padren

That does sound like a bad social connection - it is not healthy nor a normal friendship to be constantly worried about loosing a friend. My social connections don't have stress - in fact they relieve stress. When I am stressed about work, its good to have friends to relax with. I wouldn't say I couldn't without them - but hey, life is a lot better with them. I am willing to bet that it isn't the social isolation that has made you feel better than ever, but the side affect of not worrying about whether people like you. It is very freeing to not worry what others think - and healthy as well. I just recommend that you remain open to the possibility that when you do meet people that do think well of you and enjoy your company, that you let yourself enjoy theirs as well. Then you can have a normal friendship that is mutually benificial, no one is stressed over it, and even though you don't need it it'll come in as a nice luxury all the same.

I miss the FEAR reference - what do you mean by that? Basically I do think it would make a better society, and that changes that increase empathy generally do. The main reason we suppress empathy is a feeling that whatever we are reacting to, while would be nice to avoid, is needed to survive. This is why we usually have more empathy for victims of plane crashes than of wars.

I think your approach is far more positive than letting others run your life or putting your sense of self worth upon whether they are pleased with you. Ultimately, that is not what socializing is about though, and I would see your approach as simply one step in a process of becoming self-sufficient in terms of self worth. After you learn you can be happy by yourself, and free yourself of the social baggage you used to carry, you'll be in a much better position to make social connections that are benefitial, because you won't mind walking away from one if it turns out a bad fit. But just because you learn you don't need other people, doesn't mean your life can't be better with the right others than it is without.

But if he saw the shadow of a cube it would look flat, so the shadow of a 4D something would be in 3D. I still don't think it is a viable mechanism to validate ghosts though - vision is based solely on light glancing off 3D objects and hitting receptors, and no matter how out of "sync" you got you'd only be seeing light hitting 3D objects in 3D space. Unless your receptors started picking up strange transdimensional raditation you wouldn't see anything, and even then its not likely to be filtered via the eye's 3D lense into anything composable.

Just a note on the telekinesis: even if you could move something in the 4th dimension with your mind the most you could do is make the item vanish - not translate its location within the 3 dimensions we see. It would be like trying to move an item on a 2D table-top, by acting on it in the 3rd dimension and lifting it up. That helps if you want to remove it from the table top, but along the space of the table you still have to act within the 2 dimensions of the table's surface. Secondarily, if we did have a wide range of motion within higher dimensions, the laws of physics we know would all have to be based on them - meaning, there would be a reason why everything is stuck to this 3D membrane within higher dimensional space. It would probably be rather tricky to move an item up/down on that membrane, since even exploding stars (AFAIK) don't loose mass off into unknown dimensions.

Any high level politician in a nation that is "up against the wall" is primarily going to be concerned with the self preservation of that nation. Saying they don't want to make nuclear weapons and professing peace is geared towards that concern. I wouldn't doubt for a second that if they got nuclear weapons, that he'd personally turn around and say the evolving political theatre and foreign hostilities left them with no choice - they didn't want them but had to make them and that they'd only use them defensively. If they did use them, they'd end up saying they had no choice or that more lives would be lost if they hadn't - not very different than our sentiments at the end of WWII. On the topic of the Israel comment, I do think it is possible (though not likely to be true in this case) to be very peace minded and still make such horrible comments. When we were facing total nuclear war with the Soviet Union, if at a given moment our leaders thought The End was immenent, they would have happily traded 1/2 of US citizens for the total elimation of the Soviet threat - from that perspective it would be a great bargain and the only reprieve from total destruction. I suspect they do not seperate their view of contemporary Israeli politics (I don't even have to mention it is skewed) and the existence of Israel itself, and believe that Israel is a direct and immenent threat to their very existence. In that context it is not a horrific statement, but instead reflects a horrific distortion of reality that leads to a horrific and dangerous mentality.

Bascule's sentiments mirror my own very closely, and I quite like the OP. I also have high hopes for some star-trek ish society (if we aren't unrecognizable transhumans by then) and feel very strongly that technology is one of the key factors in an evolving morality. Just imagine a little while in the future where vegitarian foods had the taste appeal and better nutrition and economic viability (including grown meats) than slaughter houses. I would bet that within 3 generations after the last slaughterhouse went out of business that contemporary society would be revulsed by the idea of how food was previously aquired. Take human nature in an example of limited resources: A ship is sinking, there are 4 adults with one child each, and only one lifeboat that can only fit two people but requires an adult to be at least one passenger. Each adult knows their child will die if they are not the ones on that boat, and you can't put your kid and someone elses in the thing. Would they draw straws? Would the loosers explain to their children that they will drown horribly because you pulled a straw of the wrong length? Likely it would turn very ugly. I think 95% of the dangerous side of human nature is tied up in feeling that the world is, to some degree, analogous to that situation. The truly molevolent types who would always be dangerous even in a utopia can only influence the world when they prey on the fears of more level headed people and convince them following them is safer for their children than not. I would catagorize everything from freezing, to dying of disease, to being killed by violent humans as factors "elemental exposure" for lack of a better term. As technology makes it easier for us to help others without hurting ourselves and isolates us from danger, I think we'll find out better nature showing a lot more than the darker side. In short, I think "liberaltarianism" as Bascule puts it, is the best mix of freedom of adaption and removing the dangerous factors from society, by implementing things such as social nets that remove the fear of "elemental exposure" that drive most of crime, acts of violence and just about anything called a lesser of evils.

