Phi for All

What makes "the wild" a more accelerated place for evolution to take place in? There's no set pace for evolution. Nothing is racing to become a particular "thing". Our environment and lifestyle don't remove us from the effects of passing along our genes to our offspring, no matter how unnatural you may consider humans to be.

I think you're right. Partly guilt at not being perfect, but mostly concern for your kids even now, before they're born. You'll make a great parent.

I don't know. One is a creamy, sensual delight that never fails to satisfy when you pop one in your mouth, and the other is made of chocolate.

But that has NOTHING to do with evolution. The theory doesn't address the origin of life at all.

So the joke is...? How about, "If you want big mussels, you have to work hard and suck it up!" Or, "She wanted to be a big star, but ran out of clams and ended up dancing on a pole."

! Moderator Note Moved, from Evolution, Morphology & Exobiology since evolution is a mainstream theory that has mountains of evidence to support it, to Religion. None of the claims in this sentence are remotely correct, so the question at the end of it is pointless. A theory is as strong as it gets in science, and evolution is as strong as any theory gets. You're incredibly misinformed, nothing personal. If you don't understand evolution, aren't you instead a follower of some religion? Don't religions rely on supernatural powers? Or are you saying you don't believe in either?

Let's think this through. You feel guilty that one or more of your potential children may inherit a defect from you that is treatable and has no impact on a happy lifestyle. Would you end up feeling more guilty someday that you let a remote possibility like this stop you from bringing any children into this world? Have an imaginary conversation with your unborn child, ask them what they think of your decision to protect them from what you've gone through by not having them in the first place. I understand that you feel less than perfect, but I think you're overreacting. Someone who cares this much about it should have a family.

! Moderator Note We've let this thread go too far towards preaching and soapboxing, and now it's just opinionated claims. Nine pages, it seems everything's that could be said from an objective stance has been said. Thread closed,

So true. OPs rarely understand that replies are trying to be helpful, that the best thing we could ever do for them is to show them where flaws are messing up their wonderful idea. Perhaps it's partially because most speculative posters aren't professionals, and don't understand that all ideas are wonderful (if only because you're using your brain) but only a small few are right.

If we've allowed a thread to get to this point, I can't imagine that someone wouldn't have given an acceptable argument against stringing words together in non-mainstream ways. As long as the poster has had others mention it, I don't see anything wrong with pointing out more infractions. Speculations seems to draw people who want to bounce ideas off the membership, while most of the membership wants something more than just guessing, opinion, and wishful thinking. We don't want to be the place where you can baselessly claim your opinions might be the next huge breakthrough in science. We'd like to be the place where new ideas can be discussed productively for everyone. OPs generally want people to grab their concept and run with it, while responders want an idea to be grounded in basic science and supported by evidence, with no obvious conflicts with reality. It's all about encouraging discussion to be fruitful.

IIRC, we've requested that of the Admins, and the software wasn't capable of it. We'll ask again, maybe an update has solved this.

I think the real issue here is that, for science discussion purposes, we need to have more than just, "This is nonsense, I'm calling a spade a spade". I think an honest and slightly more in-depth response is appreciated. We're not looking for social sensitivity here, we're looking to have productive discussions. That usually requires a more thorough "calling out" or "calling spade". I think we can be honest AND explain more fully why an idea is wrong, no tippy-toe, no ridicule, no multiple pages of misunderstanding.

The ONLY evidence I have, really, is an observed desire to make their ideas known. It is an assumption that stringing together important-sounding words is an attempt to seem more knowledgeable, as well as trying to take the idea in their head and make it understandable to others. I do base some of this on personal incredulity that someone would join a science discussion forum and purposefully try to sound so dodgy. It's human nature to try to fit in, and I think that's what word salad posts attempt to do. I suppose there is a brand of troll out there who tries to see how far they can get professionals to take them seriously, but I think most of our speculators just think they've found an easy fix that everybody else has missed all these years. I think this is in reference to posts where the accusations of trolling or crackpottery are the ONLY content in the post. These are the posts that don't produce anything effective. Calling a spade a spade is one of those sound-bytes that seems perfectly logical, but begs the question that this is always appropriate.

