padren

I can't tell if this is a bot impersonating a person, or a person impersonating a bot.... but if it's the latter he's been pretty convincing around the net so far.

Just a note on this - if your assertion was true, why are women so hurt and feel so tricked/used when the relationship goes south? Plus when you use the phrase "is it not possible" you are suggesting a possibility, so it appears to me you actually understand the weak link in this theory. Suggesting "it's possible it's sound" is not the same as it being sound. And secondly, are you saying you actually feel most women are knowingly attracted to lying, duplicitous men? Seriously, most women I know that are attracted to that sort of man, start off with "no, he's really quite sweet - you don't know him like I do" and end in "what a two-faced complete bastard creep" shortly after. My experience says they're duped. I can see some degree of bias towards men that will put "defending their gal" above the laws of society... but hell, I consider that a good quality in friends, so I really don't think that has to do with sexuality.

Dweebs perceived they knew it, nerds perceived they new it, but as I mentioned there are other reasons for that perception. I chased the cheerleaders in high school myself, and I got short of breath because they were busy chasing the jocks. There are many girls I didn't even notice because I already filtered them out - they weren't cheerleaders after all. Also please consider: You can't be dangerous if you are not confident. Confidence is considered to be attractive. Can you concede there is some room for correlation there, instead of causation? Also scientists don't know it, some of proposed theories suggesting it. There is a difference to be noted. I assume you mean also because many women are attracted to other qualities too, not just aggressive or wealth. I only mention because your comment came across as rather tied to only those two, but I doubt that is what you meant. I have to disagree. Some women are attracted to dangerous men for the adrenaline kick, but the "dangerous" element is not advantageous from an evolutionary perspective. Other traits, that allow a man to get away with being dangerous may (overall health, strength, influence, mentality)... but again that is correlation, not causation. Danger is not "good" from an evolutionary standpoint. Like many previous posts, that is pretty generalized. Do you mean "women are" as in women are capable of being attracted to bad boys, or in that they all are, or a significant percentage are? I assume the last, because you've made previous clarifications, but please try to remain clear in your posts as you go. Also, if that is the case, please define "significant percentage" so we know what exactly we are being asked if we agree with. It may seem tedious at first, but this forum does have the habit of trying to qualify statements as completely and carefully as possible, to reduce ambiguity as much as possible. I find it is actually pretty helpful, and it's not meant to be a "grammer nazi" type correction. I personally agree a fair number of women are attracted to "bad boys" and I myself am often attracted to "bad girls" but I personally suspect that is the result of them being manipulative enough to push another's buttons. Secondarily, there are many ways towards confidence, and that can lead to risk taking and the "dangerous" appeal. And on top of that - please don't ignore the "low self esteem" factor either, as a lot of women that choose "bad boys" or men that seem to "talk down" to them, treat them poorly, is because they have such a low self esteem they actually think these guys are the only ones treating them honestly. My point is: 1) I don't see any strong logic that "dangerous" leading to evolutionary advantage (just other traits that may lead to dangerous behavior) 2) Due to the plethora of other factors that can cause the exact same statistical bubble (and it's perceptual exaggeration) - how can you really be sure it's evolutionary?

If these were intentionally targeted with complete disregard for the civilian non-combatants - then I would completely agree this is beyond the pale and Israel needs to be held accountable. If this is a result of "fog of war" then it only makes me more angry at Hamas for bringing this conflict and suffering upon the Palestinian people. Israel broke it's side of the cease fire when it attacked the tunnel as your previously cited articles mentioned - but that tunnel itself was a violation and implemented to harm Israelis. It resulted in 6 dead, and I am pretty sure (open to correction though) those were people involved with either building or defending the tunnel, so I don't have the deepest sympathy for them. Apparently the destruction of the tunnel caught the attention of Hamas, and they stepped up their missile attacks. Then, after some time, Israel responded with this level of force. Since I see no way Israel could have stopped those missile attacks short of this invasion and the subsequent unfortunate cost to civilian life, I don't see how they are at fault. When citizens riot and police respond, one hopes no civilians get killed, and specially no bystanders, but it is possible if one of two things to happen: Police fire on citizens that are no threat illegally and with prejudice... or police fire on citizens they think they think are an immediate threat to the lives of others and due to the chaos, happen to be wrong. In both cases they should be investigated fully, and if it is due to abuses by the officer, the officer should be prosecuted. If the burden of proof does not demonstrate this, then the officer is not culpable, and the results are attributed to the chaos of the situation. It is easiest to forget this when one feels the riots are a justifiable response to an unjust situation and as such the police should never have been necessary to begin with. I would not be above participating in riots if the situation was in my mind demanding them. I would however, try be sure I did not loose sight of the full implications of doing so, and the cost that could come with it to myself and even innocent bystanders - nor would I blame the responding officers for suffering caused by confusion within the situation. If the Israelis are intentionally engaging in the slaughter of civilians, or allowing the slaughter of civilians due to gross disregard for their lives - then there is a case to be made against them. Unless this is demonstrated, I don't see how this is anything other than the suffering caused by the fog of war. As I still feel Hamas is responsible for this invasion, I see them as the root cause of suffering of Gaza civilians, and can't really blame Israel.

