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Comment Incorrect (Score 1) 556

You have that a little wrong. God *can* (in principle) be proven. If the sky breaks open, choirs of angels break forth, a 10km-long arm reaches down from the skies and an 8km golden-haired, bearded face looks down upon humanity and utters words of unshakable truth...then God is proven

No you have only proven an entity is capable of that. You have not provided evidence that that entity is a god or similar avatar. Misquoting clark : sufficientely advanced science can look like magic. How do you prove that entity you describe is a god, or in reality is not but a very advanced technologically civilisation with very advanced tech, with an unknown agenda wanting to make us believe they have/are god ? You can't.

God is essentially unknowable, as no matter what feat it does, there could be a technological ET having mastered tech being able to reproduce that. God can neither be proven nor disproven, except maybe if you meet him after death, instead of oblivion.

Comment Presumption of innocence (Score 4, Insightful) 181

"without knowing how the drive "failed" the court cannot prove that there was no evidence to destroy."

correct me if I am wrong, but AFAIR the US justice system, It is up to the prosecution side to prove there was evidence on teh HD, not on the side of the defense there was not. Therefore from the court in absence of proof of existence of evidence, the assumption should be by default there was no evidence. IF the prosecution has proof tehre was evidence they are free to provide them. But until then by presumption of innocence, the court has to assume the recyclage was lawful. Otherwise if the presumption was it was destruction of evidence, then it amounts of a presumption of guiltiness.

Comment Not true everywhere (Score 4, Informative) 183

Especially not true in many countries where Uber was banned or is in the process of scrutinity. I have never had any dirty in Seoul, or in germany where I live, or in england (as a matter of disclosure I had a few dirty taxi in NY, true, but the vast majority of taxi I took in Dallas or other metropole in teh US were squicky clean). I had a few dirty taxi in Paris, but that was so long ago, and the few taxi I took in the last decade in france were clean too.

Anyway at least for germany I support the regulation and uber being forced to obey it. After all we do not have a medaillon system like in the US, everybody with the proper training driver licence, and the proper governemental check of their money counter, as well as the proper insurance (commercial passenger transport insurance) can become a taxi. In my city we have a lot of different taxi companies, some being simply a single person having repainted their own car (and having the proper papers). Nothing outrageous really, in fact those regulations make a lot of sense.

Comment Not really (Score 1) 38

See if you increase the temperature to overcome some bonds which are too strong, you get confronted that other bonds become too weak (remember for any kT you have a temperature gaussian spread so your bonds are likely not surviving the high end) and you seriously limit some of the chemistry we know (oxy/reduction, what most likely any life is based on). C is good because it allows for a zone of relative stability which can still be broken. I am not a high pressure or high temperature chemist, but the few I know shows me that such island of stability does not exists in the "high" zone. Keep in mind my expertise is QM, so not the subject at hand which I know only from my studying years.

Comment Case against... (Score 1) 138

Email can be said to be a copyrighted work. They are also distributed only to one person, other person do not have the distribution right. Distirbution right is given temporary to an itnermediate to facilitate the email reaching its goal. Frankly I will take the contrary direction : DMCA is over reaching in all case, but using it for email is not an overreach.

Comment The reason we search for C life is simple (Score 2) 38

Barring utterly unknown chemistry, other atoms offer limited chemistry, bonds too strong, bonds too weak, limited atoms to which they can bond. That's why we concentrate on carbon based chemistry, with Oxygen or sulfure. Sure we could be missing something, but is it likely ? We have to concentrate on what we know we CAN find, as we can't send too many intruments out there like on the mars rover.

If the approach followed here allows for a good detection of KNOWN organic life with p0.05, then it sounds a good approach.

Comment agnostic atheist (Score 4, Insightful) 755

I contend that anyone who achieves true objectivity on this issue will opt for agnosticism and just leave the debate behind.

Agnosticism alone is only about the contention that the existence of gods are unknowable and says nothing about the belief of the person.

The real category are IMNSHO :
* gnostic theist , I believe in god(s) existance and I know god(s) existence are knowable
* gnostic atheist , god(s) non existence is demonstrable (and logically do not believe in gods existence)
* agnostic theist , I believe in god(s) existance but god(s) existence cannot ever be demonstrated e.g. it is faith only, all the rest miracle and so forth is bunk
* agnostic atheist , god(s) are a construction of human mind, but this cannot ever be demonstrated to the point of knowing that god(s) do not exists.

In the very end if you shrug and say I do not know, but live your life without any token prayer , then you are de facto agnostic atheist. There are a few agnostic theist I met, they are quite rare, the vast majority of self declared "agnostic" I met, are actually agnostic atheist, but unwilling to admit the atheist part to themselves. I am an agnostic atheist by the way.

Comment They stop the practice (Score 1) 349

Some airline have an "efraud" concept where for example if you try to take leg out of order, you are refused check in and even refund. Among others. Note that they are fully in their right, as you accept term and conditions, and among those conditions is that you will respect the fare conditions.

Comment Armchair denial is not questionning science (Score 2) 719

If you have data, make a model, and then either make experiment or prediction on model and come with a different result than the actual science, youa re doing science you can PUBLISH and then you are a climate skeptic because you have reason to.

Climate change denier, usually the same people which respond to criticism with "hey science is a religion you can't question it" are usually armchar people havign read a blog or two or have a poltical ground and have no fucking clue about the real state of climate science state.

How many people worldwide can be called climate science skeptic ? AKA : publish article and have data model to back it up ? Not many. I can count them maybe on a hand or two. ALL the rest are denier which throw any excuse up and they are present by many many order of magnitude more than the previous group (including the false criticism "established science cannot be questionned" ... It can, but with a proper data and evidence. Not with bullshit from a sofa).



And this is essentially why your criticism is not warranted. Science is about being constantly questionned by other falsifiable science hypotheses. Not by idiot in a chair repeating some conservative BS they saw somewhere abou solar flare or volcanoe.

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