I think it'd almost have to be fake grass, otherwise you'd wind up with bits of grass and earth finding their way into the pool. Plus you wouldn't be able to leave the pool open for extended periods or the grass would die. Fake grass will also be lighter and while it looks like it's a single platform here, you could theoretically build one that coils/stacks away to save space.

From Teh Wikipedius Popularis: "Centuries, or Centuriae, means tribe or company. Theoretically, this word traces its roots to centum which is Latin for one hundred, but that connection is widely disputed or disregarded."

Basically, "lost in translation".

Ok, now you're just being willfully stupid.

Yes, life in the Universe is possible, but that doesn't mean your favored theory about how life arrived in the Universe is possible.
What favoured theory? I have no idea how life arrived in the universe. I suspect we never will. Even if we reproduce the exact conditions that gave rise to life and see single celled life created that doesn't mean that's how it started however many billions of years ago. I never claimed to know these things. Claiming to know things you can't possibly know is religions act, not sciences.

The probability has been calculated, more often than not, at many, many times greater than the number of atoms in the Universe.
Citation needed.

There has been no scientific proof provided showing that abiogenesis is possible.
Already admitted. But there is a sound theoretical basis behind.

To rule out at the least a possible designer is simply personal bias

Did you somehow miss the part THAT YOU QUOTED where I said I can't prove god doesn't exist. I simply stated that it's incredibly improbable.

There is plenty of positive evidence for Gods existence
Really? Please point me to the peer reviewed scientific paper that shows this. Otherwise, all you have are anecdotes.

faith in abiogenesis is simply blind faith

If I had "faith" in abiogenesis, that would be correct. But once again, I ask you do you understand the difference between what I think is probable based on observed facts and "taking something on faith"? I don't "believe" in abiogenesis. It seems like a reasonable explanation for the origin of life (certainly better than "magic beard in the sky did it"), but right now, it's just a hypothesis. Not even a theory. If we obtain some evidence one way or the other, I will switch my position. You're locked into yours regardless of the facts.

A God existing does not violate anything we know about the Universe.Thermodynamics would like a word with you.

Just because we understand the mechanics of something does not rule out an agency behind it. It would be like taking apart a car and then saying that because we understand how the car is put together that gasoline does not exist.
Jesus, that is so stupid I don't even know where to start. Do you actually read what you've written? Do you understand what the word "agency" means? Gasoline is the not the agency of a car, the driver is. A car without a driver does nothing (until google get their way anyway). And we can clearly see all the parts of a cars design where input is required from the driver and energy provided by the gasoline.

If you can show me a magical ghost car that drives without a driver or fuel source, I will believe in god. Meanwhile, we live in a universe that functions just fine without the requirement for any supernatural agency.

The bible says that everyone is provided evidence of Gods existence
The bible is a bad story book written by tribal idiots who didn't have a clue about their world. I don't give a shit what it says. Call me when you have actual evidence.

Best part was when the Dalai Lama thought and said "theoretically possible"

Pretty good, and a good advancement in snow tires, but I'm sorry, this is no where NEAR the "fastest speed ever recorded for tractors" as they imply, maybe the 'fastest speed for unmodified (except for software, which is everything on new computer controlled motors) commercially available tractors on commercially available unmodified tires on ice'....
...because even lawn tractors have gone WAY faster, over 130MPH....
http://world.honda.com/news/2014/c140402Fastest-Lawnmower/

And according to Wikipedia, drag-pulling tractors theoretically reach over 200kph in short distances all the time.

The energy would decay and would fizzle out eventually, for a pretty far range i would guess. Theoretically, the Death Star beam could go out for several thousands of years if it didn't hit anything.

Though for the game, there is a set range for laser blasts and they vanish at the range.

We don't change the definition to fit the hypothesis, we change definitions as new information or previously unthought of scenarios emerge.

This is the realm of theoretical physics. Some things are very difficult to test, but it doesn't mean we can't hypothesise about them.

By the way, 2+2 can equal 5, for very large values of 2

AFAIK, photons have mass, but in a theoretical state of zero velocity they theoretically don't have mass (which can't currently be tested).

As for neutrinos, I said, "at or faster than the speed of light", not "faster than the speed of light". I never claimed they do go faster than the speed of light, because the jury's still out on that one. This is still a debate that divides the physics community and the matter is far from settled.

