padren

Firing bad teachers is always a good idea, like in any field. I am concerned however about the idea that how well someone's students do on a standard test equals how good the teacher is. Its sort of like a "no wound left behind" policy, where any wounds on the body that leak blood slower than a standardized allowable limit, gets rewarded with extra band-aids while the bad ones get critizied for their shoddy clotting...all while the body bleeds out. I'd be much happier, even if we had some halfed baked system where a school was found "educationally backrupt" and was forced to reorganize under intellectual chapter 13 backrupcy - get some Superfund thing going for fixing the schools that are effectively waste sites.

Its also about a degree of exposure too. I've known people that, upon having pigs for pets, come to consider them much like dogs and wouldn't eat bacon anymore. And then there is cultural denial - the desire for cognative dissonance due to the ease it adds to life, you can love your bacon-pets and eat them too. More important than eating them though, is maintaining a comfortable comonality with the cultural norm, which means a lot to some people. I think a lot of people experience cognative dissonance to maintain religious beliefs while maintaining happier thoughts, such as the belief that an important family member that passes who was not adhering to their religion and is "supposed to be" in hell - yet at the funeral they'll eulogize them lovingly as if they believed they were in a better place. When pressed they'll say they "really don't know" if God would let them into heaven or not, but then be fairly certain a stranger who dinged their car that died with the same characteristics would not be in heaven. Regarding the OP: I do suspect for some people, that approval of abortion is based on cognative dissonance, but for many more I do think it is an assesment of the differences between babies and fetuses. I don't think there is a notable difference between an early abortion and the use of contraceptives - or even a difference between an abortion and a couple choosing not to even have sex on a given night. A better question I think, is why some people get as upset over abortion as they get over baby killing? Since we are dealing with two obviously different situations, why do some people make the leap that they are equivellent?

QM is confusing and disorienting to many, and is just being used here as a new tool in an old kit, taking its place along side smoke, mirrors, fog, pryotechnics, shiny swinging pocket watches.... He could also prove that he can see the future, by using more remidial means.

In a universally transparent society it wouldn't be that bad - our hangups would adjust and become more inline with who we really are. The issue that worries me first is along the way we have disparity: when some people can stalk others by knowing a lot about them, while no one knowing enough about the stalkers to realize they are doing it. (Replace term "stalking" with any kind of exploiting of information) The other issue is while people will be forced to come to terms with the way others (and themselves!) are really like, it could be an unpleasant transition. Just imagine - what if all the new age granola heads around Boulder knew what you thought of them whenever you set foot out of your home? :eek:

Letseeee * Battery acid in the eye (was maybe 12, it was from a D-cell battery, lots of drops and a good patch) * Raid in the eye hurt a lot, was 6 I think (don't remember much other than the pain) * the literal broad side of a barn put an eye patch on my eye for a while and put me in the hospital for a bit (5, and don't ask) * toe nail in the eye, while underwater (pirate time again) * hot pepper juice in the eye was pretty bad, but didn't quite make the list with acid and everything. (I don't remember much, again pretty young, I don't think I went pastafarian on this one) PS: does listening to neil diamond count as emotional or physical pain, or both?

If you want information on actual dragons from a very reputable source that is more reliable than "science" and all that...well I can't resist digging up Bascule's old find: http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/showthread.php?t=17455

If you want to go with the premise that the paranormal exists, which it appears you do, I would recommend taking up very critical research into paranormal accounts and ongoing research - not fun mind you, as even if there are paranormal experiences that are legit, you'll run at least into 99.9% fluff. Still, it is the most likely way of finding something legit, and beats finding some con artist capable of fooling you. Also, bear in mind if anyone on this forum could offer a set of instructions for experiencing paranormal phenomina, they'd probably already be world famous and well known for revolutionizing science's view of the world.

If you needed the crew to be activend respond to new information during the mission, it would make sense I guess. The only problem is muscle atrophy and possibly bone degration, being both prone and weightless. Astronaughts have to exercise a lot to keep from loosing muscle and bone mass. As for freezing, I don't think there would be much trouble with the mind. People are mentally conscious in deprivation tanks, and all the hallucinations are tied to the active brain. If you are frozen - you die, for a while at least. Then later revived. You may have dreams and memories of the freezing/reviving process, but it would likely be the same nature whether you were frozen for a day or a century.

Jim, who exactly is giving Islamofascism a pass? Is it a higher percentage of people on the left than the percentage of people all around that believe Jesus will return to Earth in a UFO?

In the same line of reasoning, I think AI could be a great advisor, and offer us solutions we would not otherwise find. In the end, I will always value the right to screw my life right up and die pennyless in a ditch. Then again there is an outside chance that my work will make me millions, but for every big net entrepeneur winner there is 99,999 who don't. Not very logical odds, but seems like the only thing worth doing with my time these days.

