1. Comment #127752 by APPlet on February 15, 2008 at 3:01 pm

Mildly amusing at best, but I whole heartedly support the idea of using humour to portray the foolish things people are asked to take on faith (as opposed to directly mocking the person).

Other Comments by APPlet

2. Comment #127796 by NormanDoering on February 15, 2008 at 3:54 pm

APPlet wrote:

I whole heartedly support the idea of using humour to portray the foolish things people are asked to take on faith (as opposed to directly mocking the person).

I think foolish people like APPlet should be mocked for foolishly thinking that foolish believers in the absurd won't take it just as personally to have their beliefs mocked with or without names attached.

Other Comments by NormanDoering

3. Comment #127829 by APPlet on February 15, 2008 at 4:27 pm

How foolish :)

Other Comments by APPlet

4. Comment #127956 by madame_zora on February 15, 2008 at 7:43 pm

Well I thought it was funny.

Other Comments by madame_zora

5. Comment #127978 by Bobington on February 15, 2008 at 8:27 pm

I shall now totally ruin the joke by explaining it.

The entire problem is one of cohesion versus gravity. For watery spit, the force of cohesion is weaker than the force exerted by gravity so it tends to move down and hit the floor. For more viscous mucous, sucking on it will lower the pressure in your mouth causing the atmospheric pressure of earth to push the spit up into your mouth. As there is a large amount of cohesive strength in the spit, the force of attraction to itself is greater than the pull of gravity.

Other Comments by Bobington

6. Comment #128354 by Shane Williams on February 16, 2008 at 8:12 pm

The beautiful thing about it, Bobington, is that most of us didn't need to know all of that to understand that there was a natural and detailed* explanation behind all of those "miracles". Perhaps this simple ability to reason things out for ourselves is what sets us apart from the cult-folk?

*Most religious "explanations" are usually invalid or incomplete, so they're not very detailed at all.

Other Comments by Shane Williams

7. Comment #128723 by windfall on February 17, 2008 at 7:18 pm

I thought it was pretty hilarious when he flew out the window at the end. :o)

Other Comments by windfall

8. Comment #128727 by dkv on February 17, 2008 at 8:05 pm

In quantum mechanics the gravity doesnt work the way it works on large scale..
Black holes emit energy.In other words the ball of energy defies gravity due to the uncertainity principle.
Monster tides in the oceans also tend to defy gravity.. They rise 20-25 meters high.

And all this happens in a real world..
The exact nature of Garvity is not yet known...
The apple from tree doesnt "always" fall on the Earth. If a supernova explodes in near vicinity then the apple might get effected in strange ways.

The formation of Galaxy defies any Gravitational equation...

We live in a small world.
There is an inherent anomaly in Randomness.

Other Comments by dkv

9. Comment #128733 by sent2null on February 17, 2008 at 8:46 pm

Some necessary pedant ism at the risk that you were entirely serious concerning the statements made in your post.

In quantum mechanics the gravity doesnt work the way it works on large scale..

Really? how is it different?

Black holes emit energy.In other words the ball of energy defies gravity due to the uncertainity principle.

This smacks of doubletalk, black holes emit radiation precisely because they have strong gravitational effects near their event horizons.

Monster tides in the oceans also tend to defy gravity.. They rise 20-25 meters high.

That would depend on what you mean by defy. Gravity can be described as a spacial and temporal vector towards which massive objects move in order to conserve energy. In the context of the earth moon system, the net effect of "gravity" as defined above varies with space and time this is why the tides "rise". They are behaving precisely in accordance with predictions of gravity for the combined Earth Moon system, your description of "defy" implies you are only including the effects from the perspective of the Earth without account to the distortion caused by the presence of the moon, this is a critical error.

And all this happens in a real world..
The exact nature of Garvity is not yet known...

What exactly do you mean by "exact"? That said, you happened to pick on one of the most accurately verified areas of human investigation ever. The workings of gravity have been tested to astounding levels of accuracy. Are you referring to inaccuracy in the 14 significant bit which may very well be a result of instrumentation rather than theory?

The apple from tree doesn't "always" fall on the Earth. If a supernova explodes in near vicinity then the apple might get effected in strange ways.

Well let's play this game, the nearest star that could possibly go "super nova" would have to possess stellar mass in accordance with Chandrasakhar's limit, which would necessitate a mass of about 8-9 sol...the nearest such star is several hundred light years away. If it went nova today it would take several hundred years for us to even know about it (through light) but so far as gravitational effects any gravitational wave disturbances (an effect of gravitation that is still unverified) would be exceedingly small indeed...far too small to cause macroscopically observable changes to gravity locally on Earth.

