Yah, well, if you're a conspiracy moron, of course you'd think of JFK first. How you can possibly expect anyone to look at your comment without laughing... that's a different question entirely.
I remember in the pre 1.0 days when getting Linux to run at all was more involved than this "hacking".
Yeah, I faintly remember that. Something to do with voodoo rattles and candles laid out in a pentagram, right? I think I went back to DOS because I couldn't find a virgin goat to sacrifice....
In science, "hypothesis" has a specific meaning which is distinct from theory
Correct.
So, for example, Einstein devises a theory to explain the constant speed of light. The theory asserts that time and space are relative. This is already a theory, even though it has not been tested and even if nobody is immediately sure that people will be able to test it.
Incorrect.
Sorry, I know you're really stretching for this one.
Also incorrect. And I'm tired of you constantly misunderstanding basic terminology, while simultaneously being a condescending jackass, so I'm going to go with the "fuck off" response which I mentioned 5 or 6 comments earlier. Ta-ta!
Well, yes. Of course, this means you now have a single-point failure mode for ALL of your accounts now; somebody sneaks into your browser, and your complex passwords are all useless.
Which is why my browser resides on a truecrypt volume, and my computer locks itself after I've been away for 2 minutes. Plus I'm in the habit of manually locking the computer when there are others around. Not really an issue.
And it doesn't help, because when the sites you have to log into vary their URL and you have to log in to their site and your browser doesn't know which password to use, you're toast.
No, you can go and manually look at the password for the site.
Your browser burps, and you're toast.
You don't do backups?
You're accessing from some other system, and you're locked out of everything.
I have a way around that, but yeah, it would be an issue for most people.
I call shenanigans. I have offered many a bet that I can put on weight eating a 2500 calorie a day diet, and lose weight at a 4000 calorie a day diet. This with absolutely no change in exercise.
I would gladly take your bet, if I could monitor you 24/7 for the duration of the experiment. If I lost - which is unlikely - we'd have learned something useful about human metabolism. If I won... well, I don't mind taking your money:)
The calories in, calories out myth has be thoroughly debunked.
Riiiiight. Feel free to follow the link I posted. The "calories in calories out myth" is pretty much the accepted standard in the scientific community. It's only been "debunked" by protein-powder-pushing muscle-heads with a 6th grade education.
(ok, I'm exaggerating a bit, but really, what did you expect when you made that claim?)
Can you really say that you have never met someone who worked out a lot, and watched what they ate yet still was fat, and never met someone who ate all of the time and never got exercise, yet remained thin?
I've met lots of people who THINK they're watching what they're eating, but when you sit down with them and run the numbers it turns out they're underestimating their daily intake by 1,000+ calories. I've also met people who have a high metabolism and are quite thin despite eating lots - that's all part of the calories-in-calories-out thing. If you have such a fast metabolism that you burn twice as many calories as an average person even when you're resting, obviously you're going to be thinner.
Most importantly, though, anecdote != data. It doesn't matter how many purple alien lizards you think you've seen - it's not going to convince me that we're being invaded.
Not that I disagree with your point, but I must point out a fallacy: by this logic, you'd choose life as a slave instead of fighting for your freedom.
"elucido" provided a decent response, but it's not the one I would have gone with. You made the mistake of inferring that I was giving a reason to never overthrow any government, under any circumstances. I wasn't. I was merely pointing out the costs associated with such acts - something which must always be considered prior to deciding on a course of action.
Also, it's worth noting that I certainly would chose life as a slave if resistance was pointless and it meant my children would have a better shot at freedom. Blacks in the US could surely have chosen violent revolution, and lost hundreds of thousands of lives on the small chance that they might defeat the white population; instead they chose cooperation and measured defiance, resulting in a progression which eventually lead to complete freedom for their descendants. Later in the process groups like the Black Panthers chose to take a more militant approach; those actions, while initially productive, gained them no new freedoms and ultimately only made the situation worse for people on all sides of the issue. Choosing when and how to fight is not the simple dichotomy that you're making it out to be.
