WorBlux

Right, Africans at least in theory have a greater potential variation than other continental groups, having been settled in Africa longer than any other human group has been settled anywhere on earth. The Flynn effect is just that, a culture raising it's IQ without a lot on genetic drift. An interesting study that would be possible it to track kids adopted in the U.S from impoverished nation, and compare them to their adoptive parents biological children. . Epigenetic also throws a question into the mix, how much might be set by the environment in the first trimester, or even in your mother's early development?

There is no you except in contrast to everything else. Really you and everything else is one non-dual thing. Conscious life is a game wherein this is forgotten for a little while. You wake up never having gone to sleep, and death an eternal sleep, and living is what is done between. You can't not strive any more than you can't not imagine a purple elephant right now. Coming up with reason not to strive, or worrying about the meaning of it all,is in itself a sort of striving. Life drives me to live, nothing else can.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/10/981008051724.htm The main point of this paper is that you can't sort by appearance reliably. There aren't neat lines and clear gaps , especially with traits like skin color which are genetically simple and are constantly being selected upon. There are however definite genetic clusters, that show up when you look closely. Populations also vary in the prevalence and composition of specific genes that is often due to local selection or common ancestry.

The resource line here is kind of crap. Right now the U.S. has more of some sort of resources than in 1900, hardwood forests being a good example. Technology changes what is considered a vital resource. The unlocking of new ways to use and extract energy is the primary driver of what resources are chosen and used. Before 2100 there will be a viable thorium cycle or fusion nuclear reactor. Suddenly new resources are unlocked. Just a a grain grinder and wild yeast is a key to extract additional nutrients from grains and legumes, cheap nuclear will unlock new recycling options, new raw material options, and a economic case to place chemeotrophic microorganisms at the base of out food supply change to supplement grains and legumes and displace a large chunk of meat production. You would have the option to set aside vast wildlife reverses while making room for a large population increase.

http://tbb.bio.uu.nl/rdb/books/mpd.pdf It's a logistic growth rate, not an exponential, poised to find a new equilibrium in the next few hundred years. Additionally a lot of recent population growth has been fueled by changes in that age distribution (increase of lifespan) rather than a large increase in the fertile population (women aged 20-35). http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/the-shifting-shape-of-age-around-the-world/373638/ Also fertility is decreasing, worldwide and thus the population of fertile women is definitely increasing at a decreasing rate (not exponentially)

Recipe? What's that? I usually just throw a bunch of stuff in a crockpot.

Samantha Carter in the various Stargate franchises. Main asset was her brain, but could gold her own in a tactical battle. The training isn't show, but it's implied the whole team (save Daniel at first) were very extensively trained.

2X is often too much. Microwaves are often overpowered and the time required is not a straight reflection of the energy needed, but also the time for the heat to get through the food. Also there are foods that need to stay at temp for a time. So the portion of time needed to bring the food to temp doubles, but the time you need to keep it at temp is the same. I usually go about 1 and 2/3's X and stir or flip halfway through the cook cycle.

Dense - 4 million times more J/Kg than coal, you can hold a lifetime supply of energy in the palm of your hand. Cheap - The goal is to match coal for capital costs. It's certainly cheaper than any scheme devised to store energy from renewable, or a huge trans-national grid. Plentiful - Mining, or seawater extraction, or breeder reactors with reprocessing, and mix in thorium. Bottom line is more than a thousand years vs less than 200 for fossil fuels. Clean - France has a lower number of death from air pollution than any other European country. No C02, particulates, nitrates, suftates.... The radioisotopes produced are not waste and can be processed into new fuel, medical compounds, or other useful industrial products. Additionally pushing the price of energy down, certain types of recycling suddenly become economic to do. Reliable- 24/7. Disasters are rare and due to human factors, the designs continue to improve. 11% world, but something like 90% France. Additionally much of the world doesn't have the supply chain and expertise for nuclear. You can buy an off-the shelf natural gas turbine and hood it to an off-the-shelf generator. Nothing like that exists for nuclear. Designs and plants tend to be one-off or small batches. And you can't exactly order a batch or enriched uranium on amazon.com. Public opinion against it has also played a role. Waste has been an issue at least in the U.S with the long-term storage site falling through and the prohibition on re-processing fuel. The technical issues are very much on the way to being overcome, it's just a question if politics will follow.

