Oh yeah, I can't imagine anything in the world more horrible than the possibility that a random, speculative criminal might get 'off the hook.' Much better to let the cops do whatever the want and assume it's making us safer.
Yes, what could be more irresponsible and dangerous than leaving too much space in front of you? That's why I always make sure my front bumper is kissing the car in front of me.
Right. We have no idea. Because NO ONE in the history of commercial radio has ever studied this issue. You are LITERALLY the first person to ever consider the possibility that EMF could affect living things. Stooge.
Oh, poor fucking you, to suffer a small measure of the bullshit that minorites in this country have been dealing with forever. What a truly bleak age it is when a perfectly good white boy can no longer expect to coast simply by being a member of the privileged class.
In what way were video games relevant to the Columbine shootings? David Cullen's 'Columbine' was probably the most exhaustive work yet published on what happened in Littleton, and it makes it pretty clear that Klebold and Harris were both pretty sick kids. Harris was pretty much your textbook sociopath, with no regard for other people and a deep delight in manipulating and controlling others. Klebold was manic-depressive and might well have just killed himself if he hadn't fallen under Harris' influence. Nowhere in the book is any evidence presented that video games had much of anything to do with what happened--they were just another part of the violent iconography that the boys embraced. By all accounts, the last thing they did before they left Harris' home the morning of the shooting was to watch part of the film 'Natural Born Killers,' but nobody argues that that was 'relevant' to what happened next.
If you have a reliable citation to support your claim, I'd be interested to see it. There's been so much myth-making and nonsense sprung up around this event that it's tough to separate the wheat from the chaff.
I think the point that you're missing is that the word WASN'T considered offensive in the original novel. That's how people talked, because obviously black folks were inferior and deserved to be treated in a subhuman fashion. THAT'S what should be offensive to the modern reader--the idea that that kind of thinking was once considered acceptable. And you don't change that by editing the word out.
I mean, seriously, Jim's still a slave, right? He's still property, to be sold, bought, used, abused, and exploited at will, and yet people are up in arms over the fact that in the book they call him a naughty word? Talk about having your priorities out of whack.
You're an idiot.
1) Please explain to me the ethical implications of using the electricity generated by eels already living in captivity, as opposed to simply keeping them captive.
2) This is a gimmick. It is not a practical source of power, the same way that wiring up humans is not a practical source of power, because the processing of food into heat and electricity by the human body necessarily introduces significant energy loss. You'd be better off just burning the food. Please try again when you understand thermodynamics, kthnxbye.
To be fair, though, what country would you name that can reliably win wars in the face of widespread insurgency? There's a reason why guerilla warfare is used so often--because it's almost impossible to beat. We'd be lots better off trying to figure out ways to avoid getting into these fights to begin with.
That's based on your extensive study of immunology, right? So you'd be able to explain the relationship between these putative toxins and the pathophysiology of a Type I hypersensitivity reaction, right? Waiting on you, then...
In this case you've probably got it exactly backward. The movie didn't open widely at first, and it certainly didn't get much of an ad campaign until closer to award season. The early positive word of mouth from people in the select markets where it opened (and yes, from those who pirated it) are probably why it ended up going wide. I certainly wouldn't have gone to see it if I hadn't heard about it from someone else who (probably) saw it illegally.
Yeah, go after Pfizer. Because I'm sure it's really them that's putting out all that Viagra spam, and totally not bullshit suppliers of counterfeit drugs.
Seriously, do you have any idea how tightly regulated even direct to consumer drug ads are? There's no way any legitimate company is involved in this. I know it's fun and exciting to blame Big Pharma for everything wrong in life, but how about we stick to the many things they ACTUALLY do wrong, rather than random shit we merely attribute to them?
No, it wasn't a suspenseful film, though I'll give you it was well-made and had some impressive visuals. The characters were cariactures--you've got Brave Hero, Noble Savage (and friends), Cranky Scientist, and EVIL MILITARY OMG. Why should I give a rat's ass about a character with no depth? While I'm not gonna demand scientific accuracy from a sci-fi flick, come on, floating mountains? A forest where EVERYTHING glows in the dark? That's just stupid, and when something is so obviously wrong it's hard not to notice it.