Just out of curiosity, what were the stats like last year? In most online things I notice, everything drops off when people can go outside and do things, then get busy as winter sets in and the air outdoors persistantly tries to kill everyone off whenever you leave the house. I'm just wondering if its a seasonal trend.

Hate to throw salt on the wound but, while it could save you money, aren't you just moving the energy used in cooling the fridge to the dry ice manufacturer, the freezer trucks that transport it, and the stores that keep it in inventory, then erroding that as you transport it in less than ideally cold conditions to your freezer? I think the net total effect would be less environmentally sound than producing cool on-site in your fridge and sparing the diesel transport fuel, and the various maintainence cooling and original freezing of the block of dry ice.

I wonder if people would concent to this idea: Each ballot can be signed, but it has a fold with a pull of adhesive that covers the signature and identification information. A person can choose to either fold it up and seal it, or tear it at the fold and vote anominiously. It would only be opened by a judge's order, after a case for voter fraud is made: such as a high difference between the electronic and paper balots or drastically higher anonimous votes than the exit polls would show. It wouldn't be fool proof, but it would make it drastically harder to steal an election, and security isn't about perfection anyway - I can write very secure webbased software, but I know it isn't foolproof. Its just good enough to ensure very few people would have the resources to break it, and drastically increase their odds of being caught. After an election, the ballots would be destroyed if there was no issues, and chances are any inspection that included voter identification would be limited to a handful of districts, and not nation wide.

Since we moved away from the questions of 2004 and into voting machine vulnerablities - does anyone have any good reasons why the status quo should be maintained and a papertrail not be mandatory? I think a printout list of the names the person voted for that they have to sign (in the privacy of the booth) should be mandatory. Its not like they'd ever have to be verified down the road as long as the election was clean, but it would also be such a strong papertrail that should anyone ever consider voting fraud and the flags come up, it would be very easy to track down what and where it happened. But basically - is there anyone on the "no need for paper or security" side of the debate in these forums and who in politics openly supports that policy? What are their arguments - just cost? It seems so far from making any sense I can't imagine anyone publically supporting a lack of security. Maybe Fox News should do a report during the mid-terms when they are afraid of the dems winning on slim margins: "Could Terrorists Doctor The Vote?"

I have nothing against the opt-in aspect of their site, but that quote plus the way the woman that called me talked conveyed a "change everyone else" mentality quite strongly.

just an example of what I don't like: http://www.dove.org/reviewmasterframe.asp?SearchType=Source&Keyword=Video&Unique_ID=5685 A movie with a bong in it gets a horrible rating, and "btw no sense in finishing school kiddo the world is ending" movies get a free pass? I have nothing against people choosing to rate movies on their site for others who agree with them, but the tone of the phonecall I got is "will you help us change hollywood" and based on the way they rate content, considering they warn when "a gay character" is in a film...this stuff really bothers me.

Got a call from the "dove foundation" trying to get me to support censorship stuff...really bothered me. Are there any good foundations that have a good reputation for fighting these orgs? I find myself compelled to donate to some group that desires the exact opposite goal of these guys...not sure which ones are actually good though. Any suggestions?

Oh my....I remember right after hearing about Steve's death, that some crackpots will want to wipe out stingrays in his honor It was a dark enough joke I didn't even mention it to anyone...but I just can't believe - god, thats just...oi.

I've been thinking a lot about liquid propellent weapon systems that seperate the slug from the propellent. It makes sense to me that a few tanks of liquid would be easier and a magazine could hold a lot more without that component attached to each shell. I think wide area non-lethal systems may become prevelent. Good link btw, that is a pretty cool defense system.

