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really?!? 

http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo2014.html

The presence of liquid water is a requirement of habitability on a planet. Possible indicators of liquid surface water on Mars include intermittent flow-like features observed on sloping terrains. These recurring slope lineae are narrow, dark markings on steep slopes that appear and incrementally lengthen during warm seasons on low-albedo surfaces. The lineae fade in cooler seasons and recur over multiple Mars years. Recurring slope lineae were initially reported to appear and lengthen at mid-latitudes in the late southern spring and summer and are more common on equator-facing slopes where and when the peak surface temperatures are higher. Here we report extensive activity of recurring slope lineae in equatorial regions of Mars, particularly in the deep canyons of Valles Marineris, from analysis of data acquired by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. We observe the lineae to be most active in seasons when the slopes often face the sun. Expected peak temperatures suggest that activity may not depend solely on temperature. Although the origin of the recurring slope lineae remains an open question, our observations are consistent with intermittent flow of briny water. Such an origin suggests surprisingly abundant liquid water in some near-surface equatorial regions of Mars.

i was just looking at the title of this "category":

Think for Yourself, Schmuck!
Did you know that most people only have three original thoughts per week? Discuss new ideas to see if they catch fire.

how do you mean original? that they didn't have before? you know there is no such thing as really "original", right? everything is a different form (or "evolution" in some sense) of something previous!

[really]

Hallo all, my german exams are over, i think i made it, i will know in 8 (!) weeks for sure, but i think i will avoid capital letters for a while.

ANYWAY, i don't know where to put this, so i leave it here, hoping you can help me with it.

i've been inspired, i think, by a man talking like a tarot deck (on youtube but in greek), total random shit but somehow it got me thinking about some issues i have with well, (what science sees as) "reality", or actually better said, with quantum physics.

on the one hand, even though i'm a set theorist, i find it really hard to think of our four dimensions, as a continuous space. because continuous means infinitely dense. and that infinite can be really very huge (from a set theoretical point of view at least, and set theory is the base of our mathematics). somehow i got a strong hunch that there's a contradiction somewhere if we assume that our dimensions are a continuous space. there's even research on the quantum theory of gravity showing (haven't read the articles *yet*) that space should be "grainy".

on the other hand, our physics is based, and that's really based, in continuous mathematics. our equations assume continuity to work! so where's the contradiction?? 

and one more thing i'm wondering about, how come on the quantum level it's all about probabilities of existing in one place or in another, and we use aristotelian logic to understand it? we use aristotelian mathematics, even though there is a theory of quantum logic, which is a version of probabilistic logic (with truth values any real number between and including 0 and 1), and i do finally have time to learn about all this stuff (marburger's book had too many words, too few equations and concrete definitions, for my taste, i'm a logician and i like to start from the start ). but two questions about this logic:
how does it work side by side with aristotelian logic? is it embedded in it (in a mathematical sense)? does it "converge" there somehow? any ideas?
and how did that continuous "all truth values between 0 and 1" creep in there again?  where's my contradiction?!!?!

So with one more month to go and ison in mars-distance from the sun, the chances it'll make it and be brilliant are looking gooood!

http://cometison.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/new-reseach-shows-ison-will-survive-sun.html

hey you guys, i'm kinda lost again due to my quasi-forced but thoroughly enjoyable intensive german course after my 8 hours worktime (if this was a german speaking forum i'd had shitloads of funny quotes from my awesome discordian teacher - her quotes don't work in english i'm afraid)

Anyway, as I'm in the fast track to understand german and germans even better, last night i watched bbc's "make me a german" (easy to find on youtube) It's about a "typical" british family moving to Germany and for a certain amount of time trying to be the average German (average as in having the average jobs (or no job for the woman), doing the mean hours of worktime, cleaning, habits, almost everything)

It's really *really* interesting and also quite disturbing.
For example, apparently having children in germany is almost impossible! Or almost impossible to have both parents working... Until kids are 3 ears old they don't go to kindergarten and elementary school starts at 8:00 and often finishes at 11:00...IN THE MORNING. And if the mother dares to go to work, she is stigmatised as a "raven mother", one who neglects her kids.

