padren

"Do you know how much a polar bear weights?" "Just enough to break the ice" (never used it, or any lines actually...but a friend of mine said she thought it was cute)

I think its safe to sum it up as: On the one hand you found something in life worth drawing you out...on the other life still scares you to death. You can't catch or take a swing if you flinch and duck the ball. Expect pain. Expect all kinds of unpleasant stuff. Get yourself punched in the face, go "ah %&^@!! that hurts" and ice it, get past it, and never fear it again. Life does so many cruel things. We have to watch friends and family die of illnesses over time, and while we have infinite desire and will to help them, we are powerless to do more than watch them, as if from behind sound proof glass, and scream and pound on it imputently. Life is harsh reminds us constantly of what our mortal limitations are. To choose to be more powerless than you have to be - out of fear, lack of confidence, discomfort, etc - somehow it just feels wrong and a diservice to the memory of those lost when our powerlessnes was real. It doesn't matter if a girl is in your league or not, if she is popular or not...just be real and act on whatever is real that you feel (maybe subtly, but definately act on it). If you want her number and if you know you are in fact not an axe murderer, tell her you want her number to stay in touch. When you tell her you that you'd like to spend time with her over the summer, think of one of the finer times you've spent with her recently just before you do, enough that you smile and she can tell by the look in your eyes that you enjoy her company, and she enjoys yours. If she won't give you her number, it won't be because she thinks you are an axe murder, it'll because of a combination of her personality and insecurity has made her want to push you away, and its better to know that now than latter.

I think that food safety risks boil down to two types: risk of infection, and risk of toxins. Cooking anything sufficiently, destroys the risk of bacterial infection, and stops the production of toxins that the bacteria are producing. Toxins are not generally destroyed by heat, which is why it is not advised to try to use high heat to salvage food that has been left at room tempurature too long. Uncooked vegitables are generally less likely to be exposed to bacteria and when they are, are (iirc) can't support bacterial growth nearly as well as meat. This means its more of a risk of transferring bacteria to the consumer than causing a toxic reaction. They still have issues of mold, but that takes a lot longer than bacteria to become a problem. As far as meat/dairy goes, it is a lot more likely to be contaminated, but because we habitually cook it and never store it in warm enough conditions for the bacteria to produce toxins, it is probably "cleaner" at the point of consumption than raw foods. Its hard to directly compare though, since how you handle raw veggies and meats is really where the risks lay. As for the video and the fecal quantities being "through the roof" I really wonder what amount of fecal matter would be "just the right amount" all in all. They could easily be talking about such small amounts that there is no risk of toxins (in the fecal matter itself from before being introduced to the meat), and at the same time (since its cooked) no risk of bacteria. Honestly, I am more concerned with the flies that eat off the dog's 3 day old business outside, then land on your food and vomit on it to digest part of your steak.

I don't think the theory really has you "creating" alternate universes...if it did...and if we could tap it...we could tap all the power humanity will ever need out of the simple decision of whether to eat pancakes or waffles for breakfast. If the alternate universe theory has merit, I'd imagine it would include all possible universes already existing, and we experience a possible outcome in the same way we experience a moment of time....that is, the present is no more special than the present you'll experience in 6 months, but they are points on a static track, and it only seems special from our perspective. I think the universe, including time and (if it exists) probability, could be described as a single unchanging glass marble, in which each molecule of glass, and how its connected to other molecules in x,y,z represent the connections between points of x,y,z,t[,p] in relation to the causal and spatial and probable bonds that connect energy/matter via the laws of physics. In that case, you no more create an alternate universe with a choice than you create a hallway on the other side of a door you choose to open. Edit: Ok, that last shot of whiskey either helped or hurt, but I'll try to say it this way: All moments of our existence are experienced at once without relation to time, but we precieve that we are experiencing a moment in time because, each of those moments of experience (created by the layout and state of our brain's neural makeup) are seperate. Since the state of the brain's data/processing system at any moment is based on the state it was in a moment before, (but not at all on the state of the brain that will come next in time), we preceive a steady flow of time and causal continuity from the past forward. The memory of the past though, is not the same as experiencing the past, and the past is as seperate from our vantage point as the future, regardless of how recent or long since. Instead of thinking of a dot on a timeline where memory is looking back, and you can't see forward, think of it as at each point you can only look "down" and that "down" contains an ever increasing record of the past as it is recorded in the present state of the brain. From that perspective all points have a static set of data below them, being at any point gives the illusion that that point is the "current" present, even though its static and unchanging just ink on the paper.

