I'd much rather have a positive effect from a placebo than from a drug that usually has nasty side-effects.
I've wondered about this. If there is an actual placebo effect, we're drastically underutilizing it in the practice of medicine. As a result, there's a whole snake-oil industry overcharging for it and misleading people about it.
Expensive placebos work better, and expensive wines taste better. Asking for more money is not overcharging, it's upping the placebo dosage:\
That's a rather anomalous variety of "running homeless shelters" and "tackling social problems". The UNHCR runs refugee camps, mostly in war zones and former war zones; it doesn't run soup kitchens in Brazil, or generally in any way attempt to improve the lot of poor people in non-warzones.
They take care of large groups of people displaced by X by offering shelter and food and water.
You seem obsessed with war, but X also covers earthquakes, and any other calamity. And unlike the churches, they aren't offering the help as part of a recruiting campaign.
'To remove the perceived stigma, we would need to have more scientists talking openly about issues of religion, where such issues are particularly relevant to their discipline.'"
Which is where, exactly?
Like I said below: The placebo effect. That effect is based on faith, and religion has been exploring the mechanisms of faith for a long time; they might have had useful thoughts if we can detach them from the supernatural and apply it to medicine.
I can think of one area of research where religion is relevant to the discipline: The placebo effect. Faith plays a major role in placebos, it's belief in the healing properties of the treatment which affects the outcome.
I guess research into the transition between life and death also touches on the issue, but in a less relevant way.
Re:Don't understand the hate
on
Lost Ends
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· Score: 1
Seconded. I love those [redacted] commercials, too.
Ah! You've been spammed with something similar to this... THERE's your problem. The only regular exposure I have to those ads is you people, propagating their brand capitalization of your own free will. I just lol'd at the terrorist bunnies and thought the production values were sharp without cringing at the memory of spam at the first sign of a CGI'd baby.
Wait... I thought those television CGI babies talked? I remember that because it annoyed me.
for 30 seconds at a time and they're always cracking wise.
Riiiight, that. I'm not a fan of that, I think it's creepy. Then again I thought the movie Cars was creepy... who built those machines? And what happened to them?
Apparently I'm the only guy on slashdot who likes babies, super heroes, and parodies.
Re:Don't understand the hate
on
Lost Ends
·
· Score: 1
How did they show up everywhere, then? Why did playing them in the lotto cause a meteorite to fall on Hurley's chicken stand?
Hurley's "bad luck" was coincidence not fate. The numbers showed up in various places because they were the numbers of the candidates remaining who made it onto the plane to crash on the island. IE: Jacob physically wrote the numbers down which led to them being written and used in various places.
Jacob didn't write down those numbers on the girl's jerseys. And that other guy that had used the numbers in a game of chance before Hurley also won the game and also had his life destroyed by a disruption in the laws of probability.
So congratulations, you know a whole lot less than me about a stupid TV show!
What exactly are they 'pirating'? I see no mention that they are using any copyrighted material without permission. All I see is that they are supposedly using PATENTED technology (software). In Europe.
Well, since they aren't on a boat, using threats of violence to get goods and hostages from other boats, they aren't pirating anything.
But the Warner would call what Warner did "piracy" if someone else did i to them, and this thread is about calling them out on their hypocrisy, so we're using their vocabulary.
I have seen some of Vincenzo Natali's previous movies; Cube (very original), Cypher (cool SF thriller) and Nothing (funny and absurd fantasy). He is definitely an interesting director. But I have never heard of Splice. Is it worth tracking down a DVD of Splice?
1- It's coming out in theaters soon, so I wouldn't try to find the DVD yet.
2- It seems to be EXACTLY the same movie as "Species". I can only hope they have as much T&A.
Ah, without clicking on any links (we have to stop feeding that fraud), google let me know this was the work of his sidekick, not him directly. Now, I demand that this fraud be fully identified in all future slashdot posts about him or his minions (an addendum to this thread would be wise, too), because HE'S A FUCKING CHARLATAN!
