John Cuthber

Do you understands this assertion? I presume you don't, because you are steadfastly ignoring the fact that- in this thought experiment, without my glasses I don't see any goddamned apple. What I see is the point spread function of the lens of my eye. And I see that if I'm looking at a a streetlamp, an apple, a tomato a Christmas tree light, or down a (weak) laser beam. I don't see an image of the object. You are repeatedly ignoring what you are told. Why are you doing that? Are you too conceited to recognise that you might be wrong? So, what I see- a blue blob- confirms the wavelength of the light (it's blue not green) and fails to provide any information about the source (which looks the same as any other bright small object of that colour). Yet you insist that I can't see the light, but I can see the source. How come the only information I receive is about the light if I can't see it?

Yes. And with R^2 values that high you are looking at slightly different noise

Does it do this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesizer#Attack_Decay_Sustain_Release_(ADSR)_envelope

Oops! Should have spotted that. Mind you I think the point's still valid for anyone else looking in.

That's exactly why you can't see cars in the dark You see cars because they reflect light and you see that light FFS! Will you read what I said; twice? Strictly what I see is essentially the point spread function of the eye. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_spread_function I don't see a goddamned apple. And there is no blue apple for me to see. However I see blue light. Yes, because an image system that "sees" a blue apple which never exists in the universe is obviously working perfectly- in your world; those of us in this world may have a different view. If your television did that and you were trying to watch snooker, would you get it repaired? Except that "light" is a subset of "things".

Do you accept that a wage ratio of say 10:1 will motivate people to do their best and that increasing it doesn't help- it just generates problems. There is nothing to gain from paying the boss so much or the the workers so little that the ratio is as high as it is in some companies. It's also important to recognise the fact that many of those who earn a lot are not "the best people" or "the most talented people". They are the lucky people. It makes no sense whatsoever to pay them a huge salary for having already been very lucky. So it also makes no sense to support a system that leads to such irrational outcomes

Ordinarily, I'd agree with you but, in principle, job creations schemes like The Wall are actually Liberal- at least in terms of govt spending. Ditto the disaster fund. Not sure about the golf.

Doh!

I think that was MigL, rather than me. What is he spending on?

That's another issue I overlooked. In the same way that you have to decide how much money goes to which projects, you also have to decide how much tax is paid by which groups. If Donald was elected on the basis that he was going to tax middle earners more and rich people less- or even negatively- and that's what he's doing then how can anyone complain? Cutting tax isn't spending more (which would be Left wing) it's cutting tax (and thus spending less) which would be Right wing. Is he spending more overall in the year than Obama did, or less? If it's more (adjusted for inflation) then he's Left wing. The observation has already been made that neither the Conservatives, nor the Liberals recognise Trump as "one of ours".

Got any evidence for that?

If you have a policy that says " We should spend more government money on so-and-so" then it's a clear choice; you can support it or not. For example "we should spend more government money on healthcare" then that's a Left wing policy. What a lot of people get upset about is that "We should increase spending on the military" is also a Left wing policy (by this definition) Left wing is just a label for more govt spending. (and, obviously, there's a second side to that- we raise taxes, increase debt or cut spending somewhere else) On the other hand " we should drop taxes on..." is a Right wing policy. This definition isn't directly linked to race, or sex, or a whole lot of other things that are typically polarised by "Conservative / Republican vs Liberal /Democrat. This thread opens with a set of ideas that someone described as "Liberal" and desirable (In their opinion, and by their definition). The policy decision for each one is is "Should we spend money to bring about this objective?". Well... should we?

There's a huge problem with those definitions (and it's why I prefer the original ones based on govt spending being liberal or conservative). In the UK we have a universal healthcare system but in the US there isn't one. So "provision of universal health care" would- by the definitions I quoted - be a Conservative ideal (keeping the status quo) here, but a Liberal one (bringing about change) in the US. Prohibition would have been a Liberal idea, and the revocation of prohibition would also have been a Liberal idea. A Liberal policy would become a Conservative policy as soon as it was enacted. Is that really what people think the words mean?

I can't exert enough force to lift a car. But I can tell when a group of people has lifted one. Why did you think that was a valid question? Yes. But if you don't take the trouble to make sure that you exclude known biases (for example if you don't use "blind" trials and reference interventions) then what you are doing is called "cargo cult science" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science So, yes, anyone who uses the scientific method is a scientist. And anyone who pretends to use it is a pretend scientist.

