"Normally balls wouldn't be perfectly spherical but we'll get more into testicular deformation later "



HHAHAHHAHA way to love your job.

>> ^Enzoblue:
Don't wanna be 'that guy', but this was really poorly done in my opinion. Way too few interstellar references, the orbit lines made it all too unreal, and the sense of scale I got was way out of whack. Where's the Orion nebula? Where's Andromeda in relation to us? No, we just zoom out and back in and learn nothing. Check me off as disappointed.


Agreed. Plus: It gives the wrong impression the universe is spherical.

>> ^deathcow:
I'd say YES all stars are round. Planets become spherical (or oblately spheroidal ; ) at much smaller sizes than required to become stars. So naturally, stars would be spherical or oblate spheroids for very fast rotating stars.


Aren't some stars are oscillating in vibrational modes? That would mean they have a constantly changing shape:

http://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2008/09/25/0803748105.DCSupplemental/SM2.gif

Though I guess that means spheroidal and oblately spheroidal.

I'd say YES all stars are round. Planets become spherical (or oblately spheroidal ; ) at much smaller sizes than required to become stars. So naturally, stars would be spherical or oblate spheroids for very fast rotating stars.

This is *geek comedy at it's finest!

---------------

A chicken farmer finds his chickens keep dying mysteriously. He goes and hires a Veterinarian. After a week, the vet comes back and says "I can't really help you, but you should contact my friend the Biologist, he might be able to help."
So the farmer calls the Biologist and after another week, he comes back saying "I'm sorry, I don't have a solution, but if you call my friend the Physicist, he could probably help you out."
So the farmer calls the Physicist, waits a week, then another and another, and finally the Physicist calls him back and says "Good news! I have a solution for you, but it only works for spherical chickens in a vacuum."

---------------

A university asks several departments to come up with a way to prove all odd numbers are prime.
The Math department said: "1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, the rest is proven through Induction."
The Physics department said: "1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is an experimental error, 11 is prime and so on..."
The Computer Science department said: "1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime...."

---------------

I could go on, but the amount of funny per joke decreases exponentially over time...

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>> ^videosiftbannedme:
'Transformer pizza dough' is the closest thing I could come to something funny. And it's not funny.


An apt description, nonetheless.

It reminds me of Gossamer's hair...





Full Sift here.

O shit, they had climatologists in the 300,000BC! Hell, they even measured CO2 and ice levels in the dark ages, black plague don't slow those folks down for science! The chart don't lie, we are all screwed! Let us consume our way out of this problem quickly!

I hope your sarcasm detectors are ringing, I was being quite hyperbolic. Measurements from prehistorical record are always intriguing to me, people can be very smart at finding the marks of the distant past in rocks or ice. However, you have to take that evidence for what it is it is, unverifiable. You can make neat models and predictions off it and try and get a sense of scale and scope for current models; trying to balance the equations that aren't working now with a window into the past. But you are peaking into what is essentially unscientific (I mean unverifiable). There is simply no way to be certain that evidence left behind in ice or certain geological formations hasn't undergone massive change over the hundreds of thousands or even hundreds of millions of years that the evidence sample is supposed to represent empirically (or the extrapolations gained from this are accurate).

The bits of wisdom uncovered from the vast long history of this world are vital, but you always have to weight that with your rational skepticism which I feel is lacking in most summations of doomsday scenarios. To believe that no such levels of CO2 or ice melt values have EVER existed places far to much credibility on something that is essentially unverifiable (that isn't just for 100k years ago, but 500).

I think concern is wise, I think prudence is advised, I think writing a paper saying we are all fuxed and run for the hills is irresponsible. Empiricism is dead, long live manipulated staticism. (assuming a spherical cow, let us calculate its volume)

>> ^Fusionaut:
History of the universe:
.... nothing...BLAAAAM!!! PROTONS NUETRONS PROTONS NUETRONS ELECTRONS

.. that's pretty close from what I've read



Let me put it like this: I understand your concern.

The central point, which was the point of my earlier post, is the fact that, however unlikely, outlandish and ridiculous this all sounds, it is based upon, as far as ANY human being can tell, irrefutable evidence, and lots of it.

A famous example, and a favorite quote-mine among creationists is this sentence from Charles Darwin:

"To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree."

What creationists always omit, of course, is that this sentence is a build-up and an introduction to an explanation of exactly HOW the eye COULD in fact have evolved by natural selection, an explanation that has, in large part, been confirmed by tests and evidence later.

Anyway, the point is this: I could admit, as Darwin partially did, that the ENTIRE theory of evolution, the thesis that every single animal has evolved from a 3 billion old ancestor and thus ALL life, from banana to bacteria to bonobo and even human, has evolved all from a common ancestor, seems freely to be ABSURD IN THE HIGHEST POSSIBLE DEGREE.

So why do I still accept it?

