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abminara

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Everything posted by abminara

  1. hahaha I was not watching the game, I was at work till midnight, but I was listening to it on the radio. For full 1.5 hours before the game the dude in the radio was sayint the Giants had no chance at all. He sounded a bit upset afterwards ) P. S. I hate when people use their positions/jobs in order to spread their points of view, when they are only expected to bring the information, not their comments.P. P. S. Go Giants!
  2. Allow middle button (wheel) clicks in the inbox to open messages in new tabs. Very annoying, sice I am used to having only 1 Internt Explorer or Firefox window open at a time.
  3. Yes, yes, and once more yes. 1. If you rob somebody - you deserve the same. If you kick somebody - you deserve the same. If you kill somebody... well, you know.2. Reasons I am partially opposing the death penalty are judicial and economic. First of all, if the verdict is wrong (a witness lied, or there is some corruption/conspiracy involved) - an innocent person is going to die. Economic - it is cheaper to pay for 1 person's food for life (let's say, you kill somebody at 25 and ended up living to 60 - that's 35 years of food paid by the government) than to execute him on the electrical chair. But there are other forms of punishments, aren't there? Like injection of a lethal virus, which is the way death sentence is brought to life nowadays in some states, or, if even that is too expensive - just go back to the good old French guillotine, or Soviet shootings.Why do I think death sentence should not be vetoed? Consider this hypothethical situation:There's a guy named Billy. Billy knows, he absolutely hates his wife, as she cheated on him and bought some expensive things for herself and her boyfriend using Billy's credit card. He wants to kill her. But here's a dilema: Billy knows, that if he kills her - he is gonna end up in jail and in the electric chair in the end. That's quite an insentive to just go to court and ask for a divorce. Now, consider the same situation, but the state (or country, if you wish) does not have a death sentence. Instead, for this murder you are going to go to jail for life. Billy, knowing that he does not have much to lose goes ahead and fulfills his wrath. What does he lose? Nothing. What does he gain? Free food, no necessity of having to work to earn his living any more, etc. For some poor people this, unfortunately, may actually become an insentive to commit the crime. So, my point is - knowing that there is a death sentence waiting for you if you do something wrong lowers the probability of you commiting the crime.
  4. I do not think the universe is infinite, but rather that there is an infinite number of finite universes. The closest galaxy to us (not counting the dwarf ones like the Magellanic Clouds) is the Andromeda galaxy. And it is travelling toward us. In 3.5 000 000 000 years (that's a big one, I know*)Then there are two scenarios: 1. Earth dies in the collision (Absolutely unrealistic if you consider the densities of both galaxies), 2. We are living in a new galaxy, which has 2 foci at 2 black holes that are rotating around each other and closely getting together. What will happen when they collide? Who knows. We would not be there to see it. Or, even if we would - it would be quite hard to see. You know, it's dark there . If we survive that, then there would be about 1-1.5 000 000 000 years left for us to live till the Sun contracts under its own weight and fades into a black dwarf. So, worst-case scenario - we have about 3.5 billion years to get out of here before we all die. Since the distance to the next galaxy is about 300 million light years, we have to go there in around 3.2 billion years as of the latest. Not that bad. But what will be there? Another life till another collision comes? That's just illogical. Looking at this I start thinking that our galaxies, our homes, are actually predators that are trying to eat each other. P. S. coming back to that infinite universe idea:one possibility that I concider "pretty" is not when the universes are packed like bubbles as the Membrane theory tries to tell us, but rather that there is one on top of the other, and Black Holes are just ladders leading in and out. Where there is a black hole in our universe - there is a quasar in the other, and anything that falls in here radiates out on that side. Please, do not ask me, what is on the very top - ther eis no very top - that's the point of universes being infinite Just a suggestion, nothing more. maybe, a bit too much imagination, too.______________________________* That's what she said.
  5. I don' remember my dreams at all, unless I wake up in the middle of the night - but I'll forge them by the morning. And that is not because I have a bad memory (which I do sometimes), as my friends complained on some issues. Sometimes weird things happen. I have a good friend Karri, hi's a Finish exchange student, we play Ultimate Frisbee together and never quarrel. One morning I remembered having a dream that he did something extremely mean to me, bu I had no idea as o what that was. More than that - I actually did not know if that was a dream, or not. So the next day when I saw him in the hallway and had an extremely angry and gloomy look put on (just in case), he smiled as always, said hi, and passed on. I heard, many of my friends ave had similar dream problems. have you?P. S. Maybe unrelated, but do you believe that dream interpretation can be used to predict future? I do not, but there's something to it. Your dreams are based on the groups of neurons in your cerebral cortex excited during the day when they "cool down" and let images out during the REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep. That's when you see images. So, the dreams definitely have a lot to do with our past. But do they really predict (or even shape?) our future?
