John Cuthber

"I am not too strong when it comes to optics / lenses, but I am trying to figure out a way to get a person to be able to focus on something substantially closer than his or her point of focus" Use a magnifying glass.

"Psychosis is not a good premise to base your assertion that LSD causes brain damage. " Are you saying that psychosis is a sign of a healthy brain? I accept that it's difficult to distinguish cause and effect, but that article suggests they have,and that the link is causal. Are you saying that LSD causes psychosis without damaging the brain? "I want to add that Aristotle's claim that we use our heart to think still has a wide appeal among literary circles" And, in bar room conversation, the idea that men think with their dicks is pretty commonplace: but that doesn't make it true either. "One case I heard of was a man received a heart transplant from an adrenaline junkie, the man soon became an adrenaline junkie himself, pursuing activities such as sky diving, heli-skiing etc., I wonder if anyone can find the source for this" Finding a source is probably easy. Finding any credible reason to believe it is more difficult- after all, the heart doesn't actually make decisions.

OK http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysergic_acid_diethylamide#Psychosis Not the pinnacle of peer review, but better than "Psychology today": at least you can check the references. Lets just have another quick look at the OP. I have highlighted a bit "It was Aristotle who, in his discussion of friendship, claims that women and womanish man makes their friends unhappy by seeking sympathy. Leave aside whether this statement is true, which would be a discussion in ethics, do feminine men complain more? " No, it is, in principle, open to analysis. It's true or it's not. Strictly, there are several factors, notably. "women and womanish maen makes their friends unhappy" and " women and womanish man seek sympathy." (There are other questions like whether womanish men (whatever that might mean) behave like women in this asserted regard) Now, actually examining those questions would be a hell of a job. It's open to all the biasses and confounding factors in history. Let's just see if there's any apparent truth to it (before trying to explain it) So, for example is there evidence that women make men unhappy? It would seem at odds with evolution and so I'd not expect to see it. I had a look and guess where I found an answer? I'm happy to report the results of a study** "The evidence is unequivocal that being married is correlated with happiness. " from http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/how-happiness/201202/does-marriage-make-us-happy-should-it How about the second tacit assertion: that "women and womanish man seek sympathy." Well, it's tricky to get decent research on this sort of thing. But I'm prepared to go with this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_flu as a start. And, if you thought that was unscientific, try this one. When Australians parody the English as "shining Poms" it's often in the context of sporting results. On the whole, it's an observation made by men about men. What does that say for the idea that "feminine men complain more"? To me it seems that before we can get anywhere discussing the dubious deductions from Aristotle (and he made a fair few wrong calls* we need to see if his assertions were right. I think the evidence is, at best equivocal on that. Unless someone can show that it is actually true that "women and womanish maen makes their friends unhappy" and " women and womanish man seek sympathy." we don't need to look at whether "feminine men complain more? " *First, Aristotle believed that thinking occurred in the region around the heart and not in the brain (a cooling organ, PA 652b 21-25, cf. HA 514a 16-22). Second, Aristotle thought that men were hotter than women (the opposite is the case). Third, Aristotle overweighed the male contribution in reproduction. Fourth, little details are often amiss such as the number of teeth in women. Fifth, Aristotle believed that spontaneous generation could occur. For example, Aristotle observed that from animal dung certain flies could appear (even though careful observation did not reveal any flies mating and laying their eggs in the dung. The possibility of the eggs already existing in the abdomen of the animal did not occur to Aristotle.) However, these sorts of mistakes are more often than not the result of an a priori principle such as “women being colder and less perfectly formed than men” or the application of his method on (in principle) unobservables—such as human conception in which it is posited that the male provides the efficient, formal, and final cause while the woman provides merely the material cause. (pinched from the web) ** Just kidding, here's the paper.

I wondered about that too.

If you set aside objections based on the morality of their intent, the science is generally quite good there. (other "similar" sites don't enjoy such a good reputation)

The sales of books do not influence their accuracy. But the converse is not true, and not always in a good way. And the article in the rag isn't science. Why did you cite it? Anyway, since it only takes one counter example to trash a theory, and my nephew is that example, you can stop worrying about it now. (Obviously, there are lots of other like him too, but just 1 is enough)

Miser- the bloke who won't play with himself, because it might reduce his intellect, but takes acid which is known to damage the brain. "Not everything needs to be defined." It does if you want to have a meaningful discussion about it.

This "Because fat has been found to break apart testosterone" is impossible from a chemistry point of view. It's generally true that testosterone helps to lay down muscle, but "So, to restate feminine; on a spectrum of 1 being indistinguishable from a girl and 10 being Arnold, " I have met some girls that are hard to distinguish from me, though I have a full beard and moustache and I'm going bald.

Oh, I see, it's true because someone trying to sell a book says so, and has published this in a non- peer reviewed magazine. http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Suffer_the_Children.html?id=N1j1C_Pg-vYC Still, it's an interesting theory. From it I deduce that either my brother and his wife suddenly moved from France to the US between their first child and their second (odd, I'd have thought I'd have noticed- particularly since they seemed to be in the UK) Or, perhaps, having raised on child, they forgot how to do it with the second.

