A friend of mine is a PhD student in Astronomy and he sometimes observes at Arecibo in Puerto Rico (a single radio telescope). And his collaboration will generate so much data that it's faster and cheaper to send by mail on external hard drives than through any sort of network!

He's got a PhD in game theory.. that almost turns me on.

@enoch
@newtboy
@Stormsinger
@speechless


31,487 American scientists say you and your belief in man made global warming via CO2 is Bullshit.

9,029 PhD;
7,157 MS;
2,586 MD and DVM; and
12,715 BS or equivalent academic degrees.
Most of the MD and DVM signers also have underlying degrees in basic science.

All of the listed signers have formal educations in fields of specialization that suitably qualify them to evaluate the research data related to the petition statement. Many of the signers currently work in climatological, meteorological, atmospheric, environmental, geophysical, astronomical, and biological fields directly involved in the climate change controversy.

http://www.petitionproject.org/index.php

PS suck my dick.

@Asmo

You ought to be careful about accusing others of ignorance when you have to resort to googling "islam homogenous" and spamming us with the first links you find. Oh my, talk about making a fool of yourself.

All the PhDs in the world can't alter reality; personally I'd be suspicious of the intellectual credentials of anyone who wasted their career on so vacuous and puerile a subject. Every widespead philosophy will inevitably factionalise to some extent; this is hardly relevant where the objections are to its core tenets and universal beliefs. Remind me, which of the major sects is the good one?

Incidentally, I skipped over this before but the claim that there are 1.5 billion muslims in the world is an outright lie. Most of that number are muslim in the same sense that winston smith is a loyal supporter of ingsoc.

It's tedious to have to continually restate the case against islam in every discussion where the lazy and dishonest leap to the defence of an ideology they've failed to adequately research. Suffice to say that any liberal, modern thinker who had, say, read the qur'an, or looked into the life and character of mohammed, or talked to muslims about what they actually believe, which is never what they reveal to unsympathetic ears; would hesitate before condemning all anti-islamic sentiment as bigotry.

You are empirically incorrect. You are proposing an impossible scenario, that somehow 1.5bn world wide are perfectly aligned, have some say over the actions of all the other people simultaneously and ergo bear some responsibility for any actions committed under the broad umbrella of "Islam"...

http://enews.fergananews.com/articles/2698

To speak of “Islam” as a homogenous phenomenon is analogous to speaking of “Christianity” as a single whole that includes Catholics and Orthodox, Protestants and Copts, and countless other sects, including such marginal ones as the Mormons, the Scientologists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Of course, we never do so, because we intuitively recognize that the label loses all meaning when forced on to such a diverse group. We seldom have such qualms, however, when it comes to Islam, even though the label “Islam” covers just as wide a spectrum of geographic, cultural, and sectarian diversity as the label “Christianity.” If anything, it is even more internally diverse than Christianity, which crystallized around an institutionalized Church from the very beginning. In Islam, such an institution never developed. There is no religious hierarchy and no single individual qualified to pass final judgment on questions of belief or practice. Within thirty years of the death of the Prophet, the Muslim community had split on matters of doctrine. Since then, there have been multiple and simultaneous sources of authority among Muslims. Authority is located not in church councils and such, but in individuals who derive their legitimacy from their learning, piety, lineage, and reputation among peers. This gives Islam a slightly anarchic quality: authoritative opinions (fatwa) of one expert or one group can be countered with equally authoritative opinions, derived from the same sources, of another group, or one set of practices devotional practices held dear by one group can be denounced as impermissible by another. In more extreme cases, such conflict of opinion can turn into a “war of fatwas,” fought out, in the modern age, in the press or in cyberspace. (If Islam were held in a more positive light in the West today, this diversity would be described as a “free market of ideas”!) To speak of Islam as a homogeneous entity ignores this fundamental dynamic of its tradition.

This pluralism extends to the most basic level of belief. The major sectarian divide in Islam, between Sunnis and Shi‘is, goes back to the very origins of Islam. The two doctrines evolved in parallel, and therefore it is incorrect to see in them an orthodox/heterodox divide. All Muslims share a number of key reference points (the oneness of God, loyalty to the Prophet and his progeny, the need to prepare for the Hereafter, to take a few examples), but they have been played upon in different ways by different sects and movements. Nor do the two sects exhaust the diversity, for they both have many branches and various theological and legal schools within them, while many modern ideological groups straddle the divide between the two sects.

Or
http://wasalaam.wordpress.com/2007/02/06/the-myth-of-homogeny-in-islam/

I could provide link after link, discuss Sunni vs Shia, or any one of the innumerable other sects (70+ iirc), discuss Islams war with itself throughout history etc, all demonstrating that you are wrong.

You are portraying (demonising actually) Islam in the same way the two morons in the video are, by making all Muslims responsible for any action committed by a Muslim. You talk about enlightenment, but your post reeks of bigotry, hardly the hallmark of an enlightened person, right?