@RedSky

The need to be kept afloat by European funds is pretty high on the list of things Syriza is keen to do away with. Varoufakis was clear on this pretty early on, at least 2009 as far as I know. They treated it as a problem of liquidity instead of a problem of insolvency, and therefore any funds funnelled into Greece were basically disappearing down a black hole. They are bleeding cash left, right and center, and the continuous flow of credit from Europe doesn't help a bit in its current form.

As of now, they can't pay shit. Any additional credit has to be used to pay back interest on previous credit. Their meagre primary surplus is less than their interest payments. With that in mind, some of the ideas floating around sound rather intriguing, especially given the horrendous failure all the previous agreements have produced. These ideas include: cap interest payment (1.5% of primary surplus), use the rest for investment or humanitarian relief; no payments on debt below 3% growth, 50% of agreed upon payments at 3-6% growth, full payments at 6+% growth.

Yet even those ideas are purely theoretical, because there is no growth in Greece. The celebrated growth in Q3 2014 of 0.7% might very well be a fluke, as Bill Mitchell described here (prices falling faster than incomes). For Greece to be able to have any meaningful growth, they'd require not just a complete reconstruction of its institutions (structural reforms), but also massive investment.

And there's where it breaks down again, since you rightfully pointed out that the Germans in particular won't spend a dime on Greece, especially not with investment in Germany in equally dire shape (shortfall of about a trillion € since 2000).


Which brings me to another point: Germany vs France.

Productivity in both countries was en par in 1999, and productivity in France in 2014 was only slightly below German numbers. "Living within your means" is a very popular phrase in the current discussion, which basically means living in accordance with your productivity.

Subsequently, there should be a similar development of unit labour costs within a monetary union, with growth targets set by the central bank. In our case, that would be just below 2%. Like I've previously said, Greece lived beyond its means in this regard, and significantly so.

But what about France and Germany? The black line marks the target, blue is France, red is Germany. That's beggar-thy-neighbour. That's gaining competetiveness at the cost of your fellow Euro pals. That's suppressing domestic demand in order to push exports.

German reforms killed its domestic market (retail sales stagnant since early '90s) and created an aggregate trade surplus to the tune of 2 trillion Euros. That's 2 trillion Euros of deficit in other countries. And we're looking at an additional 200-210 billion Euros this year. If running trade deficits is bad, so is running trade surpluses.

Ironically, there's even been legislation in Germany since 1967, instructing the government to balance its books in matters of trade (and other areas). They've been in violation of it for 15 years.

With this in mind, everytime a German politician calls for the other countries to run trade surpluses just like Germany, I get furious. Some of them, on the European level, even have the audacity to say that everyone should run trade surpluses, and all it takes to get there is massive wage cuts. That's open lunacy and a failure of basic math. No surplus without deficits, no savings without debt.

And while we're at it, it's not the savings rate in Germany that bothers me. It's the moral superiority that is being ascribed to running surpluses in every way imaginable. Every part of society is expected to have a positive savings rate, because debt is bad. Well, if everyone's saving and nobody's accruing the corresponding debt, you get the current situation where there is no investment whatsoever, a gargantuan shortfall in demand given the national productivity, and a cool 200 billion Euros of debt a year that foreign actors have to rake up so that Germany can have its massive growth of 0.5-1.5% annually.

Finding borrowers for all that cash is getting more difficult by the day. The ECB's QE is basically one big search for new borrowers, since everyone either doesn't want to borrow or cannot borrow anymore.

If Germany wanted to help the Eurozone, they'd start by increasing their ULC vis-á-vis the rest of the countries. Competitiveness should be regulated through the foreign exchange rate, not this parasitic race to the bottom within the zone. Ten years of 4% increase in wages, annually. That ought to be a start.

Additionally, allow the ECB to fund the European Investment Bank directly, instead of this black hole of QE.

Or go one step further and seriously consider Varoufakis' ideas, including the old Keynesian concept of a global surplus recycling mechanism.

But all that is pure fantasy. I don't think a majority of Germans would support either of these measures, not with the overwhelming fear of inflation this society has. Add the continuous demonisation of debt and you get a guarantee that very few countries might be compatible to be in a longtime monetary union with Germany.

I agree with your general point.

