Cap'n Refsmmat

That would not be a disk. That would be regular RAM. Why do you insist on not having non-volatile storage?

So they're ignoring the advances in understanding of ancient languages and in discoveries of new manuscripts since the King James Version was written so they can instead translate the KJV into conservative lingo? Surely this is one of the worst foundations for a Biblical translation in existence.

A sum total of -388 negative reputation points have been given, compared to 18993 positive points since we re-opened the rep system.

Here's the original journal article on the topic: http://www.rsc.org/delivery/_ArticleLinking/ArticleLinking.asp?JournalCode=CC&Year=2009&ManuscriptID=b905974a&Iss=32 So they're just saying urea is easier to split with electricity than water is.

This seems like an excellent approach to win more reputation points.

The qualifier "scientific" simply means "testable". Purple unicorns aren't testable unless you can find some; Edmond's hypothesis is most definitely testable. Fortunately for Edmond, his initial hypothesis has some credence. In fact, similar tests have been performed and found some links: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126957.300 (subscription required for full article) (Mind you, this is only relevant to his hypothesis 1. The causes of such a correlation, which he discusses in hypotheses 2 and 3, are still up for debate. I'm more inclined to think they're environmental and genetic than developmental and brain-size related. People who look different are treated differently and thus develop different personalities.) I haven't really observed him getting angry without justification. So far this thread has been rather civil. The hypothesis doesn't have methodology. The methodology in question is how he intends to test the hypothesis, and Edmond hasn't told us that, though he reassures us that he will be very rigorous. The best we can do is give advice. I too would be frustrated and angry if my thread kept getting derailed to discuss the scientific method and the meaning of "hypothesis" when I would much rather hear feedback on the actual content of my hypothesis. There has been very little of that so far.

But we can, so we can check it out for you.

Isn't that the point of performing these experiments and doing the research? Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged If a hypothesis were required to be supported, it wouldn't be a hypothesis any more, now would it? A hypothesis is a proposed explanation for an observed phenomenon. That's it. Edmond has observed that he "types" people into personality types based on their appearances and believes his types to be correct; he postulates that something about their appearance must thus reflect their personalities. That's it. Perhaps his explanation is totally wrong and it turns out he sucks at typing people; that's certainly possible and could be tested by experiment. Perhaps there is something to this; that's possible and could be tested by experiment.

How often do you think someone watches you and you don't feel anything? Think about sitting in a crowded restaurant. At any given time someone is going to be looking at you, but do you feel it? And when you do feel it, there's going to be someone looking at you...

Indeed. Number of posts, amount of reputation, and length as member all affect how much reputation power. I don't know how the green pips correspond to quantity of reputation besides that more pips = greater reputation; there's probably a simple formula somewhere in the vB source code but I can't be bothered finding it. If you ever feel reputation is being abused -- someone is giving you negative reputation repeatedly just because they don't like you, or whatever -- let an admin know so we can check it out.

What I would find more reasonable is that certain hormones (excess testosterone, estrogen, whatever) can lead to the development of different personality traits (aggression, whatever) and could influence facial feature development. That seems perfectly reasonable to me, much like how ring finger to middle finger length ratios can tell how aggressive someone is (vaguely) by how much testosterone they had during development. I think we should be more concerned with exploring potential ways to test this hypothesis, potential explanations of how it works if it could be true, and potential reasons it could be false. This whole argument about phrenology is pointless; if it's like phrenology, than a well-designed experiment will prove it to be rubbish; if it has some basis in reality, it will show up in experiment. There's only one way to find out. So can we please move on?

Drop it. That's enough of that for this thread. You both agree this has nothing to do with the topic but you keep arguing about it anyway. dr.syntax, "primal therapy" is not a widely accepted treatment system in psychiatry and there is little peer-reviewed evidence to show it works properly. As per our forum rules, you shouldn't be bringing your own favorite theories (like primal therapy) into the discussion as though they're accepted facts that can answer the questions. If you'd like to discuss primal therapy in its own thread, feel free, but please don't treat it like an accepted fact. (You might say "but it works!", and it might, but does it work to treat specks of light in vision? There are much better ways of explaining what causes spots in your vision and a good doctor can determine what's going on. The only room for mental therapy in this thread is if the person is hallucinating.)

Where can I sign up?

Actually, you need 30 posts, 10 days of membership, and -- and this requirement meant nothing until we enabled negative reputation -- 10 reputation points. 10 is the default amount you start with anyway, so only those who have received negative reputation can be affected. We may consider altering this so one or two negative reputation "hits" aren't enough to keep you out of politics, since that seems a bit unfair; anyone have comments or opinions on this?

Indeed. I just realized the method I had done quickly before breaks a few rules as well... but it does give me an answer of 0.97, which is confusingly close.

If you have this: [math]e^x + e^{-x} = 3[/math] taking the natural log of both sides gives you this: [math]\ln (e^x + e^{-x}) = \ln 3[/math] not what you wrote above. See what you can do using the properties of logarithms to tease x out of there.

That's not necessarily true, as the quotes above point out. Some of the systems have you sending money directly to those who need it, rather than to the church. The question is instead whether the church officials will be any better than insurance agencies at making sure the money gets to the people who need it most.

http://xkcd.com/435/

Anyone with less than 10 rep points has no rep power and can't influence your reputation at all.

The datacenter folks now claim that everything is fixed.

Unfortunately our webhost has been suffering from catastrophic network issues for the past day or so*. We're back up temporarily, but I don't know how long this will last. The hosts are not being very communicative about what is going on and whether things will be completely fixed any time soon. So hang in there. Ideally they'll solve this sometime soon and SFN will be back to its usual busy self. * This is a euphemism for "Dave spilled his Guinness on the server."

I believe you meant to say "Are there any relevant secular reason to keep this thread open?"

I think part of the issue, at least in my school district, was that teachers are on contracts. I don't know how flexible those contracts are to allow for dismissal partway through the year. The teacher who provided the copy-machine story has taught at several different school districts, but of course I don't know how representative the comment was of each of them.

I have talked to teachers about the process. Generally I've been told that it's often easier to just reassign a teacher to something like "you are now in charge of instructing teachers on proper copy-machine usage" than to actually fire them. (That was an actual example given by an actual teacher.) This past school year I had a teacher who turned out to be utterly incompetent to teach the subject he was assigned, and was taken off teaching all classes altogether -- they swapped in a teacher from another school in the district and pulled another teacher off of administrative duty to fill his role. But he was not fired... he stayed around doing meaningless tasks (I saw him in the teacher's lounge a lot) and was eventually told to help teach the kids who were in danger of failing the state's standardized test. (That job consisted of him showing multiple-choice questions and then explaining the correct answer.)

It appears to have been a schmuck already banned as a spammer. Drive-by negative rep! Brilliant.