Didn't you get the memo? Now that Obama is in office, you're supposed to drop the no-blood-for-oil bullshit. It only works when the republicans are in charge.
The difference being that, in one case, they're buying a finished product, while in the other they're throwing money at something that may never pan out.
That's sorta like complaining that it costs millions of dollars to build a nuclear reactor, but your crazy neighbor swears he'll be able to build you a perpetual-motion machine - eventually - for only a $100 investment. Maybe the neighbor is worth investing in, on the off chance that he actually makes something useful, but it doesn't compare to buying something you can use right now.
Subversive revolutionaries are usually mistreated by the authorities in any country. Governments hate subversives.
With good reason. The goal of "subversive revolutionaries" is to create chaos and destruction, in order to make the government appear weak and ineffective. To say that "governments hate subversive revolutionaries" is no more poignant than to say that teachers hate the kid at the back of the class who keeps putting tacks on their seats and shooting spitballs at them when their backs are turned.
As for the public in general, the problem with "subversive revolutionaries" is that they're usually no better - and sometimes far worse - than the regimes which they seek to depose, and that - even in the cases where the previous does not hold true - the act of overthrowing an entire government often leads to far more death and misery than was present under the existing system. Cuba is an excellent case-study; the government of Fulgencio Batista was corrupt and oppressive, but his overthrow lead to thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of deportations, while resulting in a government which was even more corrupt, oppressive, and ruthless. Batista had every reason to hate Castro and Guevara, and Cuba would arguably have been far better off had they not succeeded.
The U.S. corn subsidies, lower-protein corn engineered for the production of high fructose corn syrup, and the widespread use of corn syrup directly and indirectly in foods has been shown to have had a major impact.
Lets just say I find the data unconvincing. It's been repeatedly shown that, as far as weight-loss/gain is concerned, the only thing that matters is calories in and calories out. You can eat a balanced diet of 4,000 calories a day and you'll gain weight, or drink 2,000 calories of pure fructose corn syrup a day and you'll lose weight. Professor Haub provided the most recent example of that principle, when he pulled his little Twinkie Diet stunt. People who tell you otherwise are generally trying to sell you their own super-seeekrit 100% GUARANTEED to work Miracle-Diet (tm).
The only way in which the use of high-fruictose corn syrup could lead to weight gain in a population is if it's use directly lead to the increase in caloric content of the average meal. However, you'd get the same result by adding any other type of sugars, so it's irrational to blame the product if the real issue is the usage.
Here is simple graphic for seeing where one is as far as Body Mass Index. (a separate table adjusted with slightly less massive norms for Asians is also available)
Yeah, I've always found those tables to be completely useless. When I was 17, I was 5'10" and 180 lbs. I could pump out 100+ pushups, 40+ chinups, climb the gym ropes faster than most people could walk the same distance, and when I joined the military a year later I kicked everyones ass on the obstacle course. Yet, according to that chart, I was "overweight", and halfway to "obese". Looking at the same figures, I could safely say that at least three quarters of the people I worked with in the infantry would have likewise been considered "overweight". That's one of the reasons I've never put much stock in BMI measurements, although they can be useful when you're studying populations as opposed to individuals (assuming you're not dealing with unusual populations / samples, eg. military, firemen, bodybuilders, etc). I'd like to see body-fat percentage measurements replace BMI as a standard measurement of obesity, though - they tend to give a much better indication of fitness / health levels.
That was never my claim. My claim was that the "theory of relativity" was a theory before it was tested. It was a theory before anyone even figured out how to test it.
Nope. First off, the "theory of relativity" is used to refer to two separate theories, but let's ignore that. More importantly, Special Relativity (and General Relativity after it) was presented because it produced better solutions than classical mechanics. Einstein didn't just pull it out of his ass and say "Hey guys, here's this thing I just made up on the spur of the moment, let's call it a theory and put it in all the journals". His proposal was the culmination of theoretical speculation and empirical data gathered by many other scientists. We didn't need to go digging for data in order to figure out whether his models worked - we simply looked at the evidence he'd gathered, checked how it related to existing problems, and found that his theory worked better than anything else we had.
