This is getting nearly incoherent. Is there 'no gold standard measure of "scientific literacy"'? Or do you know how to do it correctly? You make both arguments in the above comment.

No, you don't get to say, "That would seem to be an important factor in scientific literacy," in the face of the data - that's just assuming your conclusion. The point of the article is that this is not borne out - people who don't believe that evolution explains the development of species are nonetheless equally scientifically literate in all the other areas of science.

Um, you've just ignored the data in front of you - the data collected shows no correlation between "someone's inclination to believe religion over science" (ie their position on the evolution v creationism debate) and scientific literacy. There is no value in that measurement - it has no predictive power of the scientific literacy.

Typical, isn't it?

Yes, that's right, the science is the story here. /sarc

I wondered about this. If being untested is a problem for methods of execution, how exactly are you ever going to have a usable method of execution?

I'm sure those opposed to the death penalty like it this way; methods of execution are not usable until they've been tested and they can't be tested because they're unconstitutional. Ergo, we can't execute anyone. But the same legalistic argument presented many times above applies to them, too; the constitution does not forbid capital punishment, only cruel and unusual punishment. If you want to get rid of capital punishment, you need to change the constitution, not try to game the legal system to get what you want without the due process of changing the constitution.

I have no idea what iron phosphate is, whether it is a stable compound or whether it occurs naturally. But yes, redness in stone is usually due to the presence of iron compounds.

Yes, Julius Caesar was the end of the Roman empire, I can see that.

Go read some history, then come back and try again.

What made the concrete rediculous is the concentration of iron phosphates in the limestone used as a raw material for the concrete. At least some of this survived into the finished concrete, lending it a reddish colour, especially when it got wet. Modern concrete is prepared by a different process that effectively removes the iron phosphates, meaning modern concrete is no longer rediculous.

Honestly, get a spelling checker.

Well, it seems others could read well enough to understand the argument. They've explained it in painful detail before I got a chance.

1. Learn to read.
2. Come back and try again.

I'm not convinced by TFS. The answers are, roughly:

1. 1. Are there doors in your game? Let's say for the moment there are.
2. 2. Can the player open them? Yes. If you have doors in a 3D game and they don't behave like doors, you have failed.
3. 3. Can the player open every door in the game? Yes. See point 2.
4. 4. What tells a player a door is locked and will open, as opposed to a door that they will never open? It's a door. It opens.
5. 5. What happens if there are two players? Doors behave the same for all players. It's a door. See point 2.
6. 6. Does it only lock after both players pass through the door? See point 5.
7. 7. What if the level is REALLY BIG and can't all exist at the same time? Then your technology is not good enough to implement your vision and one or the other needs to change. See point 2.

Am I the only one who finds arbitrary restrictions in games, either because the technology couldn't cope, or because the game designer knows how you want to play better than you do, or just because, really annoying? If there's a door there, it should open. If it won't open, there shouldn't be a door there. How hard is this? Putting a door there that's never going to open just frustrates the player and destroys the suspension of disbelief. It reminds them that they're not really in this world they can see, they're in some arbitrarily limited construct devised by a "product manager" at some company to try to screw a few bob out of them. Of course there need to be some limits on the world, because the technology isn't infinite; good game design should make those limits look natural so that the player never even notices that the limit is there.

Tomb Raider games are amazingly annoying - some things you can jump and grab, some things you can't. The only way to tell is to jump and try grabbing it. If it doesn't work, maybe you can't jump and grab that thing, or maybe you just didn't quite get it right. I know, I know, this is not the point of Tomb Raider games, Lara is, but still...

Well, as I said, you can do that calculation, and if they haven't got it right you can file a tax return. If you held two jobs in a year then you might well want to do that.

We have another good taxation innovation in the UK: donations to charities are tax exempt, but the money (usually) goes to the charity, not to the taxpayer. So if you've given £1000 to charity, the exchequer will give the charity another £250, so long as you sign a simple statement to go with the donation saying you're a taxpayer and have/will pay at least that much tax in the current year.

I like the UK system - if you're an employee and you're happy with the tax your employer has withheld on your behalf, you don't have to do anything. You get a statement at the end of the year telling you how much you've been paid and how much tax has been withheld - if you think they've got it wrong, or you want to claim deductions, you file a tax return saying so.

If you really want to use this method to calculate pi, here's how to actually go about it. What you need is a hundred yards or so of string, four stakes, a stick and something that's a reasonable approximation to a right-angle (perhaps a piece of a cardboard box salvaged from the apocalypse). If you're really stuck for a right angle you can construct one with three stakes and a piece of string by putting two stakes in the ground and using the string to mark a straight line between them, then tying one end of the string to one of the stakes and tying the third stake to the string, so that length of string between them is a bit over half the distance between the stakes in the ground. Mark out a circle using this. Then mark out a second circle with the other stake in the ground as the centre. These two circles will intersect at two places - use the string to mark a straight line between them. The two straight lines you have marked will be at right angles.

Now put two stakes in the ground, about 20 yards apart. Stretch string between them. Put your right-angled thing with one side against the string and the right-angle corner at one of the stakes. Measure another piece of string to be the same length as the piece stretched between the two stakes. Tie it to a third stake and stretch it out so that it runs along the other side of the right-angled thing. You've now marked out two sides of a square with string. Repeat to form the other two sides.

Take your stick and break it down to about a foot long. Use it to mark out on the ground equally-spaced marks along each side of the square. Get two people to hold each end of a fifth piece of string across the square so that you can mark straight lines on the ground, dividing the square into a grid.

Cut your fifth piece of string to be the same length as one side of the square. Tie one end to one of the stakes. Now use the other end to mark out an arc from one corner of the square to the opposite corner.

Count the number of squares that are inside the arc and the total number of squares. Take the ratio of these two numbers and multiply it by 4. Here is your approximation to pi.

This method has many advantages over the one proposed: With the dimensions given above, it gives a considerably better answer, correct to four significant figures (3.141). It is easy to scale for better accuracy - make the square 100 yards and the stick four inches and you get six correct digits (3.141590123). You don't need to correct for uneven shot pattern. And, crucially I'd say in an apocalypse, you don't need a shotgun or ammunition and, if you do happen to have them, you can use them for useful things like fending off the zombies or hunting.