Phi for All

! Moderator Note darryl88, what is it you hope to discuss that is different from the other three threads you have open on the same subject in March and again in July, and on evolutionary synthesis earlier this month? Non Darwinian evolution theories Has evolution moved beyond neo-darwinism? Extended evolutionary synthesis It's always better to simply bump one thread than to start a whole new discussion. Are you asking anything diffferent in this new thread or should we just merge the threads so all the replies are in a single, easily found and understood place?

Hello sunshaker, and thanks for that envelope stuffed with all that lovely cash! Who needs math when you can obviously count so well already?! Welcome to SFN, and enjoy your parking space right outside the front door.

In 1958, corporate taxes accounted for 27% of the total revenue. Today, they account for less than 9%. When we extended the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy in 2010 because they argued that they would be able create more jobs, the wealthy created only one job for an American for every three jobs they created for foreign workers. And the top 200 companies in the US made 60% of their revenue in the last two years from foreign industry. Yet you say you support stronger immigration laws and are pro-business. Don't you think a business that enjoys an American corporate charter should be more interested in helping the US economy? Especially when they're using tax revenue that should have gone to the public coffers to hire foreign workers? I'm pro-business too but I think they have an obligation to do more to support the economy of their charter nation. Isn't that part of the Republican platform too? It was when I was born.

I'll buy that. If we could also eliminate campaign funding it would help. It's hard to think about these guys spending a billion dollars and not being obligated to SOMEONE. Media time and ad space should be part of the requirements for chartered use of the radio and TV frequencies as well as the internet and paper media. I'm sure there's some kind of government compliance for cable and satellite TV as well. Let's leverage some integrity. How does a security-conscious Republican justify the safety threat of being able to open an airplane window? Who needs a bomb when you can just flip a small latch? It makes the people who still insist on taking his meaning out of context idiots, imo. How does a pro-War-on-Drugs, tough-on-crime Republican justify giving smugglers a way to toss contraband out the windows to bypass Customs and TSA? Or were you hoping to privatize a few more prisons and add to the US corner on the world's prisoners market?

This type of thing is rife in the US. I'm not sure if it's our over-competitiveness, or the blatant "us vs them" attitude we have, or the strong, fear-based conservative message that many find so comforting (or a combination of all those things), but the Republican party in particular seems to have a great deal of people who will vote for a Republican even though he/she may oppose their basic platform issues. Why would a progressive Eisenhower Republican want someone like Mitt Romney as president? Why would a small government, not-the-world's-police Reagan Republican want a neoconservative warmonger like Lindsey Graham in the Senate? And if you just like your guns, but don't mind efforts to keep them out of the hands of known crazies, why is Obama such a horrific choice? Since it costs over a billion dollars to become POTUS now, it's clear that our politics are serving those who can afford to think in those terms, which seems to make them also think that tax revenues shouldn't be spent on the 47%+ of the nation who are just shoulders to stand on. If you really want to swim in a pool, you should find a rich person who has a private one and kiss their ass (skim the leaves off the top before you jump in, will you?). If you want to borrow a book, find someone who has a library in their mansion and be really nice to them (maybe dust those shelves while you're up there). And yes, you should pay a higher tax rate because we all need roads and airports, it's just that wealthy people need them more and we should be more grateful that they do. The mental disconnect in this country is SO BAD that half the country can't figure out why local government services are being cut to the bone while corporations are paying only a third of the tax rate they did in 1958 and millionaires are paying 14% while the dwindling middle class is paying 28% or more. It's SO BAD we donate money so idiots can spend a billion dollars to lie to us. It's SO BAD we can't build up enough steam to give the boot to a Congress that only ONE PERSON IN TEN approves of. Romney - No Pressure. I think he was talking about being able to get some fresh air to breathe into the cabin and let the smoke out. I think he made the mistake of talking before he thought things through, and then compounded his error by criticizing something he didn't understand. One could assume that first-class airline passengers don't have to listen to the flight attendants give the speech about, "In an emergency, should the cabin lose pressure...", and that Mitt must have at some time flown commercially, but I think this speaks more to how out of touch he is with what the majority of the people he wants to govern deal with in life. Not all of us have private corporate jets, or parents we can borrow college funds from.