Ok, not so much a BS wiki, but a rebuttal wiki.... My thinking is: we often get posts on arguments, whether creationism or the nature of the fall of WTC7, and we end up replying with previous threads that cover the same thing. So lets say someone wants to post about WTC7 and how it fell at a speed equal or faster to 9.8m/s^2, and that it takes an implosion and negative pressure inside the building to cause that to occur. I can only bet that people have either already posted info that shows it didn't fall that fast and that the premise is wrong, or demonstrated some other evidence that shows a building can suffer natural collapse within those characteristics. It would be really sweet, to be able to paste in a link to a wiki topic that showed that the argument was made, that rebuttals were posted, and counter arguments to that was also posted. Then, any new conversation in a thread would have a chance of starting out with those established facts, instead of being a constant rehashing. The main concern would be people posting rather BSish stuff into the wiki, which is why I think it would need a rule such as only counter-arguments with credible external links would be accepted. Maybe a rebuttal could be classified as scientific vs logical vs philisophical, the latter reserved for topics that are too existential for true scientific debate. Anyway, what do people think - would it be worth doing?

This is a total shot in the dark since I know nothing about the topic, but I am pretty sure when life appears to cause negative entropy, it is explained by the fact the organism has to increase the entropy of the environment by a greater degree than the amount of entropy reduced in order to have that effect. Perhaps the process that changes radio waves to gamma rays has a greater entropic waste in other aspects than the total entropy reduced by the result of the conversion of radio waves to gamma rays itself. That said, its just a wild guess, I don't know anything about gamma rays and radio waves etc.

The concept of creating "baby universes" is interesting but it begs the question of what exactly is the "stuff" you use as the raw materials for such an endeavor, and if it could really be called creating a new universe, or just reshaping existing material in the... "greater universe" (not sure of a good term) to form a universe similar to our own. So, is the theory basically saying that the rise of life in the universe and how far life ends up going in the universe is the result of a deterministic precaclulations by an "intelligent universe" (for a lack of a better term for when intelligence and life basically fill the universe as a single super-consciousness) that either spawned our own or is infact our own universe in the future that at its end formulated a desired beginning in a looping causality? Of course if it is the latter, it would return the favorableness to life in this universe to the realm of purely random factors, unless something outside our universe did intelligently "kickstart" our self-creation cycle.

Please note the red bold, since it is key to the context to the black bold text... You can say anything you want about Hilter or Alexander the great, even though you mention in the same text that Hitler's ethnicity was white or whatever. You just can't say that he was bad because of his ethnicity. If any academic evidence does come up that can demonstrate a connection between "evil" and a person's race, ethnicity, gender, disability, nationality, sexual orientation, or religion....then naturally the bill will be challanged. However, outside some circles such as the KKK, it is fairly well accepted that research shows that such a connection doesn't exist. I think it is fair for schools to want to counter the bias. How many teachers in the 50s would actually speak to Michelangelo's sexual orientation, or the works inspired by his affairs with male lovers? How many text book printers today, wanting to avoid being targeted conservative SIGs the way Disney was, would choose to just leave some facts out...even if it did contribute to the false impression that only straight people ever did anything for the world? I think sexuality may be the source or instigating force behind some great works of literature and poetry, in which orientation was a factor, but I don't think any group who is trying to just for once be accepted as equal is going to turn around and say "we are better than you because of sexual orientation. Its completely counter to the whole point of the gay rights movement - the idea that gay people are completely equal and that orientation does not change them into lesser [or greater] people.

