Phi for All

I'm guessing you never squirted a line of dominoes with lighter fluid. Probably for the best. OTOH, if you're abnormally attracted to "orderly lying things of the same kind", you may be an American conservative. Much worse than OCPD.

Do you get aroused at the library? It could be a combination of the numbers and the order. It's pretty well known that most young kids will choose a hundred pennies over a fiver because of the numbers and weight. Did you ever play at lining things up in neat rows as a kid? I remember having about a dozen shiny ball bearings I played with when I was young. I came up with all kinds of things to do with them. Then one day my dad came home from work with a bag of about 50 more. I was in heaven! I loved having all those identical little bits.

That must have been right after the Vitamin Sea dried up.

Nice ghost costume. Happy Halloween! It turns out... he's Batman! At least that's how he was dressed when we came to his door. Welcome to the new mods!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/donald-trump-doesnt-read-much-being-president-probably-wouldnt-change-that/2016/07/17/d2ddf2bc-4932-11e6-90a8-fb84201e0645_story.html?utm_term=.2f67b1aa8328 According to this article, the only thing he reads are pieces about himself. He hates experts because they "can't see the forest for the trees", and they often go against his common sense. He claims knowledge in general distracts from his ability to shoot from the hip, that knowing things ahead of time is a bad for his decision-making process. He is the exact opposite of what I think an intelligent, rational, compassionate human should be. So I also don't believe this story. I also don't appreciate all the suggestive BS from the OP about what was on Trump's mind, guessing at his motives. I think Trump is the next Hitler for sure, but this is a science discussion site, and Trump is hardly a mastermind who leaves little evidence in his wake. Can we stop with the guesswork, and argue from what we know instead of using conspiracy and trying to psychoanalyze responses?

It's like this with many of our government programs and agencies. Our postal service could deliver more efficiently, securely, and cheaply if they were allowed to buy their own planes instead of being forced to use private carriers. The USPS could do a better job wiring funds than Western Union (they have offices in every zip code), but they aren't allowed. Capitalism is choking our country, no more so than in our healthcare.

Bush II removed Medicare's ability to negotiate drug prices like private carriers can. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_Prescription_Drug,_Improvement,_and_Modernization_Act

You say it like I'm suggesting to nationalize health insurance. What I mean is that, if Medicare was available to everyone, and people could opt to have their employer make payouts to Medicare instead of private health insurers, they would because it would be much less expensive since Medicare doesn't charge for profits. IOW, we'd be giving people a choice between private and public health insurance, and the public choice would be cheaper so it would gain in popularity until it forced the private insurers out of the market. The only thing needed would be to remove the chains conservatives have been hobbling Medicare with to make it look bad. Let them negotiate their drug prices with pharma like everyone else. Private health insurance is like private prisons. It's a stupid use of business models that kills people.

Transfer its funding to Medicare, drop the age limit, and you'll have bypassed the #1 obstacle to decent healthcare in the US, the medical insurance providers.

Not sure about the month, but it was probably 2004 or 2005. I think it was bloodhound, a math student at uni, that PMd Sayo with the prank. I don't remember the exact gag, but it was something along the lines of asking Where Do You Shop Most?, getting a bunch of replies, and then changing the title to Have You Ever Been Naked in Public?

I bet the Admins can check that. This reminds me of something one poster did, with the permission of staff at the time. He started a thread with one title, and got a bunch of responses, then had Sayonara^3 switch to a different title, which made all the posts turn out hilariously. It was sort of a one-off joke though, and was never repeated.

Got anything made from badgers or wolverines?

OK, give me a bag of fertilizer and a garden hose.

"I'm giving all your posts negative rep because you're on my LAWN!"

! Moderator Note Since the OP was a Russian Federation troll looking for people with hateful opinions just like this to stir up resentment, I'd say he achieved his goal. At SFN, we'll continue to discuss science, and we'll always try to do so with the utmost civility towards our fellow humans and all their myriad differences. Thread closed.

You may think I'm without compassion, but I have several quartz at mica mand. And massif amounts of evidence that suggests rock is non-living, despite what that awesome Who song says.

Right, so homosexuality is natural. We're also seeing that sexual orientation happens along a spectrum of possibilities, and while heterosexuality may be the most common, it doesn't make any other preference abnormal. Iirc, I think there are more people who identify as non-heterosexual than there are people who are left-handed. Lefties may be different, but most wouldn't call them abnormal. So maybe normal isn't the best word either.

Do you live by bread alone?

It determined their perception of the wine's taste, I would say instead (since the taste doesn't actually change based on price). But you don't know the expertise of "a group of participants". If they weren't knowledgeable about wines, then the price of a bottle might be more significant information for them than their own amateur tastes. Hypnotherapy has always seemed like a voluntary placebo to me. If you think it will curb your appetite or make you able to shun cigarettes, then the probability it will increases. It can be a good tool. The questionable part to me in this article is assuming hypnotherapy can "bypass" and "empower" the participant, especially wrt critical thought. I'll have to think about the efficacy of being able to see the word "blue" and say "red" after my hypnotized mind turns "blue" into nonsense. The whole concept of bypassing critical thinking to accept a suggestion without question is antithetical to what I've been studying for the last decade or so.

Wow. Don't you think he was talking about the "thoughtful discussion" part being too vague to declare beecees posts NOT on-topic? Why must you be so willfully obtuse, et pet?

This reasoning is faulty and dangerous for you, since it lets you fill in the gaps in your knowledge with your feelings. Since we have numerous examples of homosexuality in nature, it's unnatural to expect there to be a right or wrong "mentality" concerning the subject. It's clear that nature has no problem with the diversity in sexual orientation we see in animals (including humans). What YOU are suggesting is unnatural based on observation. Yes it does, unless you start using a different term to describe it. "In the wild" is about as natural as it gets, by definition.

! Moderator Note Thread closed due to lack of clarity. If you want to discuss something, especially something non-mainstream, you waste everyone's time being vague and unhelpful about it.

You're using the term "unnatural" to mean "I don't like it", instead of the most widely accepted definition "as it occurs in nature". You could say it's not "normal", but you can't say it's unnatural. Do you consider humans in general to be outside of nature? You're also requiring sex to produce offspring, and that's only one of its processes. Are you claiming that heterosexual couples who don't have kids are "unnatural"?

This is such a ludicrous claim that I suspect it's something you've heard but don't understand, or choose to misunderstand as part of a larger, anti-science agenda. The fact that you're criticizing Darwin suggests you misunderstand evolution, and the theory that explains it. Of course common descent has many practical uses in applied biology. This knowledge guides mainstream practice and keeps scientists from accepting bad hypotheses. The fossil records are understandable because we understand common descent. Is this another version of the creationist macro vs micro argument? Are you claiming (as a non-expert) that you understand the differences between applied science and theoretical science? I'll make a prediction now and say you don't (only partly because you reference Darwin).

In this case, you're using a definition of "unnatural" that includes perfectly natural animals. Perhaps this is why you're confused about homosexuality. You don't like it personally, so you want to make it unnatural for every creature, possibly? If you see this as a problem (I do), this is where you should begin. Confirmation bias can really mess up a good worldview.