Seriously, he called himself the "first cyborg" for putting an RFID chip in his skin years after people have had pacemakers, cochlear implants, and fucking wires in their brains (for vision to the blind and computer communications for the paralyzed). All reporters who called him "the first cyborg" should be fired, all "news" outlet that published that crap should be fined and stripped of all journalistic-perks (press passes, immunity from certain police procedures, etc). He's an attention whore who pulls these stupid publicity stunts to promote his books, stop helping him with his frauds.
This sort of thing happens a lot in government. Two sides fight it out, and then end up with some kind of compromise that is inconsistent, but it gives each side something. Then other people come along and say, "That's inconsistent! It's so dumb!" but in reality those people just don't understand how government works.
They should just be glad to have their half of the baby.
The "flash-sideways" may have appeared to take place during those days, but we discover at the end that it's not "real", meaning it's not affixed to what we perceive as the main flow of time and space. It was only "real" in the sense that the souls of the castaways were experiencing it
That was a season finale, and I stopped watching again when I realized that all of that had failed to kill the guy.
It didn't fail to kill him, its just that he got resurrected later on. Its all explained in the show.
Yeah, I know, an alien wizard did it. I was not impressed. BTW that was back in the days when it was on tuesdays at 12:05 am, so these irritating moves were enough to make me give up on a show that required too much effort to watch to begin with (stupid local TV station... can't wait for the internet to kill it).
In order to continue to provide clarity, our guiding principles include: 1. We don't seek to control what users tweet. And users own their own tweets.
So users are still free to tweet "Blue Sun makes the BEST saddles in the verse! #blueSun #spaceHorse" and receive payment from Blue Sun, but apps can't display ads in the feed that aren't coming from twitter?
Meh, fine by me.
Re:Don't understand the hate
on
Lost Ends
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· Score: 1
The island was not purgatory. Again, the show runners kept saying that from day 1. It wasn't a retcon, because that was one of the very first answers the show runners gave in interviews.
Christian Shepherd explicitly said it in the finale to to hammer it home. Everything that happened, happened. It was all real.
It order for it to be a retcon, it would had to been a part of continuity to begin with.
Well, techincally, I guess you're right, that it would have to have been stated explicitly to be a retcon in the fullest sense of that 'word'. But after seeing the finale I'm sure that in the beginning the island was supposed to be purgatory, and then they made up all that side-verse crap as a way of maintaining their denial about that. I do not think they had the side-verse purgatory planned all along, I think it was a reaction to the fact that everyone saw right away where they were going with this and they wanted to have us think we had it wrong so we would stay interested.
And they did a good job, interest stayed, but I call that a retcon even if they had only hinted instead of flatly stating something. Like how Willow's lesbian lover was supposed to be part demon, but they then changed that for a feminist storyline instead. I don't think the Buffy writers made a bad choice with that move, but I think it's a retcon, even though they can say she only believed she was part demon.
Now, is there another neologism that could convey this meaning to you better than "retcon"? Maybe tvtropes has one for when writers say they have everything planned out, but they make shit up as they go along.
This confirms my suspicion that the town you grew up in was significantly more evolved/gentrified/enlightened than mine.
Lucky me, but in fairness that was the easiest fight I ever had. Point being, I only had to show him I was trouble for him to back away.
Also, I later discovered he was human after all when he came to see if I was ok when I came back to school a couple of days after profusely bleeding from my head over three floors looking for a nurse after a fall in the stairs. I was very surprised that he came out of concern and not to gloat or to poke me in the stitches.
Some of that makes some sense, at least "on paper." Again, I'm talking about physical assault here, not verbal or otherwise.
And again, I'm telling you that little kids will interpret "being bumped into inadvertently" as physical assault.
I believe bullying is still mostly ignored by the adult authority figures in most settings, so kids need to fend for themselves. What I learned from years of experience was, I wasn't ever going to talk bullies out of assaulting me. The only thing that made them leave me alone was fighting back hard enough to cause them physical pain and loss of face. I never seriously injured anyone in these instances.
That's what the article says, and we're all agreeing on that. What I,m trying very hard to make you understand is that little kids don't have the capacity to judge situations accurately enough to reliably tell the difference between defending themselves from bullies and being bullies themselves.
