Generally it is considered bad form and logically incorrect. Statistical hypothesis testing has its own pitfalls (see Cohen, J. (1994). The earth is round (p.05). American Psychologist, 49, 997-1003 [Cohen is recognized as a fairly statistically savvy person in psychology circles]), which essentially make it impossible to state that you have 'proven' a theory or even a specific hypothesis. I won't go into the details, but essentially most hypothesis testing accepts p.05 as the necessary alpha level for rejection of the null hypothesis, which is essentially stating "I am going to say that this hypothesis is correct, but there is a 5% chance that my results are due to random error and variance in my sample, and not really a repeatable phenomenom."
It should be noted that the parent is correct, but that there are some alternative methods available (although these are rarely used), such as Bayesian Statistics and others. Bayesian Statistics is new to psychology, and I really don't have the background to evaluate it (read: I've never studied it), but I've heard good things about the concept.
FWIW, the probabilities stated by the parent are generally set at.05 (5%), but are occasionally set at.1,.01, or even.001. The.05 tradition is strong, however, and hails back to the days when statistics were being used in agriculture to develop varying pesticides and the like. Realistically, whatever the researcher is willing to live with is generally acceptable, but more than a few journals get a little tetchy about any probability higher than.05 (Journal of Applied Psychology being one, IIRC). The peer review process keeps this quite sane, but here's a sobering thought:
In my master's thesis, I ran about 50 correlations on about 100 participants, each providing about 20 data points. I only had 5 'significant' (at p.05) correlations). THis means that half of my correlations could considered likely to be just chance--random variance. But, because of the nasty nature of statistics, I had no way of knowing which ones were due to chance and which ones were not--thus the whole study was considered as being unable to reject the null hypothesis (no relationships). Not particularly exciting, but informative nonetheless. Unfortunately, I also don't know what the probability of falsely accepting the null was (power), which means that I can't be certain that these are correct either.
I think this pretty much sums it all up. After all I recently played around with the voice recognition stuff built into MS office 2003 (that I didn't even know about until just recently), and found it to be amazingly useful, and rather limited.
After all, the word recognition rate is limited, and as soon as you start getting away from dictionary words you run into all sorts of problems.
how do you pronounce some of the function names for php (mssql_query? or maybe a nice bit of perl code? perl golf stuff would be insane!)
It might work for languages like RUBY with loose syntax (near as I can tell it doesn't really matter what you do as long as you stick with same style for any given block of code), but i doubt C code will lend itself well to such a monstrosity.
No, in the end, until we have a programming language that reads the way people talk, this won't work. Even then there will be issues.
Now, if I could just think the structure (or even better, the results) and have it appear on the page, I would be excited about that. Of course, there are lots of times when that would be the opposite of what I wanted.
Oh well.
Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction
on
An Alternate Human
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Have you ever dissected a brain? Really? I mean open it up and look at the structure?
The optic nerve connects into the brain straight back from the eyes. Straight path, single crossover in the optic chiasm. The signal is eventually routed to the back of the brain (posterior) where the visual cortex is located, but there are several important things that seem to happen first.
Get your physiology straight.
Length may still not be an issue, but there is a definable cost to longer nerves. We typically don't notice, but the speed of nerve impulses is, IIRC, about 200mph. Thus in an object the size of a human, the longest distance is still very short and the trip time is barely noticeable. Compared to electricity, however, this is abysmally slow. This is why in the game ShadowRun the concept of 'wired reflexes' sort of made sense. The concept was that they replaced all muscle controlling nerves with copper wires that provided extremely fast reflexes. The idea is accurate, although currently unworkable and likely completely pointless (at some point processing speed is more of an issue than actual nerve-impulse speed.
The interesting thing about the BSA wrt the 'Mormons' (please, say LDS church, it is more accurate) is that now the BSA is in a position where the LDS church and the Catholic church compose the majority of its members. To allow homosexual leaders would instantly alienate both of these groups. The LDS church has recently introduced and modified several programs that would, should the BSA choose or be forced to allow homosexual leaders, allow the church to instantly abandon the BSA wholesale.
Such a move on the part of the LDS (or Catholic) church would most likely sound the death-knell for the BSA. Understandably, the BSA has no interest in this occurring.
Here's my personal take on it as an member of the LDS church--the BSA should be required to allow homosexuals if they wish to continue to recieve tax dollars or other governmental support (such as a Congressional Charter). Since they couldn't reject that money or support (without replacement) and remain solvent, they should either accept the loss of the support of the churches or find an alternative source of funding (such as the churches and other organizations that mostly encourage their young men to join the BSA). I feel that the LDS church and the Catholic church would gladly offer assistance as necessary.
