Wormwood

^^^Thanks You too Ben.

I disagree. I realize that there are somethings which might not be as attractive from one culture to the next (like stretched lips or ears or other aquired tastes), but over all I would say the mechanism is pretty constant. Men are attracted to physical beauty in symmetry and proportions. The desire for the full figured gal in the 1950's can still be attributed to the proportion of waist to hips and breasts. There were no obese women as objects of beauty as far as I know, just women that would be heavy by today's standards. Proportionally they were close to the ideal men have always looked for. Women look for shapes too, but they prefer hard lines and angles to the softer rounder features men prefer. Women look at the proportion of the chest to waist, they typically prefer a "V" shaped torso, and they also look at how square the jaw is and how it is proportioned. However, when seeking a long term mate, women will usually go for men with less testosterone and softer features. My point is, I think most of what we find attractive is actually hard wired into us. It might be more pleasant for some people to think they are unattractive because the media promotes unrealistic expectations, but in reality what we find attractive is largely out of our control. http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/09/04/dating.mating.ap/index.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_attractiveness

^^^ That actually makes sense if I understood it as well as I think I did. So it is one dimensional as a mathematical expression, though the actual physical manifestation of this isn't really decipherable? Strings are just fundamental objects that behave as an extension in one direction for all intents and purposes, whether we can ever experience them as such. Does that sound close?

How is that comprehendible though? How can it have length, yet absolutely no width or height? I know there are more knowledgeable people around and I am holding you back with a fundamental concept, but I can't make myself understand how this is possible. If your size were relative to the string, it would HAVE to have height or width for it to have length. Length denotes a physical existence, but there must be at least a second trait to which this length can be attributed, or else there is no object to have length. Also, one dimensional would mean that strings exist outside of time right? It is. However, you guys are a good bit smarter than me, so the fun for me is just understanding what you guys are talking about

I thought I was done ... How is this possible? Does it only exist as time or something? Consider what you're saying; picture an object with only length and no height or width...how could it physically exist? Unless they are phenomenonally larger than us, is what I was originally asking. For example, if we were smaller than atoms, we wouldn't realize that the atoms actually make up something larger that looks like a solid object because our size wouldn't allow us to percieve the macrocosm in that way that we do at this size. However, there is no scenario I can imagine that couldn't be explained with the 4 dimensions we already know about. I was just extending the same reasoning as to why we can not experience the smaller dimensions, to question if perhaps our dimensions were smaller on some even grander scale.

You sir are extremely knowledgable, and I thank you for taking the time to entertain my questions. If you can't tell I never went past 101 which only has a minute section about quantum mechanics at the end, and then you watch "What the @%&* Do we know" and call it a semester That is intellectually painful. Logically this makes perfect sense. Intuitively, I am imagining all sorts of scenarios which probably aren't valid. I think I get it now. Thanks.

25 cents in the hole... Isn't this just a size issue though? If we were shrunk to a miniscule size where strings were as big as cars, wouldn't they have more than one dimension or is the string some sort of non physical entity that somehow manifests as physical matter? Well, when I said "larger" I just meant in the same way that we can not detect the smaller dimensions because they are so much smaller. A dimension is just another coordinate in defining location right? Could you explain this a bit more? I tried to look it up, but the resources were not very clear. Unless I was reading incorrectly (which is highly likely) there are 10^-500 possibilities? I believe he teaches at the college here in town (Santa Barbara) right? I might be thinking of someone else, but that name sounds familiar.

One dimensional? How is that even possible? A two dimensional world sheet sounds strange enough, like a universe with no depth, but one dimensional seems physically impossible. So if I understand you correctly, when the equations are done (and I do remember that example from physics class) the alternative answers are impossibilities like 0 or -1, and since we KNOW that there are more than 0 or -1 dimensions we use the other answer which is invariably 10. Is that the gist of it? I have another question ( I know you are getting bombarded and I appreciate your time and effort in answering all of this). How do we know that all 6 extra dimensions are smaller? Is there any chance that one or more of these dimensions is too large for us too notice and we just assume it is smaller? I guess I'm asking if there is any specific reason why the dimensions must be smaller. As a sub-question, is it possible that 10 dimensions are just an anomaly of our particular point of reference? By that I mean, could the 10 dimensions operate as smaller, larger, and relative so that there is always a range of 10 dimensions with varying sizes in comparrision to the observer, no matter what size you are, or is it a set and definites series of dimensions that are well explained?

