JackC

To me that ruins a good whiskey and a good coffee.

Dalwhinnie is probably my favourite single malt Scotch Whisky, but I also quite like Lagavulin and Cardhu. Now Glenfiddich on the other hand is total shite and I wouldn't run my zippo on it.

I agree that the WMD threat probably wasn't the true reason but it was the stated reason. If we went to war for reasons other than the the stated one, that would constitute a deception. If someone intentionally deceives knowing that lives will be lost as a result, I'd call that pretty fucking despicable and definately worthy of an inquiry.

That's one for the list.

That's pretty much it. Saying you believe in the Big Bang is a bit like saying you believe in maps. The map is not the terrain and maps can be wrong, but they still have their uses. The question is what do you mean by "beleive in the big bang"? Believe the maths? Beleive that the Big Bang explains the evidence? Believe that the Big Bang actually happend? Believe that the Big Bang happened to save my immortal soul? Believe that the Big Bang loves me and wants me to be happy? What? The believing that scientists do and the believing that the religious do, ain't the same believing.

That is probably it. Except that the opportunity required rather a lot of persuasion to get it to present itself. That persuasion, or spin (aka lies) is why impeachment is an option. I personally think it is wrong to have a standing intention to go to war and simply wait for the opportunity to present itself, but it is downright unforgivable to lie in order to force that opportunity.

Here's a tip to save us all a lot of time: If you want to know what atheists think about the big bang or the 2nd amendment or last tuesday weather, just look up the definition of atheist in a dictionary, it will tell you exactly what the official atheist line of thinking is on every subject in the entire history of subjects.

You can say that a photon has an equivalent mass given by m=hf/c^2 where h is Planck's constant, f is the frequency of the photon and c is the speed of light. Not that it's much use to say that. The velocity needed to escape the gravitational pull of a massive object is related to its mass. Once you get to a critical mass, the escape velocity becomes larger than the speed of light and that's the critical mass of a black hole. The photon can't travel faster than the speed of light which isn't fast enough to escape the gravitational pull of the object. DoubleH answered that one, I'm fairly sure he's right. Energy and mass are related but I'm not sure it's right to say that energy creates mass and vice versa. As far as what kind of energy caused the four fundamental forces, well, fuctifino. The mass of the star is the critical factor I think but I don't really know about this one. Mass is not the same in all reference frames. A particle moving at a sufficiently high speed (high kinetic energy) will have a larger mass according to a static observer than it would have in it's own reference frame. So an electron with tiny mass in it's own reference frame would appear to have a huge mass if it whizzed past you fast enough. If it went fast enough it could have enough apparent mass to be called a black hole. But that's not the same as having a "real" black hole in the lab. Strangelets (I think) are made of up, down and strange quarks. Quarks come in 6 flavours of which "up", "down" and "strange" are three of them. The standard model of particle physics assigns non-integer charges to quarks, and matter is assembled out of these components so that charge for the assembled particle adds up to an integer. Strangelets are one way of assembling quarks so that the maths adds up. So they should be theoretically allowed to exist, we just need a really big-ass particle accelerator to stick the parts together. It's a test to see if the Standard Model is right, cos it might not be (and probably isn't, but that's another story). But it's late, I've had beer and that could be a load of bollocks. It's been a while since I did any of that stuff. Night night.

in the same way as Amnesty works tirelessly to free political prisoners the world over, we should work to free the children of the world from the religions which, with parental approval, damage minds too young to understand what is happening to them. from http://richarddawkins.net/article,118,Religions-Real-Child-Abuse,Richard-Dawkins I think he has a point.

Windows can sometimes develop behavioural issues without actually having any virus or malware problems at all. Windows just gets bloated after a while by virtue of how many programs and websites mess around with the system registry when they have no business going anywhere near it. The best solution is to get comfortable with doing a fresh install of the OS every so often. I keep all my data backed up to a removable hard drive containing a folder with all the downloads and install.exe programs I need to configure my system. I can format the PC HD, load a fresh OS and get all my basic software back up and running in about an hour.