Coming from a religious person, this may sound very odd, but I don't think that it is appropriate for any organization that receives direct assistance from the government to disallow membership or employment based on anything other than ability to do the job. Our public servants should be hired solely on ability, and if your organization is receiving either federal or state tax dollars then you are essentially a public company [unless it is done solely as a business contract--money for rendered services.
If you are religious, of a specific gender, have a skin color, or a specific (or even non-specific) gender/sexual orientation, then you can always expect that there will be some private club or organization which may deny you affiliation. As a male it is unlikely that I will ever be permitted to join Delta Delta Delta Soroirity (grrr), and I can accept that (even though a lot of college guys would really like to). As a white guy it is also unlikely that I would ever be accepted into an organization such as the Congressional Black Caucus (okay, I would need to get into politics first, but that would likely be easier).
If the US had a bloody dictator who had decided that she didn't like white males with curly blond hair and was committing genocide against them, I would fully support any 'invader' that decided to liberate those like me.
I would be one of those welcoming them--although I would have likely sought a friendlier country first (if possible).
If, on the other hand, it was the current gov't of the US being invaded by someone like Saddam Hussein they would find that I was the one taking potshots at them and lobbing home-made napalm cocktails in glass bottles (molotov, too, just to be certain).
My point is that your comparison is not exactly analogous. Regardless of the validity of many of the stated reasons for invading Iraq (or lack of validity, depending of POV), I don't think that anyone can reasonably deny that Hussein was a bloody butcher of his own people. I remember the news reports of what his sons had been doing. They learned that somewhere, and he certainly could have stopped them. I don't know that going in was the 'correct' solution, but I suspect that any action or non-action taken with regards to Iraq would have led to severe problems. At least something decisive was done, which is a sight more than certain other presidents.
According to dictionary.com, however, that isn't quite right--it is actually being easily decieved or convinced.
More likely the very gullible will take the one position when given seeming evidence and then be easily convinced to abandon that position.
A person who takes a holds a position regardless of evidence is likely foolish, but not particularly gullible. There is a big difference, and that is what I am taking issue with--construct definitions must be exact and precise.
What you are referring to is not a measure of gullibility but of something else (I'm not really sure what) equally deleterious.
As far as the merits of taking and holding a particular religious belief, I am not certain that/. is the best place to discuss such things--although I have in the past, perhaps foolishly. I will say this, not all who believe in God are such simpletons as you paint in that post. Many of us are more than willing to accept scientific evidence and theory as perfectly valid. I may not always agree with common interpretations, but I understand science and research. I have to. I also understand that there are frequently multiple ways to interpret a single data set or observation and statistics don't always tell us everything we would like to know. Science, at the end of the day, is a big problem and it is impossible for any one person to stay abreast on all the latest information. Thus one must select a set of experts to whom one goes for information and periodically check to make sure that those experts aren't trying to publish a particular set of beliefs disguised as science (it happens--read The Bell Curve by Hernstein & Murray).
At the same time I have a religious friend who annoys me to no end--he openly distrusts science, doctors and similar things. I strongly disagree with him on that point, but agree that God is real. You may disagree, but that doesn't make you smarter or even less gullible.
I've never heard of such a thing. I have heard of congregations praying together, but when you quantify it as such, it sounds pretty silly.
As a religious person, here's my personal opinion that you quite likely don't care about: prayer may or may not be more effacacious when two or more combine to pray. As I understand the Bible only two things really matter: the faith of the person(s) involved and the will of God.
If God doesn't decide that you are supposed to heal or have a better outcome then no amount of prayer will change that. This is something that I think most Christians would agree on.
If you don't have faith, then your prayers will not have effect.
The real question here, then is why is faith important? Can the supplicant change the will of God with regards to a single person? Perhaps so. If so, then one would expect that over a large enough sample that those who received prayers in their behalf would fare 'better' than those that did not.
The trick is in defining what constitutes a better outcome. In the medical community this is hard enough--after all they may take away your pain with a pill that causes intense itching--not necessarily an improvement. Throw in God and you end up really mucking with things. In this light, 'better' is simply 'more in line with what God wants', which we, be definition, don't know.
The other point is that the point of prayer may not be to change the will of God, but to discover the will of God and thereby change our attitude. If a person finds out that the will of God is that they die at a particular time, then perhaps they will change their attitude to accept that and then be able to learn some valuable lessons. Of course this only makes sense if you accept the existence of God and an afterlife (which some do not and the two are not necessarily linked).