Because of the evidence. The evidence shows, with crystal clear precision, just like it shows that atoms are real, or that bacteria cause disease, that evolution happened, and that, in the grand scheme of things, we humans are more or less closely related to every living thing ever examined.

And this is also the case for the theories about "nothing...BLAAAAM!!! PROTONS NUETRONS PROTONS.........." Its not that scientists really want it to be this way, or that they have some "something out of nothing" fetish, this is what the EVIDENCE tells us. There simply is nothing in that evidence about a guide or god of any kind, and even if there was, we would have an entirely new, even bigger problem to begin with.

It's funny that one of the major descriptors of the Earth is the word "globe".

Pronunciation: \ˈglōb\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle French, from Latin globus
Date: 15th century


Definition: something spherical or rounded

Ya, I agree, this graph reminds me of looking on the back of a tube of toothpaste. You see this graph with no real values mapped out with their brand beating out the leading brand by some non-nominal amount. Not only that, but this graph seems REALLY short in terms of global geological events. And you are exactly right as well BC, they can't even predict the weather for next month correctly and I am supposed to have 100% faith in their even longer reaching predictions? Not to say that clean isn't smart and nice, who likes smog really? But I have take major issue with this "assume a spherical cow" model of prediction for anything other than tomorrows weather.

>> ^jonny:
What does the atheist do when confronted with contradictory evidence? What does the atheist do when confronted with anecdotal evidence that explicitly invalidates known conclusions.
I assume you are aware of your own belief system, i.e., there are certain assumptions in your knowledge tree. What does an atheist do when the root of that tree is ripped from its foundation?


I simply change my mind.

However, it also depends, as ObsidianStorm point out, on the circumstances. it depends on how firmly I hold a certain belief. I am, for instance, pretty damn sure the earth is spherical, Thus it would take a great deal to convince me otherwise. anecdotal evidence, for instance, even if it came from an astronaut, wouldnt be near enough to convince me otherwise.

It also depends on what kind of claim that it is. Say if you told me , for instance, that you happen to have a blue car, it would be something I'd be prepared to believe, simply because you said so. I wouldnt require several witnesses, papers, and other evidence etc to confirm it for me.

If, on the other hand, you tell me that there is an invisible, all-powerful creator and ruler of the universe, and despite the fact that there are many books making the same claim, you Book is actually the right book, and it just happens to be the one you were taught as a child was the right one, then, you might understand, someone like me is much more skeptical.

For me to nail down a specific, detailed belief about the nature of the universe, I'm afraid I'll have to need a little more to go on. The same goes with scientific claims. When biologists, for instance, tell me that I am related to every species of plant and animal on this planet thats ever been examined, and that we have a history of evolution dating back some 4 billion years, it seems -on the surface- to be every bit as unbelievable and wild as the previous claim. But its based on absolutely MASSIVE amounts of evidence. So massive, that one would have to be either a complete fool, or complete ignorant, not to accept this as a fact. If any similar amount of real evidence for the biblical view of life was presented to me, you sir, would be talking to a born-again Christian, and not an atheist.

>> ^bluecliff:
all this is nice and peachy.
but when he mentioned math. it seem to me that most people think that statements in experimental sciences have the status and the logical strength of mathematical statements.


He mentioned math as an exception, because in every other field there is an element of uncertainty that you can basically get rid of in math. A circle, for instance is round by its very definition, unlike the earth, which we call spherical* because an overwhelming amount of evidence suggests that it is.We may be wrong about the shape of Earth, (tho anyone who thinks its, say, banana-shaped, has quite the work cut out for them) Math, on the other hand, is abstract, so we define the rules, and its basically an exercise in certainty and stone-cold proof.

*yeah yeah its wider around the middle/the moon blah blah blah, but You know what I mean, its actually more spherical than a common billiard ball

Fair enough



In reply to this comment by NetRunner:
Flat earth didn't have a global empire to protect from the idea of a spherical earth, though.

All we really want from people is efficiency, conservation, and a move away from fossil fuels. Global warming is our motivation, but it's a good idea for everyone, regardless.

In reply to this comment by Irishman:
Flat Earth WAS mainstream scientific belief for hundreds of years.


In reply to this comment by NetRunner:
>> ^blankfist:
Warmist sounds a lot like alarmist, doesn't it? We'll most likely see more of those for the next four years. Quality find, Irishman. We need more opposing viewpoints on this issue, because the Gore-following Warmist Automatons think the debate is over about Global Warming, science be damned.


Yes, all people who follow mainstream scientific belief are automatons.

That's what they tell me in my weekly Flat Earth Society meetings. We've got to stop those deadly Sphere-ists from throwing away billions on "satellites" that just sail over the edge of the earth, never to be seen again!

I mean, they're obviously trying to cow people into giving up good money with fear, the word Sphere-ists has phere fear built right into it!

QED