StringJunky

I find myself aligned with Physica in the popular attitude of First World society towards apparent gender pay disparities. It is important to reference like with like and not what looks equivalent because there appear to be so many confounding variables. Take CE O pay: When one looks at the differences here, company pay between different companies doesn't seem to considered and it appears women get less when, in reality, those higher paying companies are just richer. A proper indication would be if, say, Cook of Apple Inc who earns about $7m basic, stepped down and a woman replaced him.... would her pay be the same? There is/was concerted propaganda by certain establishments because I experienced it in the 90's. I started an OU Foundation in maths and all the modules contained reference and maths problems associated with gender disparitty... it was a constant theme. I noted all the authors were female. I got so fed up with it I couldn't focus on the maths....I gave up....twice. I wasted £700 and a year. The real problem is ethnic career inequality.... I could do a maths course focused on that. As an aside, courses should be apolitical, unless explicitly stated.

It seems to me, putting a lot of effort into an idea is a bit like climbing a mountain; you've got to know when to turn around and give up..

Just Wikied him. Yes, he seems to have the required attributes nicely balanced.... even if he is obscenely rich!

This is where I chuck a hand grenade amongst the SFN milieu and scarper. Past and present, ignoring personal affiliation, who do you consider to have, or had, the intelligence, knowledge, pragmatism and integrity to steer the good ship America through a term or two but aren't or weren't President. I nominate Condaleeza Rice and Colin Powell. They strike me as having all the prior qualities. Bear in mind I'm not American, so I could be way off in assessment but long-distance they looked good. Like I said earlier, political leadership is about steering ones country through ensuing events; political ideology and dreams for ones party very rarely realise... this is where pragmatism comes in. What say you and why? I'd like you to focus on the individuals and not their affiliation... and not your own either.

That's the joke point.

76.26% of statistics are made up.

Antarctic fungi survive Martian conditions on the International Space StationScientists have gathered tiny fungi that take shelter in Antarctic rocks and sent them to the International Space Station. After 18 months on board in conditions similar to those on Mars, more than 60 percent of their cells remained intact, with stable DNA. The results provide new information for the search for life on the red planet. Lichens from the Sierra de Gredos (Spain) and the Alps (Austria) also traveled into space for the same experiment. >>>>> Read more

We've had a few threads recently on our microbiota. I thought this might be of interest from the BBC site. Here's a more sciencey article on it from Science Daily.

Devil's Advocate: What if the mutation for this ability was quite relatively recent and hadn't had time to propagate to a globally populous state, OR required specific multiple combinations of genotypes/alleles to combine in order form the ability to manifest itself, which may not be reproducible everytime...rather like mules?

Yes.OK. I shall look that up: pathogenicity factors. Can 'microbiome' and 'microbiota' be used interchangeably or is there a difference?

Are you sure they aren't English and in the wrong lane?

I don't tar all Americans with the same brush, it's too big. Your states are all countries trying to act as one country and having huge problems like this.

Imatfaal, I have nothing left to vomit. I am sicked out mentally about this. All I can think of now is to utter four-letter words.

Yes, if telekinetic forces can pass out through the skull it should pass through clear glass... but maybe bone is telekinetically transparent and other materials are not?

Right.... Ive learnt a bit more.

What increases the odds is that the behaviour of chemicals, under certain conditions, is predictable; they only need to be within reactive range of each other; that there's a healthy dose of determinism.

Ok. Yes, I can't see how blood and mucus sourced at the small intestine would remain visibly distinct as such once it exited; it would have been denatured by digestive substances and mixed up more, via peristalsis, in transit..

I'm not saying what the causes are but likely indicators to their source location.

I read some research news recently that life started at a about 1 billion years. It, apparently, may have emerged quite quickly..

Magnetic North and True North

Do you feel better now for that?

Yes, I think this is one of those exercises where empirical learning is too risky. Early chemistry is littered with dead and disfigured people doing just that. Forearmed is forewarned. A wise man learns from his mistakes; a clever man learns from the mistakes of others.

It is an analogy. They are general and not meant to cover every case.

Interesting. The more I read about this stuff the idea of "germs" is too all embracing and blunt that bacteria are 'bad'. Really, it boils down to certain bacteria being pathogenic when they are in the wrong location on/in the body. Perhaps we should understand our relationship better with our microbiome and learrn to control the various bacterial populations by judiciously applying the correct commensal species in the right place instead of trying to nuke everything;. Numerically, the space we each occupy is more 'mico-organism' than 'human'.

Yes, I'm beginning to think the more I read about it, that society may be forcing a strict gender dichotomy.... one must choose one or the other. The reality, as has been mentioned before in other threads, that sexual preference falls on a continuum. I think it naturally follows that gender identity follows a continuum as well. There doesn't seem to be this general social and professional acceptance that people can be fluid in their gender identity, changing as they see fit. on any given day.... it's not a widely known category,it seems. I imagine a lot of these people with gender dysphoria are in fact transgender 'tweenies'. Why can't they be both? I don't agree with this because an adolescent is 'finding their way' about who they are. They may go through several internal transitions, settling on their biological sex. I think it is necessarily a decision that must be made at 18+ when they are likely to have stabilised better. These feelings can start very young, as young as three. Here's a six year old: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35323211