BartHumphries

The ellipse (curve) that the Earth makes around the Sun is exactly the same as the ellipse that the Sun would make around the Earth, if the Sun rotated around the Earth, from our perspective. In fact, from our viewpoint on Earth, we cannot tell, strictly from looking at the Sun, which rotates around which. It's the planets that really give it away. If the Earth rotates around the Sun, then everything is easily explainable. If the Sun rotates around the Earth, then you have planets regularly stopping and going backwards for a while for some inexplicable reason (perhaps as harbingers of bad

Well, miles/kilometers and how those are defined would probably change, but basic formulas wouldn't really change. Well, they might be described "wonkily" until people rediscovered that disregarding air resistance things fall at the same rate, etc., but eventually they'd look basically the same. That's one of the things I loved about physics with calculus. Up to that point, math was just about moving numbers around. Interesting, something that I was decent at, but I didn't really see a point to it. Basic physics was amazing and a lot of fun as we went into how the world worked and wor

jblake47, I don't think it can be said that atheists do believe in a "God". If I can make a somewhat hackneyed analogy for a moment, I think there's a difference between most religions which say things like, "God is red light" or "God is blue light" or "God is white light" or "God is yellow-polka-dots on cyan and magenta stripes light", and an atheist who says "there is no light at all." To use a common analogy, there's a vast ideological gulf between describing the elephant in the room as "like a snake", "like a spear", "like a tree", etc., and saying that there is no elephant at all in

I agree. I never saw the point of a serrated edge, given my typical activities. I suppose if I was using the knife to stalk, pounce onto, then kill game with just my wits, human muscles, and the knife, or if I was trying to cut down trees with just the knife, then in either of those cases a serrated edge would be handy, but otherwise it's just a waste of space.

The cheapest I'm seeing online is about $2k/person just for the plane tickets. Do you know of another way to get there?

Of course there's always that one guy with never ending war stories and wisdom he has to share about everything and anything. Eyes roll every time he opens his pie-hole for the umpteenth time to tell his way (the best way) to do whatever is at hand. But he means well and we can appreciate the good will and energy he devotes to scouting. I am not that guy. But I could listen to him all night long.

I have no problem giving a youth a BB gun (with their parent's permission, of course) -- I had one. Granted, my dad had a 22 when he was young and once made his own blanks and shot them at school with his pistol while he and his classmates reenacted a Cowboys vs Indians thing for some class. Attitudes towards guns have changed over time. I can easily see that some parents might feel that their child will shoot their eye out and thus shouldn't be given a gun. (Since it's Christmas and that story is likely more on people's minds at this time of year.)

Snopes doesn't agree with the 12 Days of Christmas having a hidden meaning: http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/music/12days.asp

I thought Jesus was born in the spring because that's when the shepherds would have been "out with their flocks by night", i.e. during lambing season. "If the Bethlehem star was in the East, why did the Magi travel west." Perhaps the star was in the East because the Magi were traveling West: B...s...M x = Bethlehem s = star, in the East from Bethlehem's point of view M = Magi, traveling towards the star which is West from their point of view (but then they weren't the ones writing the Bible stories).

The word "tools" does not appear in the print Guide to Safe Scouting. The words "power" and "tool" do appear, but not in contexts which would ban Scouts from using power tools.

Remind the kids, they are not to start any fires anywhere, even for practice, unless they have their parents permission. I think his mom was right to be upset with someone who first taught her son to start fires, then encouraged her son to "build, maintain, and put out fires". It's kind of like the Totin' Chip. Just because they have a Totin' Chip card, they should *not* be taking their knife to school. There is no such thing as the "Take your knife to school day", it doesn't exist. Totin' Chip only applies within the Scout troop and other people may or may not respect it or pay any a

Jet skis and ATV's are allowed only at Council-run summer camps, if the particular camp has applied and been accepted to the National program, etc. It's like chainsaws. To some people they're incredibly dangerous and no youth should ever use them (to be fair, they are incredibly dangerous). To some other people, when the family needs firewood, it might be expected of a youth that he goes and cuts some wood. This is fine and you can even have multiple youth cutting wood together as long as it's clear that it's not a Scout activity -- this is families doing this on their own time and it