I got schindler's list...so I guess I am like Monty Burns, except the shells he made for the nazi's worked.

I'm ol Abe. I always wanted to be taller.

Doesn't the religious/denial-of-science/miscomprehension element of our society have a lot of political weight due to ties to via their support for the Republican Party? I agree that it is not a "classical left vs classical right" thing, since these are more religious issues than about the core ideaologies of the right and left wings, but the right wing in this country has given people with these views a lot of clout in exchange for their political support.

What if at the "moment" of the big bang (and I don't mean "moment" in time as we know it, but whatever existed above time in which such an event could occur and create time as we know it) time simply came into existance along with all the other dimensions? In that "instant" all beings able to percieve time along the entirely of the timeline, would experience the "present" at once yet be sure their moment was the objective burning edge present. What we call the "unfolding" of an unknown future would really be an illusion created by the fact that our memory state at any point in time is built upon the previous moments. We can believe that it has to be "run through" to be determined, but does it really? Since time connects to future moments in a manner that leads to the next unknown state of a system, those connections can do what we cannot do mathmatically - lay out every state of the system from now to the end of time as a single static physical and temporal topography. While I agree with you in as of much as the only way for us to know the next state is to treat the current moment as the "burning edge" I don't believe there actually is one - I think its an illusion created by our perceptions within any given moment.

That makes me think Steve Irwin will give us some great famous last words eventually, we'll just have to wait for them.

"But since I haven't seen it yet, if I close my eyes now, you can't prove a bus is about to hit me, therefore by all logic, I win the debate because you failed to prove your case!" "I'll have another" "pffft, I'm not scared of AzurePhoenix"

I have absolutely nothing against any academic program that pulls the students towards a very strong political bias. That is, as long as the research leading to that is sound. I really wish there was less emphasis on the effects his curiculum would have on student's views, and a lot more on how robust the research is. If he actually found evidence that solidly backed up his position, it should be shouted from rooftops, not just in one classroom. While I suspect the contrary is to the case, meaning his work is not that robust and as such he should be liable for teaching non-robust theories...that is a process that should run its course and an assesment his materials will point the right course of action. We should not cut corners and short circuit that process though, simply because his theory is offensive to many.

First Wetard, I do understand what you are saying and technically, I do think any individual exists in past, present, and future simutaniously. However, who we are at any moment appears to be made up of our momentary mind, that only includes of sensory data and processed information from the present back. While we can collectively call the entirety of our existance "us" or "me" it is almost a matter of symantics, as the closest "me" is to the past, is a memory in the present of what previously transpired, with no memory of what will occur. Without some metaphysical "superself" or identity that is our entirety across time, then it is not possible through any known means to detect what occurs in the future. If we are ever able to detect what occurs in the future, it probably won't be through transendental access to a "superself" but some sort of unknown extradimensional particle that radiates through time, with signatures that can be extrapolated to a source that gives us a picture of the future. Even then, we could not change what that future is, as it would change what was there to radiate the particles in the first place. When you think of a moment in time and say it "was" this and "is now" different because we read the future and changed it, you apply time over time, which would require yet another temporal dimension for the when things changed over time. I have not heard of anything that could be a mysterious non-causal particle however.

Doh, yes, Godwin's law. I thought it was that but checked wikipedia, and I could have sworn it said Goodwin, so I changed it before posting so not to misspell it. Is that overthinking or underthinking something?

OK, this is in humor, but its an interesting thought: What if an underground movement of Nazis are promoting Goodwin's Law so they may move secretly under the radar? At what point would we say, OH NO, they really are Nazis - and to promote internet ettiquite we'd turned a blind eye until it was too late! This is really intended as a joke, but it is at the same time an interesting idea about self-censorship due to stimga (and it is a warranted stigma, considering how overused nazi references are.) Should a type of reference really be stigmatized based on what the reference is to, instead of whether the reference is fitting? In 99% of the cases, it should be just as easy to shoot down a reference for not fitting than the fact it is to nazis.

I say his theories and teachings should be allowed or crushed based on the integrity of his work, not the content's viewpoints. If he wants to teach that GW is a reptilian alien in disguise, I would not think that should discredit him - however, to academically maintian that point of view, he would in all likelihood fail miserably to defend his findings in peer review... so much so that his findings would be expected to be derived so unprofessionally that he could be fired for the unprofessionalism. Still, the emphasis is on the term expected, and just because we expect that, doesn't mean we shouldn't go through the process of testing the professionalism behind the findings. If his facts are faulty and intellectually dishonest, let that sink him, instead of whether he makes claims politicians find uncomfortable.