I think you have a Utopian view of the issue.
I think the strawman you are blindly thinking you're replying too has very pretty rose-coloured glasses on indeed! But seeing how you're too fucking stupid to tell me apart from it, I'm now 100% sure that you couldn't possibly teach a very small child the difference between defending themselves from a real threat and attacking other kids based on a perceived threat.
Seriously, you just keep arguing about NOT WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT. I haven't once said it's never a good idea to fight back, but you keep replying to me as if I had. Do you realize that your kid would act violently with the same lack of judgment, except worsen by childishness? You can't even tell the difference between "I agree with you except for this very important detail" and "I oppose everything you just said", even after repeated attempts to make it clear to you. Make an effort.
Re:Don't understand the hate
on
Lost Ends
·
· Score: 1
Neon Genesis Evangelion
It made as much sense as the book of revelation it's based on.
As for Lost, everyone and their mom called their 'brilliant' ending twist out right after the first episode (it's purgatory), they then had to find some way of getting there without using their first idea (the island is purgatory), so they made the side-verse as purgatory. It's a blatant retcon, and they can claim no one saw right through their brilliant plot twist right away, just like Will Smith can claim that in I Robot everyone on Earth trusts robots, or that Starbuck was leaving the show, but I'm not suspending my disbelief outside of the show to accommodate their egos/checkbooks.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd much rather have a positive effect from a placebo than from a drug that usually has nasty side-effects.
I've wondered about this. If there is an actual placebo effect, we're drastically underutilizing it in the practice of medicine. As a result, there's a whole snake-oil industry overcharging for it and misleading people about it.
Expensive placebos work better, and expensive wines taste better. Asking for more money is not overcharging, it's upping the placebo dosage :\
That's a rather anomalous variety of "running homeless shelters" and "tackling social problems". The UNHCR runs refugee camps, mostly in war zones and former war zones; it doesn't run soup kitchens in Brazil, or generally in any way attempt to improve the lot of poor people in non-warzones.
They take care of large groups of people displaced by X by offering shelter and food and water.
You seem obsessed with war, but X also covers earthquakes, and any other calamity. And unlike the churches, they aren't offering the help as part of a recruiting campaign.
'To remove the perceived stigma, we would need to have more scientists talking openly about issues of religion, where such issues are particularly relevant to their discipline.'"
Which is where, exactly?
Like I said below: The placebo effect. That effect is based on faith, and religion has been exploring the mechanisms of faith for a long time; they might have had useful thoughts if we can detach them from the supernatural and apply it to medicine.
Who do you think is running the homeless shelters and tackling social problems in much of the world?
The UN.
I can think of one area of research where religion is relevant to the discipline: The placebo effect.
Faith plays a major role in placebos, it's belief in the healing properties of the treatment which affects the outcome.
I guess research into the transition between life and death also touches on the issue, but in a less relevant way.
A Troll might mix up vital facts or otherwise distort reality, to make other readers react with helpful "corrections." Trolling is the online equivalent of intentionally dialing wrong numbers just to waste other people's time.
I didn't go back and watch it or even read your link, since the answer is still the same regardless.
Hmmm, you admit that you're just saying the same erroneous thing over and over again without reading the information contradicting your bullshit...
Jacob didn't write down those numbers on the girl's jerseys.
How many thousands or millions of other numbers did Hurley ignore on that same drive before he saw the girl's jerseys?
He didn't see the girls Jerseys. Stop demonstrating that you have no idea what you're talking about.
Seconded. I love those [redacted] commercials, too.
Ah! You've been spammed with something similar to this... THERE's your problem. The only regular exposure I have to those ads is you people, propagating their brand capitalization of your own free will. I just lol'd at the terrorist bunnies and thought the production values were sharp without cringing at the memory of spam at the first sign of a CGI'd baby.
Wait... I thought those television CGI babies talked? I remember that because it annoyed me.
for 30 seconds at a time and they're always cracking wise.
Riiiight, that. I'm not a fan of that, I think it's creepy.