Similarly, Darwin didn't just toss out the idea of Evolution and then try to find data to support it - his theory was the culmination of several decades of research, arising entirely because there was no better way to explain the data. Even with the overwhelming evidence at his disposal Darwin wouldn't have published his ideas until much later, if he hadn't been rushed by the threat of Alfred Wallace publishing the same ideas.
Either way, trying to redefine "theory" to mean "something proven to be true" isn't helping the discussion.
You know, that's the second or third time you've brought up the same strawman, even after I corrected it. Either you're intentionally ignoring me, or we're having some kind of comprehension issues.
Yeah, I agree that comparing these measurements in general is a bit ridiculous. It's much more interesting (and useful) to look at how various societal factors correlate to the change in BMI over time.
On the other hand, I think these stats can be quite valuable for dispelling myths. For instance, I don't think anyone pictures Greeks as particularly obese (quite the opposite, actually), while Americans have a reputation for being a nation of gluttons. Looking at some of these figures has changed some of my own personal misconceptions, so there's definitely some value in comparing the statistics; it only becomes silly when you use them to engage in nationalistic pissing contests.
Also, to be fair, the "sarcastic trollish comment" you were responding to was hardly the only one in the series; the entire thread is a collection of trollish (though amusing) comments, so don't put all the blame on that one guy:)
Well, first of all, you're completely misreading the stats. There is no breakdown by years. The numbers at the top indicated the BMI percentage, not the age.
So, with that in mind, looking at the stats tells us that the US has the highest percentage of males with a 30+% BMI. On the other hand, MANY European nations have a higher percentage of males who are obese, but under the 30% mark. What that seems to indicate is that they have a roughly equivalent prevalence of overall male obesity, but fat men in the US tend to be fatter.
The situation with women seems similar, although Albania actually beats out the US for the "monstrous" category, and the gap tends to be a bit smaller.
Getting a clear picture isn't possible from those stats without doing some number crunching and/or creating a few graphs. I would have taken a shot at it if it were possible to just copy-paste the data into a spreadsheet, but the formatting of that PDF is pretty horrible. Also, they seems to think that Israel and Turkey (amongst other questionable choices) are part of Europe, so some reorganization of their data would be necessary in order to get a valid comparison between Europe and the US.
Of course not. Just stick your fingers in your ears, and yell really loud. That ought to turn reality into something a bit more manageable!
Although if you really want to try to use those numbers to somehow refute my statement of slashdot's conservative sway, you need to demonstrate that slashdot is instead somehow favoring liberals;
Hah! Right. And to prove that the moon isn't made of cheese, I have to prove that it's made of meat. Nice logic:)
I have nothing further to add. You've done a better job of discrediting yourself than i could ever dream of doing. You take care now.
Recent like "in the past few years". You might find a reference to this redefinition that's a few decades old, but really people have only been pushing for it in the past decade or so.
In that case, you're simply wrong. The difference has existed for far, far longer; there was simply no need to point it out or discuss it in detail until anti-science twits started misusing the terminology. As I said a while back: you're aiming at the wrong target. You find an example of a time when scientific theories were just untestable shit that someone made up and presented without a shred of evidence, then we can talk. Until then, your complaints are baseless.
Special effects has been a misnomer since the early 90s and a COMPLETE misnomer since the mid-90s when all of this cutesy CGI garbage came into play. Interesting how CGI looked fake then and continues to look fake.
Yeah, and my vinyl records sound FAR more realistic than your damn newfangled 320kbps M-P-Trees. Now get off my lawn!
Except that the idea that a "theory" must be both testable and tested (i.e. "supported by evidence") is a recent invention, seemingly designed specifically so we can tell "science doubters" that you're not allowed to doubt "theories".