It was shit. If this is the best Cameron has for us these days, then maybe he should take another 10 years before he inflicts more stupidity on us.
Hey, he was a callous dick, but he's not all wrong: medical care was provided. That care costs resources--physician time, ambulance use, medications, etc, all of which have dollar value attached to them. It's tragic that the child died, and I appreciate that the last thing you'd want to see after such a tragedy would be the bill for the unsuccessful life-saving effort, but seriously, are all the parties involved supposed to just write off the expense for the sake of being nice? How far should that principle extend: if I'm mangled in a car accident and doctors go to enormous expense to keep me alive, but I lose a leg in the process, should I have the option of not paying the bill simply because I'm upset about it? How long do you think the typical hospital is going to stay in business when they can't get reimbursed for the care they provide?
If you knew anything about the Columbine attack apart from the narrative provided by the media, then you would know the whole 'bullied outsiders fighting back' meme was total nonsense. Klebold and Harris weren't the most popular guys in their school, but neither were they pariahs. There is plenty of evidence from primary sources to indicate that Harris may well have been a sociopath. Indeed, the initial plan was never simply a school shooting--they wanted to hijack a plane and crash it into the White House, which makes the whole 'bullying' theory seem a little thin.
Fuck yourself until you die, you empty-headed, theocratic godbot.
Here's a newsflash: no one, including you, has the right to never be offended. If YOU don't want drawings of your prophet, don't make them. I don't share your beliefs--in fact, many people don't. So why, exactly, must I bend over backward to risk offending your idiotic believes? Try putting the shoe on the other foot: if a Christian demands you stop your worship of a false idol, are you going to listen simply because the alternative is to offend a few billion Christians.
No, you're an idiot. You suggest that drawing a cartoon is equivalent to abetting murder, then you're not educated, you're indoctrinated. May you and every other murderous thug who shares your stupidity be consigned to the dustbin on history.
How you were modded insightful is beyond me. The GP stated that those who protest a practice most vociferously are often themselves involved in that practice. He presented three examples of people who made very loud moral pronouncements while behaving in a contrary fashion. At no time did he imply that those three had anything to do with the present case.
There are a number of things I would contest in your post, but at minimum I will point out that the benefits of xenophobia do not necessarily exceed the benefits of cooperative exercise, which is why our civilization does not continue to exist as a number of tightly bound exclusive tribal groups. I would surmise that if you had a society of tribal units and you increased competition for scarce resources, over long periods of time you'd see an increase in xenophobic behavior, while other circumstances might promote greater cooperation.
The other point which I'll contest is your claim that "Selection forbids the long-term, multi-generational transfer of traits that put those with those traits at a disadvantage." While it's trivially true that selection will tend to decrease the frequency of a disadvantageous gene in a population, all else being equal, it is entirely possible for disadvantageous genes to persist in a population for long periods of time. One simple example is the sickle cell trait, which in the homozygous form causes sickle cell anemia (bad) but which in the heterozygote promotes resistance to malaria (good). For this reason, the sickle cell gene remains common in regions with endemic malaria even though the gene itself is not optimal. And in other cases, disadvantageous genes can become fixed in a population due to things like founder effect and genetic drift. Selection can work against them, but if they're the only game in town, eventually some equilibrium will arise.
Do you actually understand the concept of statistical significance? From your use of the word 'insignificant' I doubt you're really understanding what the article is saying. Statistical significance is a different concept from what is typically meant by 'significance.'
I'm probably oversimplifying a bit, but the error bars on the Williams bar in the figure is sufficiently large to include 50% ('pure chance'). This means that based on the number of children tested, the standard deviation around the estimated mean includes the chance value--therefore, we cannot say with any confidence that the 'true' mean differs from 50% in Williams children.
In contrast, the error bar around the non-Williams children comes nowhere near 50%--that is, there is no reasonable way that resampling would produce a mean of 50%. Therefore the 'true mean' must be significantly different from 50%--and in this case, it is different in the direction of greater bias.