Mooey isn't saying you are claiming that all women are... she's mentioning that while you continue to correct yourself, you go on and continue to use wording in your posts that speaks in absolutes as if you are making that claim. She is recommending, for purposes of clarity in communication, that you choose your words well in every post so not to make generalizations that when taken at face value appear to contradict your corrections. It has been mentioned by others, and I also concur it is good advice.

Well, he's beaten up two dead Scientists, a physicist and a biologist. We better keep an eye on him and make sure he doesn't start in on poets. I'd be willing to bet he's not above flogging a dead Horace.

I do agree, and think at times optimism borders on faith, but I would like to point out no one really wants to break the laws of physics, they want to get around by the perceived limitations they impose. If I recall, no one broke the laws of physics when they "stopped light" and started it moving again, they just used the laws in a creative way - a way that was not known to be possible before. Portable energy production was thought to have a chemical limitation, and the laws governing chemical reactions have not changed - but we've added nuclear into the mix. I doubt we'll be likely to "break" the fundamental laws, out of all of them I'd say the laws of thermodynamics are especially safe, but aside from those it's pretty hard to speculate on what new things we learn. I am not saying we will get from one point to another faster than the speed of light would allow via classic traversement, but I suspect it's fair to be optimistic.

Just a thought: Since most stars pre-supernova are in orbit around the galactic hub, isn't there also a good chance that a 500km/s shift in velocity has sent it into a decaying (or decayed) orbit or, spiraling out to eventually leave the galaxy? I am not sure the odds are of it actually leaving or falling into the center in 30 orbits, I imagine it could also throw it's orbit into a radical path, slingshoting the core in one and ending up in a wide elliptical orbit... though I've never heard of this phenomenon being observed so it's just a a thought. Is this possibility very probable?

I think you are basically using the relative location (such as the Virgo cluster) to express some of the distance variance, not all of it. Essentially, the force of gravity from various sources is changing our acceleration at every moment, and if even if we kept our current velocity (which is irrelevant if we 'instantly' time travel) so as to change our time, but not our location, everything will have gone flying on by or (if you go back) not caught up with where we are. If you are in a park, and you travel 10 years into the future, you have to both travel through time and chase the park, covering all the distance the park did. Is that what you mean?

Just a thought: never take caffeine intravenously. Care to explain the part of them never um, meeting? Process of thought and subsequent derailment: 1) Imagine a man is walking down a street and meets another man walking in nthe opposite direction. - Check, okay, they meet in nthe middle, got it. 2) Now assuming they meet, - Check, got there already. 3) which they never will, - Ch-err....wha? Why? Didn't they already meet and why will they never? Are they on opposite ends of the observable universe? 4) there can be zero, since if there is a foundation only can the rest exist, and vice versa. So assuming that if they meet they make x, if they never meet, there is no x, and thus no zero. - Uh, what are they making x out of again? Is it a measurement of something? Did someone steal my cat? Did I ever own a cat? In other words: Can you slow down and explain what you are trying to say?