If by recent you mean "since the rise of science, and the decline of philosophy", then yes, it's fairly recent. It was a pretty important distinction, though, which has led to a whole new way of looking at our universe.
You clearly don't derive that opinion from reading the slashdot front page. Every week slashdot features at least 5-10 articles that specifically bash Obama and/or the democrats, and about that same number of articles that praise or defend conservatives.
Currently on the front page:
Why Anonymous Can't Take Down Amazon.com Watch 200 Years of Global Growth In 4 Minutes Google Patents Browser Highlight All Button Stallman Worried About Chrome OS Archaeologists Find 2,400-Year-Old Soup Michael Moore Posts Julian Assange's Bail The Top 50 Gawker Media Passwords Voyager 1 Beyond Solar Wind 'Jeopardy!' To Pit Humans Against IBM Machine Comcast Accused of Congestion By Choice Sheriff's Online Database Leaks Info On Informants Ukraine To Open Chernobyl Area To Tourists Why Video Game Movie Adaptations Need New Respect IBM To Build 3-Petaflop Supercomputer EPA Knowingly Allowed Pesticide That Kills Bees The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Announced for November 2011 Hand-Off, Reconnect To Verizon LTE Can Take 2 Minutes Microsoft Backtracks On Accessibility In Windows Phone 7 Statistical Analysis of Terrorism Anonymous Now Attacking Corporate Fax Machines
20 Articles posted in less than 24 hours, none of which have a "conservative" bias, or anything to do with conservative talking points. But no, that must just be a statistical anomaly, right? Let's analyze your claim instead! If we have 20 articles posted in 24 hours, we can expect roughly 140 articles per week. Let's assume that your numbers are correct, and that 10-20 articles every week either "bash Obama" or "defend conservatives". Out of 140 articles, that's about 7-14% - less than the 15% which I randomly threw out earlier.
In conclusion: you suck at Da Maths, and you're pulling "facts" out of your ass so that you can accuse others of having "fact-free opinions". You're also a blind ideologue and a blatant troll. You're swallowing the partisan drivel of your chosen political extreme, and seeing bias in any forum which doesn't go out of it's way to self-identify as a communist enclave. Either take off your blinders and learn to think for yourself, or go play somewhere else.
Nobody is trying to redefine "theory" as "fact". Evolution is both a theory AND a fact, but the two are separate from each other. The difference between a scientific theory and a “theory” in common usage is not “factualness” – the difference is that a scientific theory must be testable, falsifiable, must have predictive power, and be supported by evidence. Which is why Theory, Scientific Theory, and Philosophical Theory each have their own wikipedia page - because the usage of the word "theory" in each case is different, representing a unique concept which differs significantly from the other two uses.
It's also why Intelligent Design is neither a scientific theory nor a fact - it's an appeal to ignorance disguised as a hypothesis, but, in common usage, it could accurately be referred to as a theory.
Ok, it's one propaganda artist trying to gain publicity by bailing out another. Wow, that, like, TOTALLY changes everything I was saying! Oh darns, I made a slight error based on da outdated informations! Whatever shall I do!
Only ideologues and fanatics fear having their mistakes exposed; rational people welcome the opportunity to correct their errors. So it feels fine, thanks for asking. How does your to-to feel?
That's all well and good, but you're directing your fire at the wrong target. It's the fools who refer to evolution as "just a theory" - as well as the jackasses who insist that "intelligent design" is a scientific theory - that you should be concerned with. Apparently you are unaware that a scientific theory and a wild guess are two completely different things, but those jackasses know full well that they're changing the language in order to serve their political agenda.
Slashdot Mirror
Yah, well, if you're a conspiracy moron, of course you'd think of JFK first. How you can possibly expect anyone to look at your comment without laughing ... that's a different question entirely.
No, that was Jonah.
I remember in the pre 1.0 days when getting Linux to run at all was more involved than this "hacking".