Then again I thought the movie Cars was creepy... who built those machines? And what happened to them?
Apparently I'm the only guy on slashdot who likes babies, super heroes, and parodies.
How did they show up everywhere, then? Why did playing them in the lotto cause a meteorite to fall on Hurley's chicken stand?
Hurley's "bad luck" was coincidence not fate. The numbers showed up in various places because they were the numbers of the candidates remaining who made it onto the plane to crash on the island. IE: Jacob physically wrote the numbers down which led to them being written and used in various places.
Ok, no. You have NO idea what you're talking about. "When Hurley rides past 6 players of a girls' soccer team in the airport, each uniform has one of the Numbers. ("Exodus, Part 2")"
Jacob didn't write down those numbers on the girl's jerseys. And that other guy that had used the numbers in a game of chance before Hurley also won the game and also had his life destroyed by a disruption in the laws of probability.
So congratulations, you know a whole lot less than me about a stupid TV show!
The answer is that you put in some crappy little 1-block dead-end streets here and there.
There's sometimes entire towns that only exist on paper.
Someone even wrote a book about that.
What exactly are they 'pirating'? I see no mention that they are using any copyrighted material without permission. All I see is that they are supposedly using PATENTED technology (software). In Europe.
Well, since they aren't on a boat, using threats of violence to get goods and hostages from other boats, they aren't pirating anything.
But the Warner would call what Warner did "piracy" if someone else did i to them, and this thread is about calling them out on their hypocrisy, so we're using their vocabulary.
I have seen some of Vincenzo Natali's previous movies; Cube (very original), Cypher (cool SF thriller) and Nothing (funny and absurd fantasy). He is definitely an interesting director. But I have never heard of Splice. Is it worth tracking down a DVD of Splice?
1- It's coming out in theaters soon, so I wouldn't try to find the DVD yet.
2- It seems to be EXACTLY the same movie as "Species". I can only hope they have as much T&A.
It is meant to get him in the news to promote his latest book. It's a publicity stunt.
http://www.google.com/search?q=captain+cyborg
Ah, without clicking on any links (we have to stop feeding that fraud), google let me know this was the work of his sidekick, not him directly. Now, I demand that this fraud be fully identified in all future slashdot posts about him or his minions (an addendum to this thread would be wise, too), because HE'S A FUCKING CHARLATAN!
Seriously, he called himself the "first cyborg" for putting an RFID chip in his skin years after people have had pacemakers, cochlear implants, and fucking wires in their brains (for vision to the blind and computer communications for the paralyzed). All reporters who called him "the first cyborg" should be fired, all "news" outlet that published that crap should be fined and stripped of all journalistic-perks (press passes, immunity from certain police procedures, etc). He's an attention whore who pulls these stupid publicity stunts to promote his books, stop helping him with his frauds.
She feels that since she likes sex, she should feel like a whore.
Well pull her hair and call her a filthy whore. I know it may go against all apparent logic, but some women like that.
This sort of thing happens a lot in government. Two sides fight it out, and then end up with some kind of compromise that is inconsistent, but it gives each side something. Then other people come along and say, "That's inconsistent! It's so dumb!" but in reality those people just don't understand how government works.
They should just be glad to have their half of the baby.
No, he died. They did have a reasonable enough explanation for that. Lorien had the power to restore some of his life force.
Unfortunately, "a wizard did it" does not rhyme with "good writing".
The "flash-sideways" may have appeared to take place during those days, but we discover at the end that it's not "real", meaning it's not affixed to what we perceive as the main flow of time and space. It was only "real" in the sense that the souls of the castaways were experiencing it
Yeah, it was a holodeck season.
That was a season finale, and I stopped watching again when I realized that all of that had failed to kill the guy.
It didn't fail to kill him, its just that he got resurrected later on. Its all explained in the show.
Yeah, I know, an alien wizard did it. I was not impressed.
BTW that was back in the days when it was on tuesdays at 12:05 am, so these irritating moves were enough to make me give up on a show that required too much effort to watch to begin with (stupid local TV station... can't wait for the internet to kill it).
