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I put yes on the second question, but the mechanics of it would be very wonky. Reminds me of this: https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/a_bunch_of_rocks.png So yeah, possible, but difficult and not in the way most people would think.

Well shoot. That's a lot. Lemme answer the main points: Hypothetical FTL will definitely happen. I'm starting with the basics - that is, the laws of physics as we humans understand them. Future additions will contribute to more whacky, fantastical things. About the G-Forces thing... I dunno. I've basically just decided that NASA probably knows what they're doing, so there's PROBABLY a way to counterract the human squishiness quotient. Gravity Slingshots: Of course! If you mean gravity-assisted trajectories and such, then that would be all over the place. If you mean slingshots using miniature black holes to power the thrust... then sure. Why not? H Y D R O G E N Moon thing: well, yeah. Less gravity means less force means less energy required, yada yada yada. But that doesn't really help us if we can't get people off Earth in the first place. I'll get into that in the f u t u r e. (Spoiler alert: the universe has been around for a long time and doesn't seem like it's gonna blow up anytime soon)

First of all: cups, teaspoons, etc aren't imperial or metric. They're used all over the place invariably. Second of all: Meters are equally useful in practicality as feet. Both of you here have fallen into a fallacy: that of the familiarity bias. You're more used to feet/vs/meters and such, so it seems much more practical to you. Third of all: I am 69 inches tall

Ene, I appreciate you being up front about all this. Just know that I'm here for you if you ever need advice, or just a few good laughs. You are a wonderful human being, though we all have our flaws and struggles. You're well rounded, intelligent, and polite. Trust me, everything will work out for the best, even if you can't see it now. Sincerely, Wyn

Okay, sorry I'm a tiny bit late. I've been a little busy. ....Isn't this common knowledge? Or is that reserved only for Space Nerds? I agree, interstellar travel with where we are technology wise is a long way off. I think it's definitely possible, and achievable, in the future, however. Call me an optimist, but we shouldn't completely ignore those other stars and distant exoplanets. Yes, it may be two or three centuries down the line before we even get to the point where we have a solid plan to send humans to another star system, but it's something that can, and hopefully will, happen someday. But for those two or three centuries, I agree, we should focus on Solar System colonization. Moon! Yes, lots of good resources there. As I said in my last way-too-long rant, the moon also has water ice that could be converted into Hydrogen fuel. That, plus the H-3 you talked about and the fact that it has low gravity, would basically open up the rest of the solar system to us. So yes, the moon is definitely a place we want to be going to. Mars is literally the only other planet in the solar system that we can actually walk on conceivably without dying. It's pretty similar to Earth (Or at least used to be) but that in no way makes it hospitable, like you said. Mars is simply a good target because it's close, relatively hospitable, and can be used as an outpost for more exciting destinations. Venus: I have no idea why you'd want to go to Venus. But the whole "Let's turn it into a battery!" thing was new to me, so I guess there is some kind of resource there for us to harvest. Thank you for teaching me new things! It's also possible that there is something helpful and useful there, we just haven't found it yet, and we need to get a lot more advanced in technology before we can explore widely enough to find that resource. Mercury: Basically everything you said above fits what I thought about Mercury. Jupiter: Yes, the moons are viable and we can mine resources there. Maybe even set up stations and colonies. (I'd need to look at exactly how shielded from radiation those moons are, again...) But, you're forgetting something called.... SATURN!!!!! Yes, this is my favorite planet, so I may be somewhat biased, but seriously. Saturn's moons are just as viable as Jupiter's. (Unless once again I'm missing some important information on the lack of radiation shielding.) Saturn has more confirmed moons than Jupiter, not even counting the rings, and these moons hold just as many things for us as the ones of Jupiter. Jupiter's moon Europa may have life, but so may Saturn's moon Enceladus. Heck, we've discovered organic molecules spewing from gigantinourmous geysers on Enceladus! The other moons most likely contain the same resources that the ones of Jupiter do, and Saturn's rings are currently made almost entirely of water-ice, which is a helpful resource. Titan is an interesting world for research (because I like science), but it is also one of the most Earth-like worlds in the solar system. It has a storming atmosphere! And there are probably lots of resources there, too. And yes, Saturn is pretty. But that doesn't mean we should skip it. Uranus and Neptune: We don't really know what's out there yet, so there may be some kinds of viable resources. We should start with some scientific expeditions before we send economic ones. Who knows, maybe they have some valuable minerals on their moons, or something along those lines. Pluto: If we make Pluto a planet again, then we have to make, like, at least five other bodies - and possibly dozens or even hundreds more - planets as well, because they all follow the same rules as Pluto. So Pluto should not be a planet. But it can be a really, really, really cool dwarf planet. (Seriously, there are some cool things on Pluto. And it has five moons.) On a more serious note, the entirety of the Kuiper belt probably holds vast amounts of resources for us to harvest. Both on the dwarf planets and the asteroids. I briefly mentioned it above, but the Kuiper belt is huge, so it has likely tens of thousands of asteroids, and maybe hundreds of undiscovered dwarf planets. Which means lots of places to get resources from. The asteroid belt is much smaller, but there are also lots of resources there for us. So there you have it. My next huge rant, which is mostly about why Saturn is worth our time.