She did have the MRI in 2004, when the first round started which was clean. They didn't do a spinal tap though, if I recall a spinal tap can reveal MS earlier than an MRI

A friend of mine is having a bit of trouble, and the first thing I think most people will say will be that she needs to go to the hospital, but I am having a bit of trouble convincing her to go. Last Feb, she starting having episodes where she'd pass out and when she came to she'd have severe muscle weakness and things of that nature, and a few other symptoms. She spent about 50k of her own money and lost her job while in the hospital, but none of the doctors in the large city she lived in could find anything wrong. The symptoms went away, and she moved to this rural area for a good job (in the medical industry) which went sour, but she managed to get on her feet lately and has good work. Unfortunately, she has episodes of blacking out, of loosing vision in her right eye off and on, loosing ability to move her right arm and leg as well as extreme muscle weakness, gets serious bouts of pressure in the right side of her head which she doesn't describe as a headache but a scary "head will explode" pressure that makes it really hard for her to think or form simple sentences, and gets serious dizzy spells. She still falls down sometimes and blacks out. She also has fairly cronic insomnia and anxiety. It goes on and off, and even on bad days comes and goes, but usually when its bad it varies from really bad to tolerable but debilitating back and forth without going away. She is a real mess emotionally when it happens and doesn't want anyone to know or worry about her, and really stresses about being able to work and keep her job. Its been by random chance I think that she hasn't missed too many days of work and has mostly had this happen on her off days, but it is horribly debilitating. I am pretty scared for her, and really think she needs to go to the hospital. She had such a bad experience with the best doctors in her old metro area, that she is more than skeptical of them in this rural community. She is afraid they'll admit her and keep her without figuring anything out, run up a huge bill and that simply by going she can kiss her job goodbye for sure...which she has worked incredibly hard to get since its hard to get work in your chosen profession around here. She's been debilitated for the last three days, and I doubt she would have eaten if I hadn't brought food by. I really don't know what to do. I guess I half hope if anyone has hopeful suggestions maybe I can convince her to risk going in. Again, she's been through the MRIs and suction cups on the head and all that, and all it did was break her bank and ruin her career.

I was at home, my ex and I were placing an order with a company for our business from a distributor in New York. They said everything was covered in dust and to place it another day, then asked her if she had been watching the news. We turned it on just after that and found out before the second tower fell. Later that evening my dog died.

Let the movie roast him for lying under oath about sex I guess, but fabricating entire incidents to portray him as an incompatent leader who's actions allowed the worst act of terrorism ever in the US to occur is both partisan and wrong. I would oppose any movie that inserted completely factitious incidents to paint Bush's actions as worse than they were - no matter how much I dislike the guy.

I am just learning, and I can let you know what my current strategy is: (and if anyone has suggestions I am quite open) Basically, I am starting out online with FullTilt and trying to learn the basics of playing hands - when to fold, when to get in etc, without worrying about winning lots of chips. My thinking is, when online, everyone has a harder time reading people, so there is a natural across the board handicap on that factor in the game. By watching how much I am in chip wise when I loose, as well as when I win (without looking at the size of the pot and how much others are in too much) I can gauge roughly how well I am doing at just playing the cards themselves. When I feel more confident with that factor, I'll move on to learning how to pull people in when I have good cards, and not getting rolled over when I don't. At that point, I'll be worried about my total chips before and after each game, and try to get good at playing the cards I have to get a good chip count. From there, I'll try to use more tricks for riskier stuff, such as stealing pots even without the best cards by bluffing, milking pots by sucking people in when I do have the cards, etc. At that point, I'll be more comfortable about learning the face to face aspects of the game, since I'll have the other elements fairly down. This way, while I am learning, I am learning online against different groups of people who won't get used to reading my developing methods over a long period of time - since I'll be playing different people with each game. By isolating the factors by changing my goals within the games I play, I don't have to worry so much about what element I am weak at that breaks me - so I don't have to figure out if its my read on the cards, my bluffing skills, my suckering skills, my strategies being too transparent etc. My friends that play often give me advice, such as never fall in love with a hand and always always think about every hand that can beat yours before you decide your hand has good odds. Until you are good with that, don't even worry about reading other players to see if they likely have the cards that can beat you, since reading them is a whole other skill set that is worthless if you don't have the fundamentals down.

Someone sitting in a park playground when kids are out and downing a bottle of bleach could easily cause kids to try the stuff under their sinks...there is a fine line between verbal encouragement (telling kids they should try to drink bleach) and non-verbal encourangement that gets a bit gray. I think most people would consider the guy in the wrong for non-verbally encouraging kids to drink bleach. I consider the kitty litter gag (NPI) harmless and in good humor...unless it was done in a manner than involved some neglegence that fairly directly encouraged children or the mentally handicapped to do the same with real litter.

Mine is my favorite robot of all time, from my favorite series. I think the real question (unless I am mistaken) is how many people post a picture of an actual person that could be mistaken for them (age, gender, not a celeb etc) but is not really them.