cosine

[hide]Is it AECCO? By a similar though slightly less founded method I came up with the strings: WAYYK EIGGS KOMMY QUSSE[/hide]

Hooray! Can a federal judges ruling like this be disobeyed by anyone? (As long as its not overturned by the supreme court?)

The difference is that they actually had a timetable, which they didn't release to the public at the time, but at the time they could at least say they had "a plan." Bush actually told us his "plan," which consists of sinking more tax dollars into Halliburton and other huge companies until something good happens. And the lines before that are "Next week American families will be gathering with their loved ones to celebrate Christmas and Hanukka." He knows full well there are many Americans that will be celebrating other holidays, but doesn't give a nod to any of them. I know it may sound odd, even plain wasteful, to waste breath on such a controversy, and I doubt that anyone here would even entertain such a debate, but if you must know, Merry Christmas Vs. Happy Holidays. Any of the first couple links will give you some info on that one. And Edit: Btw, there's ridiculousness on both "sides" of the "controversy."

I've searched through the thread and apparently no one has mentioned "hyperbolic" which is a possibility for the shape of our universe. This seems to be the most intuitive to me. The universe is an expanding fundamental circle, and as we get closer to the horizon, our metric shrinks to the point that no matter how close we get to the horizon, we can never reach it because our metric keeps shrinking. This is a nontechnical explanation about how hyperbolic metric works, though this picture might help visualize it. http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PoincareHyperbolicDisk.html

Same here.

I never heard of software the blocks banners? And uh, does anyone know what happened with my posting thingy there? I hit the Post Quick Reply button and then like 20 of my post were listed and then something happened and they were all gone. Edit: um okay now there are 2 besides this one... sorry I don't know how to delete posts, so... yeah...

I don't know if I like the idea of making non-profits compete against each other. Also, this reminds me of Nupedia, the first form of what Wikipedia evolved from.

Hey, as some of you probably watched, President Bush gave an address from the Oval Office. This is a good thread to post any comments or analysis you have of the speech. The first obvious thing I noticed was that he did not give a time table, which has dissappointed many people. No one wants an indeterminantly long war that could drag on for an unknown amount of time. He introduced the word "defeatist" to describe people against the war. There are a few other things in his speech, but there were somethings he mentioned that the BBC didn't discuss afterwards. Mainly how he said "People will be gathering for Christmas and Hanukka" Then quoted a christmas carol. I thought this was in poor taste and pandering to an evengelical religous faction of the U.S. that is currently upset over the popular replacement of "Merry Christmas" with "Happy Holidays."

When they can be brought up is at the disgresson of those discussing. However, they should be providable at any time, being that it should be a property of the source. This thread and future draft threads should be the place to work out where types of sources should lay in the SCRS (Source Credibility Rating System) if it is currently ambiguous. Though, I emphasise types since hopefully discussers of a particular topic will be able to realize amongst themselves in that thread where a source such as President Bush's blog as in the example above would lie. Um, just to sum up the short answer, these ratings should be able to be provided at any time. However, it may not always be to challenge a source, it may be a request for a better source, or a comparison of sources. Also, though I noted before that certain situations may have an ambiguity (no one expects SCRS to be perfect, which is why this is the rough draft of hopefully many more to come), in most cases it should be obvious as to a sources rating. Nature is a pretty A source, Encarta is a pretty B source, President Bush is a pretty C source (come on, honestly, most politicians are), Al Franken is a pretty D source, and race generalizations are a pretty F source.

Right, but the validity of their blogs usually rests on the research on which they are based. So like you and Cap'n Refsmmat said, it really depends on sources they provide. And perhaps credentials wise if the person is an authority on or involved in the matter, though this may be basis for a slant, depending on the context of the arguement. For example, President Bush's blog would probably be considered slanted if used as an arguement to justify a given policy. However it would be a credible source as to, say, what color his eyes are, or for example, what the name of his dog is.

<op> From reviewing the news article, it seems like the whole thing was a regretable accident. Surely it will lead to an in-depth review of current policies, but I seriously doubt it can be alleged that air marshalls would be shooting a mentally ill man our of malice. But it also seems like they were hasty, and were probably not calm themselves. I have no idea what the wife actually said, because the article doesn't say. It does say she was trying to explain she had a bipolar disorder. I can only conjecture that she did not explicitly say "don't shoot," because if she did I don't know how the air marshalls would have been able to shoot, since they were probably anxious and would have had to be near crazy to disobey the command of an innocent, seemingly level headed woman. But I don't think she was level headed either, probably didn't explicitly say "don't shoot", because two air marshalls were going to shoot her husband. I mean this is all just how the events seem to play out in my head, and why I would think it was a pure mistake if nothing else... I've filled in the holes here where the article leaves them. This is actually the first I've heard of it, are there any more articles someone could reccomend that fills in more holes about how the events took place?

