Royston

Just to verify... and for those at the back, who didn't quite catch that...

31/f/UK

Umm, that isn't what I said though. A good Terry Pratchett story would serve as a metaphor. 'War on terroism', however is a term that's used by slimy politicians, where the definition of terroist has extended to 'somebody who opposes our view'. That isn't metaphorical, it's more a revamped definition, to reinforce some paranoid agenda. Also I'm still not sure why you're putting importance on metaphors, over any other method of portraying a system. They're certainly useful, and sometimes entertaining, but they're nothing without a good observation of the system the metaphor is describing. I'm not sure where this should be chucked...and now I've started yammering on about slimy politicians and the war on terror

I'm not convinced metaphors affect our (whoever 'our' is) world view, over anything else e.g a policy, scientific theory et.c it's just a method of describing a system. I'd say anaologies are just as important, the ideas and obervations behind a metaphor are what's important, not solely the use of a metaphor. Rational thinking will help, though I'm not entirely sure what you mean by 'save us from our self', save us from what exactly, there's more than a number of problems in the world, and it's ourselves anyway. 'War on terrorism' isn't a metaphor, it's a political weapon.

*Funny, I thought that 'most people' in the UK were working class. Surely middle class couples can afford public school for their children...I'll try and find some figures. It's already been said, there are too many differing situations to expect high intelligence to be solely associated with good education / upbringing. Even if you have the genetic potential, and receive good education, life has its mishaps, and can hamper any potential that student may have, being just one example. Really high intelligence has no evolutionary advantage for survival, it's simply not necessary, and we haven’t been around long enough for that to change. Somebody who has incredibly high intelligence (especially in all disciplines) is nothing short of a freak...but not in the derogatory sense of the word, they're just very rare. There's a difference between somebody who works very hard in all disciplines to achieve good grades, and somebody who is inherently exceptional in all disciplines...the latter being very few and far between. EDIT: *my mistake, lower middle class takes the majority.

Absolutely. Not really tourism related, but a recent trip by the Queen to Romsey Town in Hampshire cost the local tax payers £ 58,000. Where £ 5,000 was spent on a toilet of all things... http://www.thisishampshire.net/mostpopular.var.1763235.mostviewed.royal_visit_wipes_out_council_reserves.php

Not to shabby, unlike some of the sights on that website.

My sentiments exactly. I'd be quite interested to see what Louis Theroux has to say on the subject, after spending IIRC a few days with these, ummm, people. I'm sure balancing freedom of speech against the invasion of privacy, and the magnitude of disrupting the one time the family are together to grieve, is certainly in favour of the family in my book. Though if it was up to me, on top of the fine, I'd give Slayer a phone call, and ask them to do an impromptu gig at their church, just before it was shut down due to bankruptcy.

Hmm, that's tricky, I find too many things equally interesting. I'd probably go for fashion design, specializing in ladies swimwear. Failing that, probably neuroscience though I also find psychology interesting, as well as pharmacology. Climatology would also be up there, but I also love animals, so perhaps zoology, or perhaps evolutionary biology, marine biology would be awesome to... Hmm, may stick with my former choice.

Roughly [math]14.82 * 10^6 wv[/math] . I'll make a note to watch the video tonight, I won't get away with it at work. *wv = words per video

From the OP... First, how many distinct pit bull dogs you have encountered in your life time. Second, how many times you have been attacked by different pit bulls. If you'd bothered to follow the 'point' of this discussion, it's to collate accounts of individual experiences with pitbull terriers, so Bascule's post is perfectly on topic. Also, judging somebody’s response due to their views of an unrelated topic such as 'climate change' is logically fallacious, as I'm sure you're aware. Sorry to iNow for going off topic.

Indeed, and both of those arguments would require a far more convulted background of political strategies, rather than, anthropogenic influence to climate is happening, and there are a large number of the public who are a tad confused by the whole thing.

From your summary, it sounds like some sort of Anthropic Holographic Principle hybrid, though I don't have the knowledge to explain the 'Holographic Principle' fully, though it's certainly fascinating what I have read on the subject.