SFAIK = So far as I know. The things that became chalk were tiny. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coccolithophores

Is this "Fully aware of selection bias, but we are not at the full mercy of it. We've all had social interactions with people (I hope) and we all have opinions. Let's hear it " because you want to hear lots more examples of selection bias? Well, OK, here's my biassed opinion. "do feminine men complain more? " Not as far as I have noticed. "Are there research that confirms this?" I don't know but I doubt it because it would be damned near impossible to check. Getting ethical approval without informed consent might be rather difficult. Getting a blind experiment once you have informed consent would be impossible.

I guess it's some sort of progress. "Our entire government got it wrong, knowing this risk existed and doing nothing about it except hope the problem would go away." OK, so we ignore the hyperbole about "our entire government" because it's silly. The guy who washed the tea cups is part of the government, but he's not responsible. So I guess you mean "At least some people high up in government (maybe including the President?) got it wrong." OK, now you need to say what they got wrong. What risk did they ignore? Was there some specific indication of a threat to the embassy that they knew about and ignored? How do you know that they knew about it? Was if because they said so on Fox? If they did nothing then you need to explain that this situation was in some way different from plenty of other threats faced by embassies round the world. There simply are not the resources to make them all fortresses and, even if there were, it would be inconsistent with their diplomatic status. After all, they probably also didn't beef up security al all the other embassies that week. How could they? Unless you can show that they were aware of some specific threat to the embassy in Benghazi, then they didn't do anything wrong. It's like going to a bank the day after it was robbed and telling them it's their own fault because they didn't hire lots of extra security that day. How could they have known about the robbery in advance? In the same way, this "Not a thing except take away what little security that was there and knowing the possibility of such an attack" is a serious allegation, but you need to be able to show that they knew about the attack in advance in such a way that they could have prevented it. There's always some threat of attack, so saying that they knew there was doesn't add anything. And, as I said, there are many calls on the resources. You can't tell in advance where you are going to need them I have already pointed out that terrorist groups (and random rabbles too) are not in the habit of emailing the white house in advance of an attack. So, other than a so-called news channel, have you any evidence about that statement? Are there emails that we can look at? Is there a record of the president talking about the attack before it happens? Is there any evidence at all that he knew? Or is it just something Fox made up?

And to add to that, good discipline in a child can also prevent ADHD. http://xkcd.com/285/

DH, I think you may well be right. It's perfectly possible that Rigney can't actually answer the question. If that's the case then we might as well close the thread and forget it since there's no way of knowing what the OP was about. However, I think part of the problem is that he just has a very short attention span so he only responds to the last post. So, once again, may I respectfully request that others' don't post until Rigney has clearly answered the question and told us what this whole tread is actually about. I'm concerned that, if anyone posts something he will reply to that and ignore the fact that he hasn't yet told us what wrong he is claiming was done and by whom. It's kind of difficult to address that. So I'd like the next post to be from Rigney, clearly spelling out: 1 who did something wrongly? 2 What they did? And 3 why he thinks this is so? Once we have that we can comment on it- otherwise this thread isn't going anywhere.

SFAIK they only take on nutrients from solution, but it hardly matters. If they are sat on a rock made of calcium carbonate or silicate and they take up the calcium then the rock will dissolve. And yes, there's a lot of carbon there. People have proposed this as a way to scrub CO2 from the air.

Most cells have ion transporters (or "pumps"). They can pull things like calcium from the water ( there's always some calcium dissolved in seawater) and then the cell can use it. The cells that eventually became chalk used the calcium to make a skeleton of sorts. But the ion transport systems are part of living cells so they couldn't have exited before there were some sort of living things in the sea.

Mr Rayon, do you know that eyelash is not the same as eyebrow? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyelash http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyebrow

I first asked as post 55 in response to your comment in post 41 And, I wonder if I can ask the other people here for a favour? As it stands, this thread is 24 pages long and is debating Rigney's original starting point. However, he hasn't actually clearly stated what that point was. May I respectfully request that others' don't post until Rigney has clearly answered the question and told us what this whole tread is actually about. I'm concerned that, if anyone posts something he will reply to that and ignore the fact that he hasn't yet told us what wrong he is claiming was done and by whom. It's kind of difficult to address that. So I'd like the next post to be from Rigney, clearly spelling out: 1 who did something wrongly? 2 What they did? And 3 why he thinks this is so? Once we have that we can comment on it- otherwise this thread isn't going anywhere.

For that sort of chemistry you are probably better off looking at a specialist site like this http://www.erowid.org/archive/rhodium/chemistry/methylenation.html

Exactly what did they say which they knew to be untrue? Exactly what crap are you saying is being handed out? Who is doing it? What evidence is there to back up your accusation (even if you insist that it's not an accusation)?

Why don't you answer the questions?

I have, so to speak, a dog in this fight because I'm a member of this discussion forum. Wouldn't you find it easier to just answer the questions, rather than ranting bout me being English? Exactly what did they say which they knew to be untrue? Exactly what crap are you saying is being handed out? Who is doing it? What evidence is there to back up your accusation (even if you insist that it's not an accusation)?

Is this the sort of thing yo mean? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_transporter

That website claims that Obama and Hillary lied. Exactly what did they say which they knew to be untrue? Or is this just another of your vague allegations? (It's impossible to tell from the site since the video of them has been removed)

In addition to the risk of getting sued, anyone who was involved in the work would be an accessory to murder. The government might have immunity, but the individuals wouldn't.