Yeah, I faintly remember that. Something to do with voodoo rattles and candles laid out in a pentagram, right? I think I went back to DOS because I couldn't find a virgin goat to sacrifice ....
In science, "hypothesis" has a specific meaning which is distinct from theory
Correct.
So, for example, Einstein devises a theory to explain the constant speed of light. The theory asserts that time and space are relative. This is already a theory, even though it has not been tested and even if nobody is immediately sure that people will be able to test it.
Incorrect.
Sorry, I know you're really stretching for this one.
Also incorrect. And I'm tired of you constantly misunderstanding basic terminology, while simultaneously being a condescending jackass, so I'm going to go with the "fuck off" response which I mentioned 5 or 6 comments earlier. Ta-ta!
No such thing as a plausible but untested theory?
Yeah, that's what we call a "hypothesis".
Well, yes. Of course, this means you now have a single-point failure mode for ALL of your accounts now; somebody sneaks into your browser, and your complex passwords are all useless.
Which is why my browser resides on a truecrypt volume, and my computer locks itself after I've been away for 2 minutes. Plus I'm in the habit of manually locking the computer when there are others around. Not really an issue.
And it doesn't help, because when the sites you have to log into vary their URL and you have to log in to their site and your browser doesn't know which password to use, you're toast.
No, you can go and manually look at the password for the site.
Your browser burps, and you're toast.
You don't do backups?
You're accessing from some other system, and you're locked out of everything.
I have a way around that, but yeah, it would be an issue for most people.
Doesn't help against phishing, either.
Doesn't hurt, either.
I call shenanigans. I have offered many a bet that I can put on weight eating a 2500 calorie a day diet, and lose weight at a 4000 calorie a day diet. This with absolutely no change in exercise.
I would gladly take your bet, if I could monitor you 24/7 for the duration of the experiment. If I lost - which is unlikely - we'd have learned something useful about human metabolism. If I won ... well, I don't mind taking your money :)
The calories in, calories out myth has be thoroughly debunked.
Riiiiight. Feel free to follow the link I posted. The "calories in calories out myth" is pretty much the accepted standard in the scientific community. It's only been "debunked" by protein-powder-pushing muscle-heads with a 6th grade education.
(ok, I'm exaggerating a bit, but really, what did you expect when you made that claim?)
Can you really say that you have never met someone who worked out a lot, and watched what they ate yet still was fat, and never met someone who ate all of the time and never got exercise, yet remained thin?
I've met lots of people who THINK they're watching what they're eating, but when you sit down with them and run the numbers it turns out they're underestimating their daily intake by 1,000+ calories. I've also met people who have a high metabolism and are quite thin despite eating lots - that's all part of the calories-in-calories-out thing. If you have such a fast metabolism that you burn twice as many calories as an average person even when you're resting, obviously you're going to be thinner.
Most importantly, though, anecdote != data. It doesn't matter how many purple alien lizards you think you've seen - it's not going to convince me that we're being invaded.
Not that I disagree with your point, but I must point out a fallacy: by this logic, you'd choose life as a slave instead of fighting for your freedom.
"elucido" provided a decent response, but it's not the one I would have gone with. You made the mistake of inferring that I was giving a reason to never overthrow any government, under any circumstances. I wasn't. I was merely pointing out the costs associated with such acts - something which must always be considered prior to deciding on a course of action.
Also, it's worth noting that I certainly would chose life as a slave if resistance was pointless and it meant my children would have a better shot at freedom. Blacks in the US could surely have chosen violent revolution, and lost hundreds of thousands of lives on the small chance that they might defeat the white population; instead they chose cooperation and measured defiance, resulting in a progression which eventually lead to complete freedom for their descendants. Later in the process groups like the Black Panthers chose to take a more militant approach; those actions, while initially productive, gained them no new freedoms and ultimately only made the situation worse for people on all sides of the issue. Choosing when and how to fight is not the simple dichotomy that you're making it out to be.