Sometimes I choose to ignore it; for example, I'm not vegetarian. But at least I know that I'm making a risky decision. It's not perfect, but it's the least bad option. You made it clear that you avoid shop-bought fruit juice because of a mistaken belief that it's been super-heated and so on, You doubled down on that by misunderstanding how the addition of pesticides and preservatives actually reduces our exposure to what I think you called "unknown toxins". And , to top that off, you are now arguing with a bunch of scientists about what science is and how a single anecdote fits into that endeavour.

Human hearing is rather insensitive to phase. If you have access to some sort of digital synthesis system you can verify the observation that sin(1000t) +0.5sin(2000t) sounds the same as sin(1000t) +0.5 cos (2000t)

My answer is obviously " 4. None of the above." I realise that there's no way I can sensibly do enough research to find out what's good for people. In particular, I can't do much useful research on my own because of things like the placebo effect. So I find sources of information which publish the basis for their advice and I look at that basis to see if it is logically valid and scientifically well constructed. And then I base my actions on that actual knowledge. Why don't you?

OK, that's half the story. Why did you not include the other half? "In physics, superheating (sometimes referred to as boiling retardation, or boiling delay) is the phenomenon in which a liquid is heated to a temperature higher than its boiling point, without boiling. "? Was it because it shows that I was right? Your statement that still isn't true. Others have already pointed out most of the other errors in your screed so I won't bother reiterating them. I will pick up on one thing, the food produced without the use of fungicides is likely to be attacked by fungi. Some fungal products are among the most toxic materials we know of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycotoxin So this is, perhaps, true but argues against you point. The "unknown toxins" are what you get if you don't use pesticides. That's why we use them. And , of course if your answer to is this then I have bad news for you. Nothing is more natural than death.

I missed that bit earlier, sorry about that. The abolition of slavery was the government removing "property" the slaves from rich landowners. The equivalent of a very heavy tax bill. It's not a Conservative policy, it's a very Liberal one. NASA'a interesting. It's the use of government money to do things for the common good- in order to fund it, you need tax revenues. It's a Leftist policy- even if it happened to be enacted by a Republican government- even a stopped clock is correct twice a day. The anti discrimination laws, in much the same way as the anti slavery laws put a tax on the rich- they could no longer employ blacks and pay them less for being black. Again, that's a profit cutting, but society building act. It's Left wing. And the civil rights movement is much the same- if you want to give people the rights to decent conditions you have to be prepared to fund those changes- again, it's a Liberal wing policy. Helping capitalism is only beneficial if you think hard line Capitalism is a good thing. That is, therefore, begging teh question. Do you somehow think that having royalty is a Left wing policy? Have a lok at teh Left wing countries + count the kings- you may suprise yourself. A King is the ultimate Conservative, he only pays tax to himself. It's kind of difficult to judge whether the start of democracy was under a Left or Right wing government- ancient Greece had a very different government system. However, if you take the view that everyone should get a vote regardless of income, it's a Left leaning policy. It looks like the only good things the Conservatives did were to institute Liberal policies which rather makes my point for me. I might get round to giving it a rest when you actually answer a perfectly reasonable question

So, when you are confrontational that's OK, but when I do it, I'm an arse.

OK, so when you ask for evidence of something obvious, that's OK but when I ask for evidence I come across an an arse. Seriously, how did you come to the belief that there wasn't a very strong correlation between income and political allegiance?

If you warm cold air up the relative humidity falls.

Nope. It's a "do I really have to find a source for everything?" We are talking about a trend that's this clear and which is well known, yet you think it's a 50:50 split. Do you have evidence for that? How did you come to be so wrong?

The simplistic answer is theft. However, the real answer is often that it's like asking why runny noses cause the common cold. The people who have more money- usually largely as a matter of luck as illustrated by Trump's famous "small loan of a million dollars" from his dad- tend to end up greedily wanting not just to keep it but to acquire more. . Isn't it self evident? People who do stuff generate wealth- because not doing anything doesn't generate wealth (though it may be possible to accrue wealth from others while doing nothing). Most people who are in the business of "doing stuff" are not very well paid and that means they aren't (or shouldn't be) natural Conservative voters.

Only when the air turns blue.