I found a very high percentage of the women I'd hit on would turn out to be really really shallow and materialistic.... then I realized I was hitting on a very small percentage of women because they were really really hot - I guess it took two to tango there. I think there is some truth to the general location of the "budge" in the attraction landscape, but I suspect there is a degree of false perception, as it seems most "nice guy men" are attracted to the very type of woman that is attracted to the "bad boy guy" over other women. I also think the sampling may be off (in some of your cases), because most serial killers become widely known and their faces are broadcast across a very large segment of the population. If you take all the women that saw a particular serial killer's face on TV, the percent that felt compelled to propose marriage or even write would be remarkably low. Secondarily, the triad you mention has one really important binding element - they are traits that lead to very manipulative people. A very manipulative man can play "the rebel" to one woman and "the softy" to another (or the same woman at different times), in which the quality that makes the subject manipulative (and thus attractive) also makes the subject capable of great violence. In this case, it would be an issue of correlation, not causation. I am not arguing that is the case, just that it is a reasonable explanation. It simply makes sense to me: Two men compete for the affections of a woman. One is willing to manipulate and lie, the other will only use honesty because they are not a sociopath. If all other factors are neutral, which has the edge in the short term? The only mitigating factor I can think of for the woman is experience, which is either learned the hard way, or the capacity to learn by observation and apply it. All these are just "logical constructs" I've come up with and don't represent any real sort of research, but I do find they naturally explain the observations you report without reaching the same conclusion. Woman aren't that dominantly attracted to sociopaths. They are (like men) more easily manipulated by them.

I find the trouble people seem to have with the 'probability' of abiogenesis is in understanding the mechanisms involved and how they reduce the unlikeliness. For example, if you were to consider the moon, inside a block of three dimensional space just large enough to contain it (a cube) and assumed say, the random chance of each cubic foot of space within that volume other "either containing rock or not containing rock" to create such a spherical form - the statistical odds of it being a sphere seem ridiculously nil. It would be like taking the pieces of a watch and tossing it in a bucket, shaking it around, and ending up with a working watch. However, we know enough about the nature of about the materials that make up the moon, how they become malleable when hot, and the effects of gravity - especially over time, to see how a very simple natural process could lead to this outcome far far far more easily. While we haven't uncovered all the the natural processes involved in abiogenesis, research has shown a number of them (previously cited youtube videos for instance) remarkably ease the odds.

Nice, what I didn't know regarding the last two was 1) Cher's personal life (knew of her public life quite well) so I didn't have the facts to verify that, and 2) never watched enough Lucy to verify if we "never" saw that either. Nice riddle though, reminded me of the South Park episode with the question "People that annoy you" considering what first popped into my head.

What do you think about the "Exiled Authority" concept - it seems we've tried to play it in Cuba before, I think it came up in Afghanistan, and I know it was a major factor in Iraq. The down side that I see, is where they could be exiled to, if it's an Arabic nation it'll be more appealing to the Palestinians, but risks raising tensions with countries that support Hamas. If it's a country that is far enough removed from the Middle East, it could appear too much like they are just "Western Puppets" to the Palestinians. But, if a group could be from Gaza, with a reasonable claim to authority (such as the prime minister) and work with the international community to propose a peaceful solution that actually gives Palestinians hope for a better quality of life and more open borders - do you think it could resonate with them? From what I see, no one in Gaza is safe speaking out against Hamas in any real way, so it is actually hard to get a read on what people are really thinking there. Obviously the citizens that run into buildings because Hamas has told them Israelis alerted them it would be bombed are pretty hardcore in line with Hamas, but I can only suspect that many just want to find some sort of peaceful life for themselves and their kids - their largest concern is if that can be better achieved by taking up or putting down arms. I'm not sure if this approach could work, but I am curious what others think.

Do you think Israel should be dissolved? If Hamas is determined to fire missiles into Israel until Israel ceases to exist, and Israel has no moral options to stop the missiles in your mind - what other solution can there be?

