tbourner

I wouldn't (because I don't have a Supra ). No seriously, I know we've all done it etc. but we know it's illegal (whether we agree or not) and we know we're taking a risk doing it - if you get caught you have to accept it and move on, don't try to sneak your way around it though.

That site's blocked at work.

That's exactly what I want except I think I'd prefer a tiptronic - anyone know the sort of price stockish late year VVTi Tips go for?

I came onto a private test track at about 60, and a Cerb was in the outside lane, we both gunned it at the same time and were literally identical up to about 140 - there was a slower car in front of me (also racing around the private test track) so I had to slow. Guy was nice as well, he slowed down and gave a wave. That was when I had the Supe, TT6, BPU, 363 HP measured on a hub dyno and 360-something lbft.

Well you questioned whether someone could skew their moral guide because of a lack of faith, and categorise Hitler as a good person (you're right people could claim he was good because he was man of the year etc. but that's a different discussion - I understand the reference), and I think it's more a case of empathy, mercy and that thing we call 'humanity' than religion. I would have to agree that religion held a certain natural punishment over the people, and probably resulted in a higher average morality in humans, but removing it completely (being 100% aethiest) doesn't have to limit your knowldge of right and wrong - maybe it does shift the balance in favour of the bad, but it's certainly not guaranteed.

'He' isn't human though, 'He's beyond what we can comprehend. His energy permiates everything. Maybe that's why we get Earthquakes, God's energy is angry and rattles the planet. In terms of death there isn't much of a difference, we're all biological beings affected by disease and poison. Why shouldn't they be bi-products of our existence? Why does that make it any less caring to have a moral compass guiding you? We invented these words you're using; compassion and love, they are defined exactly by our feelings and emotions coming from the biological bi-product of life - God didn't create love and compassion, only the causes of those words being designed, we made the words to suit based on biological bi-products. Similarly, the word 'bad' is designed by consensus to mean a certain thing, Hitler falls into that category, so by our meager definitions he was a 'worse' human being than us - in the eyes of God that may or may not mean anything, regardless you can't use human words to describe the worth of a person in Gods terms.

Didn't Adam and Eve sin quite a lot though? Were they his rough draft? Who was the first perfect human who didn't sin?

He didn't do a very good job of creating us then if we have all these flaws!

Don't we also breath out CO2? I wonder how much CO2 a human produces? So we're back to the old idea of killing 3 billion people - that would save the world? We've always said they should tax cars by the mile rather than a flat yearly rate.

I know, see my other point on believing in a creator, I'm half religious. I was generalising, I do that a lot.

Surely a thread about death is a perfect thread for a God debate? My views are that there is a creator, but not a 'God' by the definition of the word. It doesn't listen to us and care about us, it just made everything (as a fluke maybe). You think man created Earthquakes? I agree, but I hope I don't come across like that, it's only a discussion! I think there are FAR more religious people who are willing to go 'preaching' to try to convert people, than there are Aetheists who do the same - I tend to see Aetheists as wanting to discuss it ALL to gather more information, rather than doing all the 'ramming'. Essentially a Scientist is more open minded than a religious person.

From the death thread, what came before creation (God or the Big Bang)? What if we're looking at it all backwards? What if the higher dimensions have always been here, and someone in the 5th dimension wanted to create a physical dimension (X, Y and Z) and so had to create time, so there was literally nothing (or everything) before the big bang!!

What about if your children left home at an early age and then did really well for themselves, made loads of money, gave most of it to charity, saved lives and brought up a lovely family - only to return to see you when you (or them) were dying - would the father hate them and cast them out and not want to be with them? Also, I think putting human fatherly emotions onto a higher being is a bit naive. You would hope God wouldn't be so petty as to say "Well you've laughed at me all your life so now I don't want to play with you, so ner."

Aah, but Bourner's Uncertainty Principle states that principles and proofs are only correct at the time of going to print, and may be surpassed by any future discovery or proof. How's that for a paradox.

No, but if something annoys me I'll lob it at the wall and hope it smashes to bits, cos I know I've taught it a lesson then.

I talk to myself a lot. I also talk to (shout at) inanimate objects a lot.

