere. I tried to explain calmly, that glutamate as amino acid is something around 7% (IIRC) prevalence in protein, so unless you are eating no protein whatsoever , you will eat a lot of glutamate. Also the body internally itself produce 90% (IIRC) of the glutamate for protein creation. But no matter the argument , I could not convince the person that MSG is harmless especially considered the very low quantity.

That's your history right there. You can see melting period / snow period in the ice core.

With a 2-3% inflation you get a doubling of price every 23 to 35 years. So 1 billion today is equivalent to 350 million $ in 1980 and 550 million dollar in 1990. So not so "big" anymore.... I used this by the way : http://www.bls.gov/data/inflat... very useful to compare money amounts.

Soooo parasitic species do not exists in your world, symbiotic species do not exists in your world, domestic species do not exists in your world etc...etc... I am happy to live in this world where natural selection led a lot of species come with far more inventive solution than kill or be killed.

Ah yes because the NSA says me so. You know what i think ? I think NSA told us to distrust other vendor because they have no back door in them.