K. This gets us closer to understanding it how?

It seems he's answering the 'why' and not the 'what'.

"your hair frizzles in the heat and humidity, because there are more ways for your hair to be curled than to be straight"

Yes, pretty much any chaotic influence on an orderly system will induce chaos in that system. But chaos is somewhat of a copout - it's a catch-all for patterns or interactions too complex to model or predict, but that doesn't make chaotic systems fundamentally different from ordered ones since the only distinction is whether or not us humans can understand and make accurate predictions. A bullet fired in space and a bullet fired on the earth only differ in the degree to which the environment affects the predictability of the bullets trajectory. But they're still just bullets traversing a distance according to fixed laws.

"the force we call gravity is simply a byproduct of nature’s propensity to maximize disorder."

This makes almost no sense, since if nature wanted to maximize disorder, physics would be inconsistent. Stable gravity is a huge help in creating ordered systems - what if gravity flipped erratically? or if time wasn't sequential? it seems to me there's no end to the kinds of things nature could do to maximize disorder that it defiantly isn't doing.

Are we so fearfully un-racist that we get squeamish whenever anyone examines the differences between different races? Different races ARE built differently. We're always quick to point out the bad English teeth, but that's ok because they used to be our oppressors? Or..?

We do the same with the sexes - there's only a handful of female race car drivers, but heaven forbid anyone say it for fear of seeming inappropriate. I also dont see a lot of Vietnamese motocross riders or physicists with a southern drawl. Maybe these things mean something, maybe they dont - perhaps the reasons are purely environmental. None of us is really qualified to say. But that doesn't change the observed data - certain races do certain things more or less commonly than others.

Conquering racism doesn't mean pretending we're all physically identical - it means abandoning the idea that a persons worth is somehow tied to their race. Titles like "the first black _____" or "the first female _____" need to go away.

Why do black people like menthol cigarettes? Why do so many whites lack rhythm? it stands to reason that there is a reason, im just not sure its worth burning the calories to find out. We're all different and, generalities aside, as individuals we're all very different. Some people are mechanically inclines, some people are artistically inclined, and on an individual basis this seems to have very little if anything to do with race. And across the board there are always individual exceptions to the trends. But the trends exist. Not the most philanthropic endeavor IMO but it doesn't hurt anyone to investigate these things.

Oooh does this mean it'll be easy to remove the entire shell to get at those hard to reach parts?? I mean not that i'd buy one - I need a little oomph here and there and my 30mpg civic already does that nicely without guzzling too much gas. But I am all for simpler construction techniques.

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"cumulative"?

This is odd - the expansion of the universe means that a given point is decreasingly influenced by distant gravity wells - and we know that proximity to gravity wells causes time to slow.

question: do the relativistic effects of gravity cancel if one is between 2 equally powerful wells? that is, in a binary system of mutually orbiting black holes, if one were to reside at the center of gravity between them, would one be ripped in half or feel no gravity at all? and if one felt no gravity at all, would one then experience zero time dilation? or is the effect cumulative?

Good lord I can't wait til HIV, Hep C and the herp are curable diseases. Not that I get a whole hell of a lot of action personally, but the idea that unprotected sex is tantamount to sticking your dick into some kind of bear trap russian roulette is terrifying.

@anonymustard

I was *just* about to chime in with the same thing. The water coming out of the end of a long hose didn't just travel the entire length of the hose - it's pushed out by the water behind it. similarly, when you turn the water off, the inside of the hose doesn't go instantly dry. And so it is with the electrons in the power lines.

my # has two 0's in it, thus no worky.

The day after my 21st birthday i showed up at work more hung over than i'd ever been in my life. Told the boss i was going to lie down for a bit as i wasn't feeling well.

fast forward to around noon. boss came in, kicked me gently awake and proceeded to tear me a new one. i'd only been at the job for 9 months or so. i was about *this* close to being canned on the spot.

i think what really did it was the fact that i had retrieved a blanket AND pillow from my jeep.

just celebrated my 5 year anniversary here. yay!

lesson: if you're too f'd up to go to work, STAY HOME.

I don't understand the function of that lobe at the bottom of the upper arm - it seems to me a heavy enough item could cause the mechanism to hang up (no pun intended) before fully actuating.

we did have this one thing we'd do when we were teens, if anyone said something was bullshit, someone else had to chime in and say,

"hella bullshit".

i don't remember how it started but it was always a funny way of defusing someone who was genuinely pissed off about something.

@SocalTim

I'm a bit north of you but up here it's generally only used ironically. it's on par with 'bees knees' or 'humdinger'.

I had no idea Al Jaffe was so paranoid.

anyways, came up with a handful more last night

'what is this small lake' he pondered.

'i had no choice but to eject from the aircraft' he explained

'i'm getting taller every day' he groaned

'who is the ruler of the sphincter!?' tom was asking.

'i erased every word i had written' tom described.

'i wonder if i ought to use a lure instead' he debated.

'i no longer care who wins the game' he decided

(the de-words are kind of a cop out, though)

@Miss Cellania

while im glad to have helped... i think your kid might be flubbing on her vocab assignments...