Well, I can see the point that some people have made about it putting more work on the Scoutmasters. Take my troop, for instance. We're a small troop. We have plenty of adult leaders. Roughly half the boys, though, don't live with their father. Either the parents are divorced and the father lives elsewhere or the father was deported a couple years ago, or something else. The single mothers work hard -- darn hard -- too hard to be driving kids out to some event (I live in a rural area, it's at least 30 minutes to an hour to get anywhere, depending on how many people you have to pick up/dr

"It's missing reproducibility..." Go "experiment" for yourself. Have you? "... and peer review..." I'd say there plenty of people who criticize this and who have commented on such things over the past few millenia. You may or may not believe yourself to be my peer. "...results don't converge since different people end up finding different gods, and different numbers of gods." I can only report my own experience -- anything else in this regard is hearsay. I guess we can only say that the experiment, performed time and time again for thousands of years by various people, needs more

Well, some people believe that God still responds to prayers. That people who feel "called" to minister/preach/whatever really are called, because the heavens are not closed and God is still an active parent. Bearing that in mind, some people believe that if they pray to God and ask Him if he's really real, He will respond. From this point of view, it can be said that faith is like science. You start with the hypothesis that God is real, you experiment by continually praying, you see whether the hypothesis is validated and God is real or not. There are plenty of people out there who say t

johnponz, I recommend you watch a little movie that came out recently called "Tucker & Dale vs Evil". Here's the trailer: http://www.magnetreleasing.com/tuckeranddalevsevil/

packsaddle, yeah -- like I said, Wikipedia is a tertiary source and while it's a great start for looking into something, it is not the final arbiter of truth. Ockham/Occam did, though, do some excellent scholastic work while also having a strong personal belief in God, which is sort of the point of that list. (This message has been edited by BartHumphries)

How many "experimental tests" does anyone conduct in economics? Actually, quite a lot. Large scale economic tests are rather difficult to conduct in a "laboratory" setting, so generally the idea is to dream up something that a person would like to test (for instance, is there a correlation between abortion and the crime rate, and what sort of economic impact does prostitution have), figure out how that could be tested, then go look for real life data that can be parsed to suggest that's really happening and whether there's a causal connection or a correlation. In my opinion, Steven D. Levit

Perhaps the report is saying that those without the extra money required to participate in extracurricular activities (extra gas to drive back and forth instead of riding the bus with everyone else, extra time to pick up/drop off, extra money for supplies/uniforms, etc.) are surprise, less likely to be participating in extracurricular activites (such as sports, community organizations), less likely to be eating three square meals a day, and are otherwise impacted by their lack of money.

Speaking of bacteria and parasitic forms of life, back around 1000 AD (or CE, if you prefer) the people of England, under thelred were pro-parasite for the most part. Worms (tapeworms and other such organisms) were seen as an example of how people were able to be more Christ-like -- when people donated their bodies these "harmless" creatures who would otherwise perish were offered the chance to live. Flies, on the other hand, were universally derided. Maggots were believed to spontaneously generate from "dead" meat and were seen as direct evidence of Lucifer's ability to touch the world. H

I think it's impossible to hunt for food and not feel any joy. Wait, don't misunderstand me, I'm not talking about some sort of sociopathic joy in the death of something else. I just think it's impossible to do something well and not feel some joy/pride in having done it well. That being said, I haven't actually gone hunting, but I still feel that it would be pretty much impossible to not feel any joy, simply because hunting is a difficult, time consuming and usually expensive hobby and doing it well enough to complete the desired task (bagging the desired prey) would seem to be something t

For adults or Cub Scouts?

Hunters seem to be more dedicated (some might say fanatical) about going hunting. Rain or shine, no matter what else is happening, they seem to always go. Campers seem to be more lackadaisical -- massive numbers on Labor Day and Memorial Day, presuming the weather is good, not so many the rest of the year. I could see why some land management agencies might want to cater to hunters equally as much as campers (instead of catering to campers more as has historically been the case in most places).

I'll probably get one in April, 2012. Isn't that when the world is supposed to end or something?

I wonder if that person changed their phone number. My family has had phones that will still accept messages a month or two after we've stopped using them. "Oh, that's my old phone number, I can't check those messages any more, let me give you my new number." Just a possibility.