WTF GERMANY? or is this just a ridiculous exaggeration? Does any of you have experience with this? Is this just a stereotype, is it just Bavaria (they did move to Nurenberg), or is it really so? And how does this minimal amount of school time influence the average german education choice, that is working for a company and not pursuing a university education? Is this a plan? I mean, if you look at the german school system, it's especially made to make lots of workers who can't really think for themselves and are content with the tabloids telling them what their opinion should be. Or is this a general phanomenon and not something particularly german?

Hm, I dunno why i tell you all this, it's not like you're all experienced with the german system. I'm just stunned. I mean, this situation wasn't really unknown to me, I live here for many years, but my circle of friends isn't exactly like this and it's weird seing all this things, that i suspected, spelled out and confirmed in such a manner.

Hey you guys, nice to be able to log in again.... On the day the lavabit server was shut down, and before checking my emails, i decided to change the email address which i gave here to my lavabit one (the old one i never checked). BOOM, confirmation email unreachable, as you can see on lavabit.com, old email adress also closed since i didn't use it for so long,anyway, long story short - i never got any confirmation email anywhere, but i will never ever change my email adress here again, I'm glad to be back, i missed you

A farce? Fake news? I'm confused. Especially given the name choice...SOYLENT?? at least it's not green?

http://foxnewsinsider.com/2013/08/05/could-soylent-powder-replace-solid-food

Does anyone know if there is a translation of PD in greek? modern greek of course i searched a bit, also here, but didn't find anything... and if not, does any of you speak greek and want to help me translate?

when the internet makes poems:
http://screenshotsofdespair.tumblr.com/

  Yesterday i was listening to the monks and i remembered the first time i wrote here, fantasizing about roots of "the monks" music/project in discordianism 
so here's one for you guys:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWR4r78CWEQ

So which one of you wrote this about the synchronised metronomes experiment? 

http://io9.com/5947112/watch-32-discordant-metronomes-achieve-synchrony-in-a-matter-of-minutes

[all the properties of a Majorana fermion, the charge, energy, what have you, it's all zero. It is a particle, but it doesn't have properties that we can measure.]

Well, the last years, science news are becoming more and more science fiction but THIS.........!

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21829160.300-nothing-to-see-the-man-who-made-a-majorana-particle.html

What is a Majorana fermion?
It is named for the physicist Ettore Majorana, who found that a particle could be its own antiparticle. If a particle has properties with values unequal to zero, then its antiparticle has the opposite values. What that means is that all the properties of a Majorana fermion, the charge, energy, what have you, it's all zero. It is a particle, but it doesn't have properties that we can measure. That makes it very mysterious. It also makes it difficult to find.

sometimes it seems that soon there might be nobody left who can understand science anymore... 

after the local cheap sorbet changed the factory to not meet our home's allergy specifications i discovered the following awesum cheap and easy (always best!) berry sorbet recipe
ingredients:
1 bag frozen mixed berries (300gr)
200 ml yogurt drink (or cream, plain milk, whatever)
sugar to taste (i use about two-three soupspoons brown sugar)
recipe:
put ingredients in blender (berries still totally frozen) and blend until smooth

eat immediately or put back in freezer in which case stir after you take it out

miam - i hope you like this too - i gotta go get me some berries now!

[very discordian songs]

Hi,
I'm talking about the 60s revolutionary band, the Monks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_monks). Comprised of 5 american former soldiers left back in Germany in the mid 60s, their philosophy was constructed by "a pair of loopy existentialist visionaries". Apart from being the fathers of punk, techno, etc., they influenced later bands like the Beastie Boys, Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys, The White Stripes, etc..

So if you listen to their only album, "black monk time" it is I think a collection of very discordian songs. Take for example "higgledy piggledy" (http://www.myspace.com/music/the-monks-6801749/songs/higgledypiggledy-2949587). Higgledy Piggledy in English means 'in confusion or disorder', and the only other lyrics of this song are "Way down, to heaven, yeah!". And Principia Discordia's heaven is down.

So my question is rather technical: does anybody have information to the discordian nature of the Monks? I mean, is it accidental or were their "designers" discordians or what?

merci, granny smith