swansont

The subject of the discussion is Sharia in the US. So yes, it can happen elsewhere, but that's irrelevant to this particular discussion.

Yes, one can make crappy arguments. We don't do that in the US because we have no religious law, and a constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment. Remember, stoning is in the Bible, too. But no whipping? You should reread your history books.

From http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/100641-trump-protestors/?p=957919 I think it would be more accurate to say that your caricature of Sharia might not be compatible with our constitution and separation of church and state, but even that would be a stretch I will copy this rather than rewriting it, from another thread So Sharia is not "compatible with our constitution and separation of church and state" in the same way that wearing a yarmulke is not, wearing a cross necklace is not, not eating meat on Friday is not (if people still do that) or avoiding pork is not, or avoiding getting a tattoo or eating shellfish is not (if people actually avoid the things in Leviticus) or even saying "God bless you" after one sneezes is not. That is to say, it is in no way incompatible. As I said in the quote, the Constitution protects us from any laws that do not have a secular basis. That applies to all religions. You can't pass laws that exclude, or promote, a religion. Nobody is going to be able to pass a law that will stand a challenge that forces you to "Islamic things" (for lack of a better phrasing) any more than you can get a law to stand up to scrutiny that makes everyone do something that is exclusively Christian — unless there is a secular reasoning behind it. Murder, as an example, is called out as a sin in the Bible, but that's not why it's illegal. The first amendment says you can follow whatever religion you want, and the courts have said this is up until your practices break some secular law (no sacrificing virgins, for example), though you can still believe what you want. Your belief is sadly not grounded in fact. It's a spook story being passed around to make you afraid.

zbigniew.modrzejewski has been suspended three days for spamming the forums with multiple threads on the same topic, and hijacking other discussions. The garish use of text highlighting did not help matters.

After discussion among the moderating staff, blue89's suspension has been extended to a permanent ban.

! Moderator Note No. This was moved here: it is the official thread for surveys.

A reminder that warnings about staying on-topic are given not only because of the relevance of the post, but also the likelihood that the post will elicit responses that drag the discussion away from the OP.

Wolfhart has been banned as a sockpuppet of Wolfhart Willimczik

A note that we have a FAQ for why a thread would be moved to speculations, since this comes up. An addendum made this morning, from a specific act of moderation: We generally draw a distinction between posts that ask a question and posts that make an assertion that is contrary to mainstream science. "Is the moon made of green cheese?" is a question that can be addressed by science, and so it is legitimate to post in the appropriate science subforum. The answer happens to be no, and we have evidence that can be cited to support that answer. "The moon is made of green cheese!" is an assertion, and something that would be moved to speculations, where it would be refuted, though the author would be expected to post evidence in support of his/her claim.

FeynmanPath11 has been banned as a sockpuppet of NolanNeon1

granpa has been banned for repeated soapboxing (we shouldn't have to beg for links to back up claims, or to find out that the claims are not substantiated, and repeating a claim is not evidence for the claim) and a history of rude behavior.

randomc has been banned after adding insinuations of creepy stalky behavior to a resumé of abusive and insulting posts.

If I don't know the kindest person in the world, how kind they are has essentially no impact on me. Whether a person considers animals as being more important depends on what people and animals they have interacted with. The only way to ensure the comparison of kindest person and kindest animal matters is to consider all people in the analysis. Because for any one person to like animals more than people, they simply need to have animals that are kinder than the people they've interacted with. As others have pointed out, that's not difficult for some people.

Which is not relevant, unless you change the premise to "all people like animals more than humans", which is obviously untrue.

Professional Strawman has been banned for being an insufferable troll, and continuing to engage in that activity after repeated warnings.

Physics Girl, Veritasium, MinutePhysics, SmarterEveryDay, The Slow Mo Guys, It's Okay To Be Smart. First time poster, long time lurker.

B. John Jones is suspended a week for a rule 1 violation on top of repeated thread hijacking and soapboxing (an apparent inability to post without bringing religion into it)

Velocity_Boy is suspended a week for repeated thread hijacking and abusive behaviour.

bart2 has been banned as a soockpuppet of Bart.

Mikemikev has been banned for his insults, his refusal to follow moderator direction, soapboxing and persistent use of fallacies in his arguments.

Again, supply and demand. The people that show up here discussing an invention are usually very coy about details because they're afraid someone will steal their idea. Often that's overblown because they have a fundamental flaw in their understanding of the science. Another issue would be whether the discussion counts as prior art for patent purposes. I have no idea what the answer to that is. The result is that there isn't much call for it. You can e.g. discuss mechanical or electronic details in physics or engineering.

Prophet12A has been banned as a sockpuppet of Prophet12.

I had a chance to peek at some of the supporting data here. The premise is that we can treat everything as random for the null hypothesis. However... The first quake+riot is described as "Second wave of violence 3 weeks after earlier Toxteth incident" Doesn't sound like it's random. It's correlated with an earlier event. The next two instances happen on the same day. Both are "Violence between striking miners and police", so the riots are correlated with each other. Even in the most generous treatment of this analysis, they should not be counted as separate incidents. Further down: two instances of "Copycat disorder during weak economic conditions" More correlated events.

Oh, *That's* what you're calculating. What are the size of the error bars on this prediction of 9 riots in this period of time? I mean, you can do this with coin flips. You expect as many heads as tails, but in any 10-toss stretch, you can easily get 6 of one and 4 of the other. Or 7 and 3, somewhat less often, and 8-2 less often than that, etc. you only get 5H and 5T about a quarter of the time. 6H happens about 20% of the time. 7H is more than 10%. So how do you conclude that the odds are less than 1% for your riots distribution?

Yes, my mistake, I had that backwards. 9 riots in a two week period. That's even worse, since you only have 64 of them. You claim 21 riots per earthquake actually happened, before and after. That only requires 3 earthquakes. Something is not adding up. The bins I'm referring to is just any random two week period. Surely you analyzed a null hypothesis that there's no correlation at all. The expectation of a riot in any period is less than 0.1 and yet you have 16 of them before an earthquake. Again, something doesn't add up.