In order to continue to provide clarity, our guiding principles include:
1. We don't seek to control what users tweet. And users own their own tweets.
So users are still free to tweet "Blue Sun makes the BEST saddles in the verse! #blueSun #spaceHorse" and receive payment from Blue Sun, but apps can't display ads in the feed that aren't coming from twitter?
Meh, fine by me.
The island was not purgatory. Again, the show runners kept saying that from day 1. It wasn't a retcon, because that was one of the very first answers the show runners gave in interviews.
Christian Shepherd explicitly said it in the finale to to hammer it home. Everything that happened, happened. It was all real.
It order for it to be a retcon, it would had to been a part of continuity to begin with.
Well, techincally, I guess you're right, that it would have to have been stated explicitly to be a retcon in the fullest sense of that 'word'. But after seeing the finale I'm sure that in the beginning the island was supposed to be purgatory, and then they made up all that side-verse crap as a way of maintaining their denial about that. I do not think they had the side-verse purgatory planned all along, I think it was a reaction to the fact that everyone saw right away where they were going with this and they wanted to have us think we had it wrong so we would stay interested.
And they did a good job, interest stayed, but I call that a retcon even if they had only hinted instead of flatly stating something. Like how Willow's lesbian lover was supposed to be part demon, but they then changed that for a feminist storyline instead. I don't think the Buffy writers made a bad choice with that move, but I think it's a retcon, even though they can say she only believed she was part demon.
Now, is there another neologism that could convey this meaning to you better than "retcon"? Maybe tvtropes has one for when writers say they have everything planned out, but they make shit up as they go along.
This confirms my suspicion that the town you grew up in was significantly more evolved/gentrified/enlightened than mine.
Lucky me, but in fairness that was the easiest fight I ever had. Point being, I only had to show him I was trouble for him to back away.
Also, I later discovered he was human after all when he came to see if I was ok when I came back to school a couple of days after profusely bleeding from my head over three floors looking for a nurse after a fall in the stairs. I was very surprised that he came out of concern and not to gloat or to poke me in the stitches.
Some of that makes some sense, at least "on paper."
Again, I'm talking about physical assault here, not verbal or otherwise.
And again, I'm telling you that little kids will interpret "being bumped into inadvertently" as physical assault.
I believe bullying is still mostly ignored by the adult authority figures in most settings, so kids need to fend for themselves.
What I learned from years of experience was, I wasn't ever going to talk bullies out of assaulting me. The only thing that made them leave me alone was fighting back hard enough to cause them physical pain and loss of face. I never seriously injured anyone in these instances.
That's what the article says, and we're all agreeing on that. What I,m trying very hard to make you understand is that little kids don't have the capacity to judge situations accurately enough to reliably tell the difference between defending themselves from bullies and being bullies themselves.
I think you have a Utopian view of the issue.
I think the strawman you are blindly thinking you're replying too has very pretty rose-coloured glasses on indeed! But seeing how you're too fucking stupid to tell me apart from it, I'm now 100% sure that you couldn't possibly teach a very small child the difference between defending themselves from a real threat and attacking other kids based on a perceived threat.
Seriously, you just keep arguing about NOT WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT.
I haven't once said it's never a good idea to fight back, but you keep replying to me as if I had. Do you realize that your kid would act violently with the same lack of judgment, except worsen by childishness? You can't even tell the difference between "I agree with you except for this very important detail" and "I oppose everything you just said", even after repeated attempts to make it clear to you. Make an effort.
Neon Genesis Evangelion
It made as much sense as the book of revelation it's based on.
As for Lost, everyone and their mom called their 'brilliant' ending twist out right after the first episode (it's purgatory), they then had to find some way of getting there without using their first idea (the island is purgatory), so they made the side-verse as purgatory. It's a blatant retcon, and they can claim no one saw right through their brilliant plot twist right away, just like Will Smith can claim that in I Robot everyone on Earth trusts robots, or that Starbuck was leaving the show, but I'm not suspending my disbelief outside of the show to accommodate their egos/checkbooks.