Phi for All

Maybe your fatbergs are spilling out into the streets! I've been using a spray bottle mixture of equal parts warm water and white vinegar for greasy stuff. Maybe soak the chain first, and scrub off using some bicarb as an abrasive?

I would wager more children have been conceived after "happy hour" than after "intelligent hour". Bars don't have Jeopardy playing on the TVs for a reason.

You know you're a true geek when you fake amnesia to violate the restraining order Summer Glau has out on you.

You've merely set up a situation where you create the very problem you're criticizing. If you don't ask me about god(s), I won't have to tell you about my non-belief in them and you won't consider me to be religious. Ironically, in your perspective, you can tell me all about how religious you are, but if I tell you more than once that I don't believe in god(s) you're going to label me as religious.

You know you're a geek when you can at least be glad one more person won't be using the word "supposably" ever again, even if it means Summer Glau won't be having sex with you behind the Klingon makeup booth at Comic-Con.

So you're maintaining that Newt Gingrich is NOT a power to be reckoned with in the Republican party because coming in third in the last presidential primary doesn't make him a key contender in your opinion? And that, in any case, it's all about party loyalty and not accomplishments for the party? Those are some pretty specific cherries you're picking there just to discredit Newt's support of the public healthcare option.

So as long as I don't talk to you about god(s), I can be atheistic while enjoying my non-religious lack of belief?! I guess I'm fine with that, so long as you promise not to engage me in such discussions in the future. You apparently have the power to make me religious just by asking me about religion.

For the alternative, I visualize every superhero EVER. Massive intelligence, but they can never be happy, forced always to watch those they love die, and so they never let themselves be vulnerable, never let their guards drop. You sacrifice happiness for the knowledge that justice is being done. It's like the minute you see a superhero start smiling, watch out for some industrial-strength woe to rain down on the brooding braniac. Stolen is such a harsh word. And some of those other words are just too damn big to understand.

I don't "believe" there isn't a god(s). I have a lack of belief in god(s), not a belief in a lack of god(s). I don't get together with other atheists to discuss our lack of belief; there's nothing to discuss, worship or otherwise get together about. Similarly, I don't get together with my non-stamp-collecting friends to discuss our lack of involvement in that hobby. I have done nothing to sponsor any kind of "movement" in either of those regards. I'm not sure why you would group me with any other atheist if I said I didn't believe in god(s). I don't group all theists together, or all those who claim to follow a specific religion. I think it's probably because, as you confirm above, you think not believing in god(s) is the same as "your beliefs are anti-God". Do I really have to be anti-stamp collecting if I don't collect stamps? Can't I just support your right to believe in something without sharing that belief myself? Can't I be bald without being forced to condemn those with hair?

! Moderator Note s1eep, you've made several assertions which you've haven't supported with any evidence. You've been asked several very specific questions which you've avoided as well. You need to provide support for your ideas if you're going to assert them so strongly. And finally, you can't accuse others of "pointless nullification" when they're reduced to refuting you for lack of evidence. You've been ducking the issue by simply claiming, "You've rarely responded to the underlying point behind my posts" or "There's so much you don't know" or even that it's not your fault people can't understand your perfect explanations because they're still using "words" and "definitions" that you don't want them to. In short, your explanations rely solely on you being already correct. You're asking others to assume that and you're getting defensive when they don't. Your style is to preach instead of discuss, and nobody else is here for that. You make your claims on how things are and then sneer when anyone attempts to question you. I'm not sure you can change. If you can, you are certainly welcome to stay and discuss. If all your threads are going to be like this one, you're going to waste a lot of your time. You should really think about starting a blog somewhere, where that style might attract those who just want to read and agree/disagree with you, rather than talk to you about your ideas. I'll leave this open for now, but the thread will be closed if it continues like this.

If there is a neutral position, an average state where I can be brilliantly intelligent but neither blissfully happy nor miserably unhappy, I might choose that. Or if I can be blissfully happy but neither brilliantly intelligent nor staggeringly stupid, that might also appeal. If I have to be miserably unhappy to have any kind of intelligence then it's not worth it. Overall though, if I'm already blissfully happy, my intelligence must not be a factor in that, so I suppose I could live super happy with even minimal intelligence. Only because you're so damn good-looking on top of it.