Incidentally, the "popular" view of Islam is of a homogenous group of people, us vs them, a group to be afraid of, or to attack. The average person on the street (ie. plumb ignorant, much like yourself) would not be aware of just how complex it is, far more so than Christianity. It's exactly why the talking heads who got schooled kept trying to make out that Islam was homogenous, and were proved wrong...

But give it your best shot trying to shoot down the considered opinions of Phd's, scholars, philosophers etc if you want to continue to make a fool of yourself.

Some University needs to just give Anthony Bordain a PhD in Culinary Anthroplogy.

Not an honorary one, a straight up degree.
I wish I had lived my life half as well as this man.

So, this is a major misconception by the public about where the money actually goes when drugs are developed. Read the link you have there, but with a more realistic eye about where the money is going. Drugs are SUPER expensive, but only because they're super expensive to discover. 'Drug discovery' is a tremendously difficult thing, to the point where it is the wetdream of a professional drug discoverer in the pharma world to discover 1 drug in their 30+ year career. During that time, the team of pharma researchers all have to be paid for their PhD level of expertise, and the human cost in developed countries is quite expensive! If there are 1000 people in one pharma company, and each person makes ~70+ thousand, and benefits cost another 100+ thousand per person each year, then the human cost alone in that rough exercise accounts for 170 million yearly for just 1000 people, and can touch the billion dollar figure per year for very large companies. That is where the money is going in that 1.3 billion dollar figure.

The major problem lies in developing a substance that actually does something, and you know exactly what that something is, including all side effects. To get a statistically valid clinical trial is actually a rather hard thing to do; a poorly designed clinical trial can prove whatever you want it to. Considering your St. John's wort example, the most costly 'drug discovery' component is already finished, it would just need to go through clinical trials as a drug for antidepression. The body of evidence in place may already serve for early phase clinical trials, and it may just need to go through a couple of more trials to prove its efficacy (and determine side effects). It would cost some money, but it would NOT be so prohibitively expensive as starting from complete scratch.

Considering this, the idea that it's 'unfair' to make the supplements world actually prove their product does what it is promised to do (or at the very least, not be harmful) is a bit odd. Quackery is illegal for moral reasons, and hard to argue that what the supplements world is doing is not quackery; particularly with the Dr. Oz zeal, false promises are being sold millions of bottles at a time. It is in the public's interest to get this stuff tested and approved!

What are you all talking about? This whole presentation is parody. If you have ever watched someone present their paper and claim it is the greatest thing ever and that all of their hypotheses are clearly correct as shown in the data, then you will understand this. It is a perfect satire on PhD and Masters Thesis defenses as well.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'phd, honorary, its always sunny, nightman, speech' to 'phd, honorary, its always sunny, nightman, speech, Charlie Day, Merrimack' - edited by Sagemind

...the question he should of asked is how on earth was he granted a PhD?
I mean, believe in creation if you like... but to no be able to answer the questions posed by that graduate student means that you do not have a graduate level understanding of evolutionary theory.

The thumbnail image for this video has been updated - thumbnail added by eric3579.

Actually I'm about as English as they come but crucially I spent my advanced academic career studying Philosophy and rhetoric (lamentably only to Hons. due to laziness) and consequently have an ingrained habit of arguing around a problem rather than relying on established parameters (not always entirely helpful when discussing more day to day matters as I'm sure you've by now gathered but it is essential to working with advanced epistemological problems and so serves me well none the less). I'm also prone to poor punctuation and odd patterns of grammar when I'm not going back over everything I write with a fine tooth comb which has likely not helped. (A consequence of learning to describe tangent after tangent when trying to thoroughly encapsulate some conceptual problems with language alone)

That said, while I may have gone around the houses so to speak I think my conclusion is entirely compatible with what I now understand your own to be.

I didn't want to describe my original counter-point by simply working with the idea that weight is lower on the moon relative to the earth (though I did not try to refute this either) because that would not illustrate why a 2-300kg man in a space suit still takes some shifting (relatively speaking) even if there were no gravity at all. (Would have been faster to just crunch some numbers but that's not what I specialise in)

Sure you could move anything with any force in 0G (which I do understand is technically relative as every object in the universe with mass exerts gravitational forces proportionately (and inversely proportional to the distance between)) but the resulting velocity is directly proportional to mass vs force applied. Weight here then, can be seen as another competing force in the equation rather than the whole thing which it can be convenient to treat it as for a simple calculation (which is what I think you are doing).

To put that another way I was applying a different/deeper linguistic/descriptive paradigm to the same objective facts because that's what we philosophers do. Single paradigm approaches to any subject have a dangerous habit of making one believe one possess such a thing as truly objective facts rather than interpretations only (which are all that truly exist).


In other terms weight alone isn't the whole story (as I assume you well know). Overcoming inertia due to mass scales up all by itself, then gravity comes along and complicates matters. This is why rocket scientists measure potential thrust in DeltaV rather than Watts, Joules etc. right? The mass of the object dictates how much velocity a given input/output of energy would equal.