Good Points Light water reactors (LWR's) are fairly suspect any ways. The operate a temperatures too low for optimum thermodynamics, and are prone do sudden failure from pressure loss. The newest designs keep a 24 hour water reserve above the reactor to cool it in the event of pressure loss, additional passive cooling is incorporated that will condense steam and extend this time if conditions permit. There are gen IV designs like the MSR (molten salt reactors), LFTR (lithium flouride thorium-cycle reactor) and pebble bed reactor were fuel can be removed for the reactor via gravity and move into containment designed for passive or mostly passive. cooling. The point being we aren't stuck with the old reactor designs foreve. Removing the huge steal vessel as necessary in the LWR's will reduce capital and decommissioning costs. "Spent fuel is really a misnomer, after about 35 years all that is left is uranium, plutonium, (and a few other long halflife tarns-urnaics), Caesium and Strontium. " There is actually more fissile fuel in them than than one you put them in the reactor. At that point it's fairly feasablie to chemically process spent rods into fresh fuel. Fukashima was a tragedy that should have never happened. The reactor itself was in service far longer than it should, placements was questionable, backups were negligently designed, spent fuel was kept around far longer than it should have been. (The length of operation and lack of offside processing or stage of spent fuel rods may have been partially the fault of anti-nuclear activists that discouraged new developments) The bottom line is that nuclear is the only process that we know of dense enough, cheap enough, plentiful enough, clean enough, and reliable enough to bring all the earth's population to and industrial standard of living. Weather the U.S and Europe pursues new designs with the needed vigor, rest assured that china and India will. In and economic contest do you really think industry powered by intermittent and diffuse renewable sources can compete with a nuclear china?

To put it in physics terms the aquarium applies a normal force to counteract the water pressure. The normal force on oceans is present at the ocean floor. The point of the demonstration is to show water does not seek a straight line level. It instead seeks a minimal potential energy configuration with on any surface point you can draw a tangent to the sum of influencing force vectors. These tangent lines are within the water because the normal forces point towards each other. In systems like a water balloon the tangent lines are in the balloon/air side because the normal forces point away from each other. What happens with tires is fairly complex but doesn't scale up to well. The surface tension and cohesion of the droplets play a role, and these are insignificantly small forces compared to the weight of cubic miles of water. The rotation of earth as does change it's shape away from the simply sphere gravity alone would create and makes coralis affect, but is not why sea level works on a spheroid earth.

If you can understand the math behind https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zip9ft1PgV0 that water's level is not in respect to a straight line, but rather all of the forces it's being subject to. In the case linked to, the level is perpendicular to the vector force of gravity and the centripedal force. In the case of the oceans the level found is perpendicular to g, the force of gravity which is directed towards the earth's center of mass.

No it's not, though tea also contains quite a bit a theobromine, which does not stimulate smooth muscles (heard and intestines) quite like caffiene does.

First within the NAP and aggression must be intentional (Simple negligence is not an aggression (though gross negligence arguably is)) If I don't scoop my side walk and someone slips and breaks a bone walking up to my door, that's not aggression, even though there may be good reason to believe I am obliged to make that person whole. (Weather this obligation may be forced or not is not spelled out by the NAP and is a point of contention within libertarian philosophy) Lets generalize this situation first, and then apply the parental situation. Instead of Father, Mother, Child, and surgeon lets think of Frank, Martha, Charlie, and Sam. And instead of handicap lets just go to the worse case death. So the situation is that Sam wants to stab Martha in order prevent the probable death of Charlie. Sam intends to be a careful as possible, but there is nonetheless a real possibility of ill effects to Martha. Frank not only very fond of Charlie, but stands to gain financially or emotionally, or both should Sam stab Martha. A - Martha refuses Sam, and Charlie dies. - Franks suffers a loss but this is not an aggression, unless you can prove Martha intended Charlie to die, or acted without the slightest concern for Charlie - Childbirth is an autonomic body process. There is no more aggression in it than in defecating. That third parties may be alarmed is irrelevant, unless again there is intention or gross negligence. - Charlie dies. People die everyday, and not usually the result of aggression. It may be a consequence of the refusal, but unless the intention of the refusal is harm to Charlie, it can't count as aggression. B. - Martha refuses, and Sam stabs here anyways. Frank helps Sam in some material way. - Sam aggresses again Martha, by intentionally stabbing her against her known wishes. - Frank is an accessory to the assualt, or at the very least a conspirator in the aggression. - Charlie in neither agreeing to Sam and Franks' scheme, nor in having fault for his predicament commits no aggression. Thus the aggression score in A vs B is not 2 vs 3. but 0 vs 2. Unless... You can somehow prove the parental relationship transforms what is normally just simple negligence (a mistake of perception regarding risks of a medical intervention) into gross negligence or that it is entirely unreasonable to ignore the advice of any medical doctor during childbirth.