Remind me again, why we aren't using hemp instead of oil and corn?
Our reptilian overlords are allergic to it.
On the bright side, every time we smoke a bowl, we're striking a blow against Alien Oppression!
Didn't you get the memo? Now that Obama is in office, you're supposed to drop the no-blood-for-oil bullshit. It only works when the republicans are in charge.
The difference being that, in one case, they're buying a finished product, while in the other they're throwing money at something that may never pan out.
That's sorta like complaining that it costs millions of dollars to build a nuclear reactor, but your crazy neighbor swears he'll be able to build you a perpetual-motion machine - eventually - for only a $100 investment. Maybe the neighbor is worth investing in, on the off chance that he actually makes something useful, but it doesn't compare to buying something you can use right now.
Subversive revolutionaries are usually mistreated by the authorities in any country. Governments hate subversives.
With good reason. The goal of "subversive revolutionaries" is to create chaos and destruction, in order to make the government appear weak and ineffective. To say that "governments hate subversive revolutionaries" is no more poignant than to say that teachers hate the kid at the back of the class who keeps putting tacks on their seats and shooting spitballs at them when their backs are turned.
As for the public in general, the problem with "subversive revolutionaries" is that they're usually no better - and sometimes far worse - than the regimes which they seek to depose, and that - even in the cases where the previous does not hold true - the act of overthrowing an entire government often leads to far more death and misery than was present under the existing system. Cuba is an excellent case-study; the government of Fulgencio Batista was corrupt and oppressive, but his overthrow lead to thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of deportations, while resulting in a government which was even more corrupt, oppressive, and ruthless. Batista had every reason to hate Castro and Guevara, and Cuba would arguably have been far better off had they not succeeded.
The U.S. corn subsidies, lower-protein corn engineered for the production of high fructose corn syrup, and the widespread use of corn syrup directly and indirectly in foods has been shown to have had a major impact.
Lets just say I find the data unconvincing. It's been repeatedly shown that, as far as weight-loss/gain is concerned, the only thing that matters is calories in and calories out. You can eat a balanced diet of 4,000 calories a day and you'll gain weight, or drink 2,000 calories of pure fructose corn syrup a day and you'll lose weight. Professor Haub provided the most recent example of that principle, when he pulled his little Twinkie Diet stunt. People who tell you otherwise are generally trying to sell you their own super-seeekrit 100% GUARANTEED to work Miracle-Diet (tm).
The only way in which the use of high-fruictose corn syrup could lead to weight gain in a population is if it's use directly lead to the increase in caloric content of the average meal. However, you'd get the same result by adding any other type of sugars, so it's irrational to blame the product if the real issue is the usage.
Here is simple graphic for seeing where one is as far as Body Mass Index.
(a separate table adjusted with slightly less massive norms for Asians is also available)
Yeah, I've always found those tables to be completely useless. When I was 17, I was 5'10" and 180 lbs. I could pump out 100+ pushups, 40+ chinups, climb the gym ropes faster than most people could walk the same distance, and when I joined the military a year later I kicked everyones ass on the obstacle course. Yet, according to that chart, I was "overweight", and halfway to "obese". Looking at the same figures, I could safely say that at least three quarters of the people I worked with in the infantry would have likewise been considered "overweight". That's one of the reasons I've never put much stock in BMI measurements, although they can be useful when you're studying populations as opposed to individuals (assuming you're not dealing with unusual populations / samples, eg. military, firemen, bodybuilders, etc). I'd like to see body-fat percentage measurements replace BMI as a standard measurement of obesity, though - they tend to give a much better indication of fitness / health levels.
That was never my claim. My claim was that the "theory of relativity" was a theory before it was tested. It was a theory before anyone even figured out how to test it.