I have decided, after a bit of research, that the bulbs weigh 0.075 lbs which is about 34019.4 mg. The ants weigh 6 mg and can carry 10-15 times their weight which means they can carry 60-90 mg of weight. This means it would take somewhere between 378 ants (who can each carry 90 mg) and 567 ants (who can each carry 60 mg). There's nothing between 100 ants and 100,000 ants. 100 ants couldn't do it. 100,000 would be too many, but - assuming they understood - could probably do it, and there would be lots of sad ants standing around and doing nothing. Now, these ants are big enough that even three hundred seventy eight ants can't be touching the floor and the lightbulb at the same time, so we'll assume they use pilfered thread or cheesecloth and add more ants for the extra weight, which I don't care about right now. There's enough margin that it's safe to assume that 100,000 ants can deal with the lightbulb and cheesecloth and still have some sad lonely ants sitting around doing nothing. You're welcome.

Because virus's are comaparetivly easy to kill compared to deer or ants. Which is the main reason I'm not going to help the deer, far too much work. Ants? I could kill thousands of those in an hour, Virus's I just wipe the area with some disinfectant and it's done. Speaking of which the ant one reminded me of this dnd meme I saw where a guy asked why gods were always doing mortals bidding, and someone responded by asking him how he would react to a bunch of ants chanting his name while standing in a circle and only demanding sugar or that he kill other ants.

Why don’t we use Brandon Sanderson’s books as units of weight and length on this site? It seems like a missed opportunity.

From your theory "Then there's good old Szeth. How is he a Surgebinder if he doesn't have a spren? I'm not totally sure, but perhaps his strong oaths as a Truthless provides the sufficient bond for Honor's magic to work. Maybe there does exist a spren. Either way, those oaths are intricately tied with Szeth's Radiant powers. So, I'm calling it right now: if Szeth breaks his oaths, he will lose his powers." I think it has been clarified that Szeth got his Windrunner surges with the use of Jezrien' Honorblade. Szeth has trained in all ten Surges prior becoming Truthless. He trained with all the 8 honorblades Shin have kept hidden from the world. But I'm very interested in all "Oath" related things on Roshar being Honor's Investiture and these things being used with an honourable Intent. We also see Syl questioning Kal as "who were you trying to protect"? As in when he needed the power of Surges for a frivolous use than for actually in need. So 'Oathgates' , 'Oathpact' , Bonds, Connection, Honorblade , all seems to be major Investiture of Honor with Intent. So if the intent for all these is wrong then there is a loss of Investiture. Thus resulting in loss of power of a Shard. This could be the reason how Tanavast could have been weak enough for Rayse to physically injure him. Your theory can also explain just how when Vin' powers magnified with death and became a force of nature thus Honor also when releived of his Physical form, his consiousness went into the Stormfather there by providing Stormlight to everyone on Roshar without bias. The intent comes into play when Shards decide to settle on same planetary system with another one. In Mistborn we saw how important that was with opposing intentions. So similarly in Roshar, when we look at Honor and Cultivation, they decided to occupy a planetary system already created by Adonalsium and had life I guess. Both were not interested in starting new life they just wanted to improve something making it better (Cultivation). I can see Honor and Cultivation agreeing to a Pact to help the people of the land. At first it was the singers and later it became the humans. But later Honor lost his powers as you explained his Investiture was not being used with the right Intent resulting in huge loss of power for a Shard.