You call it "evolution," I call you, "someone who doesn't know what 'evolution' means."
Evolution is NOT an increase in the frequency of a genetic trait that we believe to be socially positive. At its most technical level, evolution is simply a change in gene frequencies within a population. Unless the article claims that the frequency of these genes is changing, then this cannot be considered 'evolution.'
Furthermore, traits like xenophobia have been evolutionarily favored over the history of our species precisely because they provide an advantage in terms of greater fecundity. Our social environments have obviously changed, but until the gene(s) for 'open-mindedness' produce more effective reproducers than their counterparts, xenophobia will be conserved in the species' gene pool.
I suggest you read Carl Sagan's 'The Demon-haunted World.' He dedicates an entire chapter to describing a perfectly plausible theoretical explanation for abduction stories which does not require any kind of alien (or otherwise supernatural) phenomenon.
For me, it's a fairly simple question. We know that people are prone to confusion, delusion, and wishful thinking. We know that people sometimes believe very strongly in things which do not exist. On the other hand, we have no tangible evidence of abductions, or any of their related phenomenon. So what is more likely: some people have weird delusions of otherwordly encounters, or aliens are here, and they spend all their time skulking around screwing with people and covering up all signs of their presence?
Here you are unabashedly wrong. As someone who designs drug trials for a major pharmaceutical company, I can tell you we very often prefer to test our new drugs versus placebo, and we absolutely will report those results. Part of this is because you obviously have a much better chance of demonstrating effectiveness if your competitor is 'nothing,' whereas using an active comparator (product X) runs the risk of making you look no better than product X. This doesn't mean all products tested against placebo are "shit;" it simply means the company is minimizing the risk of a failed trial.
Of course, how well your new drug works compared to existing therapies is exactly what many healthcare providers and payers want to know, which is why regulators increasingly demand active comparator trials. In some countries reimbursement is explicitly linked to how well you fare against whatever the current standard of care is.
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Oh yeah, I can't imagine anything in the world more horrible than the possibility that a random, speculative criminal might get 'off the hook.' Much better to let the cops do whatever the want and assume it's making us safer.
Yes, what could be more irresponsible and dangerous than leaving too much space in front of you? That's why I always make sure my front bumper is kissing the car in front of me.
Right. We have no idea. Because NO ONE in the history of commercial radio has ever studied this issue. You are LITERALLY the first person to ever consider the possibility that EMF could affect living things. Stooge.
Oh, poor fucking you, to suffer a small measure of the bullshit that minorites in this country have been dealing with forever. What a truly bleak age it is when a perfectly good white boy can no longer expect to coast simply by being a member of the privileged class.
In what way were video games relevant to the Columbine shootings? David Cullen's 'Columbine' was probably the most exhaustive work yet published on what happened in Littleton, and it makes it pretty clear that Klebold and Harris were both pretty sick kids. Harris was pretty much your textbook sociopath, with no regard for other people and a deep delight in manipulating and controlling others. Klebold was manic-depressive and might well have just killed himself if he hadn't fallen under Harris' influence. Nowhere in the book is any evidence presented that video games had much of anything to do with what happened--they were just another part of the violent iconography that the boys embraced. By all accounts, the last thing they did before they left Harris' home the morning of the shooting was to watch part of the film 'Natural Born Killers,' but nobody argues that that was 'relevant' to what happened next. If you have a reliable citation to support your claim, I'd be interested to see it. There's been so much myth-making and nonsense sprung up around this event that it's tough to separate the wheat from the chaff.
I think the point that you're missing is that the word WASN'T considered offensive in the original novel. That's how people talked, because obviously black folks were inferior and deserved to be treated in a subhuman fashion. THAT'S what should be offensive to the modern reader--the idea that that kind of thinking was once considered acceptable. And you don't change that by editing the word out. I mean, seriously, Jim's still a slave, right? He's still property, to be sold, bought, used, abused, and exploited at will, and yet people are up in arms over the fact that in the book they call him a naughty word? Talk about having your priorities out of whack.