Hi Ben, I was hoping you could explain the circles a bit more I get that we must be smaller to observe them. Like a mite walking around the ant that is walking around the rope right? But why 10? Why not 1000 or an infinite number?

I agree with the OP (up until the male female dynamic). Not only is PC policing thoughts, but it encourages false ideas about reality. For example, it is a popular tactic in some debates for the side with the standard issue PC opinion to resort to personal attacks such as calling someone a racist or a sexist, not because they feel like this should be pointed out, but because they know the other side will instantly lose all credibility if the claims stick. By that I mean if you go against the subjective truth of PC, any objective truth is lost because your opinion no longer matters. I have seen this tactic used a lot in Israeli v. Palestinian debates, when one side doesn't care about the other. Both sides call the other racist, as if that somehow makes an opinion more or less true. I was under the impression that something is true if it's factually correct, not if it fits well with everyone's delicate sensibilities.

^^^ Sorry man. After reading it again I see what you mean. I just get frustrated when people keep comparing every war to vietnam because they want to feel justified in their pacifism, or they want to be seen as the rational social progressives that protestors were seen as in a previous conflict. Sarcasm noted!

Well in their defense, they can see 5 soldiers die anytime, but Paris only gets out of jail once (well, so far...) I think you have misread the American population. This administration used the fear of the 9/11 attacks to drum up support for attacking. We were attacked, and we were pissed, and therefore easily manipulated. I don't know of anyone that was just up for a war, or that thought of this as a game. I think the people that were in favor of a war were not aware that we would be fighting with extreme limitations and that we would have to stick around and rebuild all of the sh*t we just blew up. That's the whole reason we took the war to the middle east though; so we don't have to deal with terrorism here, and so our standard of living isn't really effected. No one cares about the "progress" because A) it will most likely be stretched truths, fabrications, and outright lies and B) Even if the report says we are doing a terrible job, no one is going to pull the troops out so it doesn't really matter. It's just some BS made up to appease the public who has lost interest anyway. ----------------------------------------------------------- Really? The media has only been trying to force that association since the first day of the war. For anti-war people Vietnam is the ONLY example they have of opposing a war and being completely justified. Since then, they try to turn every war into Vietnam. The anti-war crowd during the gulf war said the same types of things. Sometimes we need war, and when we do, we should fight to win, not to make friends or feel like humanitarians. There is no nice way to kill someone, but sometimes it must be done. I don't think that was his point at all. He was comparing it to Vietnam, like most anti-war people, because he sees it as an unwinable war against an unseen enemy. I'm pretty sure that's what he was talking about; I might be mistaken. Let me answer your question with another question:Does it matter? Seriously, the media has already uncovered the lies...what horrible repercussions have happened? The lies got Bush and pals the war they wanted, end of story. No. They should have learned to keep the American press away from the war front if that is how they're going to be. War is ugly; it just is. A bunch of soft people in their comfortable homes see only the worst scenes and in it they see barbarism because their lives are not in danger. It is simply an appeal to the lowest common denominator. I am still not getting this term "Iraqinam". Is that supposed to be clever or something? Do you think "Nam" means something it doesn't? Or is it just that you, like many other anti-war people, simply want to try to draw an association with VIET nam so you can feel likewise justified in your protests? Just so you know, there is no draft for this war, and no American demonstrators have been shot to death yet, so I think you have along way to go before you can really connect that justification.

Well I was just citing a specific example of what I was talking about. I even asked specifically that we not diverge on it. Biologists aren't the only ones that do it, and not every example is as extreme as that, but I think most of us are guilty of it. I study medicine. Honestly I don't independantly research every fact I am taught. Some of it I take on nothing more than the word of the person teaching me because they are an authority on the subject. I am not saying this is bad, because I would hate to spend all of my time independantly verifying every fact I heard, but it does create a dogma of sorts in each field because some knowledge is questioned and some is not. A random example from my field is eggs. Are they good for you or bad for you? You can find research that says either, plus research that says just the whites are good, and some say just the yellows. The current predominant idea is that they are good, or ok in moderation, but honestly I have no idea what the truth is. I am just accepting the current consensus. If that changed tomorrow, so would my opinion. Pure dogma. From many of the debates I have seen the center of the issue is the "randomness" aspect. We can demonstrate that evolution almost positively happened, but we can not demonstrate that it is completely random (mutations), or that life randomly came from non-life (pre-biological evolution). As for the creationists, I'm not sure what their deal is. Well I look at their endeavor like forensics. They will never see the act being commited, but if they can piece together enough patterns, motive, and such then they can reaffirm their belief that this is all the result of a design. I am not saying they are right, but I am saying that the notion that the two ideas are compatible doesn't make someone the dumbest person on earth. I think there is room in current scientific theory for a passive designer, because as we have said, that doesn't really effect the science of the issue. Now if people want to start attributing special qualities to this designer that go against something we know to be generally true, then they have over stepped the abilities of their philosophy. Also Horizontal gene transfer seems to have played at least some part in human development. I'm with you though; I think there are still mechanisms to be discovered. Like I said, all of the knowledge of the gaps that gets accepted along with much more provable theories. Each discipline has their own versions, and some are probably more true than others.