AMENDEMENT: I NO LONGER BELIEVE THIS BLOG ENTRY TO BE THE CASE. While it seemed reasonable at the time, I have since reconsidered things and this doesn’t feel right to me, nor does it fully match up with my experiences. I apologize for wasting everyone’s time with this theory. Thanks again for the support, and please have a nice day.

*also hugs* Whatever you need from us to help you get through this. We're here for you.

*hugs* Ene, good choice. You’ve got a community here that’ll help you. Best of luck.

Here is what I made. Hope you like it! Edit: google drive link https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0bN9EcUb__OSVVyQzc2V0ZmX2M

What is the messianic ideal. My understanding was that messianic jews were those that believe Jesus Christ was the redeemer, but also hold to Jewish practices as well, but your article has cast some doubt on that subject.

I need to log in again more often. This is very interesting @Trutharchivist How many of these have I missed?!? (Also, I promise you, before the end of the weekend I'll have responded to our outstanding PM(s) - I'll try to get it done before the end of today!)

Or we should decrease the speed of time to achieve the same effect.

Changing the distance of a mile would cause too many problems for my runner brain. Instead we should increase the speed of light until it travels a full foot in a nanosecond.

Providing new information is one of the many services we provide Huh ... I probably should watch some of those videos at some point then. Though if you're interested in an ... interesting play of some Sith Lords (well, they become Sith Lords ...) check out SFDebris's videos: https://sfdebris.com/videos/games/swtorinq.php (Sith Inquisitor, though he steers more Dark Side) https://sfdebris.com/videos/games/swtorsw.php (Sith Warrior, and one of his better series, goes for a Grey Sith) Looking forwards to the future posts!

Hey, upvoting blog entries is possible! I did not notice that. Also, I would like to not be turned into a Sith lord in the near future, thank you. Though Brandon apparently thinks they're moral, upright and good (that's a name of an Intentionally Blank episode). Hopefully going to dive into Reform, Conservative and Ultra Orthodox Judaism soon.

In some ways that is the saddest part. Their crusade sought something that could be argued to be noble. However, they would destroy the identity of their people to force them to accept these noble ideals.

That's the thing: the issue was not that the ideas of enlightenment contradicted Judaism, it was that in order to access those ideas you had to jump over a cultural gap. Emancipation, in and of itself, doesn't have to damage religion... But when religion is what sets you apart from your neighbor, it's going to. Then there were well-intentioned extremists, though the well intentioned part depends on your point of view.

It's also interesting that part of the promise of emancipation was the quick tearing down of the walls both physical and metaphorical. The tradition was at stake during this period not because of enlightened ideas per se but more because of the extremes that some wished to go to in order to spread these ideas.

I am a science nerd, but I am also religious. I think that humans are definitely pushed by biological needs. But if that was our only drive, we would have stopped a long time ago. As for the other two options, both are viable. Our agency, our free will, drives all people forward. Each person's agency is different, of course, but generally, I think humans have agency's that strive for something better. This is what has let us progressed so far. I do think there is a Virtue, but I believe this "external good" as you called it is just as much internal as it is external. The way I see things, the virtue of God that exists externally also exists within every person, to a degree. I believe that as God's children, his divine nature is in each of us. That universal virtue, combined with our free will and our daily biological needs, is what drives us forward to progress and grow. I didn't mean to wax religious there at the end. I realize that not all people will share all my viewpoints, so feel free to share yours or argue against mine below.

A monarchy only works if you get consistently okay kings.

HAHA THIS ^ ^ ^ GUY KNOWS HOW TO THINK

An AI cannot have a soul, I think, but it could almost certainly reach sentience given enough time and technology advancement.

How big is this lightbulb, how many ants would it take to lift it off the floor, and what kind of ant are we talking about?

I put "Um...ants can't screw in lightbulbs???", but I think that if they were given direction and had the capacity to understand such direction, they could probably do it. I just don't know how many it would take. The AI one stumped me. I had never really thought about it. I think that an AI could hypothetically get pretty close to sentience, to the point of achieving it, but I do not know, or what the implications of that would be. It might be that it could simulate certain aspects of sentience, to the point that living beings perceived it as sentient, but it wasn't actually sentient itself. I do believe in souls. (I am religious, see my signature.) I don't know if a sentient AI would have a soul, though. Good questions! They made me think.