Not at all. You're obviously not a religious right Republican. Are you a neo-conservative Republican? Or a Reagan Republican? An Eisenhower Republican? You meet so few Republicans these days that endorse scientific efforts, so I'm curious where you stand on the platform.

I think there's also a tendency for people to assume that scientists are so amazingly freaking smart that they might overlook the simplest explanations. Like maybe there's a type of light in the spectrum that we can't see that we don't even know to test for, and if we singled it out and used just that on a photovoltaic cell designed for it it would produce 98% efficient electricity. Or that special relativity is so complicated that it can't be right, and some kind of aether medium is much more simple and elegant as an explanation.

This is what you get when you have businessmen as politicians. CEOs often have no idea about what makes things work. Governing and leadership in a democracy often has conflicts of interest with commerce and modern business models. Maybe we need a separation of corporation and state.

People who need more education don't have the education to realize it. It's like a Catch- um, a Catch-... well, something that involves math.

Ooooh, I just thought of Romney's new campaign slogan: "ROMNEY - The No-Pressure Politician"

Airplane windows not opening is just another example of Big Government regulations stifling the US economy by not providing more opportunities for companies like Bain Capital to realize better returns on investments in medical holdings like Damon, Physio Control and Dade International.

I predict that, at his request of course, they'll install opening windows on Romney's plane. I think, at this point, the GOP would rather have Ryan at the top spot on the ticket anyway.

Forgive me, but this doesn't seem as mature as simply admitting you might have overstated your position. And I'm sorry that answering your question about generalizations seems like nitpicking to you. It's often difficult to admit when we might have been wr... wr... wro... incorrect.

Preserves how? Personally, I always thought pleroma was one of the most insidiously manipulative concepts in the Christian arsenal. The idea that you have to keep believing until the church thinks you're "full" seems, imo, incredibly ambiguous and prone to abuse by Christian authority. Christianity will live forever? More meaninglessness and hypocrisy from the folks who brought you eternal damnation for the sin of being human.

Let's get this thread onto a better footing. ThePolyphasicSleeper, I think it's great that you want to document your experiment and share it with us here. One mistake you're making is assuming your results in an assertive way that makes the science-minded folks here a bit nervous. You should try to remove as much of your own bias as possible, and stop making claims that don't have any evidence (yet?) to back them up. That said, I think you should tell us how you plan to test your hypothesis, how you're going to document the experiment. Many of the parameters you've been mentioning, like feeling great, restful sleep, these are very subjective and vary between individuals. How will you test if polyphasic patterns give you as much of what you need from sleep as normal patterns do? Do you plan on doing some crossword puzzles or something to see if mental focus is impaired? If you're comparing polyphasic sleep to normal sleep patterns, you need to document that too to use as a baseline for comparison. The experiment will be worthless if you don't use the right methodology in your study. Are there any suggestions that ThePolyphasicSleeper could use to make his experiment more successful?

For me, your original statement implied "always". The fittest will dominate (absolute) and being bigger is fitter (absolute). Also, it was pointed out more than once that you were making a pretty broad generalization: ... yet you chose not to respond to those posts and continued to defend the position, rather than amend it, until now.

No, they'd rather no one corrected the misinformation they've been repeating, so they call it flaming.

I think it's clear there is no "proof". If you could even come up with scientifically valid supportive evidence for the existence of any god, that would be more than anyone else has ever accomplished.

If we're talking about a MacGyver-type cobble-up, multiple layers of radiant barrier might help under some kind of dive suit. If you wrap multiple layers of the reflective material, you just need a layering of non-conductive material between each layer so the metal layers don't touch each other. This would help you retain body heat better, and maybe you could figure out some kind of electric long underwear underneath it all.