As a psychologist in training (can't use the appellation just yet) I have to take exception to that statement. It's false.
The ability to maintain a belief despite outside influences (whether or not this is a good thing is left as an exercise for the reader) is not gullibility. I think that's what was meant by true belief. I'm not certain.
Gullibility, however, is a very testable question. In some ways it is more of a measure of how readily one accepts new beliefs or statements and has nothing to do with ones ability or propensity to maintain those beliefs. A person who is highly gullible may be just as likely to abandon their newfound 'truth' just as quickly as they found it. In fact, this is suggested by the definition of the construct.
I think the parent was correct--there is not a scientific measure of true belief. There is a measure of religiosity, however, and I think this may be fairly close.
As a Mormon, let me make my opinion, which of course does not necessarily reflect the views of the church, clear.
The reason the Church probably does not do something like this is simple: the focus is on teaching the difference between right and wrong and encouraging your children to make good and healthy choices. The Church also encourages parental and personal responsibility such that instead of a filter you place the family computer in a very public area.
The doctrine of agency is interesting in light of the recent debates on pornography, child pornography and similar ideas. The church takes a strong stance on these issues, decrying those who engage in viewing and creating pornography as immoral--and makes eligibility for certain activities within the church dependent on a person's choice to comply or not. The doctrine of agency, however, dictates that we never FORCE anyone to comply. We do things to protect our children, certainly, but forcing those who do not share our beliefs about morality has NEVER been a part of church doctrine, even if you count the rather aggressive missionary program.
Thus, the church really has very little to say about laws regarding pornography, from what I have seen. Instead the church focuses on the things that are very important--people and teaching them what we believe is a manner of living happily.
I think it is extremely unlikely that for the church to take action in this matter, especially in conjunction with other churches. The most likely scenario is that the church will issue a statement that states that people should be actively engaged in protecting their homes and children and avoiding these things themselves. Pornography is dealt with rather summarily in the church--if a man or woman is found to have a habit of viewing porn and are unwilling to change or to even try to change, then they are relieved on any positions within the church. Further action is occasionally taken, but the focus is on getting people within the church to deal with these things on a personal basis.
Of course, since the church takes the stance of political neutrality with regards to parties and candidates (but not issues in some cases), it only makes sense for the church to focus internally and on helping people change their behavior and habits, not on forcing those outside the church to comply with our rather unique set of beliefs.
As an aside, the missionary program is generally seen like this: we believe that most religions have some truth. Some have teachings that are not exactly right and few have some blatant untruths. We feel that we happen to have things that are important--truth that others don't have. For the most part, our biggest desire is to share these things with others so that they can enjoy the benefits of that knowledge as well. As a deeply religious person I find it abhorrent when others use religion as a crutch, or as a method of getting money or as a justification for bad behavior (Spanish Inquisition). Religion is, ultimately, a personal set of beliefs. Sometimes it is appropriate to share these with others if you think it will help them be happier.
I'll look it up later, if I remember, and post what I find--I've got a couple of good dictionaries. I don't recall the word, personally. Of course, you probably have access to a better dictionary than I do.
I forgot to mention the other nifty little problem:: it requires ActiveX. POS.
I haven't tried RDesktop, but I think I just might give it a shot.
The other problem is printer support--not just in RDesktop, but in linux. Need to have the printer installed on BOTH machines (stupid setup) for it to work. I just wish RDP supported non-mice/non-keyboard/non-storage/non-printer USB (heck even the printers need a registry hack in our environment). The crazy thing? We have people from 14 or 15 locations logging in to a single Terminal Server and they all need to print locally. This requires a lot of work to setup.
Even if we overcome the printer/RDP issue, we STILL need to deal with the nasty little issue of ActiveX. This is a real issue that is not easily handled.
I hate to poo-poo anything linux related, since I am a fan. I am a big fan of the penguin, but at the company where I work, it just won't happen.
Here's why: we resell cellular phone service for one of the BIG providers, and their web-based interface to activate phones ONLY works on Internet Explorer. Period. They actually check for other browsers and REJECT ALL OTHERS. They claim security reasons, but I think their web gurus are just morons.
Additionally, our point of sale requires Terminal Server Client (RDP), and we need to have printer support. It is also a windows only application. They also highly recommend Citrix Metaframe, but that's out of our price range (the terminal server licenses are costly enough).