This is true too, you would not want an institute with a flashy name to be used in an effort to sneak C evidence into an A credential. Such as using information from say the Heritage Foundation. As ecoli points out, the best solution to this problem is to cite the sources that the Institutes research itself uses. However, to add onto that point, it doesn't mean that the International Platinum Association should not be cited, but perhaps also suffixed with "in an study that uses A sources." If it is research that the institute itself carries out, it will be much like a premium or slanted news source, but can definitively fall into A or C depending on the existance of slant and methodology and peer-review of the institution.

Thankyou!

Fairness? Good thing we're a country that never takes initiatives! How logical is it to elect leaders that never want to make a sacrifice for the greater good? Edit: However, the cartoon in the op is rather humourous.

The ultimate goal is to encourage the use of better sources. As to this question specifically it would be more likely that a reader would analyze a writer's sources this way. For instance, I cite michaelmoore's website that says bush is an alien, you may request a better source, tell me I really shouldn't be bothering you with a source, or say "yeah I've seen this on this C- source (source), but I still don't think its credible. anyone have a B or A source?" Basically in political discourse there should be a heavy emphisas on the use of sources when trying to put foward a point, especially to avoid side-tracks into source credibility (although this system may lead to questions if it is ambiguous as to which catagory a certain source lies in) and to avoid circular debates where two people drone on argueing one theory against the other using only D sources and never really getting anywhere. For example, can creationism even offer a B source? a C even?

Sorry for the ambiguity. I meant a credibility rating for sources used. Sources here referring to anything used to support an arguement. The thread exists here.

Hello, in http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/showpost.php?p=231931&postcount=18 a post about congenial debate, I said I would start a rough draft of a Source Credibility Rating System for us to use. Sources referring to anything used to support an arguement. It is certainly a rough draft because I expect and encourage feedback. The goal is for when enough people post that they are satisfied with the current state of the rating system, all the edits will be gathered into a "Second Draft thread" which hopefully can be sticky-ed and used as a reference for source credibility. (Of course it is labeled Second Draft so future SFN members can look at it and add to it over time until it is deemed neccessary to create a "Third Draft thread" and so on.) A - Non-controversial science journals, independently verified government reports, and first hand accounts from those involved in the discussed events rate as the best sources one can use. Perhaps a little lower but still in this rating would be widely agreed upon premium news sources such as the New York Times, or local newssources that are able to get in-depth information relevent to a mainly local topic. B - Encyclopedias, dictionaries, Wikipedia, and books without an agenda. All of these are sturdy (with the possible exception of Wikipedia) references usually written by an accountable authority, but can be slow to update. Books may be biased, depending on who's writing them, although publishers usually require a degree of fact checking before using resources to publish. And Wikipedia, while it can be updated quikcly, is open to anyone to edit, so it can possibly be tainted, though is usually self corrected. C - Government reports, perhaps more controversial though still somewhat sound scientific articles. Though these can easily be biased resources, these sorts of things still maintain a credibility since they did use some sort of method to arrive at their report. D - Member hypothesi and slanted sources. While these may be used for a lead or starting point to suggest a further investigation, they do not actually constitute support for any given point. Using these to support an arguement against someone who uses more credible sources is a nuisance, and even using them as a starting point for inventigation should be used for chronicle purposes only and should be accomponied by further support you were led to. F - Refuted sources and generalizations. Refuted sources should obviously be left out of debates, and generalizations, which are the basis of bigotry, even if based on an event, should be left out as well. My own suggestions is that these could be the larger catagories, and subjectively people could add a + or - suffix to the rating to show an expression of how they feel it compares to other sources in the same catagory, while it needn't be neccessary for us to lay out formally what a + or - means, as long as the catagories are agreeable. Edit: I would like to be able to edit this document directly to reflect suggestions, but I don't think I will be able to after 4 hours of the original post's posting time. So all suggestions are in subsequent posts, this post is just the original post.

<op> While it is hard to unbiasedly say something is a good arguement or a bad arguement, there are some statements that can be agreed upon as general rules or guidelines, the most objectively obvious of which I can see is: Cite sources. This includes providing links to any external sources, links to posts in external threads, and at least post reference numbers to posts in the same thread. The last point is important in order to keep posts connected, and should be used when only a fragment from the middle of a post is quoted. (I would like to ask if it is possible to have QUOTE tags that provide slots for thread title and post number, and to have these filled in when someone pushes the "Quote" button.) Sources serve multiple purposes, such as to provide context, additional information, and provide examples or literal support for a certain point. Also I would like to suggest a credibility rating system, which could be kept as a sticky on the forum. I will start a rough draft to which people can comment, and after it has been hammered out, we can make lay it out in a Second Draft thread and sticky it.

I copied and pasted it from our conversation.

If you say "add all the real numbers from a to b," you would get an infinite answer, but if you say "add all the intergers from a to b" you get a finite answer. The problem I pose to you SFNers is: Prove that for any a and b that are not the same, prove that the infinite series summing all the rational numbers between them diverges. (Hint: You don't need to sum all of the rational numbers between a and b if you can show a series with only some of terms diverges.) Edit: BTW, just to let you know, this is a little challenge problem I'm giving to the community that arised from a conversation between ecoli and me. Just so you don't think its hw or anything.