That actually made me lol.

It should probably still be Mk. though (big 'M', small 'k', with a full stop). So really it's a Mk.IV?

Aha, and here is the crux of my questions, doesn't quantum physics revolve mainly around things being a probability? The 'wave' part of a wave particle duality thingy is a probability graph of some kind? Isn't that how the infinite probability drive works in Hitchikers Guide? If that's all true and we're correct in our workings then there is always a probability, no matter how small, of something unpredicted happening, and therefore it's literally impossible to predict the future?

I think we're destined to become more mechanically biased, maybe including robotic implants and being able to link with machines. Maybe this will be the next evolution. Maybe that will give us more ability to think outside the box (or the dimension).

I have (tried to) read up on quantum theories, I've looked into the basics of it and the double slit experiments and wave/particle duality etc. I've tried to understand quantum tunneling and how electrons emit photons when they jump up and down into neighbouring orbits (?), something to do with how lasers work? I'd still like to learn it properly just don't have the time or money to put into it. I feel like I'm getting too old to learn new things now as well . Anyway, the lack of a theory of everything still makes me think we're at the 'Earth is flat' stage and there's a breakthrough coming that will change all our ideas.

Thanks to Tannhauser's quote in my sig, and the thread it relates to, I've been thinking about predeterminism again. Basically I'm pretty certain that you can predetermine EVERYTHING. If we had the knowledge and computational power we could work out exactly what was going to happen in the future at any point. Reasons for this include the fact that if we knew exactly what goes on in every cell of the human brain and every chemical reaction etc. we could predict a persons movements indefinitely into the future, and if we knew everything about the forces exerted on a dice at the point it was thrown we could predict where it would land - in fact linking the two we could predict that a person at birth would eventually roll a dice and would exert a certain force on it and it would land in a particular way!!!!!! Obviously that's an obscene amount of information required, far more than we can even imagine, and computational power so immense I don't think we'll ever be able to do it, but is the theory sound? Problems I can see are: 1) Is there anything truly random in the universe (Quantum physics)? 1b) Is it only random as far as we know at the moment - ie: will we ever be able to predict quantum movements of particles? Or can we now? 2) How about predicting that a person will have a baby that will also produce offspring that will eventually roll a dice and exert a certain amount of force on it for it to land in a particular way? Is there anything random in the decision for a particular sperm to make it to the egg, and the layout of the womb to produce a certain embryo, and the cell multiplication to go a certain way that we could predict exactly what the person will eventually turn out like - when they will have children, which of their partners sperm (or theirs) will get to the egg etc. I'm sure this isn't just about solving all the questions with DNA but a lot more besides. 3) The human soul. Is there such a thing? If we could replace one brain cell with a nanobot that does EXACTLY the same job - produces the right chemicals, transfers energy, gives out electrical signals or whatever, could we stick it in the brain and the person would still be the same? How about if we produced nanobots for EVERY type of brain cell, and replaced them all one by one, until the person had a COMPLETELY robotic brain - would they still be the same person? Whether this is a question of if it's possible to replace a brain cell with a machine or not ie: can a natural process actually BE replicated, or whether it's a question of something 'else' being in control of all those seperate cells I don't know. So assuming there is no soul, we should be able to precisely predict the chemical production, energy transfers, electrical signals etc. of a human brain and be able to predict the future decisions of that person? Aside: Bloke at work says I'm very strange for wanting to learn quantum physics and astro-physics and stuff. He said "You'll never get a job in that field so why learn about it?" Am I strange for wanting to learn something because I'm interested with no plans to make money from it? I think he's strange for NOT wanting to learn something outside his little working-life world!!

The thing is we have at least some understanding of how dreams are made in the brain and where they come from. And we know that if the brain dies it can't produce dreams any more in your subconscious, so when you die you won't be living in a dream as we currently know them. It could be that THIS is a dream of sorts, and when we die we 'wake up' into another reality that is just as different from this one as dreams can sometimes be from life - but obviously we've got no way of finding out about that until it happens.

But it's a rule created JUST for MS isn't it? How rubbish is that!!

Loki jumped up and turned our cooker on before, melted his first aid box all over the top of it.