As long as we are an authorized agent for this company, we are required to meet their software requirements. This 100% means Windows, and Internet Explorer. We have managed to cut our MS Office Installs by using OO.org, but this hasn't been without troubles [whining idiots that can't use a mouse reliably, let alone figure out a slightly different interface--good thing MS Office 12 is going to be even more radically different].
There are a lot of small businesses in a similar situation, and as long as this is the case, linux will be a limited use OS.
Now, if someone would release a terminal server client that supported ALL attached peripherals (at the client end), then I would use that (and we might be able to get rid of windows at several points).
While you are right about the pendulum swing business, I have to state that the perfect world you describe isn't very likely. The reason for this is basic human psychology. Simply put, people love a good story, and those details about their life, while irrelevant, are important to the story of why the accomplishments were acheived (in most people's minds). The story is a large part of how we remember things, and so the idea that those details would ever be eliminated from the reports of accomplishment is unlikely at best. More likely is the idea that these will always be around, but that they will cease to contain any value judgment.
I don't think it lessens or enhances an accomplishment in anyway to note that it was done by x person, but it makes it more interesting, more human. And that is why those details will likely always be a part of our society.
As far as I'm concerned its only a matter of time before this shows up on Iron Chef as the Secret Ingredient. Batali may have trouble with this one, but Morimoto probably already has 5 dishes planned.
Bah, I won't discount that there was a REAL and appreciable danger at 3 mile Island, but because folks followed procedure, there was not an accident.
As far as a danger to the public, we are closer to death every time we get in a car--especially if some idiot is using a cell-phone. Your chances of dying quadruple every time you use that cell phone. You'd be better off driving drunk (.08).
TMI was a public relations disaster, and not much else.
I am aware of the linux version--I don't know much about it.
Why not? Because getting the school or a company to shell out extra cash for the linux version is going to very difficult. Especially the server version.
I love being in school right now--I will be able to get vista as soon as the school does. I currently download the site-licensed winXP off the school's intranet at no cost to me. Same for Office. Yes this is factored into my fees, but the assistantship I have reduces my cost considerably.
The truth? I hope the school gets vista before I finish my PhD or that I end up in a big corp where I can afford to make the purchase.
Why? Because although I love linux, there are certain apps that I need (SPSS anyone?) that I will either have to pay for myself or convince my company (whereever I end up) to purchase a linux version of the app or are simply unavailable on linux or OSX.
This is important. It cannot be avoided. Where I currently work Vista will only show up once Dell no longer offers XP. And maybe not even then.
The GUI is terrible. It doesn't handle even basic things that access does (can't remember specifics, since I haven't tried to muck with it for about 3 months), and it is incapable of properly handling certain imports.
Yes it does have the advantages you mention, but overall I am not impressed with it.
Impress has a similar complaint--it handles almost everything that you throw at it from excel, and can easily import excel docs, but the one thing it NEEDS to have in order to do well is more templates. The template handling in Impress stinks. If it could handle templates like firefox handles extensions, I would be very happy. There needs to be a way to automatically download and install templates.
Surely you jest. Access is not the best solution out there--it is horrible to use, the interface just blows, and it doesn't do a lot of what it should do. For the record OOBase Sucks as well.
Now that I have used MSSQL more, I am realizing the power of such a database. At work we are also getting ready to implement Crystal Reports, which makes the reporting components in Access look anemic and pathetic.
I am not a big MS fan, but I do think that they make a fine SQL server.
Folks, don't use Excel as a db, but access shouldn't be used either!
You _cannot_ mod a topic in which you have already posted. Period.
You _can_ post in a topic that you have already moderated--but *only* if you are willing to have your mod points wasted. Posting in a topic you have moderated results in the moderation being removed--and you don't get the mod points back. This is to prevent abuses.
more significant? What, precisely, does that mean?
Are you meaning the p value is lower? (eg. p=.03 vs. p=.013)
Or do you mean (as I suspect) that the correlations where higher for status level & lifespan or education & lifespan than for childbearing & lifespan?
Glancing at the article, I note that there are some fairly advanced statistical methods (with a LARGE dataset), and I think that the conclusions are valid. From what I can tell, this effect, although small, may still be important. Additionally, I don't see the necessary information about how this interacts with environmental factors, which is critical to understanding how this works.
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Although it is still improper to state 'proven'.
.05). American Psychologist, 49, 997-1003 [Cohen is recognized as a fairly statistically savvy person in psychology circles]), which essentially make it impossible to state that you have 'proven' a theory or even a specific hypothesis. I won't go into the details, but essentially most hypothesis testing accepts p .05 as the necessary alpha level for rejection of the null hypothesis, which is essentially stating "I am going to say that this hypothesis is correct, but there is a 5% chance that my results are due to random error and variance in my sample, and not really a repeatable phenomenom."