Gravity and thus the force in newtons it induces (weight) in these terms is an additional force which depending upon the direction in which it is acting multiplies the required DeltaV to achieve the same effect. Moreover when concerning a force of inconstant nature (such as pushing up/jumping or a brief burn of an engine) brings duration into play also. (the foundations of why rocket science gets its fearsome reputation for complexity in its calculations)


Man on the moon lies on the ground and pushes off to try and stand back up.
This push must impart enough DeltaV to his body to produce a sufficient velocity and duration to travel the 2 meters or so needed to get upright so he can then balance the downward gravitational force with his legs&back and successfully convert the chemical/kinetic energy from his arms into potential energy as weight (the energy he uses to stand up is the same energy that would drag him down again right?).

One could practically speaking reduce this to a simple calculation of weight and thrust if all one wanted was a number. Weight would be the only number we need here as it incorporates the mass in it's own calculation (weight = mass x gravity)

But where's the fun in that? My way let's one go round all the houses see how the other bits of the paradigm that support this basic isolated equation function and inter-relate.

Plus (and probably more accurately) I've been playing loads of Kerbal Space Programme lately and have ended up conditioning myself to think in terms of rocketry and thus massively overcomplicated everything here for basically my own amusement/fascination.


Basically few things are more verbose and self indulgent than a bored Philosopher, sorry .


Re: Your challenge. (And I'm just guessing here) something to do with your leg muscles not being able to deliver the energy fast/efficiently enough? (as your feet would leave the ground faster/at a lower level of force?). This is the only thing I can think of as it's easier to push away from things underwater and it certainly looks difficult to push away hard from things when people are floating in 0g.

So lower resistance from gravity = less force to push against the floor with?

Warm? Even in the Ballpark? (Regardless I'm really pleased to discover you weren't the nut I originally thought you to be! (though I imagine you now have some idea what a nut I am))


If I got any of that wrong I'd be happy for you to explain to me why and where (assuming you can keep up with my slightly mad approach to syntax in the 1st place). I'm an armchair physicist (not that I haven't studied it in my time but I'm far from PHD) I'm always happy to learn and improve.

Were you not paying attention in physics class the day they explained the difference between mass and weight? As @Payback pointed out the energy required to overcome inertia is the same no matter what the gravity, low gravity simply allows you to "spread the duration" of the force like a fulcrum.

I.e. it would be easier than on earth but you still have to apply enough force to move 2-300kg of mass, you just have the option of doing so less rapidly (making it easier but not easy).

Even if this were not the case your argument still makes no sense. If it was indeed faked then surely they were on wires anyway? How else are you proposing they replicated the effects of low gravity?

The fact your comment got 3 likes is rather depressing. As someone who makes researching conspiracy theories a borderline obsessive hobby I can say with some confidence that the whole faked moon landing thing is about the most debunk-able one ever conceived. It is an insult to the very term "conspiracy theory" and helps give the rest of us a bad name .

Radiation belt? = 7 mins of expertly calculated exposure, there is a 1000ish page NASA manual on how they did this.

Cameras? = they had about 20 DIFFERENT cameras & much like anyone else would the crappy poorly framed or exposed shots weren't used for publicity

Multiple light sources? = The surface of the moon is both highly reflective and uneven. (mythbusters did the shit out of that one)

Most complicated machine ever built? = Actually launched, several times, to the freaking moon and back!

Waving flag? = Funny how every single shot of the flag waving is when someone is holding/touching it eh? (& what kind of retard leaves evidence of wind in the most expensive coverup of all time?)

The Russian space programme? = They just turned a blind eye to their arch rivals lauding it over them? They were in on it? You have to get really paranoid before that one starts to make any sense whatsoever.

etc. etc. etc.

I have a lot of time for conspiracy theories and I'm happy to speculate with the best of them but I've yet to find a single good argument for the landing not happening. I can maybe work with the possibility that some things were omitted/covered up (Monoliths etc.) because this could not be conclusively refuted by empirical facts. Suggesting that it never happened however is so easy to disprove it blows my mind that people still have time for the idea.

For your own sake try looking into the opposing arguments. There are plenty people with PHD's and direct experience who are happy to take you through the counters to all this stuff. And they back it up with actual evidence and experiments rather than conjecture and selective information. Your mind will thank you for it

@JiggaJonson
* http://www.medialit.org/reading-room/how-do-media-images-men-affect-our-lives
* http://www.forbes.com/sites/meghancasserly/2012/11/14/are-men-the-latest-victims-of-media-misrepresentation/

*http://www.brandeis.edu/departments/psych/zebrowitz/publications/PDFs/1970s/McArthur_Resko_1975.pdf
* http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865574236/Dumbing-down-Dad-How-media-present-husbands-fathers-as-useless.html?pg=all
* http://www.rolereboot.org/culture-and-politics/details/2013-02-why-arent-more-real-men-portrayed-in-the-media
* http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/the-depressing-depiction-of-men-in-the-media/
* http://www.huffingtonpost.com/darron-t-smith-phd/black-men-media_b_2844990.html

Well, it used to be Thunderbutt before I finished my PhD.