Nope. First off, the "theory of relativity" is used to refer to two separate theories, but let's ignore that. More importantly, Special Relativity (and General Relativity after it) was presented because it produced better solutions than classical mechanics. Einstein didn't just pull it out of his ass and say "Hey guys, here's this thing I just made up on the spur of the moment, let's call it a theory and put it in all the journals". His proposal was the culmination of theoretical speculation and empirical data gathered by many other scientists. We didn't need to go digging for data in order to figure out whether his models worked - we simply looked at the evidence he'd gathered, checked how it related to existing problems, and found that his theory worked better than anything else we had.
Similarly, Darwin didn't just toss out the idea of Evolution and then try to find data to support it - his theory was the culmination of several decades of research, arising entirely because there was no better way to explain the data. Even with the overwhelming evidence at his disposal Darwin wouldn't have published his ideas until much later, if he hadn't been rushed by the threat of Alfred Wallace publishing the same ideas.
Either way, trying to redefine "theory" to mean "something proven to be true" isn't helping the discussion.
You know, that's the second or third time you've brought up the same strawman, even after I corrected it. Either you're intentionally ignoring me, or we're having some kind of comprehension issues.
Yeah, I agree that comparing these measurements in general is a bit ridiculous. It's much more interesting (and useful) to look at how various societal factors correlate to the change in BMI over time.
On the other hand, I think these stats can be quite valuable for dispelling myths. For instance, I don't think anyone pictures Greeks as particularly obese (quite the opposite, actually), while Americans have a reputation for being a nation of gluttons. Looking at some of these figures has changed some of my own personal misconceptions, so there's definitely some value in comparing the statistics; it only becomes silly when you use them to engage in nationalistic pissing contests.
Also, to be fair, the "sarcastic trollish comment" you were responding to was hardly the only one in the series; the entire thread is a collection of trollish (though amusing) comments, so don't put all the blame on that one guy :)
Well, first of all, you're completely misreading the stats. There is no breakdown by years. The numbers at the top indicated the BMI percentage, not the age.
So, with that in mind, looking at the stats tells us that the US has the highest percentage of males with a 30+% BMI. On the other hand, MANY European nations have a higher percentage of males who are obese, but under the 30% mark. What that seems to indicate is that they have a roughly equivalent prevalence of overall male obesity, but fat men in the US tend to be fatter.
The situation with women seems similar, although Albania actually beats out the US for the "monstrous" category, and the gap tends to be a bit smaller.
Getting a clear picture isn't possible from those stats without doing some number crunching and/or creating a few graphs. I would have taken a shot at it if it were possible to just copy-paste the data into a spreadsheet, but the formatting of that PDF is pretty horrible. Also, they seems to think that Israel and Turkey (amongst other questionable choices) are part of Europe, so some reorganization of their data would be necessary in order to get a valid comparison between Europe and the US.
That doesn't mean jack squat.
Of course not. Just stick your fingers in your ears, and yell really loud. That ought to turn reality into something a bit more manageable!
Although if you really want to try to use those numbers to somehow refute my statement of slashdot's conservative sway, you need to demonstrate that slashdot is instead somehow favoring liberals;
Hah! Right. And to prove that the moon isn't made of cheese, I have to prove that it's made of meat. Nice logic :)
I have nothing further to add. You've done a better job of discrediting yourself than i could ever dream of doing. You take care now.
Recent like "in the past few years". You might find a reference to this redefinition that's a few decades old, but really people have only been pushing for it in the past decade or so.
In that case, you're simply wrong. The difference has existed for far, far longer; there was simply no need to point it out or discuss it in detail until anti-science twits started misusing the terminology. As I said a while back: you're aiming at the wrong target. You find an example of a time when scientific theories were just untestable shit that someone made up and presented without a shred of evidence, then we can talk. Until then, your complaints are baseless.
Special effects has been a misnomer since the early 90s and a COMPLETE misnomer since the mid-90s when all of this cutesy CGI garbage came into play. Interesting how CGI looked fake then and continues to look fake.
Yeah, and my vinyl records sound FAR more realistic than your damn newfangled 320kbps M-P-Trees. Now get off my lawn!