.05 (5%), but are occasionally set at .1, .01, or even .001. The .05 tradition is strong, however, and hails back to the days when statistics were being used in agriculture to develop varying pesticides and the like. Realistically, whatever the researcher is willing to live with is generally acceptable, but more than a few journals get a little tetchy about any probability higher than .05 (Journal of Applied Psychology being one, IIRC). The peer review process keeps this quite sane, but here's a sobering thought:
Generally it is considered bad form and logically incorrect. Statistical hypothesis testing has its own pitfalls (see Cohen, J. (1994). The earth is round (p
It should be noted that the parent is correct, but that there are some alternative methods available (although these are rarely used), such as Bayesian Statistics and others. Bayesian Statistics is new to psychology, and I really don't have the background to evaluate it (read: I've never studied it), but I've heard good things about the concept.
FWIW, the probabilities stated by the parent are generally set at
In my master's thesis, I ran about 50 correlations on about 100 participants, each providing about 20 data points. I only had 5 'significant' (at p.05) correlations). THis means that half of my correlations could considered likely to be just chance--random variance. But, because of the nasty nature of statistics, I had no way of knowing which ones were due to chance and which ones were not--thus the whole study was considered as being unable to reject the null hypothesis (no relationships). Not particularly exciting, but informative nonetheless. Unfortunately, I also don't know what the probability of falsely accepting the null was (power), which means that I can't be certain that these are correct either.
I think this pretty much sums it all up. After all I recently played around with the voice recognition stuff built into MS office 2003 (that I didn't even know about until just recently), and found it to be amazingly useful, and rather limited.
After all, the word recognition rate is limited, and as soon as you start getting away from dictionary words you run into all sorts of problems.
how do you pronounce some of the function names for php (mssql_query? or maybe a nice bit of perl code? perl golf stuff would be insane!)
It might work for languages like RUBY with loose syntax (near as I can tell it doesn't really matter what you do as long as you stick with same style for any given block of code), but i doubt C code will lend itself well to such a monstrosity.
No, in the end, until we have a programming language that reads the way people talk, this won't work. Even then there will be issues.
Now, if I could just think the structure (or even better, the results) and have it appear on the page, I would be excited about that. Of course, there are lots of times when that would be the opposite of what I wanted.
Oh well.
Have you ever dissected a brain? Really? I mean open it up and look at the structure?
The optic nerve connects into the brain straight back from the eyes. Straight path, single crossover in the optic chiasm. The signal is eventually routed to the back of the brain (posterior) where the visual cortex is located, but there are several important things that seem to happen first.
Get your physiology straight.
Length may still not be an issue, but there is a definable cost to longer nerves. We typically don't notice, but the speed of nerve impulses is, IIRC, about 200mph. Thus in an object the size of a human, the longest distance is still very short and the trip time is barely noticeable. Compared to electricity, however, this is abysmally slow. This is why in the game ShadowRun the concept of 'wired reflexes' sort of made sense. The concept was that they replaced all muscle controlling nerves with copper wires that provided extremely fast reflexes. The idea is accurate, although currently unworkable and likely completely pointless (at some point processing speed is more of an issue than actual nerve-impulse speed.
Just a few thoughts.
nice flame--keep it up.
FWIW, I stand by my statements
The interesting thing about the BSA wrt the 'Mormons' (please, say LDS church, it is more accurate) is that now the BSA is in a position where the LDS church and the Catholic church compose the majority of its members. To allow homosexual leaders would instantly alienate both of these groups. The LDS church has recently introduced and modified several programs that would, should the BSA choose or be forced to allow homosexual leaders, allow the church to instantly abandon the BSA wholesale.
Such a move on the part of the LDS (or Catholic) church would most likely sound the death-knell for the BSA. Understandably, the BSA has no interest in this occurring.
Here's my personal take on it as an member of the LDS church--the BSA should be required to allow homosexuals if they wish to continue to recieve tax dollars or other governmental support (such as a Congressional Charter). Since they couldn't reject that money or support (without replacement) and remain solvent, they should either accept the loss of the support of the churches or find an alternative source of funding (such as the churches and other organizations that mostly encourage their young men to join the BSA). I feel that the LDS church and the Catholic church would gladly offer assistance as necessary.