You may have your (sixish) pound(s) of flesh but not a drop of blood. A mother is not a slave.

I once had a cup of coffee from McDonalds that was REALLY bad, like two sips and dump it out bad. And in my three years as a cab driver I tasted a lot of mediocre coffee. McDonalds it generally pretty good though, a lot of places make batches that are too big and let it sit/burn too long.

What if the Autistic are just less likely to commit those fallacies that lead to theism? Sometimes intuition leads to the wrong results. You lead your post with a fundamental confusion. Atheisms is a different sort of thing than autism. Autism largely describes certain classes of behaviour and cognitive ability. Atheism is an assertion about the external world.

If you are going to register the company as an LLC or corporation you do need a formal discritpion of ownership and management operations. Even if you want to do a fifity-fifty partnership there are relevant questions about dissolutions, buyouts, and how to handle disbursements. At the very least you should discuses these contingencies.

1. Human testimony is by and large how we learn of things. Al religions are going to have structure and instruction, yet many do not rely on a special claim of authority. 3. An experience can't be wrong, it simply is. Is laughter right or wrong? My last sentence was not about the your self as in your body, but your self as in your concept of self. (A good http://terebess.hu/english/AlanWatts-On%20The%20Taboo%20Against%20Knowing%20Who%20You%20Are.pdf of the topic) 4. A belief may or may not be so supported. Again the question is of sufficient justification. If you keep placing grains of sand on a table when does it stop being grains and start being a pile? Yet common sense knows a pile when it sees one. And it's not that depth of tradition makes something correct, but that it is a good prima facia evidence to that fact. The common man is most usually justified in trusting to the common sense. 5. No, what I'm saying is that people are going to seek depths of spirits, a look for a meaningful and flourishing life. Not assaulting or stealing is just some of the prime basics. Do you have some great beauty, meaning, joy, or purpose in your life?

I usually get right about two standard deviations above the mean. Which is in the top couple of percent, but i'm never quite as smart as I want to be

1. You admittedly don't have a great grasp on the religious traditions of the world. I've never seen Laozi put forth as a divine being, anything other than fundamentally human. That some places treat him as particularly holy is not that surprising though if he is responsible for first communicating some of their dearest values and thought. Christianity, particularly the catholic tradition has practices for adoration and devotional rituals of the saints, those men considered exceptionally holy, yet still only men. Buddhism from the most part does not consider Buddha divine but rather simply enlightened, a state that any might achieve. (there are a few salvation sects) Some sects flat out tell you you are a Buddha. It is in general and atheistic religion that advocates a secular ethics. Even the Dalai Lama for those in that sect is simply a bodhisattva, one who has been enlightened, yet chooses to return to help others. (by tradition venerated, but still not considered a god.) Quakers stressed a direct relationship with God and his light in all people. Ya they came from the framework of the bible, but they are far from the only ones within Christianity that emphasised an inner tradition. (the Christ within, the radical compatibility between the human and the divine...) The Hindu's speak of Atman, the soul which is a part the Brahman or ultimate realtiy. The overtly monotheistic religious born out of Zorastoricism (Judiasm, Christianity, and Islam), which was born of a culture of the first empires are on the surface about a divine ruler of the universe, yet they do contain their own brands of asceticism here and there. These are the one that tend to stand structured as you accuse, yet not entirely. 2. Ok! 3. Ok! I am not religious, and I am not saying you ought believe any of them. If you are the sort looking to believe I advise to stay far away from fundamentalism, and look to a sect with a significant history of philosophical inquiry and asceticism. What I'm saying people are going to believe, and what they believe tends to be the core values of a culture, that they can and do change. Pick and choose, and make a few things up is generally how new religions come about. Neo-paganism is almost entirely made-up. Every now and then a religion has to stop and ask "Is this working or not", however a religion can't do that directly, it would just spoil the game so you get they slow evolution and selection and deep memory hole. It can't be quite so overtly self-correcting as science, but it tends to work anyways. (in building wider societies). Nonetheless there is something of value in religions, for which no amount or words and abstraction can get you to. That is direct experience of who you really are and the realization of your "self" as a hallucination. 4. Belief, a mental attitude of acceptance or assent toward a proposition without the full intellectual knowledge required to guarantee its truth. Believing is either an intellectual judgment or, as the 18th-century Scottish Skeptic David Hume maintained, a special sort of feeling with overtones that differ from those of disbelief. (Encyclopaedia Britannica Online) Something one accepts as true or real; a firmly held opinion: (Oxford dictionary) Belief is the state of mind in which a person thinks something to be the case, with or without there being empirical evidence to prove that something is the case with factual certainty. (Wikipeadia.org) I've been doing this philosophy thing a long time, so believe me, I'm not just pulling stuff out of my ass. One of your big issues is with the question of how religions can justify their beliefs, even the ones that you would otherwise agree with, correct? National Socialism in Germany lasted two decades, hardly a successful tradition. National Socialism was at the time a very large break from the established traditions and religions of the time. Even if it were, see the caveat that you can't be justified by tradition in face of strong evidence to the contrary. . Murder and War and economic ruin, not really the results of a good system. 5. Of course it would be ridiculous, but that is one of the few alternatives to having a religion or quasi-religion that exhibits and expounds upon what philosophy and culture has shown to be important. The examples you give, the dangers of hot stoves and long falls do not require and great quantity of courage, intellect or honesty to comprehend. Dis George Washington all you like, but he was a real-life action Hero. A society needs role models, Heroes, characters to aspire for, to dream about. Parables and examples of those that were damned. If you will, a subconscious that acts as a well of vitality and creativity. Mythologies don't have to be false, but they do need to set apart from the mundane. I'm not sure what's going to show up in more rational and free society, but I'm sure its not going to be pure dry empiricism.