Except that the idea that a "theory" must be both testable and tested (i.e. "supported by evidence") is a recent invention, seemingly designed specifically so we can tell "science doubters" that you're not allowed to doubt "theories".
If by recent you mean "since the rise of science, and the decline of philosophy", then yes, it's fairly recent. It was a pretty important distinction, though, which has led to a whole new way of looking at our universe.
You clearly don't derive that opinion from reading the slashdot front page. Every week slashdot features at least 5-10 articles that specifically bash Obama and/or the democrats, and about that same number of articles that praise or defend conservatives.
Currently on the front page:
Why Anonymous Can't Take Down Amazon.com
Watch 200 Years of Global Growth In 4 Minutes
Google Patents Browser Highlight All Button
Stallman Worried About Chrome OS
Archaeologists Find 2,400-Year-Old Soup
Michael Moore Posts Julian Assange's Bail
The Top 50 Gawker Media Passwords
Voyager 1 Beyond Solar Wind
'Jeopardy!' To Pit Humans Against IBM Machine
Comcast Accused of Congestion By Choice
Sheriff's Online Database Leaks Info On Informants
Ukraine To Open Chernobyl Area To Tourists
Why Video Game Movie Adaptations Need New Respect
IBM To Build 3-Petaflop Supercomputer
EPA Knowingly Allowed Pesticide That Kills Bees
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Announced for November 2011
Hand-Off, Reconnect To Verizon LTE Can Take 2 Minutes
Microsoft Backtracks On Accessibility In Windows Phone 7
Statistical Analysis of Terrorism
Anonymous Now Attacking Corporate Fax Machines
20 Articles posted in less than 24 hours, none of which have a "conservative" bias, or anything to do with conservative talking points. But no, that must just be a statistical anomaly, right? Let's analyze your claim instead! If we have 20 articles posted in 24 hours, we can expect roughly 140 articles per week. Let's assume that your numbers are correct, and that 10-20 articles every week either "bash Obama" or "defend conservatives". Out of 140 articles, that's about 7-14% - less than the 15% which I randomly threw out earlier.
In conclusion: you suck at Da Maths, and you're pulling "facts" out of your ass so that you can accuse others of having "fact-free opinions". You're also a blind ideologue and a blatant troll. You're swallowing the partisan drivel of your chosen political extreme, and seeing bias in any forum which doesn't go out of it's way to self-identify as a communist enclave. Either take off your blinders and learn to think for yourself, or go play somewhere else.
Nobody is trying to redefine "theory" as "fact". Evolution is both a theory AND a fact, but the two are separate from each other. The difference between a scientific theory and a “theory” in common usage is not “factualness” – the difference is that a scientific theory must be testable, falsifiable, must have predictive power, and be supported by evidence. Which is why Theory, Scientific Theory, and Philosophical Theory each have their own wikipedia page - because the usage of the word "theory" in each case is different, representing a unique concept which differs significantly from the other two uses.
It's also why Intelligent Design is neither a scientific theory nor a fact - it's an appeal to ignorance disguised as a hypothesis, but, in common usage, it could accurately be referred to as a theory.
Ok, it's one propaganda artist trying to gain publicity by bailing out another. Wow, that, like, TOTALLY changes everything I was saying! Oh darns, I made a slight error based on da outdated informations! Whatever shall I do!
Only ideologues and fanatics fear having their mistakes exposed; rational people welcome the opportunity to correct their errors. So it feels fine, thanks for asking. How does your to-to feel?
It doesn't. It's just one propaganda artist trying to gain publicity by sticking up for another.
That's all well and good, but you're directing your fire at the wrong target. It's the fools who refer to evolution as "just a theory" - as well as the jackasses who insist that "intelligent design" is a scientific theory - that you should be concerned with. Apparently you are unaware that a scientific theory and a wild guess are two completely different things, but those jackasses know full well that they're changing the language in order to serve their political agenda.