Jackson could do it. And if they adopted the Game of Thrones strategy, whereby one doesn't mess around with an already popular story too much, it would probably be wildly successful.

We make an assumption here that people who concoct a word salad post aren't knowingly doing it. They actually think the words make sense the way they've put them together. They don't know enough to understand that they don't know enough to begin with. So just posting "word salad" as a response doesn't further the conversation, doesn't help the poster understand why common terminology is important. I think the shorthand isn't as constructive a criticism as we'd like. The results are usually more requests for clarification, so the longer version is probably more efficient anyway. We've tried NOT having a religion section, but people end up bringing the subject up anyway. Our religion section is an effective way to make sure all those posts stay in an area you don't have to visit if you don't want to. As always, report any posts that bring up religion in a mainstream science section.

Sci-fi TV has to be hard, when you think about it. It's almost guaranteed to fail. The people who love the genre want even more geekiness and hardcore, accurate science, but as soon as the intellectual offering goes up, general audience numbers start dropping.

Congratulations, tar, that's pretty awesome. Temptation is everywhere as long as smoking is an option. Isn't it weird how your stepmom chose something she knew would only please her temporarily but end up being worse for her than the trauma she's trying to cope with, with the guilt included? We vastly underestimate our own ability to deal with difficult situations. We remember the dire situations but forget how brilliantly and quickly we dealt with them.

Since you can't roll down the windshield and the back window, the idea is to make the air move around the car as efficiently as possible, as it moves forward. Opening windows on the side creates drag, even if wind is coming from that direction. I recall reading about this in regard to fuel efficiency, and whether it's better to roll the windows down to cool the car or leave them up and use the air conditioning. It's better at low speeds to leave the windows down, but at about 45-50 mph the drag reduces fuel efficiency, and the faster you go with the windows down, the worse your mileage gets.

Depending on the vehicle, high winds can cause the body to lift slightly, reducing friction on the tires. I don't think speeding up helps that at all. And with all the dangers from other vehicles and debris during high wind, I think slowing down is always your best option. Explain why rolling the windows down is an obvious choice, please. It seems like you'd just be creating more drag on the vehicle.

You're probably peeling the onion a bit too much. Stick with the outer layer when you can, and let your audience ask for a more in-depth answer if they're interested. That's been my experience. People like to learn in small chunks, but we tend to teach by tossing out everything we know. Maybe try spoon-feeding to keep them interested, instead of just pouring it all in a bowl and letting your pets decide how much to eat. [/food analogies]

This is the part most people don't get. They judge others based on very little information, but hate it when such superficial judgments are made on them. It's a part of our behavior that serves an important purpose, being able to make quick judgments on the fly about various people and situations, but I think it's not the best behavior if you apply it to people you'll be spending more than a little time with. For people you work with, I think it's essential to be willing to dig deeper and learn more about them. And if you aren't willing to do that, then you should at least give up judging them based on inadequate data.

Perhaps after the thank you, one could let the person know how their kindness affected the world. "We were strangers until you fixed that today, and I want you to know I'm going to pay forward the kindness you've shown me."

Having known you for 10 years now, I can safely assert that any field you've chosen to share this ideal with is going to be made better because of it. Thank you for your efforts on behalf of all of us. It's not the size of our individual contributions that counts in this context, but rather the cooperative accumulation of beneficial works that increase human knowledge of the real world, imo. As such, it's difficult to say how the seemingly unimportant little bits might benefit the whole, but that they eventually will seems almost certain.

I think it's a bad coping mechanism. It's not easy dealing with people, but it's usually vastly more rewarding than not. It's well worth the effort and I think it's a big mistake not to make the investment by claiming they're ALWAYS interested in triviality, or that their life's goal is to win a video game. That's not honest, and relationships need quite a bit of that.

Where did I say you're "supposed to be as happy"? And the part about beating level 100 being "their life goal" is also new information. Are you making strawmen? The sheer number of significant things below "curing cancer" is fairly staggering, and may not include video games at all. The point is, the accomplishment may not be something you care about, but the person who accomplished it is. Or should be.