I agree, but try telling that to the small part of me that feels bad for the ant now.

You see, the difference between an ant and me is that an ant is nonsentient, and I'm sentient.

Fadran you're making me feel bad now.

The nice thing about the speed of light is that it is constant. That means that if you measure the distance that light travels in a vacuum in one second and then divide it by 299,792,458, you will always get the same distance, and that distance will equal one meter. Imagine I'm making a meter stick. How do I know how long it should be? Well, perhaps I take an existing meter stick and use that to measure out exactly one meter. We'll assume that the stick that I'm measuring from is, in fact, exactly one meter. Now, the new meter stick I just made is made out of wood. Wood is not a perfect material. It may bend over time, it may absorb moisture and grow, etc. Any material that I use, in fact, will not be perfect: its length will vary slightly over time. For many applications, this will not be a problem. However, what happens when someone else wants to make meter sticks? They need to know how long a meter is. So perhaps they come to me and purchase my finest, most accurate meter stick, and use that to make new ones. Even my most accurate meter stick will not be enough to give them the same measurement every time: their meter sticks will not always be the same meter that my sticks are. And if someone makes meter sticks from their meter sticks, the problem will only compound. Now, depending on what the meter sticks are being used for, the amount of variation might not matter at all. However, this raises a question: what is the actual length of a meter? You see, the physicists are knocking on my door saying that they want to have the speed of light defined in meters per second, and - since the speed of light is invariant - they want it to stay the same number of meters per second. (Physicists get quite annoyed when their invariants vary.) Now, I might just take my original meter stick and say "This meter stick is officially one meter long. One meter is defined as the length of this stick." However, there's a problem with this: my meter stick is not made out of a perfect material either, since perfect materials don't exist! That means that its length will vary, which means that the length of the meter will vary, which means that the "constant" speed of light will vary, which means that the physicists will be be annoyed. Unlike meter sticks, however, a number that is written down will stay that number forever. And also unlike meter sticks, the speed of light will never change. Therefore, in order to have a definition of a meter that is consistent, all I need to do is determine how many meters light travels in a fixed period of time and then write that number down. Any time I want to know how long a meter is, all I have to do is repeat the experiment and divide by the number I wrote down. TL;DR a meter has to be defined by something, so it might as well be something that we know won't change. None of which takes away from your point that measurements are inherently arbitrary.

I dunno, maybe they just like being able to easily convert between masses, volumes, and whatnot. I know I do.

Reading: Making ourselves hallucinate by staring at dead trees, glue, and black marks.

Piano teacher's doggos are ADORABLE.

Sorry

And that would change the value of a dollar. Yes, but we don't have a world wide currency so making that conversion isn't possible It does, but there aren't any smaller denominations of curency, my one answer is that we might have looked far more into this than Brandon did.

Yay!!! I found it!!!!

Extremely rude of you to improve on my flawed guess about the center latitude. Now I have to do work.

Really neat data, @Jofwu! Is it me, or is Raboniel missing from the overall list...? Oh, now I think I see; they are word counts by POV character. Odd how some relatively unimportant characters have viewpoint chapters, while much more central (and interesting) characters, like Raboniel and Leshwi, have had none. I wonder if there is some deep truth to be inferred from that.

Sibling didn't get any PoVs. I believe the only one falling in that category was Sja-anat. Pretty sure the text uses she/her for Sja-anat, but I didn't feel comfortable labeling her "female".

Somehow I managed this anyway Sorry about that. (Of course I missed a typo, why would I not)

Thank you

Thank you.

Nice Looks like a good refinement of the rules I think, and a I like the card design. It's probably worth adding a quick note stating how many of each card are in the deck.

Nice And sure, go for it! I'm curious to see what you came up with, I'd be the first to admit that my rules could use improving anyway

Sorry to hear that! I decided to adapt your rules / ideas and make a rules sheet and cards. I am getting the cards printed soon! I can post them here if you'd like, but I don't want to hijack your thread.

There may be a better way to make your database accessible online, but I do know you can put together something that works with Microsoft Access Runtime, which is free. People would download the runtime and then use it to open your updated database.

This was very well written, and incredibly profound. Some people may not think so, but books and games can carry excellent life lessons. One of my favorite quotes from Kelsier, "For every Push, there is a Pull," has helped me find some stability in my life as well. Thank you very much for sharing this with us.