Don't get me wrong, I understand exactly how a higher base leads to more compression. I'm just saying the phrase "There are enough combinations to encode the alphabet, etc." sounds a bit strange since TWO is enough to encode literally anything, given enough space.

I'm just going to summarize my views here: yes, an ideal world would be great. And yes, I do understand we'll never get there. But my point is that we should TRY to get as CLOSE as possible, instead of just giving up and being content with the status quo. Just as we will never cure all disease, but we should still try…

Here's where we greatly disagree: you consider the "kill or be killed" situation a necessary evil. I do not. I consider it necessary only as long as we, as a collective culture, continue to support it. But I firmly believe that were we to shift our beliefs so that we may prioritize nonlethal DEFENSE over…

"For gun owners... you just repeated yourself. There is no distinction in such a situation. They do not think of the gun as anything more than simply a tool of defense."

I'm pretty sure that's been my issue/point the whole time. My issue is with the concept of "defense" being IMMEDIATELY associated with an offensive…

"If you don't want a gun, get a big can of some strong pepper spray AND a taser for your house at least." I'm okay with this. In fact, the very fact that nonlethal options like this exist has been entirely my point. I never said you shouldn't defend yourself against danger. I just said that lethal options, like guns,…

Nope, I never liked it enough to watch more than a few minutes on occasion. But thanks for the reference elaboration :)

Nah, I like wine better than whiskey. I'd ask for some rum...any brand...just rum :)

I know that's a reference to Seinfeld, but not being a fan of the show, I don't understand it's relevance...

Tangent related to this post but not this article: Jesus turned water into wine, but on Wizard Wars the other night, a magician turned water into Pepsi. Just sayin', I like Pepsi more than wine.

I know, because usually it's the other way around. And interestingly, when theists disapprove of something, they disapprove of the PERSON doing it, while atheists tend to just disapprove of the thing and not judge the person. Go figure.

I don't watch it enough to even remember that episode. But that's one of the great things about MythBusters: if you submit valid complaints about how they did their tests, they eventually re-do them, issues fixed, in a revisit episode :) So you may want to mention your tidbit over at the Discovery Channel MythBusters…

I do know all of what you just said lol . Even though they're odorless perceptually, they're sensed by the same receptors as odor, so if there's a strong smell, it'll "wash out" the sensation of pheromone detection.

Retro-wikipedia XD

Oh, great. Nintendo is jumping on board with the "NEW" names. Call it the 3DS 2 at least... just calling it the "New 3DS" makes it confusing to talk about. "I got a new 3DS". "Oh, the New 3DS?" "No, just a new 3DS." Who's on first again?

*Sigh* Did you really just say, "hey, I don't personally think my memory has trouble, so this drug can't cause memory trouble"? That's not how science works. One sample point, using self-reported data obtained without a control, through the perception of the person using the drug, is about the farthest from unbiased…

No...that's the usual sci-fi idea of what happens if you move faster than light. But that's not how it works. The faster you move, the slower time goes, but it's not linear. It's dependent on the factor called gamma, which is 1/sqrt[1-(v/c)^2]. You'll notice as v gets larger (an object gets faster), the factor gets…

Exotic matter is...well, it's a mathematical quirk for now. So, yeah, a placeholder in that we don't even know if it EXISTS, let alone how we would gather or make any. But NOT a placeholder in that we know, mathematically, all the properties it would need. So kind of like the number i.

I didn't mention that light sometimes moves slower than C because it isn't relevant. The constant is the speed of light in a vacuum—the "in a vacuum" parts are therefore implied.

I don't know. I used AVG for a very short period of time a long while ago, and immediately switched to Avast.

Avast! is free. You can pay for a "pro" version, but that's totally unnecessary. It handles basically all antivirus protection, from prevention methods to removal, with no bloatware. The most annoying thing it does is, when you update it (the program itself, not the definitions, so this is rare) it asks you if you…