Coming from a religious person, this may sound very odd, but I don't think that it is appropriate for any organization that receives direct assistance from the government to disallow membership or employment based on anything other than ability to do the job. Our public servants should be hired solely on ability, and if your organization is receiving either federal or state tax dollars then you are essentially a public company [unless it is done solely as a business contract--money for rendered services.
If you are religious, of a specific gender, have a skin color, or a specific (or even non-specific) gender/sexual orientation, then you can always expect that there will be some private club or organization which may deny you affiliation. As a male it is unlikely that I will ever be permitted to join Delta Delta Delta Soroirity (grrr), and I can accept that (even though a lot of college guys would really like to). As a white guy it is also unlikely that I would ever be accepted into an organization such as the Congressional Black Caucus (okay, I would need to get into politics first, but that would likely be easier).
Circumstances my friend, circumstances.
If the US had a bloody dictator who had decided that she didn't like white males with curly blond hair and was committing genocide against them, I would fully support any 'invader' that decided to liberate those like me.
I would be one of those welcoming them--although I would have likely sought a friendlier country first (if possible).
If, on the other hand, it was the current gov't of the US being invaded by someone like Saddam Hussein they would find that I was the one taking potshots at them and lobbing home-made napalm cocktails in glass bottles (molotov, too, just to be certain).
My point is that your comparison is not exactly analogous. Regardless of the validity of many of the stated reasons for invading Iraq (or lack of validity, depending of POV), I don't think that anyone can reasonably deny that Hussein was a bloody butcher of his own people. I remember the news reports of what his sons had been doing. They learned that somewhere, and he certainly could have stopped them. I don't know that going in was the 'correct' solution, but I suspect that any action or non-action taken with regards to Iraq would have led to severe problems. At least something decisive was done, which is a sight more than certain other presidents.
That's all fine--if you stick to that definition.
/. is the best place to discuss such things--although I have in the past, perhaps foolishly. I will say this, not all who believe in God are such simpletons as you paint in that post. Many of us are more than willing to accept scientific evidence and theory as perfectly valid. I may not always agree with common interpretations, but I understand science and research. I have to. I also understand that there are frequently multiple ways to interpret a single data set or observation and statistics don't always tell us everything we would like to know. Science, at the end of the day, is a big problem and it is impossible for any one person to stay abreast on all the latest information. Thus one must select a set of experts to whom one goes for information and periodically check to make sure that those experts aren't trying to publish a particular set of beliefs disguised as science (it happens--read The Bell Curve by Hernstein & Murray).
According to dictionary.com, however, that isn't quite right--it is actually being easily decieved or convinced.
More likely the very gullible will take the one position when given seeming evidence and then be easily convinced to abandon that position.
A person who takes a holds a position regardless of evidence is likely foolish, but not particularly gullible. There is a big difference, and that is what I am taking issue with--construct definitions must be exact and precise.
What you are referring to is not a measure of gullibility but of something else (I'm not really sure what) equally deleterious.
As far as the merits of taking and holding a particular religious belief, I am not certain that
At the same time I have a religious friend who annoys me to no end--he openly distrusts science, doctors and similar things. I strongly disagree with him on that point, but agree that God is real. You may disagree, but that doesn't make you smarter or even less gullible.
I've never heard of such a thing. I have heard of congregations praying together, but when you quantify it as such, it sounds pretty silly.
As a religious person, here's my personal opinion that you quite likely don't care about: prayer may or may not be more effacacious when two or more combine to pray. As I understand the Bible only two things really matter: the faith of the person(s) involved and the will of God.
If God doesn't decide that you are supposed to heal or have a better outcome then no amount of prayer will change that. This is something that I think most Christians would agree on.
If you don't have faith, then your prayers will not have effect.
The real question here, then is why is faith important? Can the supplicant change the will of God with regards to a single person? Perhaps so. If so, then one would expect that over a large enough sample that those who received prayers in their behalf would fare 'better' than those that did not.
The trick is in defining what constitutes a better outcome. In the medical community this is hard enough--after all they may take away your pain with a pill that causes intense itching--not necessarily an improvement. Throw in God and you end up really mucking with things. In this light, 'better' is simply 'more in line with what God wants', which we, be definition, don't know.
The other point is that the point of prayer may not be to change the will of God, but to discover the will of God and thereby change our attitude. If a person finds out that the will of God is that they die at a particular time, then perhaps they will change their attitude to accept that and then be able to learn some valuable lessons. Of course this only makes sense if you accept the existence of God and an afterlife (which some do not and the two are not necessarily linked).