The formation of Galaxy defies any Gravitational equation...

More gobbledygook, models of gravitational formation operate so long as we make the right accounting for missing factors (unseen mass) in the form of dark matter. You add the mass into the equations and poof you get our galaxies ...but you then have to find the dark matter ...that is what the LHC hopefully will do when it comes online late this year;)

Gotta love the fact, that there are a lot of fantastic, weird and bizarre events in this universe but through it all... there is no magic, no where.

There is an inherent anomaly in Randomness.

huh???!?!?!?!

Other Comments by sent2null

10. Comment #128735 by dkv on February 17, 2008 at 9:04 pm

You are totally wrong..
If you have read the theory carefully then it should be known to you that Black holes do not allow anything to escape not even light.(we are talking about microscopic blackholes)
The only thing which works then is the interaction between virtual particles.. which comes into existence because of what we call uncertainity principle(or more precisely due to inherent probabilistic nature of physics).
======================================
The effect of Moon do not account for the Monster Waves in Ocean... Read more.
============================
The dark matter etc add additional uncertainity to the true nature of Gravity..
It might turn out that Gravity as we know is consequnce of a different theory.
Naive understanding of gravity (or gravitation more precisly) doesnt help.
========================
Anamoly in Randomness is my theory ... you are free to disagree.

Other Comments by dkv

11. Comment #128737 by Steve Zara on February 17, 2008 at 9:11 pm

I will let sent2null have the fun of answering the physics bits, but I have to ask:

Anamoly in Randomness is my theory ... you are free to disagree.

To disagree, we would have to have even the faintest idea of what you are talking about here. Perhaps you could explain.

Other Comments by Steve Zara

12. Comment #128740 by dkv on February 17, 2008 at 9:28 pm

I will not discuss too much here.
I have already discussed it.
The main topic of discussion is gravity.

Other Comments by dkv

13. Comment #128741 by Steve Zara on February 17, 2008 at 9:39 pm

I will not discuss too much here.
I have already discussed it.

Perhaps you could point us to a web page or blog where this is covered in detail?

The main topic of discussion is gravity.

I don't think someone who believes that magic is needed to account for high tides and large waves is really in a useful position to discuss gravity.

Perhaps you could explain which waves you are talking about?

Other Comments by Steve Zara

14. Comment #128742 by dkv on February 17, 2008 at 9:40 pm

To give you a hint the probability is never zero even theoretically.

Other Comments by dkv

15. Comment #128743 by Steve Zara on February 17, 2008 at 9:42 pm

To give you a hint the probability is never zero even theoretically.

Probability of what?

Other Comments by Steve Zara

16. Comment #128756 by dkv on February 17, 2008 at 10:26 pm

Probability of anything.
But that will take us away from the discussion on gravity...
Gavrity is caused by Gravitons... which are self interacting and they can have weird properties.
Now there is no reason to assume that Gravitional Constant G remains constant in time and space...
There is a chance that Gravitional Constant has non-linear properties.
The Earth quakes can then be explained as consequence of this non-linear component in the Gravtational equation...
We were experiencing anamoly in standard Gravity but we were not recognizing it in fundamental way...
It is impossible to have any mass of significance without "earthquakes"...
There is chance that you might suddenly expereince an earth quake for no reason at all.

The truth is we are neglecting the true nature of gravity and we tend to assume landing on Moon explains gravity.
(I explain it by Anomaly in Randomeness which is pure physics.)

Other Comments by dkv

17. Comment #128757 by sent2null on February 17, 2008 at 10:30 pm

(After having read dkv's last post)

Steve,

Why do I get the sudden memory of the sense of astonishment I had reading the adventures of Alice after she went down the rabbit hole?

Other Comments by sent2null

18. Comment #128760 by Steve Zara on February 17, 2008 at 10:39 pm

Why do I get the sudden memory of the sense of astonishment I had reading the adventures of Alice after she went down the rabbit hole?

I know what you mean. Some posts are not just weird, but painfully weird:

There is a chance that Gravitional Constant has non-linear properties.
The Earth quakes can then be explained as consequence of this non-linear component in the Gravtational equation...

Perhaps we should forward this to some prominent String Theorists. Their desperate search for a situation in which the properties of strings can be directly observed is at an end. No more talk of building particle accelerators light years in diameter... we can observe weird behaviour of individual gravitons using Earth Science. Just think of the Nobel Prizes....