  6. I do not believe in God. Never did. I was babticised against my will when I was 6. Since then I have hatred to everything that deals with religion as it was the first thing to lmit my choices in life against my will.
  7. I was quite excited yesterday to hear in the news that Honda is releasing a new car in 2012 that will be ableto live soly on water with no waste products other than hydrogen peroxide, which with the helop of energy from the sun rays will break down into free oxygen, which will under certain conditions be able to fuse into ozone, and waterm which will fall down on Earth as rain to be a source for even more fuel for the car. That sounds pretty sweet, I am considering bying on eof those cars once they come out.
  8. I had the same problem. I'm not sure, that's causing it to happen, but, I think, it just depends on the hardware you use. My friend had the same problem, too, and he had the same kind of modem. My other friend had a different modem and it ran perfectly. So, now we went down to Vista Home Premium and it works just fine.
  9. Sorry, could not keep away a smile while reading this. Of course, great job and effort, but let's be realistic. First of all, capitAlism is not a system of government, but rather an economic system and it has nothing to do, or not to do with facism. It's like comparing a green tree and a red crocodile (please, do not ask me, where did that come from - I'm not sure myself). So, what is capitalism? Capitalism is a market form of economy, its largest difference from communism and socialism is that there is almost no government interference in setting prices. People are free to do anything they want with their money as long as it does not contradict the laws. In this system the only force driving people to expand the economy is the desire for self-well-being, rather than a desire to help a neighbour, or a kid on the street that you do not even know. But it all works out eventually through a bunch of complicated formulas and graphs. This was proposed by Adam Smith in his Inquiry on causes of the wealth of nations (or just Wealth of Nations for short (yes, they did actually even rop the definite article. Lame.)) in 1776. He also devised many rules for economic systems, and proposed the four-stage theories of society evolution. His major proposition was the laissez-fare (please excuse my poor french, I never learned it) idea of very limited governmental intervention into the society - it should leave people do everything except for the things people do not want to do as they will not get profit from it (like providing navy, army, building roads, finding new dangerous trade routes, and funding education and the police force). People have a false impression of economics being a science of how to get wealthy, which it is not. It is actually a lot like sociology or psychology, but with a lot more empirical data put into it. All economics is about is making choices: All people have unlimited wants, but limited (scarce) natural resources (factors of production - land, labour, capital, enterpreneurship). E. G. You cannot go to college forever to get 10 degrees in psychlogy, physics, chemistry, astronomy, biology, math, teaching, etc. You have to make the choice. Kinda bad of an example, but you get my point. Facism, on the other hand, is indeed a political system. Every facist government in the history of mankind was militaristic - Germany under Hitler, Argentina under Pinochet, and others. All it is is just the opposite of anarchy. If an anarchy is a state of nature in which every single human being is doing anything he or she wants without being bound by social and moral laws - in facist envioronment you would encounter quite the opposite - people in the strong central government will always be trying to make things happen their own way, deciding for everybody and telling them what to do. All you have brought here are just specifi cases and your opinions on the controversial issues in our society like abortions and drunk driving. When talking about the "ideal government" you need to be more general. If you have interest - I could explain you the ideas of John Locke and Thomas Hobbes - the 18 century philosophes that designed two opposite systems of government. If you blend the wo in a certain proportion - you will get something that is like some existing form of government with its rules and customs. Again, do not go to the extremes, they are never good. Unless it is extreme happyness
  10. yeah.. I imagine Me, Myself and I going to my mon asking to write a letter "Hey, mummy, can you write a letter and ask the schoolboar to give me some money to buy some frisbees and shorts?" I just hate this system. There must be an other way around it.