Quiet you, or Canada gets it nexthttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/29/AR2005122901412.html Seriously though, what the heck is "Iraqinam" supposed to be? "Nam" isn't a suffix that means quagmire or anything...just so you know. You call Americans dumb and in the same sentence use a triple negative! You are right though that many Americans don't even know who or why we are fighting. The reason is apathy. We don't have to care, so many of us simply don't. Sure, blow up anyone you want, just keep my taxes down!

No, I'm really not. I just don't like the way some people are so condescending about it. If they want to make fun of someone for being stupid, then turn around and say we know this or that questionable event happened for a fact, then I think someone should call them on it. I don't know. Looking at the mechanisms of nature and seeing a design seems rather subjective to me. The reason most people accept purely naturalistic explanations is because they entered the question knowing that the only acceptable answer was materialistic. In other words, there is no method in science to test for intention, and no place to accept that in the results. Even if it were 100% true that everything we see was the result of a design, science would not be able to tell us that by itself, because anything other than the mechanics or theory of functionality is outside the realm of science. No it doesn't, and I never meant to suggest it did. Just consider this; if you are arguing for evidence of design based on circumstantial evidence that points to some sort of plan or intention, then the methods and certain key events could be indicative. I have seen many ID supporters that believe in evolution, but they don't believe in natural selection and random mutation as the method driving the diversification of life. Natural selection is nice, but it's current incarnation doesn't really explain something like the cambrian explosion or the phi ratio. These things don't instantly mean that all of nature was designed BTW. They are just pieces of circumstantial evidence used when trying to build a case for design in nature. I'm sure I would. My point was that the mere mention of ID makes the dogma not only more believable, but apparently undeniably true. That's why one of the first things I said in this thread was that it was more noticeable in some settings than in others.

Guys come on, let's forget the words "intelligent design" were uttered and try to salvage this conversation. My point wasn't that I like to defend *that forbidden idea*, but that I enjoy pointing out problems with our current version of evolution to people that say it is an undeniable fact and shouldn't be questioned. It should be questioned in every respect. If there is a problem with the current theory I have no doubt that it will be a creationist or an ID proponent that will find it, because they seem to be the only people not willing to accept the theory as is. Personally I think we are missing key elements to the mechanisms that make evolution work and we fill it in with much speculation. For example, are you familiar with the explanation given for multicelled organisms that involves a single case of endosymbiosis? This is largely just speculation. But it fills in a gap of information that we actually do have. This is my point. There are some things that are accepted dogmatically as a functional assumtion. If you question these things, people seem to get upset or confused.