People are lazy, and the division of labor can bring a wealth of benefits. We should expect everyone will know the basics and rules of thumb simply by growing up within a particular society. You don't need most people to be able prove a theory of morality from the ground up. There are things that are mostly arbitrary, but provide the most value when everyone or most everyone agrees on them: left or right side of the road?, pounds or kilos?, scientific names. What exactly counts as a university? Who is really married, and what does than mean exactly? How do you collect a debt or seek recompense for a tort? How is common property establish and who is it common to thereafter? Do particular neighbouring property claims require separation to allow general access, and minimize direct conflict. How do you register or lookup titles to real property? How do we get our address on this computer network? Of course some of these issues and answers are going to become the core of the cultural identity and local custom. These are the sort of things a religion tends to latch onto. There's nothing wrong with a library. The issue is this case there is no incentive to really ask those types of questions. But I think you mistake the purpose of that library, which was not education and access to information (as you pointed out there are easier ways to do that). Rather I guess it's simply a status symbol, thinking more like "Every nice suburb has a nice library, so since we're still a really nice suburb, we ought to have a really nice library. It's really rather odd and funny, so let's just laugh at it. A good religion though could provide deeper insight and encourage people to get the joke.

It's called melanin.

1. Counterexamples are Toaism and some sects of Buddhism. Quakers have long been non-violent and non-authoritarian. Some early Baptist advocated freedom of conscious in religious and political matters. Additionally most or the command of religions are either negative in nature steering people away from the most profound fuck-ups a person can make or about observance and ritual. 2. Even rejecting the idea of an external personal God, I find there is also something fundamentally odd about you and me, rational beings, existing in a blind mechanical universe. 3. Religion is a combination of a traditions, doctrines, myths and practices. It is not simply a scripture and it's not set in stone. Back in the day belonging to the group, the culture was life and death. A few people got carried away sure. 4. No there is a rationality behind it. One of the key roles of Religion is/was to give the REASONS as the why things are as they are and how they came to be that way. A belief is simply anything you give assent to. Knowledge consists in a true, justified belief. It seems that your issue is that while some of the beliefs you may agree with and they may be true, but you criticize the method of justification. I, not so much. Tradition and culture whatever you may say of it has stood the test of time and I think for the most part can be sufficient justification for a belief absent strong evidence to the contrary. 5, I don't think everyone is cut out for, or has time to become a philosopher. A free society is going to need traditions, doctrines, myths, and practices that reinforce, guide, and explain it's culture. This may or may not be overtly deistic. Sovereign just means not subject to some other's law. "Love your neighbour" if consistently held does point to anarchy, and there have historically been Christian groups that were either overtly anarchic or seriously leaned that way.

It's and excellent course, but geared towards people accepted to the MIT computer science course and assumes you have some sort of programing experience. Simply Scheme is a good precourse for the newcomer if SICP is desired. http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/ss-toc2.html