  11. Okay, I just don't get this. I am attending a fairly large High School (it has almost 2000 kids), rated one of the best public high schools in the city, Blue Ribbon Award winner of 1996, City Champions in many sports and academic competitions... but yet the school does almost nothing to support the organizations that bring it the fame it gets. For example, the basic clubs: Key club, Chess club (which I restarted after it died out), Joggling club etc. - there is absolutely no support for them whatsoever. In Key Club we had to fit 20 people in an extremely small room, school officials even refused to put the announcement about our meeting on the PA announcement system section, so we had to buy food for our own money to advertise and get at least someone to come. Meanwhile, when our club got most volunteer hours than other high schools - it was immediatelyh on the A system. Chess club - we had to buy our own boards and pieces which somebody keeps on stealing - and, man, they are expensive. Usually we don't even have a room to stay in and we keep playing in the hallways. Meanwhile we have one of the brightest people in school playing for us, and we have won many tournaments - and - of course - it was on the PA system. Needless to say that Joggling club has no room at all - and we have to buy our own stuff also. Next. Sports. School DOES NOT sponsor majority of the sports - tennis team, ultimate frisbee team, roller hockey team, and many more. Meanwhile when we win it is on the PA system. Our Frisbee team won the city championship last year and moved up to the state level. Well, guess, what? We had to pay for everything - from discs to transportation. Our Fencing team has 4 rated "A" fencers (equivalent to those who participate in olympics) - and - of course - they pay for everything. Girls tennis team also won everything and got the second place on the states competition. But, yet, payed everything to the last penny.Academics. We have an excellent Math team as well as Science Bowl Team. In '04 we won the regionals and placed 6th on the national competitions bringing back 1000 $s to the school budget. And yet we payed for everything.I think, I see a pattern here. Now, WHY does this happen?
  12. History constantly repeats itself by following the same path of destruction and decay by parents forcing their children to believe in one religion when they really believe in another, or by a teacher forcing religion upon their students for the sake of self-appeasement. To put it simply, people have a hard time understanding something that they do not want to understand because all men may have been created equal, but they were not created under the same philosophies and should not be expected to have the same dreams and ideas. For the most part, the entire history of this earth, as far as humans go, has been war after war over the base of religion.And that corresponds not only to religion. If you look back - every single war in the history of mankind except the ones for territory was because of some minor differences - eye color, skin color, religion, beliefs, nationality, tradition, etc. That is quite depressing that we all cannot live together in peace. Why do people have to look for the differences, when there are so many similarities?
  13. Wow. That's pretty amazing. I heard a lot about it, but this is a great gathering of all theinfo about it. Thanks.
  14. Don't be rude, just sit with her one day and ask why is she doing that. My first guess is that she wants you to notice her. My second guess is that she likes you. My third guess is that she is an evil sadistical creature that hates you Jk, of course. Don't talk to the teacher - it's your problem (I wish, I had such problems in life instead of mine).Just ask her politely why she does that whenever she does it again. Don't be shy, but also don't loose your brakes. If you know, what I mean.
  15. I totally do not believe in spirituality, magic, and etc. But I DO believe that ANY human is able to heal himself from ANY desease without the use of medication via self-hypnosis/meditation. I do not have any written proof, but I've been doing that to myself for 1.5 months and my vision got better from -6 to -2.25. I'm sure, you could find many more sources like that online.
  16. guys, you really do not seem to understand the question. I am pretty satisfied with my life, I'm not a bookworm/nerd/whatever, I just want to go to a good college (primary goal - MIT) and that's why I am taking those classes that are not offered in school. Now, should I be doing that, or should I wait till my next year? That's all I'm asking.
  17. Thanks. I think, I get enough physical activity from frisbee practices (6-9 hrs/week) and just running. As far as going out - there is also no real problem, I hang out with people on weekends after work and during my free time... But the question is not what I have to do to become a good person - it is - should I take those classes on my own, or wait and take them in college?
  18. Is independent study that good of a thing? During the 4 years in HS I saved a lot of time to myself by doing Geometry, Algebra I, ALgebra II, and elementary functions (precalculus) as an independent study, thus making more space for more advanced courses like Calculus (which I took my sophomore year) and statistics (I have this year). But is it that good of a thing? Yes, you do get the knowledge, etc., if you are a hard worker, but it doesn't go anywhere onto your college transcript, or anything to benefit you in the future. Currently I am enrolled in 4 AP (advanced placement/college in high school) classes (Statistics, English 3, Biology 2 and European History) in school and I am learning 3 more classes on my own (Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, and Physics 2). That takes pretty much all of my free time and I have only an hour, or so to rest/hang out. I am sure, these classes will help me in the future, but how about now? I just feel that my life is too busy with education. Is it worth spending so much time for learning these courses on your own? (Please do NOT comment on the efficiency of taking AP classes in Hish School for saving money and not spending it on those courses in college, I am aware of that.) My friend last year had 6 APs, 2 of which he took on his own, and got 5/5 on every single one of them. I feel like I could do the same thing (So far I had 5's on all the APs I've taken except for a 3 on English 3 - That was my mistake, I didn't have to take it.), but again, it is really tiresome and takes too much time.