You're an idiot. 1) Please explain to me the ethical implications of using the electricity generated by eels already living in captivity, as opposed to simply keeping them captive. 2) This is a gimmick. It is not a practical source of power, the same way that wiring up humans is not a practical source of power, because the processing of food into heat and electricity by the human body necessarily introduces significant energy loss. You'd be better off just burning the food. Please try again when you understand thermodynamics, kthnxbye.
To be fair, though, what country would you name that can reliably win wars in the face of widespread insurgency? There's a reason why guerilla warfare is used so often--because it's almost impossible to beat. We'd be lots better off trying to figure out ways to avoid getting into these fights to begin with.
But I bet he could write a really scary business plan! OOOH!
That's based on your extensive study of immunology, right? So you'd be able to explain the relationship between these putative toxins and the pathophysiology of a Type I hypersensitivity reaction, right? Waiting on you, then...
In this case you've probably got it exactly backward. The movie didn't open widely at first, and it certainly didn't get much of an ad campaign until closer to award season. The early positive word of mouth from people in the select markets where it opened (and yes, from those who pirated it) are probably why it ended up going wide. I certainly wouldn't have gone to see it if I hadn't heard about it from someone else who (probably) saw it illegally.
Yeah, go after Pfizer. Because I'm sure it's really them that's putting out all that Viagra spam, and totally not bullshit suppliers of counterfeit drugs.
Seriously, do you have any idea how tightly regulated even direct to consumer drug ads are? There's no way any legitimate company is involved in this. I know it's fun and exciting to blame Big Pharma for everything wrong in life, but how about we stick to the many things they ACTUALLY do wrong, rather than random shit we merely attribute to them?
No, it wasn't a suspenseful film, though I'll give you it was well-made and had some impressive visuals. The characters were cariactures--you've got Brave Hero, Noble Savage (and friends), Cranky Scientist, and EVIL MILITARY OMG. Why should I give a rat's ass about a character with no depth? While I'm not gonna demand scientific accuracy from a sci-fi flick, come on, floating mountains? A forest where EVERYTHING glows in the dark? That's just stupid, and when something is so obviously wrong it's hard not to notice it. It was shit. If this is the best Cameron has for us these days, then maybe he should take another 10 years before he inflicts more stupidity on us.
Hey, he was a callous dick, but he's not all wrong: medical care was provided. That care costs resources--physician time, ambulance use, medications, etc, all of which have dollar value attached to them. It's tragic that the child died, and I appreciate that the last thing you'd want to see after such a tragedy would be the bill for the unsuccessful life-saving effort, but seriously, are all the parties involved supposed to just write off the expense for the sake of being nice? How far should that principle extend: if I'm mangled in a car accident and doctors go to enormous expense to keep me alive, but I lose a leg in the process, should I have the option of not paying the bill simply because I'm upset about it? How long do you think the typical hospital is going to stay in business when they can't get reimbursed for the care they provide?
If you knew anything about the Columbine attack apart from the narrative provided by the media, then you would know the whole 'bullied outsiders fighting back' meme was total nonsense. Klebold and Harris weren't the most popular guys in their school, but neither were they pariahs. There is plenty of evidence from primary sources to indicate that Harris may well have been a sociopath. Indeed, the initial plan was never simply a school shooting--they wanted to hijack a plane and crash it into the White House, which makes the whole 'bullying' theory seem a little thin.
Fuck yourself until you die, you empty-headed, theocratic godbot.
Here's a newsflash: no one, including you, has the right to never be offended. If YOU don't want drawings of your prophet, don't make them. I don't share your beliefs--in fact, many people don't. So why, exactly, must I bend over backward to risk offending your idiotic believes? Try putting the shoe on the other foot: if a Christian demands you stop your worship of a false idol, are you going to listen simply because the alternative is to offend a few billion Christians.
No, you're an idiot. You suggest that drawing a cartoon is equivalent to abetting murder, then you're not educated, you're indoctrinated. May you and every other murderous thug who shares your stupidity be consigned to the dustbin on history.
