Sayonara

I bet this is on the news next week

Yes... but let's not start a new thread halfway down an existing one.

What? What? Yeah, and adding a whole new course into a national curriculum doesn't cost anything. If you looked at the links I posted earlier (not that you are the only person who didn't bother) you'd see that the ban on handguns in the UK has led to a reduction in armed policing, which we might reasonably expect to correlate with a reduciton in money expended on equipment, resource, and training. Doesn't (2) go hand-in-hand with all of the others? Spending money is something of a given. If you want to develop a plan of action in which money is a limiting factor, you're going to have to decide how much a single human life is worth. Good luck with that. Oh be quiet.

Is this coursework?

OK, just so long as you know I was mocking the article and not you

The information I was quite rightly scoffing at had nothing to do with genetics. My "tooth fairy" challenge was meant to introduce you to the idea that proving things don't exist is problematic at best. If you wrote the HIV article, it needs work. If you didn't, you have no reason to defend it.

I think you established your understanding of "negative proof" with the Houdini/telepathy post. That's not really a placebo effect, it's more of a psychosomatic response - which incidentally is an integral part of a lot of complementary medicine. The fact that it's called "complementary medicine" alone should answer most of your questions.

Are you saying the same effect (read: 'effect', not 'cause' or 'process') does not occur in each?

Fingerprints in identical twins are different.

I'm ending this now because it's been answered already, and the fewer venues there are for people to repeat dumbed-down versions of previous replies the better

If MrL had chosen "simple dipole" as his example, one might well say "I don't know why you didn't choose Yagi". It's not really important, is it?

I've moved on to Adriana Trigiani's "Big Stone Gap".

It only implies that if you already know how the effect works. If you don't (can you say "original poster"?) then it doesn't imply anything. I think that's what MrL was trying to communicate. Post #4 says "this is a fact [insert fact]. This happens [insert observed effect]", without explaining if or how they are linked.

#2 and #3 look pretty much on-topic.

I think that's probably a dead end, seeing as he's just stated that he has been there and still can't see how the pros outweigh the cons. You can't apply the argument atm was making in the homosexuality thread (about society accepting people as they are) to gun owners. His argument was about people who are unable to reasonably change what and who they are (regardless of whether or not they should). Gun owners aren't in that category. It would be a handy time saver, but unfortunately it's not a valid analogy.

That's the problem with phone-ins. It's purely annecdotal (except last week when a professor of whatever it was phoned in to tell everyone they were plain wrong, which was fun). That coma story wasn't really the best advert for osteopathy, was it?

Ooooh they're talking about it now! They have some sort of victim or expert or something.

"The judges' decisions are final and no correspondance will be entered into" now, is it?

They're also talking about chewing gum for some reason... it's looking like they might save the chiropractic calls until tomorrow. (LOL, one guy just phoned in to say he now reports chewing-gum-spitters to the police. I bet he eventually gets done for wasting police time.)

UK ppl: The phone-in thing on Radio 2 this afternoon is about homeopathy, osteopathy and chiropractic. It's on until 14.00, when that goon Steve Wright takes over.

But what makes you so sure I'm not getting exactly what I wanted from the poll, no matter how it's worded?

Lewis Caroll wins every time.

What has that got to do with this discussion? Oh I see, so your cunning reply to my argument was to discuss the guns that my argument wasn't discussing? Bonus.

Bludgeon things?

I didn't realise we were only discussing your guns. I guess that's my argument thrashed. It's like I said before; make the ammo $30,000 a piece and the problem solves itself. [edit] I have to say, I find the comparison between target pistols etc and things like cars (which can kill, but weren't designed to do so) to be invalid. A target pistol performs a single function. It's to help to teach you to shoot accurately, and to keep that skill sharp. So that you can operate a gun properly. That makes it a dedicated accessory to 'proper guns', so its sole function lies in the whole "making with the death" area. Not. A. Difficult. Connection. To. Make.