Phi for All

Have you looked up the definition of whey yet?

Is this for homework? What is happening to change ice to water? How are the molecules being affected?

Only indirectly, through speaking tours, autographs and product endorsements. And apparently our services aren't even that useful. We don't even get to run our own awards anymore.

Caffeine isn't really a stimulant. That's not the way to look at it scientifically. It's an adenosine blocker. It keeps adenosine, which is responsible for that drowsy feeling you get when you remain stationary for a length of time (like before going to bed) from reaching the receptors it's normally released to. It also encourages the release of catecholamines, the fight-or-flight hormones. You get some dopamine that increases your ability to concentrate. You get some adrenaline which raises your heart rate to send more blood to the muscles and tells the liver to release some sugar. It's important to note the distinction, especially if you have a condition where neurotransmitters and hormones are imbalanced. This response doesn't sound like you actually read PhDwannabe's link to the Placebo Effect. I think this is correct. Some meals can actually make you feel less energetic, despite all the calories you just consumed. Digesting a heavier meal requires a lot of energy from the body. Fruits don't require much to digest. Hal. is right. Grapefruit is an actual food source, but caffeine obviously isn't the source of any energy. It just triggers hormones and neurotransmitters that in turn trigger other responses from the body.

Really good work. In the future, you should take the extra step to link to the direct studies rather than the biased sites that quote them (like d2l.org, which obviously has an agenda), just for the more pure citation. But this was very well presented. +1

Sex is much more basic than any ideology that gets enforced, though. It's at the core of our evolutionary drive. I think that's why we guard it more zealously than anything else that gets taught to children. But if that's the case, why do we reinforce that sex is bad all the time?. Our swear words are mostly genitals and sexual references. That's the best we can do to shock someone, is use a sex word to underscore our words. It's really horrible to be a fucker, isn't it? Or a cocksucker? Gosh, how horrible, someone who does oral sex. What I don't get is why someone tough has a lotta balls (which are quite fragile), but a weakling is called a pussy (which can take more punishment than anything I know).

I hate ivory towers. Elephants are endangered.

So you think when he says this: ... he means he wants an expert to do the math for him to show others? It reads more like The Light Barrier wants an expert who will understand when The Light Barrier shows the relation using theoretical mathematics. But you may be right. English is a funny thing.

I definitely think we've evolved into identifying things by the pattern we assign to them. We can't handle the flood of data we receive without a way to categorize, so we look for patterns the way we used to look for animals to hunt, or plants to gather. Input is transferred to pattern recognition to be sorted and stored. If it sounds like a duck and walks like a duck, it's a duck, next please! It's mostly things that don't fit a pattern that require our full attention.

Because it can never be truly consensual, for the reasons previously stated. Just as there are people who can handle drinking and driving better than others, it's still not an excuse to change the laws surrounding it. Where did anyone say that? Of course children have sexual feelings, and of course they can enjoy them. But to consent to adult sex with an adult requires knowledge and maturity I don't think the majority of children have. Change society, change the way we're raised, change the way we're educated, change the way we're taught to understand our responsibilities and then you can start talking about changing the consent laws. Historically, we did many things that we now no longer do. Most of it I call progress. Personally, I think as our society grew, parents could no longer keep tabs on who their children came in contact with. Back in the day, you probably knew everyone in your village. Now you don't have time to know everyone on your block, and those not nearly as well as when we were working alongside those we lived with. So we came up with laws to protect the kids. And we started telling them stories about predators and how sex was even dangerous with people you knew, to keep them from exploring before they were ready. Again, where is anyone saying "it just is wrong because I feel like it's wrong"? I think some very compelling evidence and logic is being used here, not just feelings and opinion. The laws in many countries make exception to consent with those within a few years of the minor's age. Believe me, I know where you're coming from. I remember reading Jean M. Auel's fictional books about Neanderthal and Cro Magnon life when I was younger (back in the Pleistocene) and they described a culture where the village elders observed all the growing kids and determined which ones were mature enough to be paired with an adult to teach them about "pleasures". It seemed like a very civilized, stress-free and fair way to make the transition into adulthood. But we're not in villages now. We don't even have that community culture going for us very much these days. So we make laws that cover worst case scenarios and prevent the worst of the abuses, or at least make them punishable when they're found out.