You can separate any sentences you want to reply to by either using quote sentence /unquote tags (with [ ] brackets around quote and /unquote), or you can highlight the sentence and then click the "Insert quotation" button on the Reply to Post menu bar (third button from the right). You know how it is when someone's wrong on the internet. I was a TBH fan as a kid but not for Buddy. Partly for Irene Ryan who played Granny Clampett (OMG she was hilarious), mostly for Ellie May (any scene with her down by the "cement pond" was a hit with teenage boys).

The original guy ended up playing Jed Clampett, the patriarch of The Beverly Hillbillies, one of the most successful and highly rated TV sitcoms of all time.

Really? I heard he became a millionaire and moved to Beverly Hills.

The beginning of an investigation, not a methodology. Not the beginning of a methodology, the beginning of an investigation. An investigation is what we're beginning, as opposed to a methodology like you're misreading it to be. We can start an investigation at an arbitrary place as long as the methodology we use is sound. Using sound methodology throughout, where we begin an investigation can be chosen arbitrarily. False dilemma. You're assuming the direction is wrong simply because it was chosen arbitrarily. This really isn't throwing darts like you seem to think. If you're proposing an hypothesis, chances are you won't have a lot of choices where to start your investigation (indeed, you may have only one place to start). If there are multiple good places to start, why do you object to the starting place being chosen arbitrarily? I think you either have an overly rigid concept of the scientific method, or you misunderstand the idea of choosing from multiple, equally sufficient starting points by whim or personal preference. I think this point has been belabored into senselessness. The starting point to any scientific investigation should be in context to the investigation itself, and will most likely vary depending on the phenomena involved.

I agree. If platinum mined on Earth sells for $1500 an ounce, any platinum mined from an asteroid and brought back down to Earth is going to cost a great deal more. Unless it somehow has extra properties that Earth platinum doesn't have, why pay extra for it? And if you're not going to charge more for it, why bother to go offworld for it? The only profitable scenario I see for bringing it back to Earth will be a short-term one. I can see people paying more for jewelry or art made from "alien metals", but only until increased supply diluted the exotic nature of the purchase.

Again, can you provide some links to the studies you're referring to? I don't know of any psychology that puts reproduction above gratification. While evolution inevitably favors those who pass their genes along to the next generation, most individuals just have sex because it feels good. That seems completely valid to me, psychologically. Seriously? Most studies I've seen involving humans don't mention the drive to procreate as the main reason to have sex. Even in an evolutionary sense, sexual drives fulfill many other functions where the rewards are much more short-term. It's not as simple as just failing to put the desire there. Think of it like any physical system. It's easier to divert a force away from a certain area than it is to dam it up completely, or just fail to provide a force. This is especially true with something as strong as sexual desire. If you have a river that's going through an area you wish to protect, it's easier and cheaper to redirect the flow of water around the area than to remove the lake that feeds the river. And damming the river creates its own problems (not a perfect analogy, but then none are). I fail to see what you're arguing about here. You seem to suggest that homosexual humans are not valid members of the species because they can't procreate in the exact same way heterosexuals do. Yet you acknowledge that it's perfectly possible and acceptable for homosexuals to use other advantages humans have in terms of intelligence, cooperation, superior communications and tool use to work around the limitations of homosexual reproduction. It seems like you're making the parameters too rigid in order to point out a problem that really doesn't exist. As a minor side note, I object to your use of the term "Darwinian psychology". Evolutionary theory has advanced a great deal in the last 150+ years. Calling it "Darwinian" anything seems like an attempt to chain it to a time when it wasn't as deeply understood. You don't see relativity being referred to as "Einsteinian physics" or big bang as "Lemaitrian cosmology", so why insist evolution be associated only with its earliest understanding?