I agree absolutely, but I wasn't talking about anybody or group getting to "pass skeptical review" at all, but that each item any group wants to submit must pass skeptical review before it is adopted, and continue to be able to survive future challanges should they come up.

Do you know the whole story behind dental fillings? Don't dismiss heavy duty foils outright until you do a little digging.

Would the difference be Great Value econo grade versus Reynolds Wrap® Extra Heavy Duty?

If I understand what you are trying to ask...you mean to ask, if you compare the IQ of human engineers and what we can design with our intelligence against the complexity of systems and living systems within the natural world...how smart would nature have to be to pull off making all its stuff. If that is what you mean, then I think the answer would be "whoah, way too smart too measure" but only because you are making the unfounded assumption that nature has "designed" the stuff it has created. Its like asking "how smart would you have to be to calculate how to throw a ball to arc in a perfect perablo [sic...darn its been a while since I did quadratics] with the ball spending exactly the same amount of time rising as it does falling. The answer is of course, you don't have to think about it at all. You throw a ball at any angle that is not downward on level ground and it will, thanks to gravity and the 9.8m/s^2 rule, always display those attributes. Nature does not design things, a bumble bee doesn't know how it flies, if anything nature is a system of hardware, where the software algorthym is composed of the laws of physics and the bits are all the atoms and energy in the universe, and it simply iterates for billions of years, reaching these sorts of results by brute force. Its like asking how smart a computer has to be to find the correct lotto number, and the answer is "not at all, if it tries every number from zero up to the max possible lotto number randomly, over billions of years." Edit: Also remember that things like the invention of feathers mean something to us because we can appreciate their use, being biological critters and all, but the value of something is pretty subjective. Feathers aided in the survival of some species and thus adapted, and isn't an invention of evolution anymore than helium is an invention of a hydrogen laiden star.

Start with thinking about the types of guys you admire or have elements you really respect. Do you want to be more buff? If so, decide on what you want to do (walk, hit the gym, swim, etc) to get there and then make it happen, and measure the results along the way. Do you want to be more familiar with the great literary giants of the times? Find some good books and read all the poety and novels you can, but pick out what you want to start out with when etc and get into it. Do you want to be more comfortable in social situations? Make a plan to try to talk to a new person every week...strike up one random conversation a week, or, better yet, one a day. Whatever you feel comfortable with. In addition to that, anything that is an interest, from the inner workings of the UN and global politics to plant biology....just dive on into the subject and learn what you can, slowly and steadily. It may seem like there is a chasm between who you want to be and where you are, but it really is just a series of steps and taking the time, effort and continued willpower to get from here to there. This is your time to be alive and you really can shape yourself any way you want to be...you should feel full of hope and promise that anything is possible, not sorrowful of where you fall short of your hopes. I can already tell you are intelligent and have a decent sense of introspection, and if you throw in a little determination that is all you need to shape your life anyway you want. It may take years, but it will happen and it will take you farther than anyone who is simply comfortable with themselves and have a simple map planned out for their life. Jump in and seize the day.