Please show us. Review shouold be done by multiple people. Unless you just want to test your mathematical model on an expert for feasibility, you should show your model and have lots of people try to falsify it. If it stands up, even more people will be interested. Who are "they"?

Their sanity was not at issue. Their existence was the only thing questioned. I love nitpicking others.

There is confirmation bias, where we prefer information that confirms our beliefs and tend not to check it for truth as much as that which doesn't fit our preconceptions.

And I made it quite clear that deceiving a 13-year-old into having sex with you, while making it seem consensual, is prosecutable in Spain, the country you mentioned as having the lowest age of consent. They certainly don't need to be justified cross-culturally. And there are plenty of reasons why laws against sex with children are justified. Abuse. Incest. And while no clinical numbers are available for psychological trauma, we do know that some children are traumatized by sex with adults. It frightens and disturbs them and creates unnatural expectations in some children. That's enough to warrant concern. And please don't trot out any more horse-shit straw men arguments equating pedophilia to homosexuality. That may play well in other forums but people hear know a logical fallacy when they see one. Your arguments all center on the consensual agreement, so let's just focus on that. True consent requires an informed decision. Children can't possibly comprehend all the nuances of sexuality, what it means in their society to be sexually active and sexually responsible. Further, consent requires the full ability to decline, and children are not equal in power to an adult, no matter what culture you refer to. There can be no true consensual sex between an adult and a child.

Corporate personhood gives corporations the rights of people, while their charters shelter the owners from liability. This is not the equality spoken of in the Bill of Rights. The equation is unbalanced. And you can't discount the fear of reprisal that disagreeing with the politics of the corporation that employs you can engender. It stifles the whole political process. I agree that the debate shouldn't be focused on "the wealthy". I also think some of the other demands should be back-burnered in favor of the major proposals. I've already seen a Tea Party video where they took apart an OWS supporter with a "Pay my college tuition!" poster. If nothing else, I hope this movement can stem the mega-corporation business practices, replace reasonable corporate restrictions and stop the influence of the lobbies. There's also the problem of bills that have extraneous spending attachments to them, that end up making bad laws out of good. Democrats won't vote for a Republican bill unless they get some stuff they want too, and vice versa. If we could fix the current two party deadlock that seems to foster this sort of "compromise", I think it would help.

Perhaps the leaves are thin so the plants in high-wind areas can tear easily to avoid wind damage to the branches, while those protected from the wind, and possibly the sun, retain their surface area to gather more sunlight.

I can't take it apart to measure it, but it makes my nano-pen go, "Click".

And the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 doesn't actually set the age, it merely withholds some funding from states that sell liquor to those under 21. To bring this idea more on-topic, only 15 states and DC ban underage drinking in the home. 17 states don't ban it at all if the minor is in a private setting. The remaining 18 states have some provision to allow it with family members in private. If the laws against sex with minors were treated similarly, the probability of abuse increases dramatically.

Good topic. Thanks for the idea. But you obviously joined to spam, so your link is gone. And it was stupid, because it didn't say anything about the engineering aspects of self-charging cars. It just talked about the Philippine auto industry. So, here is a better link to the Philippine car. And here is a link to some engineering Nissan is doing with self-charging cars that doesn't involve Tesla or magic. And pohcohmoh, if you didn't join just to spam, stick around for the discussion and prove me wrong.

Corporations started as very limited business instruments. They couldn't even own other businesses. They had strict limitations because the founding fathers knew how powerful a charter from the government could potentially be. After the civil war, businessmen argued for and received equal treatment for corporations that slaves got. Ever since that time, the regulations and restrictions against corporations have been eroded. It's always been small bits at a time, allowing them to do a little bit more, acquire a bit more. And now the biggest of them have so much control they can have their lobbies writing legislation for them in Congress. Not all corporations abuse their power. But even good ones are tempted when legislation in their favor is used by their competitors. You owe it to the stockholders to make as much profit as possible and grow your business. And the competition is fierce. I guess the way to look at it is this: what would you think of a person whose biggest priority in life was earning the most money possible? Extreme, but not so bad I guess. But the more he makes, the more he's able to influence lawmakers to change the laws that restrict him. Now that seems rather harsh. And now understand that this person holds the lives of thousands, maybe millions of people in his hands, all of whom are affected by the decisions he makes. And he may seem to care but his priority is still the money, always the bottom line. If you continue to let him do whatever it takes, some day he could abolish all the restrictions against his actions, and then he can do anything he wants, take anything he wants and kill anyone he wants to keep making more money. Would you still consider that person a person anymore? Or would he be a monster?