I was told that it's the exact opposite: They did a study in Canada to find out how much smokers were costing the tax payer in extra medical, and were shocked to find the lifetime cost of health care for a smoker was actually less than a non smoker. Apparently, smokers tend to die and have cheaper, shorter end of life care than healthy people. That study is well over 10 yrs old though, no idea what the stats are now. /offtopic

By speculations about time travel, do you mean science fiction stories that would have been really really short if the protagonist had used a time machine and popped up in deep space? The only theoretical time travel mechanisms that I've heard even vaguely considered as plausible, have both had physical structures that "anchored" the system in some way. One, is the old "take two openings of a worm hole, grab one and accelerate it so time dilation creates a discrepancy" technique, so the target location is maintained by a physical feature that also travels along with the Earth's path. If I recall, it's considered to be flawed, though I wouldn't be able follow the math if I saw it. The second was a glimpse of an idea on some "future science almost-now" show, which really didn't go into details, that only operated on something to the scale of a single particle. It was supposed to use lasers in some sort of tight spiral to distort a very very very small path of space/time to somehow have a particle end up at a destination before it was sent by traveling back in time. I assume since the lasers are moving with the planet, so would the particle being transported back in time. Of course, that show didn't even really offer any math, though it may have mentioned "String Theory" so I should probably take it on faith that the idea is sound. Of course, if you look at fictional time travel, you are generally popping out of one spot and into another instantly, even if it's just a different spot in time. If you've mastered time to that degree, I doubt the three classic dimensions will give you much trouble, so maybe you could just compensate in the 3D coordinates as well.

I don't know about the last two on that list but: The pattern suggests: [hide]Last Name[/hide]

If they can stop the missiles even for a month by decimating their production and methods of deployment, it could be a good political victory. Nothing else has stopped the missiles, and if this does, it lends credibility to it as a "last resort" action. It doesn't change anything morally, just the perception, same as if Iraq had turned into a shining democracy the day after the "Mission Accomplished" banner was hung on the aircraft carrier would have impacted perception. Mooey, you mentioned Hamas not being the only player - I didn't mean there aren't other ideological factions, but Hamas really seems to be running the show. Are there any other strong groups that are more moderate within Gaza at this time? If there could be any other group that challenge Hamas with international support that the palestinian people would actually rally around (if free from Hamas retributions) they could end up playing an important role at some point.

Thank's iNow! Lifetime's supply of Bubba Gump Shrimp for you! Since you cracked it, got any good riddles to follow with?

I think that's a really good point, and if tomorrow there was a cease fire without talks, just a general cease fire, how long it would take before the reduced weekly death toll because ignorable again. The only thing I can think of at this point that would have a chance of helping, would be if some Palestinians could play the "exiled authority" card, with some claim of authority in Gaza (whether grass roots or pre-coup status) that can exist outside Gaza and advocate a sensible moderate viewpoint that could lead to long standing peace and raised quality of life there. If the citizens in Gaza were to see the world pretty much united against Hamas, but very supportive of a different, exiled group of Palestinians that had the political clout to bring rebuilding and investment to Gaza should peace be restored, it would have the potential to erode support for Hamas. From what it appears, Hamas is poison to the Palestinians, but they are the only serious game in town left to rally around.

Frankcox, if you do get banned, it won't be because you are a creationist - you may not believe it but there are religious people on these forums who are very well respected. It'll be because you have a tendency to preach instead of discuss, and insult the people here. You did not acquire your contempt for atheists and evolutionist from this site - you brought that baggage with you. If you want to have an open, honest discussion you have to check that stuff at the door, and if you just want to tell us how you think it really is you honestly needn't bother, as there are millions of people with millions of views on the internet more than happy to tell us how it really is just a click away on a million different websites.

I'll add another verse to the above "riddle" I can be happily eaten, by a guy slow in the head. he may have told you, what his mama always said.

It's the "Stoner Effect" in action: Voting machines are notorious for failing to correctly tally the "High Vote" and as such, in a physical recount the candidate with the highest "Stoner Bias Index" tends to pick up a slight advantage1. This this race, the SBI was heavily in Franken's favor, so the trend does not actually indicate fraud. 1. It's only a slight advantage, as many in this demographic who thought they were voting were actually still sitting on their couches at home.

I would have preferred to see a more complex answer, that gets into the grit of the topic, but I really can't blame him as the last thing he needs is to open that can of political worms before he is even sworn in. As for the possible legalization under his watch, it's sort of a "only Nixon could go to China" thing, and he's no Nixon on that issue. It would have to be an issue that received national attention, raised debate in the Legislative branch, where he could take the stance of "I'll sign a bill either way if that's what the Senate feels the American People want" and ultimately sign a bill decriminalizing the substance. So in short, I agree with you about the brevity of the answer, but I can't blame him politically for it.