The other problem is who decides the criteria for being "super"? Different people find different teachers effective. For example I know that Feynman was regarded by most as a "super teacher" but I hated his books and found his explanations needlessly complicated and far more confusing than most other textbooks. In short I found him a terrible teacher. I realize I'm in the minority with that but the point is that not everyone will agree on who a super teacher is because different people learn differently. This is why you need to learn from a variety of teachers and not just the most popular.

Not unless it is a lot bigger. The one that occurred around the time of the extinction of the Dinosaurs gave rise to the Deccan Traps.

To put the scale of this extinction-level eruption in context the article mentions that the new, larger chamber under Yellowstone contains enough magma to fill the Grand Canyon which according to here is 4,170 cubic kilometres. The Deccan trap eruptions produced 512,000 cubic kilometres over 30k years. A Yellowstone eruption would certainly cause a lot of devastation over a large area of North America but its peanuts compared to an extinction level event.

...and yet the vaccine prevents those people who already had Chicken Pox as a child being re-exposed to it the virus later in life which has been shown to prevent shingles in adults.

Now I could accuse you of spreading lies and deceit but really that would be behaving exactly like the anti-vaxxers: adopting a preconceived notion, ignoring all scientific evidence to the contrary and getting mad at anyone who disagrees. So how about we adopt a more scientific stance which is that for the specific case of the Chicken Pox vaccine there is no clear evidence that it is a net benefit to individuals or society over just catching the disease as a child and recovering? The risk of the vaccine is not measurably less than the risk of the disease and there are clear questions about the net affect of susceptibility of adults to shingles: it might be good or it might be bad but we really don't have a clue either way.

My position is that if there is no clear evidence for any benefit from a medical procedure then you don't do it. If that changes with more studies and they can show that there is a clear benefit then great I'd be 100% behind it. In the meantime I would argue that it is unethical to coerce people into undergoing a medical procedure for which there is no evidence of a net benefit to them or to society. Worse, because in this one specific case, the evidence is lacking you give the anti-vaxxers ammunition which they can use to shoot at the cases where the vaccine is incredibly beneficial and absolutely should be taken by everyone.

It also turns out there is another reason this vaccine is bad. Older adults in contact with children who have chicken pox get a boost to their immune response to the vaccine which helps prevents shingles. The vaccine prevents this from happening: see this.

No, go an see a doctor fours times at 20 year intervals AND remember to ask for this shot because unless you go to the same doctor throughout your entire life it is unlikely that they will.

Correct - once you have the virus you never lose it and shingles can emerge if something compromises your immune system. However if you have the vaccine and then the immunity wears off and you are exposed to the virus again then you can get shingles even without a compromised immune system.

Umm...so how is it wrong to say that Shingles and Chicken Pox are the same disease given that they are caused by the same virus? All you stated I already knew. Indeed Shingles often emerges when the immune system is compromised.

However if you had the vaccine and so never caught Chicken Pox. Then your immunity wears off (which does not happen with Chicken Pox since you have the virus inside you) then when you then get exposed to the virus again you will have no immunity and so end up with Shingles EVEN IF your immune system is fully operational.

If the measles vaccine does not work then why is the rate of cases so much lower than before the vaccine? At this point the vaccine has been given to so many people the evidence that it works is because nobody worries about their child dying or going blind from measles any more... unless there is some reason why this was due to some other factor?

So should it be illegal to go out in public if you have a cold? People with weaker immune systems, such as the elderly, could die if they caught your cold.

A better law to fix this problem would be to allow kids to consent to having vaccinations without parental knowledge. As it is this law will encourage anti-vaxxers to home school and spread their ignorance to the next generation. Allowing kids to consent once they are, say 10, would let you educate them about the advantages of vaccines and then let them have the benefits without their idiot parents getting in the way. It also means that there is no need to force anyone to undergo a medical procedure which they do not want.

It ends at the point that you force someone else to have a medical procedure for your benefit. Anti-vaxxers are ignorant idiots but you do not cure ignorance or stupidity by making it illegal (tempting though that is)...you cure it through education. However the ironic thing about this law is that it encourages these idiots to home school their kids where they will be able to propagate their ignorance to the next generation.

The moment you force people to have medical procedure you are on a very slippery slope. Vaccines are incredibly safe but there is no zero risk medical procedure: one in every N million vaccines will produce severe complications and sometimes even death. So, to flip the argument around, how many people's lives is it fair to risk to reduce the risk to yourself? Now I realize that this is not entirely fair since, by not having the vaccine the risk if they catch the disease it prevents is far higher but the fact that either way there is some risk means that the proper solution is to educate people about the risks and then let them make their own decision which, will hopefully be to get vaccinated. If not then why stop at forcing vaccinations? Think how many lives could be saved by forced live kidney and liver donation!

The OP got the figures very wrong - there is no way a vaccine with a 1 in 30k chance of death would be approved. However lurking in all that misinformation there is a point struggling to get out. The rate of severe complications and/or death from the Chicken Pox vaccine is probably comparable to the risk of serious complications or death from the disease at least to within the limits of statistical analysis because the risk from either is so incredibly low.

There is also something particular to Chicken Pox which makes the vaccine even less desirable: length of immunity. If you actually catch Chicken Pox you get immunity for life. However if you vaccinate against it you need to continuously remember to get boosters - I believe currently every 10 or 20 years - otherwise your immunity may lapse. What is bad about this is that Chicken Pox for adults is known as Shingles which is far nastier than Chicken Pox. So in this case taking the vaccine to protect against a very mild childhood disease may lead to an increased chance of a more serious disease later in life...unless you set a 20 year alarm so you never forget a booster shot!

Pushing extremely dubious vaccines like Chicken Pox is a very bad idea. There are very legitimate questions you can ask about the value of this vaccine - it's certainly not dangerous but it is of very questionable benefit. The problem is that idiots then make the illogical leap that if one vaccine is dubious they all must be.

Surely the more appropriate answer would have been: "That? Oh it's nothing.".

Technically it should actually be "farthest" since it refers to a physical distance whereas "furthest" means most distant in a figurative sense. For example you say "furthest from the truth" not "farthest from the truth" but "Cape Spear is the farthest east you can go in Canada" not "furthest east". So to summarize: "furthest-most" should not have a hyphen, should not have the 'most' added since it is redundant and finally should actually be "farthest" since it refers to a physical distance.

As for the origin of the "cold spot" I understood that it was completely statistically consistent with quantum fluctuations in the early universe. So how about we rule out that explanation first before coming up with multiple universes or other crazy stuff.

I bet they would if you went to regions concerned. The holocaust is well known in the west because we were all involved in the war that was fought to stop it and many families lost members fighting it. We were far less involved in the Armenian genocide, Pol Pots regime or the countless other genocides (like the more recent one in Uganda). That does not make them any less terrible but it does make them far less a part of our history than WW2.

Isn't this the crux of the debate though: is scientology a religion or just bad science fiction? Indeed perhaps this is a good way to look at it. If scientology is classed as a religion then why not Trekkies or Star Wars fans? There is just as much "religious" fervour in those groups, if not more, and the science fiction is better written.