I have always found "armchair science" fascinating to observe, particularly when it is combined in some grotesque chimera with religion.

Other Comments by Steve Zara

19. Comment #128764 by dkv on February 17, 2008 at 10:44 pm

Nobel prizes ?? for what ?
Isnt it sufficient to know that we know more.

Other Comments by dkv

20. Comment #128767 by Steve Zara on February 17, 2008 at 10:57 pm

Nobel prizes ?? for what ?
Isnt it sufficient to know that we know more.

To know more, you have to know something in the first place.

People like sent2null spend years studying subjects in detail to build up expert knowledge. That requires work and dedication.

I don't know what your background is, but you are clearly no expert. You seem to be throwing random concepts together with little understanding.

Telling people here that they are wrong and "need to read the theory carefully" is not a good way to make an impression or encourage useful debate.

The scientist Lewis Wolpert expresses, correctly in my humble view, that science is hard. It is non-intuitive. It is not some set of arbitrary ideas that you can play around with to try and find some gap for God.

Other Comments by Steve Zara

21. Comment #128770 by dkv on February 17, 2008 at 11:09 pm

Nobel prize deals with a subset of knowledge.
And there is no nobel prize for mathematics..
The point is we cannot keep on debating in the hope that someday someone will give Nobel Prize.
If we think we think for the pleasure of thinking..The pleasure beomes more sexy if institutions support it... but thats it.
There is no other advantage.Wisdom reminds me of the fact that one must remain humble ...it is the most difficult skill to learn for any knowledge seeker.
There were many brilliant people who lost their lives before thier ideas were recognized again proving the futility of materialistic search in knowledge...

Other Comments by dkv

22. Comment #128779 by Steve Zara on February 17, 2008 at 11:23 pm

There is no other advantage.Wisdom reminds me of the fact that one must remain humble ...it is the most difficult skill to learn for any knowledge seeker.

I don't consider believing you know far more about physics and the nature of gravity than people who have been studying this for years as being humble. I am only an amateur in this, but even I can see that you are just putting vague ideas together with little understanding.

Perhaps you could explain how God is supposed to fit into all this?

Other Comments by Steve Zara

23. Comment #128787 by Styrer- on February 17, 2008 at 11:47 pm

22. Comment #128779 by Steve Zara on February 17, 2008 at 11:23 pm

There is no other advantage.Wisdom reminds me of the fact that one must remain humble ...it is the most difficult skill to learn for any knowledge seeker.


I don't consider believing you know far more about physics and the nature of gravity than people who have been studying this for years as being humble. I am only an amateur in this, but even I can see that you are just putting vague ideas together with little understanding.

Perhaps you could explain how God is supposed to fit into all this?

Steve

What the hell are you doing?

Please stop giving the likes of wooter and dkv reason to perpetually come back at you with vacuous inanities.

If, Steve, you would distill all your possible retorts to the illiterate, innumerate, inconsequential numbskulls as you provide them, these may form, independently, nuggets of information worth reading.

But do not expect me to go through the pain of sifting your gold from their shite.

Think on, good Doctor.

Best,
Styrer

Other Comments by Styrer-

24. Comment #129255 by JuxtaMonkey on February 18, 2008 at 11:20 pm

Bobington,
I've always found it humorous and educating to read little scientific jokes proving the falsities in such thinking. It always makes me think just how weird people get about illogical jesters. Hehe...if you ever read Skepic (I highly recommend if you have haven't) they have an article on the "Science of Santa" in a very dated issue. I wonder if one can google it? It appears you can: http://www.chainreactionbicycles.com/santaclaus.htm
very funny.

Other Comments by JuxtaMonkey

25. Comment #129866 by scrub on February 19, 2008 at 5:21 pm

UCB was a great show. Cancelled many years ago but I still have a handful of episodes on my hard drive. Try to find the "ass pennies" skit.

Other Comments by scrub

26. Comment #133889 by Narrator on February 27, 2008 at 2:14 am

Is that Amy Poehler in the video? I love her!! What show was that?

Other Comments by Narrator

27. Comment #159003 by forksmuggler on April 11, 2008 at 10:23 am

Narrator-

Yeah, that's her. UCB is one of the best sketch comedy shows EVER! This particular sketch is funny, but not their best work. Scrub's right, check out the "ass pennies" skit.

Other Comments by forksmuggler