As a psychologist in training (can't use the appellation just yet) I have to take exception to that statement. It's false.
The ability to maintain a belief despite outside influences (whether or not this is a good thing is left as an exercise for the reader) is not gullibility. I think that's what was meant by true belief. I'm not certain.
Gullibility, however, is a very testable question. In some ways it is more of a measure of how readily one accepts new beliefs or statements and has nothing to do with ones ability or propensity to maintain those beliefs. A person who is highly gullible may be just as likely to abandon their newfound 'truth' just as quickly as they found it. In fact, this is suggested by the definition of the construct.
I think the parent was correct--there is not a scientific measure of true belief. There is a measure of religiosity, however, and I think this may be fairly close.
read the nick...
his definition of himself is likely quite good.
As a Mormon, let me make my opinion, which of course does not necessarily reflect the views of the church, clear.
The reason the Church probably does not do something like this is simple: the focus is on teaching the difference between right and wrong and encouraging your children to make good and healthy choices. The Church also encourages parental and personal responsibility such that instead of a filter you place the family computer in a very public area.
The doctrine of agency is interesting in light of the recent debates on pornography, child pornography and similar ideas. The church takes a strong stance on these issues, decrying those who engage in viewing and creating pornography as immoral--and makes eligibility for certain activities within the church dependent on a person's choice to comply or not. The doctrine of agency, however, dictates that we never FORCE anyone to comply. We do things to protect our children, certainly, but forcing those who do not share our beliefs about morality has NEVER been a part of church doctrine, even if you count the rather aggressive missionary program.
Thus, the church really has very little to say about laws regarding pornography, from what I have seen. Instead the church focuses on the things that are very important--people and teaching them what we believe is a manner of living happily.
I think it is extremely unlikely that for the church to take action in this matter, especially in conjunction with other churches. The most likely scenario is that the church will issue a statement that states that people should be actively engaged in protecting their homes and children and avoiding these things themselves. Pornography is dealt with rather summarily in the church--if a man or woman is found to have a habit of viewing porn and are unwilling to change or to even try to change, then they are relieved on any positions within the church. Further action is occasionally taken, but the focus is on getting people within the church to deal with these things on a personal basis.
Of course, since the church takes the stance of political neutrality with regards to parties and candidates (but not issues in some cases), it only makes sense for the church to focus internally and on helping people change their behavior and habits, not on forcing those outside the church to comply with our rather unique set of beliefs.
As an aside, the missionary program is generally seen like this: we believe that most religions have some truth. Some have teachings that are not exactly right and few have some blatant untruths. We feel that we happen to have things that are important--truth that others don't have. For the most part, our biggest desire is to share these things with others so that they can enjoy the benefits of that knowledge as well. As a deeply religious person I find it abhorrent when others use religion as a crutch, or as a method of getting money or as a justification for bad behavior (Spanish Inquisition). Religion is, ultimately, a personal set of beliefs. Sometimes it is appropriate to share these with others if you think it will help them be happier.
I'll look it up later, if I remember, and post what I find--I've got a couple of good dictionaries. I don't recall the word, personally. Of course, you probably have access to a better dictionary than I do.
I forgot to mention the other nifty little problem:: it requires ActiveX. POS.
I haven't tried RDesktop, but I think I just might give it a shot.
The other problem is printer support--not just in RDesktop, but in linux. Need to have the printer installed on BOTH machines (stupid setup) for it to work. I just wish RDP supported non-mice/non-keyboard/non-storage/non-printer USB (heck even the printers need a registry hack in our environment). The crazy thing? We have people from 14 or 15 locations logging in to a single Terminal Server and they all need to print locally. This requires a lot of work to setup.
Even if we overcome the printer/RDP issue, we STILL need to deal with the nasty little issue of ActiveX. This is a real issue that is not easily handled.
I hate to poo-poo anything linux related, since I am a fan. I am a big fan of the penguin, but at the company where I work, it just won't happen.
Here's why: we resell cellular phone service for one of the BIG providers, and their web-based interface to activate phones ONLY works on Internet Explorer. Period. They actually check for other browsers and REJECT ALL OTHERS. They claim security reasons, but I think their web gurus are just morons.
Additionally, our point of sale requires Terminal Server Client (RDP), and we need to have printer support. It is also a windows only application. They also highly recommend Citrix Metaframe, but that's out of our price range (the terminal server licenses are costly enough).