I get the general impression when reading and listening to arguments against GW, and experience with people I know, is that they're harboring a political/social, maybe even personal axe to grind, and rather than take issue with the real reason they challenge the anthropogenic cause to GW, they attack the science behind it. The debate is the perfect recipe to fuel opinion, due to the mass political and media coverage, and this obviously skews the information and breeds doubt and suspicion. There are obviously a number of reasons that GW is challenged or denied, including, lack of knowledge of the field, moderate knowledge but missing or misinterpretation of significant data, misinformed by the media, personal reason, or a political or media axe to grind that has swayed an individual’s opinion. The sad fact is, organizations such as the IPCC receive the brunt of the arguments, when they are practicing legitimate science. Climate change includes the use of basic elementary science from subjects such as the carbon cycle through to reams upon reams of collected data, through to highly complex interdependent sequences / series calculated on supercomputers. No stone is unturned, but people arguing against, either genuinely forget or conveniently forget not only attributes of the entire system that effects climate, but attributes of the science behind climate change, which covers all faculties of science, from the basics to the most advanced models calculated. Where Creationism is concerned, it's perfectly obvious why they would have an axe to grind with certain scientific discoveries (depending on their interpretation of the Bible, and how strong their beliefs are.) With GW deniers, there could be a myriad of reasons, however the tactics used to argue a case (if used to support an individuals agenda) are very similar indeed, and that is where the comparison lies. However, the source of the argument isn't, and in that respect it's like comparing apples and oranges...one has religious motives, the other is misinformation or political or perhaps economic and media suspicion. It could also be stemmed from just plain ignorance, which would be applicable to both individual Creationists and GW deniers. I always ask myself this question, if organizations such as the IPCC are not practicing legitimate science (I think there would be a lot more outcry against GW if that really was the case), what possible reason would they have for misinforming the public.

What are you talking about ? Misinterpreting, or actively reinterpreting or sometimes cherry picking data, especially to bolster a 'denial' of a scientific model does indeed create a false dilemma.

Alternatively there's the elimination method... [math]3 + 5x = 2y[/math] [math] 5 - x = y[/math] You need to find a way to make the multiple of either variable (x or y) the same in both equations, so the obvious would be to multiply by 5... [math] 3 + 5x = 2y[/math] [math] 25 - 5x = 5y[/math] Add the two values on the left, the x terms cancel, so you get... [math] 28 = 7y[/math] or [math]y = 4[/math] Now just substitute [math]y = 4[/math] into the original equation, and you get [math]x = 1[/math] I'll show you another alternative, but I'm just about to head out. Depending on the equation, some methods are more appropriate than others.

You'll never catch me succumbing to the evil that is alcohol, you should all be ashamed of yourselves.

So Jacques is probably right, that the comet fragmented, or has broken up a little. Nice pic.

Well the America-centric phenomonon is specifically the over exuberence when it's just not called for. It's understandable at sporting events, or rock concerts, but it's found it's way into much more low key events, and even into meetings (albeit I only gave one example.) Also the 'woop' is just synonymous with this behaviour, it doesn't matter what sound is made. It's generally only on trashy programmes in the UK that you get this, where the average IQ of the audience is around 25...and they're usually programmes that have stemmed from America, e.g the UK's answer to Oprah et.c It's odd, because if practically anything is worth 'wooping' at, then practically nothing is worth 'wooping' at...if that makes sense. Not much more to add really, I was really interested if there was something specific about American culture that could be the cause of this. Pangloss's response seemed the most likely, along with the other influences already mentioned.

Interesting, the first thing I thought was a gas pocket that had heated, or had ignited due to a collision...but the images of the comet look spherical, as though the change in luminosity is uniform, and you'd expect to see the ejection of gases, a small tail on the comet. Here's more from space.com... http://www.space.com/spacewatch/071025-comet-holmes.html If the comet had fragmented, due to collision or an increase in pressure from within, I'm sure you'd still see deformation of some sort, not a bright sphere. Perhaps somebody else knows more on the subject, or has an idea of what could of caused this ?

Going by the previous posts, I thought that one of the areas of consciousness they were discussing was self awareness i.e a computational model of the human brain. Rather a pointless venture if the goal wasn't self awareness...but maybe I misread. Obviously consciousness would include sapience, sentience and subjective thought as well. I just used the mirror test as one example. Thanks for the links BTW EDIT: Right, just read my last post again...was a little confusing.

Chicken chicken ???? Chicken, chicken chicken...chicken. Chicken chicken, chicken chicken, chicken. Chicken ! Chicken. Chicken, chicken chicken chicken... http://www.chicken.ac.uk Chicken: chicken----->chicken<----->chicken ¦ ¦----->chicken ? ¦ ¦ chicken<------>chicken Chicken, chicken...chicken, chicken.

By not programming a response algorithm for e.g the mirror test, if the entity is truly self aware, it should react accordingly without the need for that specific programme. Otherwise it is just mimicking consciousness. I'm not sure what other tests could be conducted to prove that the entity is indeed conscious, AFAIK the mirror test is the only one so far.

Oops, missed that. Perhaps a mod can answer that one.

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