http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...

The brain is intimately involved with how we perceive things. A bunch of experiments have been done, for example (recounted in the link above), one guy wore glasses that inverted everything -- he saw everything "upside down." After a few days, his brain flipped everything the right way!

I can imagine that years with low or no gravity would do far more than just affect the physiology. This isn't just a mechanical phenomenon. It's not just a matter of distorted eyeballs or inner ears. The whole time, your brain is trying to reinterpret what you're sensing to fit what it understands.

> Posts like this are why scientists like Lawrence Krauss have no time for philosophers.

Heh. Thanks for the laugh with my morning coffee. You are dead on the money.

> Karl Popper's rules do not claim to be science itself

And Popper himself was responsible for the Philosophy of Science. His rules are generally used because they work.

A good example for the layman (not scientific by any means, but illustrative) would be, you're sitting in your den, watching TV. "Where's the cat?" you wonder. One of his play toys mysteriously rolls from under the sofa, and you say, "ah." Is that proof that there's a cat under there? Of course not. But based on previous observations, experience, and the knowledge that your feline is a loveable knothead who can get into anything and at any time, it's a darn safe guess. :)

> Creationists, by the by, have an agenda; that is, 'prove' what they already take to be a priori assumptions. They aren't interested in knowledge, they're interested in influence.

Many are. But don't make blanket assumptions.

Me? I'm more of a libertarian, plotting endlessly to take over the world so that I can leave you completely alone. :)

> Is this testable?

I spent a good bit of time trying to explain this to laycreatures at my own Website. Karl Popper pretty well summed up the rules for scientific theories:

1. It must adequately explain that which is known about the thing being observed.
2. It must be falsifiable. In other words, it must make concrete predictions that can be tested empirically. If not, it is NOT a scientific theory.
3. This is the key: the SIMPLEST (i.e., the most "economical") theory that adequately explains the observations is preferred.

This is extremely important: just because you come up with a theory that seems to work does NOT mean that you're right. It simply means that you've found a mathematical model that works as far as you are able to understand and test it.

These guys seem to believe that inflation compels a belief in multiverses. They are certainly not alone in that. But in the interest of equal time, there are PLENTY of other cosmological-types who insist that there are alternate explanations. The "math" does NOT lead only and exclusively to that conclusion. In fact, while researching this for my Website, I found a flooding TON of physicists who went all the way back to Andre Linde (who was one of the first to popularize this) and beyond, and poked all sorts of holes in these arguments.

Disclaimer, I'm not a physicist and don't claim to be. But I'm about as up to speed on it as a layman can get and still remain sane. :)

> You imply the Big Bang is generaly accepted nowadays because Koch brothers managed to make money of it?

Indeed. I had to put my helmet on just to consider that one.

My head still might explode.

> dick move ... dick move ... classic RH ...

Larry Ellison, is that you?

"Red Hat Lutherans ... Ubuntu baptists ... Android is like the Mormons ..."

OK. ... so whom are the snake handlers?

[Stephen pops a bag of corn and sits happily back to watch the debate ...]

> 95% of the Japanese are Christians.

???? Is that a typo? Estimates vary, but I've never seen one that said that more than 5% of the Japanese population is Christian.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_Japan

The Never-To-Be-Questioned-Wiki says that it's about 1%.

> If an average vacuum tube lasted 6 months

This is a common misunderstanding about reliability, whether talking about solid-state or tubes. In fact, any manufacturer worth his/her salt can predict, with surprisingly accuracy, the number of failures over time -- say, 1% in the first month, 10% by the end of the first year, and so on. How they do this is fascinating to those who are interested.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_assurance

Thus, you can buy electronics, made in the same factory, by the same people, but one branded "Sharp" and the other with an off-brand name -- identical units -- but one has a 90-day warranty, while the other is 1 year. The latter will probably cost more because ('ere's the secret) the cost of the warranty is factored into the price of the unit. (Moral: a longer warranty does NOT necessarily mean a better-built device. Another secret that "They" won't tell you.) :)

In this case:

1. You test each tube thoroughly before it's even approved for use in the computer. (This testing is one reason why "mil-spec" components cost so much.)

2. Since each tube is about the same age when the computer is first built, there will be a *window* when you expect to begin having cascade failures. You schedule PM (i.e., tube replacement) to occur *before* that window. For each of those 60,000 tubes, there's a replacement log.