As long as we are an authorized agent for this company, we are required to meet their software requirements. This 100% means Windows, and Internet Explorer. We have managed to cut our MS Office Installs by using OO.org, but this hasn't been without troubles [whining idiots that can't use a mouse reliably, let alone figure out a slightly different interface--good thing MS Office 12 is going to be even more radically different].
There are a lot of small businesses in a similar situation, and as long as this is the case, linux will be a limited use OS.
Now, if someone would release a terminal server client that supported ALL attached peripherals (at the client end), then I would use that (and we might be able to get rid of windows at several points).
While you are right about the pendulum swing business, I have to state that the perfect world you describe isn't very likely. The reason for this is basic human psychology. Simply put, people love a good story, and those details about their life, while irrelevant, are important to the story of why the accomplishments were acheived (in most people's minds). The story is a large part of how we remember things, and so the idea that those details would ever be eliminated from the reports of accomplishment is unlikely at best. More likely is the idea that these will always be around, but that they will cease to contain any value judgment.
I don't think it lessens or enhances an accomplishment in anyway to note that it was done by x person, but it makes it more interesting, more human. And that is why those details will likely always be a part of our society.
I eat venison. Deer are much prettier.
As far as I'm concerned its only a matter of time before this shows up on Iron Chef as the Secret Ingredient. Batali may have trouble with this one, but Morimoto probably already has 5 dishes planned.
Another edible food? Perfect...
Bah, I won't discount that there was a REAL and appreciable danger at 3 mile Island, but because folks followed procedure, there was not an accident.
As far as a danger to the public, we are closer to death every time we get in a car--especially if some idiot is using a cell-phone. Your chances of dying quadruple every time you use that cell phone. You'd be better off driving drunk (.08).
TMI was a public relations disaster, and not much else.
Insightful? Personally, I would have modded that Hilarious (need new mods!!!).
/.ers.
I think, however, that the sly wit leapt passed most
Better luck next time, eh?
I am aware of the linux version--I don't know much about it.
Why not? Because getting the school or a company to shell out extra cash for the linux version is going to very difficult. Especially the server version.
I love being in school right now--I will be able to get vista as soon as the school does. I currently download the site-licensed winXP off the school's intranet at no cost to me. Same for Office. Yes this is factored into my fees, but the assistantship I have reduces my cost considerably.
The truth? I hope the school gets vista before I finish my PhD or that I end up in a big corp where I can afford to make the purchase.
Why? Because although I love linux, there are certain apps that I need (SPSS anyone?) that I will either have to pay for myself or convince my company (whereever I end up) to purchase a linux version of the app or are simply unavailable on linux or OSX.
This is important. It cannot be avoided. Where I currently work Vista will only show up once Dell no longer offers XP. And maybe not even then.
No, it's not.
The GUI is terrible. It doesn't handle even basic things that access does (can't remember specifics, since I haven't tried to muck with it for about 3 months), and it is incapable of properly handling certain imports.
Yes it does have the advantages you mention, but overall I am not impressed with it.
Impress has a similar complaint--it handles almost everything that you throw at it from excel, and can easily import excel docs, but the one thing it NEEDS to have in order to do well is more templates. The template handling in Impress stinks. If it could handle templates like firefox handles extensions, I would be very happy. There needs to be a way to automatically download and install templates.
one what? A database?
Surely you jest. Access is not the best solution out there--it is horrible to use, the interface just blows, and it doesn't do a lot of what it should do. For the record OOBase Sucks as well.
Now that I have used MSSQL more, I am realizing the power of such a database. At work we are also getting ready to implement Crystal Reports, which makes the reporting components in Access look anemic and pathetic.
I am not a big MS fan, but I do think that they make a fine SQL server.
Folks, don't use Excel as a db, but access shouldn't be used either!
Off topic, and all that, but...
You _cannot_ mod a topic in which you have already posted. Period.
You _can_ post in a topic that you have already moderated--but *only* if you are willing to have your mod points wasted. Posting in a topic you have moderated results in the moderation being removed--and you don't get the mod points back. This is to prevent abuses.
It is a reasonably safe system.
more significant? What, precisely, does that mean?
Are you meaning the p value is lower? (eg. p=.03 vs. p=.013)
Or do you mean (as I suspect) that the correlations where higher for status level & lifespan or education & lifespan than for childbearing & lifespan?
Glancing at the article, I note that there are some fairly advanced statistical methods (with a LARGE dataset), and I think that the conclusions are valid. From what I can tell, this effect, although small, may still be important. Additionally, I don't see the necessary information about how this interacts with environmental factors, which is critical to understanding how this works.
it's as simple as getting rid of all the oxygen...