But no one said anything about hair "style", they mentioned hair "color". You're changing the analogy so you can refute it. You can't replace a god with science and call it religion. Scientists don't worship. And if atheists explain why they don't believe in god(s), it gets called preaching? You can't show that to anyone's satisfaction. Atheists will happily ignore gods if theists would stop mentioning them. Let me ask this: Is my non-collecting of stamps considered a hobby? Then why is my non-belief in god(s) considered a religion? Edit to add: Cross-posted with iNow. I should check to make sure we aren't wearing the same suit....

What are your parameters? How intelligent would I be, and if I pick happy, how unintelligent would I be? If I'm intelligent, how unhappy is not happy?

They're made of forked tungsten, anaconda cheap, imo.

Some psychologists say men are attracted to mates that remind them of their mothers. They represent the qualities of stability, caring and loving, with less emphasis on sex and kissing.

You know you're a geek when you only lose your temper about the big stuff, like the correct way to fold a frikkin' road map and why .7mm lead is for buck-toothed hill people.

There's a difference between "regeneration" and growing back tissue. Your chunk of your intestine will grow back, while an amputated arm won't. Unlike salamanders, we lose the kind of embryonic regeneration we had in the womb that would let us actually regenerate a lost limb, various tissues, bone and all. Apparently we do have all the right apparatus to induce embryonic cell regeneration just like the salamander, but we lose the ability shortly before birth. We're making strides towards being able to switch this back on. Imagine regrowing teeth your whole life.

I think we need to fund more research into exploring our own system first. We need to establish ways of tapping the potential resources we have nearby, and build facilities to make it more cost-effective to keep exploring further into space. We (hopefully) won't need another Earth-like planet for quite some time, which would be the main reason for interstellar travel, imo.

! Moderator Note Per SFN Rules 2.1c, "Slurs or prejudice against any group of people (or person) are prohibited". Please refrain from using language and arguments that attempt to pass judgement on groups of people. Also, you seem to proselytize a great deal about a religion you've made up so you can pass more sweeping judgements about everyone but yourself. This violates our rule 2.8 against preaching. It's impossible to have a fruitful discussion with someone who can't be wrong by his own definition. Please find a better way to communicate your arguments. Do NOT further derail this thread by discussing this modnote. If you have a problem with it, please report it.

AFAIK, rust isn't slowed down by an existing layer of rust. The rust on steel kind of flakes up, exposing the rest of the steel to more corrosion. Leaving the rust on merely covers up what's continuing to corrode. Best to keep it clean, and then you can see signs of further corrosion.

Sign #2 - The sea lion deaths mentioned are sea lion pups. I've read that the cause isn't known but radiation from Fukushima is not suspect, since it would cause more than just infant deaths. Sign #4 - In the linked report, this disease was reported in a single school of about 100 herring. That's hardly a good enough sampling for the claim "fish all along the west coast of Canada". Over-generalization and vividly misleading. Most of the other claims look like a regurgitation of actual facts that, when presented in a list like this that contains so much misinformation, make these facts look alarming. They aren't, really. Most of the levels of radiation and cesium-137 levels are completely within the ranges expected and pose no extraordinary short or long-term threats. It's alarmist to claim that 300 tons of contaminated water per day is still being poured into the ocean when the levels of that contamination are within safe limits and entirely expected. "Contamination" is one of those words that's qualitatively bad if it isn't quantified.

! Moderator Note For any diagnosis regarding supplemental medication, you are strongly urged to consult your doctor.

How hard would it be to unshackle Medicare, start treating it like a program we actually want to succeed, and then remove the age requirement? Has anyone seen a good economic study for that scenario?

If you look at thoughts as being influenced by the input from our senses, emotion is another filter we use like color, texture, smell and sound. We have quantitative sensory data (this object is rectangular, pink, plastic, lightweight and makes various stimulating noises) and that's being filtered also by emotions (the size feels good for my hand, I hate pink, afraid I'll scratch it, kind of cheap feeling, I love those ring tones). I agree with iNow, I think it would be very hard to remove any emotional judgements from your thoughts. They seem linked to how we make qualitative observations.

! Moderator Note Agreed.