  19. The isoceles triangle ABC has angle at B & C of (90-a/2) Now consider the isoceles triangle QBC. It has angle at C of (90-a/2) The angle at Q is {180 -[90-a] - [90-a]} = 2a The angle at B is {[90-a/2]-a} = {90-3a/2} But the angle at B must equal the angle at Q Theefore 90-3a/2 = 2a 90 = 7a/2 180 = 7a 180/7=a QED
  20. ABC is an isosceles triangle with AB = AC. A perpendicular PQ is drawn on AB at its mid-point P (i.e. AP =PB), and this perpendicular line cuts AC at Q. It turns out that QC = BC. What is the the vertex angle /_BAC? The solution is to be obtained analytically and exactly. No trigonometrical tables..No numerical solutions. I assure you it is analytically solvable. I spent literally 40 hours solving it, using all that I learned in high school starting from trig and ending in comparing areas btween the curves. Trust me, you really don't need this. It's solvable by pure geometry and algebra. Well, and some usage of your brain, of course:)) If you have an answer - write it here and PM me the solution, I will PM you if you were right, or respond in the topic, if you were not.
  21. Okay... that might be a weird topic, but I am quite unsure about that matter. The thing is that the theory of evolution tells us that if a family undergoes some effect from the outside envioronment for a long time (several generations) - in the end those creatures will be born with some type of a feature that would make them fit better to the envioronment. E. g. If there's a great flood - hawks and other birds would have to learn how to swim in order to find food and rest to survive. Or, if you take a cow, and cut her left ear, then take her baby and cut its ear, then its baby, etc, etc, in the end there is a probability that you will get a cow born that would not have an ear from the very beginning (birth).Now, back to the question, why are all the girls born as virgins? I mean, technically, all the women in any girl's family tree going up 20, 000 years to the beginnings of *person* sapiens were not virgins by the time that their babies were born (or their embryos were created inside of them)
  22. Good interpretation of an old story. I don't think, it belongs to the science section of the forum.
  23. The funny thing is that she'll probably actually get something out of it. Though, she might end up spending all that on her lawyer.
  24. I think, I know what you're talking about, I saw that show, too. Interesting, yeah. But nothing more. As far as the time standing still is concerned - it will continue its way as long as you hit the "surface" of the black hole. The time tands still onl if you are moving with a speed over the speed of light. But once you stop - the movement of time continues. As far as the stars being born around black holes - that is a complete nonesence, in that case there would not be spiral galaxiest tens of parsecs actoss, all the stars would be clustered in the center, collide, and thus ruin the whole galaxy. A black hole in the center of each galaxy is only necessary to keep the inner and outer stars in constant motion so that they don't collide with one another and prevent the galaxy from collapsing upon itself. Though high, their mass is finite. It has been calculated - not estimated - that every supermassive black hole in the center of galaxy weights exactly 0.5% of the galaxy's mass. I'm not sure as to where does it lead us as far as rotation and stuff, but I am sure that there is some math used to ascribe for the phenomena. All a black hole is is a supermassive star that ran out of fuel and its mass is too high, as it starts expanding, so, that the radiation from the most dense part - the core - cannot hold the weight, and the star just collapses upon itself. The acceleration is so great that the star itself becomes a very small object. Depending on its mass it can become a white dwarf star, or a black hole, if the mass is high. Scientists today tend to consider the black holes as garbage bins of the universe - they collect the unnecessary trash around us and get rid of it. How does i happen - nobody knows, probably just the hole itself is getting larger, but nobody really cares about that. Scientists also consider using them for that purpose in the future - to keep litter away from the Earth. In that case I have a question - why don't you just dump stuff over on the Sun? It's closer, thus, cheaper, anf it provides more fuel for it to survive. Yeah, there are many other weird theories like the wormwholes and stuff - but I don't really believe in them as they have no scientific or matemathical data to back them up.
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