You are comparing two different things though. Keeping the peace and rebuilding an area is much easier when you have completely leveled everything in that area. The people's will to resist fades. With these more modern "surgical" strikes, there is no true display of power to the common person. However, the insurgents have daily displays of power through civilian bombings and intimidation, and coincidentally have had no trouble finding supporters as support for the soft US fails. That's not entirely true though. The North thought Grant went to easy on the south. People in the south were pissed because they lost even more states rights which was what the whole war was about. In other words they were just mad about losing the war...and some people there still are This seems like a statement in support of harsh policing after a war. We could have avoided WWII altogether if we had crushed Germany more thoroughly the first time. I do see what you're saying though. Since we live in an era of wars with regulations that dictates everything has to have a humanitarian spin on it, you don't want to crush a nation completely then leave them to their own devices. Again you are comparing unlike things. Germany and Japan were leveled. Japan had atomic bombs dropped on major cities, and Berlin was carpet bombed until all of the big buildings fell, then the rubble was shelled with artillery. Of course they were ready for peace...they knew the extent of the alternative was the complete destruction of every man, woman, and child in the country. Well that was a bad example because I wasn't talking about him being removed by a foreign power so much as a different power. My main point was that just because someone is elected, doesn't mean that's actually who the country wants running things. It just means that out of a very limited selection of people, this guy was the most popular at the time, or had enough to pay the ballot counters. People say and do crazy things when you are blowing up their town. They liked us because we still had international credibility and we could stop the horrific violence that we brought to them. There was no shortage of people supporting the Nazi's in Germany before 1944-45. It still doesn't change the fact that harsher military tactics seem to lead to a more docile post war population. I never thought they were a threat, and I am pretty sure no one in our government did either. Is it just a coincidence they used trumped up stories of a surprise attack so soon after 9/11 to piggy back the Iraq war on Afghanistan? No it is the result of coddling Israel and artificially carving out a nation for them while simultaneously exercising or trying to exercise control over who they can fight and when. But to an extent the international community is what has stopped Israel from just wiping the Palestinians off the map completely. I guess that is coddling of sorts for the Palestinians, just not from the Israelis.

You missed my point. If you read again, you will notice that I don't believe in ID either, and it is peripheral to what I was saying. Edit: I guess you did prove my point about knee jerk reaction when talking about certain subjects though.

foodchain: I feel the same way as you do to an extent. This is more noticable in some areas than in others. For example I am a deist, so I sometimes join an intelligent design conversation or something similar. If you point out holes in big bang, or the current paradigm of evolution people get very upset on dogmatic principle. I don't believe in intelligent design per se, but I am familiar with some problems of the existing theories which are often touted as undeniable fact so I enjoy the debate. In this context, going against the status quo leads to a bunch of people that have only taken high school biology trying to explain to me how evolution works because they think I am just missing something. There is also the fact that science can only deal with materialism and physical determinism, even though we have theories that only selectively include either of those elements (such as the big bang). However, when you think about it, science has always been this way. First, the fields are full of people that can memorize information and will never make direct contributions to their discipline. This has always been the case since Galen. Look at Joseph Lister for example, he invented antisceptic surgery at a time when caked on blood was a sign of how good and experienced your doctor was. Most people in medicine thought he was crazy. He was one genius in a sea of mediocrity, similar to pioneers of today. About the corporate aspect, consider that Tesla was trying to invent a machine that would give everyone free electricity wirelessly, but his funding was cut in support of Edison's power plant design that allowed people to be charged for how much electricity they used. This is similar to pharmacutical companies that won't pay for certain drugs because there is no money in them.

Policing isn't really the military's job, though they are trying to incorporate that now. We are a country in a moral transition, and it is these conflicting morals that cause our problems. Some people want to win the war, but they have to look like the "good guys" while doing it which causes a weak military strategy. If they wanted to control the road to the airport, or stop roadside bombs, they could make travel by car illegal, and destroy any civilian caught traveling in a car. It's not "fair", but it would put a stop to a lot of the chaos. The only thing people truly respect is demoralizing power. Why do you think there was such stability in the region when Saddam was in control? This isn't necessarily true. What if they have a crappy monopolistic two party system like we do in the U.S.? The population here just tries to pick the lesser of two evils. Are you saying if G.W. was forcibly replaced, that the majority of the U.S. would be upset and support the new guy less? http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19352087/site/newsweek Just because someone was elected, doesn't mean a majority of the country supports them. It just means the country gaged that person as less horrible than the alternative. This attitude is what I was referring to with the moral transition statement. Everyone wants to be liked for some reason. A war isn't about making friends. If we had taken this approach during WWII the Nazi's would be ruling the world right now. When you see pictures of Berlin around 1945, does it look like they left the schools, hospitals, and churches standing, or does it look like we carpet bombed the whole town into oblivion? Now these Imams know that they can play on American sympathy and the need to be liked; so one moment they are sawing off someone's head on the internet, and the next they are outraged that p.o.w.'s were embarrassed at the hands of a woman, and the sad thing is that we respond by turning on each other and taking their side just like they knew we would. Our sympathy and need to be liked has become a serious source of weakness. Lack of forethought, and personal vendettas, but that is beside the point. The truth is, without that regions oil, no one really cares what they do, who they like, or how they want things to be. Pretending like we need them as allies is silly. Acting like they pose some genuine threat, even together is silly. Instead of trying to install a puppet government, we should just set up military bases in the oil fields and claim those as US property since that is a big reason we went. Let the Iraqi's build their own governement, and if Iran has anything to say about it, we take their oil too and sell it back to them at an extreme mark up. Their economies and power structures will fail. It's hard to hire militants with no money and no transportation. Problem solved.

