Mike Ma

I am a senior in massachusetts and i want to stay in the northeast

my class rank is 9 out of 340ish

my weighted gpa is 5.45 (the valedictorian's is 5.6-)

my sat in 2370

i have 800's on SAT subject math ans chemistry

extracurriculars marching band, math team (captain), science team, orchestra. Indian american association of merrimack valley

my ethnicity is indian.

The schools i am applying to are UMASS, BU, MIT, Cornell, DUke, Harvard, Carnegie mellon, RPI

since more than half the schools im applying to are uber-competitive, i want one more safety school, just in case

Alzheimer's disease has increased almost 9000% in 30 years.

Autism has increased 7000% in 20 years.

Obesity has increased by many factors in recent years.

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090108095429.htm

Can all of this be explained by "oh we are just more aware of it know" or is there something about modern life, with all the radiation from our daily interaction with technology, our over-processed fast food, our lack of physical and mental stimulation, pollution, social isolation (in the real world), and changing things that human beings have experienced for tens of thousands of years?

I have a GPA of about a 3.6 out of a 4.0 scale (A-) generally

My SAT score is 2370

I play violin in NYSO orchestra, and played band for three years.

So if i go to the adobe website and download and install the new version, what happens to my old version? Is it still there, do i need to go and manually delete it to save space? How can i see what version i hav now?

Oh and can someone explain what a patch is? is this a patch?

Who can help me in my quest to become computer literate?

So i know patches are parts of programs that update something uve already downloaded, but how do they work. So when you download a patch, are you redownloading the entire program? Should you delete the old program to save space, or does the patch overwrite your old version? Like for instance, when you install u new version of AIM, the old one is still there...

with inert (graphite) electrodes? I know the reduction is Cu (2+) ---> Cu (solid), but what is the oxidization? is it just water taht gets oxidized, assuming its in solution?

Remember all those world leaders saying that they would not "accept" a nuclear-armed North Korea? Well, they're nuclear-armed now, and everyones running around condemning them, but at the end of the day, they are going to accept a nuclear armed NK. What the hell else can they do. They've already isolated NK so much that it has nothing to lose.Wat now?

It has been said that the more we know about fetal development, the more support for abortion rights goes down. Is this true?

Also, when brain-scanning advances to the stage that we can "read" the thoughts of a late-term fetus, how will that impact the debate? Will we be able to witness how a late-tern disembowelment abortion is experienced by the baby's brain?

In our ability to gaze at the Universe with awe? Is the defining characteristic of every human society that has ever existed that we don't merely search for food, water and shelter, but that there are individuals within those societies who are willing to give up food, water, and shelter in order to find meaning, purpose. Does any other collection of matter in the Universe wonder why it exists?

You know the story of the blind men and the elephant? The elephant is God and the blind men are different religions.

One guy touches the trunk and thinks that the elephant is like a snake. Another guy touch a leg and thinks the elephant is like a tree (and then of course, they gather followers and kill each other over who is right)

Which blind man would the atheist be in this picture? "I don't see an elephant'?

Does anyone know the truth, besides the elephant?

... More people were willing to die for their beliefs and less people were willing to kill for them.

Does anyone know the words? and source please.

p.s. Fundamentalist atheists, bite me

For humanity? Surely what was left in Pandora's box is gone now

So this week the elite politicians in Pakistan opened their eyes and realized that the barbarians were at the gate. So now they've decided to finally engage in a battle to the death over the soul Pakistan.

Now common sense tells us that the few thousand terrorists shouldn't stand a chance against the U.S. backed behemoth that is the Pakistani army. Its jets vs donkeys. But if the mayans are right and this is the end of the world, perhaps they extremists will win, overrun Islamabad, and take control of the nuclear weapons. And we have no way of stopping it, save an full scale invasion.

Surely, we need rationality, or we could never create anything. However, should we rely on pure rationality as the ONLY way to understand our existence

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful

servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has

forgotten the gift.

~Albert Einstein

If i want to ask a "deep" question about God or religion, i have to come here, because of all the ideologues who infest the R and S section. Ironically, it seems mostly to be atheists, who seem to have certainly proven that you don't need to believe in God to be a religious nut

Was it always like this?

What did Einstein mean by this? It seems very opposed to the philosophy of some modern scientists who pride themselves on their rationality and empiricism

IS there anything that cannot be justified by a moral relativist, and if so, why? Would that not be an absolute?

The more Modern society fufills more and more of our physical needs, the more our spirits seem to be starving.

Why do we climb mountains not to find food, but truth? Why do stand in front of tanks for concepts, like freedom? Why are we awestruck when we look at the stars? Do we have no purpose here? Are we just biological machines? Then why do we feel so deeply?

Has there been any documented proof for mind-matter interaction, psi, remote viewing, etc. And if so, why isn't it on CNN 24/7? Woulnd't it be the biggest upset of the current materialistic paradigm in human understanding?