It probably wouldn't bother me so much if the job that it performed could not equally be performed by just simply looking inside of the box before putting it away.

Ah, but here you're falling into one of the common misconceptions about cosmology. The universe isn't expanding *into* anything -- if it were, the universe would have a centre

First of all, I never suggested that the universe actually *was* expanding into anything... I only offered the notion that even if it *were*, the fact that it has only been doing so for a finite amount of time still makes the universe finite, even if the space it were expanding into were infinite.

Second of all, if it were expanding into an infinite space, there is no reason to conjecture that this space would be limited to three dimensions, so no "center" to our expanding universe can necessarily be found - any more than you could find the center of a soccer ball on the surface of the soccer ball. A center definitely exists, but it's not going to be found on the restricted topology of the soccer ball, and the center of the universe exists, but you can't find it at a point in space... it would therefore be most correct to say that the center of the universe is actually the instant in time of the big bang.

It appears to only be able to tell if something is missing from the toolbox, which is perhaps useful because you can have an external indicator on the box that shows that the toolbox does not contain everything, and may reduce the occurrences of having a toolbox stored away before it has been properly restocked, but it does not do anything to actually locate the tools that were once in the box. Even if the range were limited to a few hundred meters within the box, that would still be extremely useful because you would still generlaly be able to locate it as long as it is still at the same work site.

So it's doing half a job... which however better than no job at all that may be, is still not a full job.

Which is what being fully environmentally conscious always amounts to.

They are right... renewables can't compete with coal economically, and it's foolish to try.

Where they *DO* compete with coal is in longevity.... in partictular, being sustainable for durations that are many orders of magnitude longer than any fossil fuel based system can hope to achieve while still keeping the planet's ecosystem unaltered. Yes, it costs more, but until somebody finds another habitable planet for us to live on and a way for us to actually get there, even a more expensive option is more desirable than no option at all.

Uhm... what are even you talking about?

Even if the universe were expanding into some hypothesized infinite space, the fact remains that it has only been doing so for a finite amount of time, and so therefore is not infinite in size.

I said it was 13.8 billion years old, I never once suggested it was 13.8 billion light years across, I am well aware that the observable universe is actually much larger than that... what I've always found interesting, however is that the ratio between the proposed estimate of 93 billion light years in diameter and the age of the universe at 13.8 billion years is within 8% of the value of 2pi. That could be a coincidence. of course, but hey.... maybe it's something to think about?

My point remains. The universe is finite.

My point is that amidst all of these people here suggesting that she is lying about the dating site, the similarity of information she claims was found elsewhere and what info was gathered from myself suggests to me that she is telling the truth about what happened.

For what it's worth, Olber's paradox uses the wrong formula for the volume of a shell some distance R from earth... The formul as I remember it from Olber's paradox is 4*Pi*R^2*dr, where dr is the thickness of the shell. However, this value only approaches accuracy as R approaches infinity. It is wrong for all finite values of R.

And I was not double counting anything. The actual volume of such a shell is: 4/3*Pi*(r+dr)^3-4/3*Pi*r^3. This is a value that is admittedly less than proportional to R^3, but more than proportional to R^2 for any finite value of R greater than zero. This volume is actually even greater than the value that Olber was utilizing, and dividing it by R^2 to calculate the expected intensity of radiation in that entire shell that reaches a point at distance R does not approach 0 as the distance approaches infinity.

But the real problem with Olber's paradox is not the miscalculation of the volume of the shell at some distance from earth,and in turn the number of elements within that volume which will emit radiation,but rather with the assumption that the universe is somehow actually infinite in the first place.

Olber's paradox revealed that trying to make an assumption that the universe might be infinite is flawed, and by my understanding helped to serve as an impetus at the term to find alternative explanations for what we observed, eventually leading to the widely accepted big bang hypothesis.

And observed red shift means that objects are moving away from each other, which means that at some point they were much closer together, and rewinding the clock even further suggests that the universe began at a single point, and has been expanding outward ever since (although you can no more find a point in space that is the center of it than you can find the center of an inflated balloon anywhere on the surface of the balloon).

Bottom line: the universe is finite. Even if it were ever found to be expanding into an infinite unbounded space.

... where will the incentive for peace come from?

What evidence is there of an infinite universe that had no beginning?

Bear in mind also that if an infinite universe exists, which had no beginning, then light would also have had infinite amount of time to travel to here from absolutely everywhere else, and although the intensity of radiation that reaches a point is inversely proportional to the square of the distance to that point. the volume of space that is an average of some given distance away from a point is greater than an amount proportional to the square of the distance from that point, and so the number of things in that volume which produce radiation at that distance would be be correspondingly greater, more than cancelling out the inverse square relationship to the intensity of radiation reaching a point some fixed distance apart. Every point in the universe would be perpetually saturated in radiation that is reaching it from every other point in the universe, infinitely far away, and certainly things like life bearing planets could not exist.

Critical observation suggests that the universe is finite.

Before that happened, I hadn't realized how much of my profile was public, but I do now, and I've long since gone through the facebook privacy settings, and turned it all off so the info is no longer publicly visible. I'm just saying that the similarity between what happened to her and what happened to me is striking, especially with regards to the actual data that they obtained, and I thought that it could be the same thing. Facebook's default privacy setting suck, and not everyone necessarily realizes until something happens that they actively need to do something to keep unknown people from finding out about them. Prior to seeing this story, I also hadn't made any connection to any particular ads that I had seen on facebook, but that is also entirely possible. As I said, the reason I connected it to facebook at all was because of the image that they had, which I happen to use as my profile pic for facebook and which isn't used for anything anywhere else.

I don't think so... something strikingly similar to what she is describing happened to me as well, although in my case, it wasn't with a dating website. The website had clearly scraped facebook for its info about me. It got my full name, my city and postal code, and the image I was using for my main facebook profile pic, exactly as she described happened to her. In my case, if it hadn't been for the image associated with my name, I wouldn't have had a clue where they got the info, but facebook is the only place I happened to ever use that particular pic, so I had a pretty good idea what happened.

Experimental evidence suggests that the universe had a beginning. and that based on observation, this appears to have been about 13.8 billion years ago.

13.8 billion years ago is not an infinite amount of time. The universe is not infinite.

None of the companies that I've ever worked for exercise that principle.... in my experience, if you are incompetent at what you are asked to do, then you are fired. If you are just barely competent enough to keep your position past your probationary period, then this would come up during an annual performance review, with a critique on your work habits and what you can do to improve. If no improvement is noted over the next several months, you will be laid off. In my experience, if you are going to get promoted, you will need to go above and beyond what your job expectations are, and show the employer that you are capable of taking on greater responsibilities than what you were initially hired for, while still meeting all of the expectations of your current position. If there are no exceptions to the "Dilbert Principle", then how does that experience jive with promoting the least competent people to management, exactly?

Or are you incorrect about your assertion that there are no exceptions?