Just a few thoughts: 1) It sounds almost like you want someone you respect to care about you, so that you will feel worth something, instead of simply respecting yourself first. While its nice when someone wonderful sees something wonderful in you, its not a good way to build a sense of self worth. Why do you think she'd hang up on you and not someone else? Why would anyone? If you feel worthless or at the very least, worth less than others, take some personal time to figure out what you want to achieve and what makes you feel that way. If you feel flawed, what do you feel are your flaws, and what would it take to improve them? Are you too hard on yourself about flaws in yourself that you don't consider an issue when seen in others? If so, can you come to peace with those flaws? The most important thing in your life is how you think and feel about yourself, since that will determine everything from the risks you'll be willing to take and what sort of hardships over time you'll be able to endure. 2) When it comes to dating, its not about getting a "date" but far more as to whether you share common interests, are likely to have fun, have compatible senses of humor, etc. Don't approach it from the vantage point of trying to "get a date" but offer the girl a decent time out. If you don't really have compatable interests in the end, then it wouldn't really be a very interesting relationship anyway. Also, be real and honest, don't be afraid of sharing your tastes in music because she may find them unsophisticated or otherwise not approve. Don't try to appear close minded or anything, just be real and honest. 3) Just try to be more daring. Why do you feel that while others have that option that something makes you different? I only ever regret 1 in 10 risks that I've failed miserably at (and naturally even less of the things that work out) but I regret 9 in 10 things I never work up the courage to try. If you fail its not because "you are you" but because there are nuances you haven't figured out yet, (maybe you didn't realize she's into totally different stuff, maybe you came across as someone who would be too nervous to have fun, etc) but you're only going to figure it all out by trying. Maybe you are afraid to try because if you do wrong, you'll loose your chance with a specific girl you like at the moment. There is a good chance of that, but if you don't, nothing will happen and you won't learn anything from it, and you'll be just as likely to blow the chance with the next girl you meet worth taking one on. Thats my three cents at least, for what its worth. Best of luck.

That gives me some good names of the APIs (ReadDirectoryChangesW API, etc) that can give me a good lead in on where to start ferreting out deeper info - thanks. I don't want to build another batch synch system though, I want exceptional realtime performance that burns decent CPU cycles to make a small number of clients very responsive, which is why I want each connection to the server to stay persistent while working for hours at the office or use datagram packets. I am pretty sure I can get performance up there with a decent first person shooter network game, and when I am saving every 3 seconds while editing code the 1-2 second pause that the windows file sharing causes at random intervals is somewhat annoying, and FTP is like working underwater. I expect I can blast under 200 bytes of data over an open socket (if you save after editing one line, which often happens in debugging) and get the response time down low enough that you'd think you were working on the local network, even when editing a 2000 line source file. Well, I'd rather my system work completely independant of the third party editors, and I'd hate to close photoshop and reopen it when I need to update a few graphics. I'd like to keep it decoupled from applications, and work directly with the file system itself for its triggers. I'll try searching for those windows APIs, as well as any opensource wrappers that may have been written when others were trying to cope with cleaning up MS's messes. Thanks for all the advice, I'll let everyone know how it goes, and if anyone has any use for this sort of tool it'll be opensource itself.

Hey everyone I am working on a new file sharing program for synching with other systems. I am not too happy with FTP and normal windows sharing, so I want to try out an idea to make it easier to update server files while editing them locally. My concept works like this: In the synch program, you setup the prefs and browse to and mark a folder, and enter the info for what server you want it synched with. After that, it DLs the files from the server, mirroring them locally, but also caching the file info that the server supplies seperately. This way, each file locally is associated with info such as the server's file size (since CRLF/CR difs can occur if its linux server and a win client) and the server's last modified date. In the synch program, you can resynch, which will download any file newer than yours, and upload any file you have that is newer than what is on the server, but it will also check for write-collisions, since it will compare the cached server data, and if the server has a file older than your newly modified version, but that happens to be older than the one you downloaded, it will flag that as a conflict. About speed: It will have an FTP optional backup incase your server cannot open new ports (such as on shared hosting accounts) but the primary transport method will utilize a maintained open connection between the server and the client. The keep-alive connection is geared to fewer clients with faster response time, and for text files (I am mostly trying to speed up upload of source code, HTML, and other plain text files) it will build a change list based on the line breaks, consisting of "delete", "insert" and "modify" actions. Since it keeps a cached copy locally of the file as it exists on the server, it shouldn't be too hard to ensure the change list will result in an identical file. Along with the changelist, a checksum of the file is sent, so the server can send an OK response when it does its own checksum, or request a full transfer of the whole file and log the error of the optimizer. And since its a constant connection, there is no "connecting to host" lag, but instead something more akin to the response time of a well designed network first person shooter game. (I'll have to play with reliable packets vs tcp a bit to find the most optimized transport options.) I already plan to use Raknet for the networking, and I have visual C++ express to write it in (so the server may be linux or windows based) but I would really like some advice on the windows client end of things. If possible, I would much prefer to skip the forced manual synch button all together, and hook into some windows API that lets me "hook" callbacks into operations such as "create folder" and "file save" etc. I know some programs do this, and even allow you to "fake" folders and open zips as if they were directories. I have no idea what these APIs are called or what to look into reference material wise. I just want to be sure I can open/edit/save in my favorite editors to a folder like any other local folder, and preferably have the rest of it all work behind the scenes (I'll make the user bind a hotkey to "synch" if I can't hook into the correct windows events). Any advice on the windows event APIs or where I need to look this stuff up? I don't even know what the libs are called. TIA

