is the electron ACTUALLY doing that, or was that simply a mathematical/logical proof that correlates highly with what we see?
Ummm. physics has been all about testing for discrepancies between the two for at least a century now. There's a nobel prize waiting for anyone who can show an electron not behaving itself in accordance with the standard model.
Wikipedia articles cite sources.
Exactly, WP is an encyclopedia, academics do not cite encyclopedias, never have, and most probably never will.
Can this claim even be proven or disproven?
Silly question on a nerd site, you don't "prove" anything with science, and Jurassic park was a movie, not a scientific model.
Back then the short cut they took probably saved them weeks in rendering time, and as you say, came out looking realistic. A scientific simulation would be comparing real data points to the output, it would be able to identify the "handful of leaders" that initiate each manoeuvre of a real flock, it would definitely not be a bunch of lab coats looking at the pretty pictures and nodding.
Disclaimer: I like Crichton's stories too, but he tends to write in "false document" style and every story has the same "science gone mad" plot.
Pollution occurs wherever there is life.
Indeed, the oxygen we breath is another life-form's pollution.
we suck at knowing things, even when those things are big enough for us to see
Welcome to the real world where imperfect knowledge has been enshrined in a very useful philosophy we call "Science".
Science is just highly refined common sense. The fact that the biblical plague of smallpox has not been seen in the wild for decades convincingly demonstrates science knows enough to control it, what more do you need to know? Sure it may pop up somewhere after all these years, but even if that very unlikely* event was to occur we have already demonstrated we know how to deal with it and stop it spreading. So even though we can never know for sure that every last smallpox bug has been killed, we do know that as long as our current knowledge is passed on to the next generation, smallpox will never again cause human miseries of biblical proportions. This scant knowledge also tells us that smallpox (alone) would be a stupid choice for a biological weapon.
very unlikely* - Without special care smallpox does not survive for very long outside of a human host, the human body is it's unique natural habitat.
But we have one side ready for peaceful coexistence and the other side who wants only the total destruction of their enemies.
If you watch it for a few decades you will see the sides alternating, when Israel makes a peaceful move in conjunction with Fatah, Hamas retaliates with rockets. When Hamas declares and keeps a 2yr ceasefire, Israel lays the boots in. Israel does want a 2 state solution but only if they can veto who's running it, in the meantime they call it an occupation territory so that it doesn't screw up the demographics of a jewish state, similar to the way S.Africa denied the black a vote to keep their "white demographic" intact. Fatah has been widely seen as Israeli puppets by people in Gaza since the death of Arafat. The Israelis came close to a resolution with Arafat in the 90's but he backed out at the last minute over the "right of return", Arafat wasn't the only one punished because of that act of political disobedience.
The situation also has similarities with the British occupation of Ireland in the early 20th century, the Brits solved that mess in the 80's and 90's by talking the high moral ground of allowing full participation on the political side while simultaneously infiltrating the IRA and bringing members of the military wing to justice via criminal courts and local police. Trust has to start somewhere and Israel are supposed to be the grown up government in this equation.
Hamas cannot defeat Israel, from a purely militarily POV Hamas is a nuisance largely of Israel's and Egypt's own making. When will Isreali soldiers follow the lead of the Brits in 1980's N. Ireland and remove their riot helmets while on street patrol. Replace the live ammo with rubber, swap real cannons for water cannons, stop shifting the border, stop evicting people and bulldozing homes that have been occupied for centuries by the same family, bring your own extremist dogs to heal to show the palestinians how it's done.
I tell them to turn to the study of mathematics, for it is only there that they might escape the lusts of the flesh. -- Thomas Mann, "The Magic Mountain"