JackC

I can relate, for different reasons... I've always felt that the dial of an analog is more intuitive... it's a quick visual reference that doesn't require mental arithmetic to translate. It seems (disclaimer: I've not actually used a digital) that the digital would require more thought in an emergency situation. It's an individual preference thing too; I prefer analog watches, speedometers, tachometers, fuel gages... in those cases I have used digital and find it does feel like it takes longer to translate. Numbers are more abstract, less intuitive, to me. Others may diagree completely, hence neither has come to dominate the sport! These are my thoughts too. You don't actually have to read an anologue alti, you can just glance at where the needle is and know roughly how far along you are in the skydive. With a digital, you have to actually read the numbers.

Pull them all out, clean and inspect them properly, then renew or refit as needed with new grease. Anything else is a half-assed bodge.

My rig hasn't got an RSL, but if it did I'd leave it connected. My next rig will have a Skyhook.

That Obama has done more good in 4 days than Bush did in 8 years? Glad to be of service.

Cult of personality. It could be. "Asshole" is a personality trait that Bush does much more convincingly than Obama seems to. "Messiah" is a personality trait Obama seems to have down pat, with the willing enthusiasm of the press. Well people tend to like it when you do more good in your first 4 days of office than Bush did in 8 years.

Cult of personality. It could be. "Asshole" is a personality trait that Bush does much more convincingly than Obama seems to.

There's a village in the Shetland Isles calld Twat.

This track is much more doable than it sounds. Tuning is DADGCE

Sorry Tone.

Well, Britain ceased to be responsible for Israel after the Israelis declared independance in 1948 which presumably meant they want to look after their own shit. But if you think Israeli independence should be ignored, should we also ignore the US declaration of independence? We could help you out with Gitmo then. Deal?

Bush was your chimp, you clean up his shit.

Evidence can present itself in many different forms. Arguments are useless when concepts are foreign. Intelligence that allows us to observe a perfectly ordered universe ,has to be something other than coincidence. There has to be some unifying equation that describes the interchangeability of energy, matter, time, space, and intelligence, since they all came from the same place. The sum of that equation would of course be God. ... Good grief. Non-sequitur piled on top of assumption piled on top of wishful thinking. I think you've demonstrated my point brilliantly.

Correct, and perhaps when it is revised after futher understanding of blackholes and dark matter, those revisions could extend to an understanding of God who created them.... I very much doubt that. Scientists aren't in the hocus pocus business. Any scientist who invokes god would need to actually produce this god and let all the other scientists scientifically prod and poke it to see what falls out. And apparently god won't stand for being poked.

No. It's the complete lack of evidence or even a coherent argument for the existence of god that makes the god hypothesis highly improbable. It's got bugger all to do with certainty.

You see, people hear phrases like uncertainty principle, wave-particle duality and probablistic, and they think that quantum mechanics means you can't prove anything so there is enough wiggle room for any old crap to be true. QM has to be the single most misunderstood subject on the face of the planet. It's a crying shame.

Only if you define illusion to mean real. An electron may be described by a wavefunction and have wave-like properties (under certain circumstances) but it is still as real as real can be. To say that everything is just waves and therefore an illusion is to misunderstand quantum mechanics.

Right, so "keep drinking the koolaid" implys either that you're on drugs or that you are otherwise mentally imballanced, thereby playing the player rather than the ball.

Nah, just plug the elevator cable into the motor that drives the lift platform. It would power itself then. Free jumps for all!

I think we're in general agreement. A lot of science, in broad strokes, should in principle be explainable to the average person. I was just commenting that the average person won't understand most of that science without putting in quite a bit of effort. I'm all for lex parsimoniae, I think the unnecessary details should be omitted from a first attempt at deriving any theory, it's often the only way you can start. The problem I have is that in order to get the apathetic populus to make any attempt at understanding science, many of the necessary details are also omitted. So much so that science as taught (even at high school level) is dumbed down to the point where it is no longer the same subject (it's a bit like alcohol-free beer: it ain't beer, it's merely beer flavoured drink).

The more you learn and dig, the more unbelievable and contradictory it gets. The which is correct, SR or quantum mechanics? Now you haven't learned or dug very far have you? SR and QM seek to answer different questions so it isn't an either/or situation. But both are correct in so far as they agree with experiment and have excellent predictive powers.

I agree that it would be very nice to be able to explain even the most complicated theories to the average human but I just don't think it is possible. One of my big beefs with popular science literature is that a lot of it isn't very well written and people often get the wrong end of the stick when they read it. They then criticise science for what they think it is instead of what it actually is. How often do you hear the uncertainty principle misused? Or people bleating on about 11th dimension "gravitrons" [sic]? The complaint that science has to be taken on faith may be a false one, but for many people that's exactly what they do. This is because they do not understand the building blocks or why the theory is the way it is and they lack the tools necessary to find out. But they've read "A Brief History of Time". My old prof used to say: "You've got physics with calculus, physics without calculus, and physics without physics". He was right. You can't understand the subject unless you first understand the language, and the language of physics is maths.

I cannot simply choose to believe something that I find unbelievable. If I tried I would just be deluding myself since at the core of it, religion just doesn't make any sense. Science can seem unbelievable for those that just have a superficial understanding of it. To get to the bottom of why science says the things it does, takes a lot of work. Sometimes it takes years of study to colate all of the knowledge you need to see how it fits together. But everything science says is based on empirical evidence. Whatever theory you pick, it has to be based on what you can observe. If the experiment says no, the theory is wrong, end of. You might say that religion also takes years to understand and maybe it does, but sooner or later you always end up at the brick wall of faith. Then you can go no further.

What on earth makes you think it's a choice? One cannot simply choose to believe that which is unbelieveable.

What the fuck are you on about?

From what you've written, it seems pretty obvious that you are saying that in the event of no evidence, D would be justified in falling in behind A, B and C because they are deemed to be "trustworthy". That is argumentum ad populum by definition and your continual denial wont change that. Exactly the same. If you want me to believe something, you will have to convince me that it is true. If you cannot do that, then your opinion is worthless no matter who you are. Like I said, bullshit detection is one of the main uses of logic. What they believe is their business, not mine. But you won't catch me believing it unless they can convince me that it is true by producing a coherent argument backed up with facts. Put up or shut up.