How you were modded insightful is beyond me. The GP stated that those who protest a practice most vociferously are often themselves involved in that practice. He presented three examples of people who made very loud moral pronouncements while behaving in a contrary fashion. At no time did he imply that those three had anything to do with the present case.
Thanks--you explained that a lot better than I did.
There are a number of things I would contest in your post, but at minimum I will point out that the benefits of xenophobia do not necessarily exceed the benefits of cooperative exercise, which is why our civilization does not continue to exist as a number of tightly bound exclusive tribal groups. I would surmise that if you had a society of tribal units and you increased competition for scarce resources, over long periods of time you'd see an increase in xenophobic behavior, while other circumstances might promote greater cooperation.
The other point which I'll contest is your claim that "Selection forbids the long-term, multi-generational transfer of traits that put those with those traits at a disadvantage." While it's trivially true that selection will tend to decrease the frequency of a disadvantageous gene in a population, all else being equal, it is entirely possible for disadvantageous genes to persist in a population for long periods of time. One simple example is the sickle cell trait, which in the homozygous form causes sickle cell anemia (bad) but which in the heterozygote promotes resistance to malaria (good). For this reason, the sickle cell gene remains common in regions with endemic malaria even though the gene itself is not optimal. And in other cases, disadvantageous genes can become fixed in a population due to things like founder effect and genetic drift. Selection can work against them, but if they're the only game in town, eventually some equilibrium will arise.
Do you actually understand the concept of statistical significance? From your use of the word 'insignificant' I doubt you're really understanding what the article is saying. Statistical significance is a different concept from what is typically meant by 'significance.'
I'm probably oversimplifying a bit, but the error bars on the Williams bar in the figure is sufficiently large to include 50% ('pure chance'). This means that based on the number of children tested, the standard deviation around the estimated mean includes the chance value--therefore, we cannot say with any confidence that the 'true' mean differs from 50% in Williams children.
In contrast, the error bar around the non-Williams children comes nowhere near 50%--that is, there is no reasonable way that resampling would produce a mean of 50%. Therefore the 'true mean' must be significantly different from 50%--and in this case, it is different in the direction of greater bias.
You call it "evolution," I call you, "someone who doesn't know what 'evolution' means."
Evolution is NOT an increase in the frequency of a genetic trait that we believe to be socially positive. At its most technical level, evolution is simply a change in gene frequencies within a population. Unless the article claims that the frequency of these genes is changing, then this cannot be considered 'evolution.'
Furthermore, traits like xenophobia have been evolutionarily favored over the history of our species precisely because they provide an advantage in terms of greater fecundity. Our social environments have obviously changed, but until the gene(s) for 'open-mindedness' produce more effective reproducers than their counterparts, xenophobia will be conserved in the species' gene pool.
I suggest you read Carl Sagan's 'The Demon-haunted World.' He dedicates an entire chapter to describing a perfectly plausible theoretical explanation for abduction stories which does not require any kind of alien (or otherwise supernatural) phenomenon.
For me, it's a fairly simple question. We know that people are prone to confusion, delusion, and wishful thinking. We know that people sometimes believe very strongly in things which do not exist. On the other hand, we have no tangible evidence of abductions, or any of their related phenomenon. So what is more likely: some people have weird delusions of otherwordly encounters, or aliens are here, and they spend all their time skulking around screwing with people and covering up all signs of their presence?
Of course not. There can be only one.
If the magic psychic future seeing power works at a rate no different from random chance, it ain't exactly much of a power, now, is it?
Here you are unabashedly wrong. As someone who designs drug trials for a major pharmaceutical company, I can tell you we very often prefer to test our new drugs versus placebo, and we absolutely will report those results. Part of this is because you obviously have a much better chance of demonstrating effectiveness if your competitor is 'nothing,' whereas using an active comparator (product X) runs the risk of making you look no better than product X. This doesn't mean all products tested against placebo are "shit;" it simply means the company is minimizing the risk of a failed trial.
Of course, how well your new drug works compared to existing therapies is exactly what many healthcare providers and payers want to know, which is why regulators increasingly demand active comparator trials. In some countries reimbursement is explicitly linked to how well you fare against whatever the current standard of care is.