What I think is that "trying smart stuff" really helped us survive because we happened to by chance have bodies shaped in a manner that could take advantage of it. We could "try something smart" like figure out a tool and actually use it too, since we had thumbs. In most species, if a group starts to get smarter while another group starts to get better teeth, the ones with the teeth will really out compete the ones that got smarter since there is not a lot of ways to take advantage of intellegence for most critters. Since we weren't too strong and didn't have the best teeth etc, something like a very primative tool would help us a ton, whereas a puma...even if it could use a club, would be way less likely to be more effective, since its claws are so sharp and its muscles so strong.

A lot of the time, people are on their way somewhere, have something to do, and aren't really hanging out and observing the moment. Also, you may be observing that they aren't all connected to each other, but that most people are connected to some others. Also, someone may look at someone they are "connected to" but that connection may be limited. They may only know someone as "that loud funny guy at the party with the jokes" but they'll still acknowledge them because they have somewhere they fit in their mind. If you don't relate to someone's view of the world, by which I mean if someone doesn't have anything to go on regarding who you are, and they are already on their way to do something, then they likely won't really notice you. I used to be fairly introverted and wondered how some of my friends could just go up and talk to perfect strangers and have great times with them. After a while of wishing more people would be like that and try to talk to me out of the blue, I decided to just test out if thats how most people feel and be friendly and outgoing. So far I have found that by far most people are fairly receptive to converstation, and otherwise there's just a bit of short errant banter but no harm done. Instead of feeling like an outsider, try to assume that everyone else is the same and also feels isolated, just to varying degrees. If you feel anxiety about meeting strangers just remember lots of people feel that way, but if you just try it and not sweat the times things don't go smoothly, it'll get more natural with time and you'll grow as a person and the options open to you. Thats my advise at least

Of course' date=' I definately agree. The issue is where the line between the two terms lay. I don't think abolishing capital punishment or adhering to the geneva conventions constitutes being over-sensitive, imho. Iirc, premeditated crimes are considered worse than spontanious ones legally. I could agree the for-profit killer is less dangerous (he has to think he'll get away with it, he has to have something to gain to consider it, etc) to society but that is not what punishment is measured on. My reasons for feeling the profit killer to be worse, are that the killer has a long amount of time in which to consider their actions, considers how to get away with it, considers the value of the benefit for them while completely disregarding the death of their own child, and enacts a step by step plan to execute it without a hint of feeling guilt. The other fellow is far more dramatic and brutal, but his crime is spontanious, runs completely against his own capacity for reason. If he was thinking criminally, he would have tried to think of a way to get away with it, perhaps waiting for an opportunity that wouldn't lead the cops to him, or, having just thrown the child out the window...killing the mother and dumping the car and their bodies somewhere and claim a carjacking or something. (the article doesn't mention other witnesses until the mother is looking around the water). I agree he is guilty of a horrible crime and needs to be in prison, but considering the guy didn't even try to run, and gave no thought to his own inevitable imprisonment, I can't see how its on par with a premeditated murder. Could you go into more detail explaining your position, I do want to understand your point of view.