Ok I'll suspend my judgment on this until I have had a chance to look at the source then. Thanks BTW. This is all true, but it is arbitrary to the point I was making. In the controled environment, LSD had success stories for more than 10 years in HELPING with psychological problems, if there was something inherant in the use alone, don't you think some of these symptoms would have surfaced earlier? In an uncontroled environment people could potentially be traumatized in some respect or another simply from bad circumstance, and bad reaction to that cirumstance. This doesn't reflect on the drug as much as the people using it, and to what ends IMO.

Do you have any sources for this? This seems like a ridiculously false statistic. I have known more than 20 people who used to do LSD regularly and none have any psychological issues that they didn't have before we started. I personally have taken around 30 hits of liquid at one time with no long term effects (other than a kick ass halloween in new orleans). I have also tripped on DMT, mushrooms, morning glory seeds and even robatussin DM (we got bored easliy when I was a kid) with little to no lasting effect. The only lasting effect I can think of is the persistence of what we used to call "crazy business". It's basically the multi-colored T.V. static you see when you close your eyes. Other than that, nothing. I think if people are ending up with problems it's because they have mishandled the drug. When LSD was first introduced, therapists realized that patients on LSD could make a many sessions worth of progress in just one session. So if someone sets up a bad situation it's like getting months of bad therapy. http://www.echeat.com/essay.php?t=25621 And finally, it has been my experience that all of those horror stories (i.e. my friend thinks he's a carrot; my friend jumped off of a roof, or whatever) are usually relayed anecdotes (a friend of a friend told me) with no basis in reality. One good indicator these stories are false is when you go to a new area and the local people have the same urban legends. I think every region has their version of the same few stories. Has anyone else heard of the guy that thinks he's a cup of orange juice? I have heard that exact urban legend in at least three different cities scattered across the U.S...everyone claims to know the guy, or knows someone that knows him. As for the OP; morning glory seeds are the way to go. It's a mild trip (5 packs of seeds was close to one hit of blotter [weak acid]).

^^^Thanks, I'll look into it.

CPL.LUKE: Yeah, I was going to mention that it is probably related to a study I saw that prolonged cannabis use can damage the way your neurons work in some people, but I can't seem to track down the study. If one already has a genetic predisposition to schizophrenia, then damage to the neurons could exarcerbate the already existing issues between the two hemispheres of the brain. I wasn't dismissing the study, but some of the conclusions were way off base from what I saw. Cannabis has not been show to "cause" schizophrenia. It may reveal it, but I have seen nothing suggesting that it can cause it. For example, one of his sources said: She can believe that all she wants, but there is no conclusive evidence suggesting that is the case. That was all I meant.

Yeah I read over my first post again and I should have explained myself better (I was at work and trying to be sneaky ). Apology accepted and I apologize for not explaining myself better, and then being sarcastic when I did. You're right it's probably safe to assume that he doesn't have a tumor, I just wanted to make sure that avenue had been explored; and it has. Bi-polar disorder is a form of depression with alternating periods of mania, which usually (but not always) manifests as the opposite extreme as depression. This is why it's called "bi"-polar disorder; the patient swings from one extreme or "pole" to the other. Lithium is supposed to be good when the new generation of antipsychotics don't really work, but it can be harsh on your body if you don't moniter your salt and water intake. And yes, antiepileptics are sometimes used as mood stabilizers in the same way and they help with impulse control, especially in violent behavior. --------------------------------------------------------- That's called denial and supression and it isn't a very effective treatment method. As for your sources; correlation is not causation. Most of them are careful to mention that. It is most likely the case, as with other forms of mental illness, that people with this condition are just more likely to self medicate. If there was a true cause and effect relationship here, wouldn't you expect to see the numbers of people with schizophrenia to rise synchronistically with the number of people who smoke cannabis? This has not happened. While the number of people who smoke continues to rise, the number of people with schizophrenia has remained relatively constant. From your own source: http://psychcentral.com/lib/2006/cannabis-is-linked-to-schizophrenia-in-predisposed-individuals/