This is a great example of how statistics can mislead. When the first really big computers were proposed, there were indeed some who argued that they'd never work, because with 10,000's of tubes, they'd be constantly breaking down. But real-life proved them wrong, thankfully.

> go to work down to the mill

In the snow and rain. Uphill BOTH ways. And we LIKED IT.

GET OFF MY LAWN!

>> "I own two machines which cannot be upgraded for very good reasons."

> What are those?

Plenty of reasons. Khyber's comment below about hardware drivers is one. If you have a sweet server that's still chugging along, you feel no need to replace or upgrade it. If you did, though, you'd have a time finding drivers for it.

Another reason is if you're using a very expensive software package that simply won't work with anything newer than Windows XP. Then it's not just a simple matter of upgrading Windows, but having to shell out tons of money for other software upgrades at the same time. Until the economy turns around, that ain't gonna happen.

We've run across cases where a software vendor will say, "don't install anything newer than service pack 2." We handle it by completely isolating these machines from the Internet and disallowing the use of external, user-supplied storage (which most smart admins do anyway, on general principle).

Here's a piece of trivia for you: one of the key audio streaming companies* for broadcast radio stations, as late as last year, made it clear in their contract that they would ONLY support Windows XP. We dropped them for that reason, but folks, this was in 2012. That kind of stuff still happens, too, and again, blame the economy.

This admittedly won't affect most users, but it does affect some of us.

(*actually, to be technically correct, they're an ad-insertion company -- they insert commercial inventory in your online stream -- but I figured everyone's eyes would glaze over if I tried to get that detailed.) :)

@girlintraining:

Very, very interesting. My only observation would be that the police would be likely to accept what Target told them; I wouldn't think there is active collusion between them.

But if we accept the premise that this is a coverup, I have a rather pertinent question.

I don't shop at Target stores. I don't like them. But sometimes, my wife and I *do* use their online site. During the dates in question, we may have sent a Target gift card (via said Website) to a family member.

If this is a coverup, it'd be nice to know the actual details. I'd like to know if *we* are at risk. We have a couple of those "credit protection" plans on all of our accounts, but it'd still be nice to know. :)

> I have yet to meet the synthesizer that can even remotely duplicate the dulcet noises of the old-fashioned dead trees and metal strings of my grand piano.

That's true to someone who is sitting at the piano, playing it.

But remember, when you're talking about *recorded* music, you should compare that to the sound of a properly-miked grand piano vs. a properly-sampled piano. Both sounds are ultimately stored and then played back through speakers, and test after test have shown that most listeners can't tell the difference (and/or just plain don't care).

From my own experience, I can get the sounds I want from digital synthesis and sampling, but it does take a lot more work. However, the benefit is that I DON'T have a giant grand piano and a drum kit in my small home studio. I'm willing to accept that tradeoff. :)

> Yet people like you ... never complain when the IRS giving our money to the Military, or to form a police state ...

Stereotype much? :)

I hate big government AND I hate big corporations. (I'm an equal-opportunity curmudgeon.) So yes, I will complain about the GM bailout, but I will also complain about the military buying weapon systems that it arguably doesn't need and will almost certainly never use.

> You seem to be under the impression that the Russians by large are atheists

I never said that. You decided that I must believe that and then prepared an (admittedly interesting) discussion about it.

What I said was actually quite simple. Facts:

1. STALIN and those around him were committed atheists. They were serious. Forget what historians have tried to divine about his beliefs (or lack thereof) and go read what the dudes actually wrote. They weren't playing or pretending.

2. As a result of that viewpoint, Stalin and his cohorts sincerely believed that, since there was no God and no afterlife, the only thing that mattered was the here and now. If that meant that you were obstructionist to their view of the future, you were (at best) persecuted or even killed.

The point I was making here was that Stalin horribly persecuted gays, even though he was an avowed and sincere atheist -- so the idea that religion automatically results in anti-gay philosophy is a terrible oversimplification.

Then I stand corrected on that technical point. (Seriously.) I try to respect the difference between atheist, agnostic and free-thinker.

He probably ought to watch what t-shirts he wears at some of these events. Just sayin' ... :)

I know, I know. He mostly attacks *religion* and not specifically the existence of God. For that matter, I attack organized religion myself. Have very little use for it.

What I especially object to are Dawkin's famous statements such as, "I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world." That completely ignores that all through history there have been those who were intensely curious about nature BECAUSE they believed in a Supreme Being. They wanted to see how He did it. :)