I personally would never consider 'replacing' the A10 with the F35.

But I still think you don't design weapons for what you need now, but to be ready for what you could need in the future.

Su-35 / Mig35, pak-fa, J-10, J-20, fighter tech is moving along in the world. The goal of systems like the F35/22 is to remain superior in any theoretical/potential future conflict. The only thing the F22/35 have to do with today's conflicts is the possibility to be shoehorned into dropping bombs on some scare crows in the middle of nowhere.

Sure, people pick on the F35 for being fat and happy - but fighters are more than turn turn turn turn shoot. They are systems to sense/detect, share info, build a battle field picture, jam opponents, strike the opponent's sensors, build situational awareness while denying the opponent his own SA. They build an environment where your forces can maneuver around enemy forces, strike key locations, and leave (without an actual fight), so that the enemy eventually finds himself with nothing left to defend, and they just quit without ever fighting. Modern fighters are an information system as much as a weapons platform.

Even in WW2 the powers learned the lesson that a good fighter is not necessarily a good pure dog fighter. The zero was the best turning fighter of the war - and it sucked. US planes would just not bother dogfighting with it. US planes would fly high above, dive down onto a zero, shoot at it, fly right by, and zoom back up. They didn't have to dogfight, because they had more speed and altitude, and the zero was helpless, it was a fighter stuck playing defense in air to air combat.

Times changed, today's tactics are not speed and altitude, they are situational awareness and detectability. It's the kind of fighting the F35 is tailored for, and it's not worth being too hard on it for not being ideal for more classical combat applications.

-scheherazade

This reminds me of something that my high school Chemistry teacher told us one day. He told us about how gasses require a certain percentage of oxygen to ignite, so, that if you were to fill up an airtight room with 100% hydrogen, such that no oxygen was present, you could open a door to that room and light a match at the threshold without fear of an explosion. Theoretically the gas in the room would only burn at the door-shaped barrier between the hydrogen and the oxygen on the other side. I remain dubious and I want to see Adam Savage risk his life to bust that myth.

Also, actually related to this video: the guy doing the demonstration,Theodore Gray, has an awesome website if you're into chemistry.

Short version: Cosmology, particle physics, theoretical physics, etc... are elucidating fantastically complex aspects of our universe's beginning that we don't and probably won't ever fully understand. Some interpretations may indicate that there is some eternal process giving rise to the complexity we can observe. Therefore it's the Jewish war-diety from 3000 years ago that did it, definitely not Allah or Vishnu - that would just be crazy.

It's great when the attempt to portray theoretical events 'properly' actually ends up teaching scientists something new about the science instead of just trying to show what we already knew.
Can't speak to the movie, I haven't seen it, but I appreciate the efforts made here.

Skillful as in skillful editing.

Theoretically the whole circus act could almost be pulled off with lighter than normal pucks, allowing the puck trajectory of the first and third shots and a quick wrist shot 2nd (which is very ulikely for a 7yo). In any case the pickup before the juggling looks all wrong - could have conceivably been done with a ball just to make the editing easier.

Take a look at something like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLamA97C14A
to compare the stick and skating skills and puck physics of a more probably real 7yo without the drama.

This has been a damn good year for games even though a lot of the games that should have been good were really sort of rehashes/boring with subpar indie games, Ubisoft reskinning Assassin's Creed for every franchise (I'm looking at you Shadow of Mordor) and then there are all of the bland ass MMO's that looked decent but ended up sucking (Wildstar, ArcheAge). Not that they're bad, theoretically they are decent games but they just don't have the innovation or oomph.

I've NEVER spent $75.00 on a game needless to say a beta, but E:D is definitely worth it. It's my top game of the year (even in beta form). Closely followed by Divinity: Original Sin (fucking awesome RPG), Legends of Grimrock II (fucking awesome old school dungeon crawler (Ultima Underworld / Myst puzzler), Wasteland 2 (awesome Wasteland comeback) as well as Alien: Isolation (great concept, nailed the visuals & sound -- super intense). And then there was Hearthstone which I definitely spent more time playing than anything else.

But, Elite: Dangerous is stunningly brilliant, best sound I've ever heard in a game- it's so fucking good that I invested in a HOTAS & Oculus Rift (haven't gotten it yet though).

Downloading the update now - can't wait to see the changes.