Would you have the same objection if an anti-gun organization was campaigning in that county to influence gun-control issues? When the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens get infringed, that's EVERYBODY's business. There is no "local" exception. Let's follow your logic, and presume that some town wanted to override the 4th Amendment, and allow unwarranted, no probable cause, searches of homes, for the sake of crime-fighting. Would that then be okay with you? It shouldn't. Constitutional rights are for everybody. They are not subject to override by local jurisdictions. Are you listening, Obama? I've never been to Orange County, I'm not even American but I could still vote as many times as I could find IP addresses. Is that OK with you?

While we're on the subject.... http://youtube.com/watch?v=oqERBkwBSsY http://youtube.com/watch?v=P_S2Sbp8xfY&feature=related

My point is not that I'm an atheist, but that you make no sense. Gods plural? There are literally thousands of them and they are all indistinguishable from their own non-existance. So why wouldn't I dismiss them? If you're talking about the omnimax Abrahamic God in particular then I dismiss that for the same reasons I dismiss square circles; the concept is nonsensical.

How can a post contain as many words as this and yet remain completely devoid of all meaning? Seriously, this is a fantastic demonstration of why I'm an atheist. Anything that motivates people write stuff as incomprehensible as this and yet still maintain the belief that they're talking sense, really cannot be a good thing.

Indeed. Religion might not be the only reason why Catholics and Protestants are slotting each other in Northern Ireland, but it sure does put an easy identifier on the "enemy". Religion isn't the real reason though, stupidity is.

I love this game. Totally addictive http://thpinfo.com/2008/numptyphysics/

That's fine. Jack doesn't get the self-righteous.

So what's the story? Are Democrats supposed to be the party of the unbelieving Infidels and Republicans the party of the righteous Christians? US politics is more fucked up than I thought.

You can? Do you use Babelfish or Google translate?

Dude, that's all you do.

Black holes have entropy, and that entropy increases as matter is absorbed into it. For a given volume, black holes have the maximum possible entropy. The entropy can be calculated precisely by: S = (pi·k·A·c^3)/(2·G·h) where S is the entropy of the black hole, k is Boltzmann's constant, A is the surface area of the black hole, c is the speed of light, G is the gravitational constant, and h is Planck's constant Thus highlightling the problem of thinking disorder=entropy. Pop-science fails again.

Oooh, that's a gotta sting.

No thanks. Too technical for a non-scientist like me. How about a dictionary (American Heritage)? Mockingbird, it is blatantly obvious that you do not understand entropy or the implication for the universe. Quite frankly, I am suprised you think a dictionary would be sufficient to grasp even the most basic understanding of the subject. I'm sure you'd complain if I read the dictionary definition of christian and decided I knew everything about christians and the implications for the world. If you are going to discuss this stuff you really should do your homework because you really do not seem to understand any of it. And please, learn from reputable scientific sources. That depends. Some decays, others appear to be stable. I've not read Jastrow's book so I have no idea what he said but if you thought he said that entropy means that all matter must decay into non-matter, I think you are mistaken. Beware of pop-science books though, badly written ones can be misleading. And christian apologetic sources are virtually always misleading, usually intentionally so.

I didn't write the definition. And it's similar to a lot of words in that it has more than one meaning. I know you didn't write it but nonetheless it is a pretty poor definition because anything can be used as evidence of anything. It is so broad that it loses all meaning and isn't what most people would understand by the word evidence. If trees are evidence of god, then spaghetti is evidence of the flying spaghetti monster. A pair of pliers is evidence of the tooth fairy. If people insist on being so loose with the definition of words, how the hell are we supposed to know what they are talking about? I'll go with the definition that says "Evidence in its broadest sense includes anything that is used to determine or demonstrate the truth of an assertion". A tree does not help determine or demonstrate the truth of the statement "God exists". It does however demonstrate the truth of the statement "trees exist".

Please, please, for the love of God, stop getting your science from creationist websites. Haven't been to any creationist websites; sorry to disappoint. I know what entropy means and implies for the universe. Read me