Our next topic-driven chat session will be held on Saturday, September 17th, at 1:00pm Central Standard Time (CST) or GMT-6. Saturday is the current winner in the
poll and seems to be a reasonable time for most folks. Be sure and vote in this thread's poll so I can know who will be there. If we don't have enough interest I'll need to cancel again.
Current Topic
The topic of the chat will be the Anthropic Principle as applied to Cosmology. I think there is a lot of confusion regarding this principle and I'd like to have some reasoned, rational discussion based on scientific principles regarding the merits of this principle. I'll update this post with a summary later today.
References:
- Wikipedia - Always a good reference. Be sure to explore the links to related topics and the external links referenced.
- Anthropic-principle.com - Be sure and read the primer
Statistics
This will be chat session #12 (last chat was cancelled). Since our last chat (four weeks ago) we have grown from 667 to 734 members representing 88 countries (up from 80). Also we've had 159 members active over the preceding 30 days which is up from 145; another indicator that we may have a good turnout.
The Usual Timezone Stuff
Ok, the usual stuff... As I already said, the chat session will be held this Saturday at 3:00pm (CST). You can use the
timezone converter to convert to your local time. Once there, enter the day and time as specified above, then select US/Central in the "From Time Zone" column and your own location in the "To Time Zone" column, then click Convert. Be sure and unclick the "Use Current Date/Time" option. This will give you the time of the chat meeting in your own local time.
Some other areas:
Texas, U.S. - Saturday, 1:00pm
California, U.S. - Saturday, 11:00am
India - Saturday, 11:30pm
London - Saturday, 7:00pm
Madrid, Spain - Saturday, 8:00pm
Melbourne, Australia - Sunday, 4:00am
New Zealand - Sunday, 6:00am
Sweden - Saturday, 8:00pm
Canada, Eastern - Saturday, 2:00pm
Pakistan - Saturday, 11:00pm (new)
Future Chat
The topic-driven chat sessions will continue on every other Saturday at 3pm (CST). These will be moderated and a transcript of the chat will be recorded and available for later review. I hope to start a weekly un-moderated and open-discussion chat in the near future, based on traffic patterns on the website.
New for this Chat
You may have seen the new "Time till Next Chat" block on the ToeQuest home page. Currently, this is only accurate if you are in the CST timezone. I'll have this working shortly and it will display the topic, specific date, time, and time remaining until the next chat. Plus, the time and date will be localized to your timezone. This should help draw attention to our chats and eliminate the time translation confusion for our many members in different timezones.
I'll also update the chatroom software to the latest revision. No major changes this time, but I like to stay current. Also, Carly has been sneaking out of the chat room occasionally to read messages in the forum, and I think she even introduced herself to the community. I've talked to her about this and told her she needs to stay in the chatroom and talk to people there. I don't think she was really listening to me. Anyway, I apologize for that and hope it doesn't happen again.
We'll meet in Flash Chat. I'm assuming everyone is happy with the new flash-based chatroom. Please let me know if you are having any problems getting into the chat room. Hope to see you there!
Regards,
--Robert
ATTENTION: An online chat transcript can be found
here.