When she meets the serpent, she didn't know he was evil (and in fact, Genesis never says the serpent is Satan). The serpent didn't lie, he deceived. He said, "Ye shall not surely die, for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil." He hides the full consequences, he deceives, but, since Adam and Eve don't die, he didn't lie. God lied first when he told Adam, "Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die". When Eve touched it and didn't die, she might've thought eating it would be OK too. She probably didn't think God lied, since she didn't know about good and evil, but she took the next logical step and ate the fruit. THEN she knew that God lied, and told Adam about it. Adam has no concept of good and evil. He's told the consequence of touching the tree is death. Eve touches it and doesn't die. She eats the fruit, doesn't die and tells him she now has an understanding of good and evil, and urges him to eat also. If anything, Adam has been lied to by God and by Eve, since after eating she surely knows about good and evil. And God, knowing that Adam and Eve had no concept of good and evil, failed to warn anybody about the subtle serpent. How can your decision be called free-willed when it's based on so many lies and so little information? Your analogy would be more apt if I were told by the police that running a red light is punishable by death, but my wife says, "I ran a red light and didn't die because the guy on the radio said the government is covering up all the benefits of running red lights. Besides, the light is actually green now so go ahead."

How long? Except the knowledge of good and evil. Which made the subtle serpent's job much easier. In context, it could be argued that it wasn't "siding" (choosing to be on Satan's side) with the serpent to listen and act on what he was saying (as you said, they didn't even know he was Satan, or what Satan was). In fact, it's quite obvious that Eve didn't just suddenly decide to believe the serpent and defy God. Genesis 3:6 tells us the serpent found out what God had told Adam (who must have filled Eve in on the particulars) and said, "No, you won't die today if you touch it, it'll teach you about good and evil". Further, Genesis 3:6 tells us Eve probably had never seen the tree before at all. She looks at it and sees that it's got fruit to eat, and that it's really, really beautiful, and looks like the kind of tree that would make a person wise like the serpent said. Now Genesis doesn't tell us this part, but one can imagine that Eve, while really tempted, was still mindful of God saying that she would die if she even touched this tree, much less eat of it. So when she finally worked up the nerve to touch it (tree or fruit, whatever part she really touched first), it didn't kill her, which told her that the serpent was probably telling the truth, and that God was most certainly lying. If he was lying about touching the tree, it affected her free will by making it much easier to believe she wouldn't die from eating its fruit. But we have the capability of regaining the money for ourselves, or at least won't be held responsible for our father's debts. And we can have children who won't be responsible for their grandfather's or their father's debts. Adam's free will was not so free, it was manipulated by a lie he couldn't have known was a lie. He wasn't created perfectly, he had an extra rib that he could live without. He was created naked, which we later found out was evil, something to be ashamed of. He didn't have the knowledge of good and evil that perfect God had (even the serpent knew more than Adam did and the serpent certainly wasn't perfect). And if "perfection can not come from imperfection" how can "God set it up that we could gain that back"? This sounds like more omnipotence messing with our free will.

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The odds favor victimhood in most present day cultures. Children generally don't have the sophistication to determine the level of deceit being used upon them to get them to do things they might not want to do. And yes, the majority of children under their society's age of consent need to be talked into having sex, even if it's just to comply with their parents admonitions. The assumption may not be true, but neither is an assumption that they won't be traumatized. But within those cultures the laws set conditions by which adults may interact sexually with those even at the age of consent. If you deceive a 13-year-old Spaniard into having sex with you as an adult, the parents can have you charged with non-consensual sexual abuse. Further, just because different cultures have different ages of consent it's no basis for an argument that the younger ages should be universal, or that a higher age should be lowered. Taking away the laws doesn't necessarily take away any traumatization. You still have to deal with the fact that a child who doesn't want to have sex with an adult must be either coerced or tricked into it. Adults have undo influence over children, which makes any type of reasoning with them about consensual sex a bit suspect. You're describing an ideal event as an argument for a generalized shift in the way society treats an historically problematic situation. Also, if you're thinking this would be some kind of best scenario learning experience for the child, so they wouldn't have to learn about sex from an equally inexperienced peer, the fact that you've had a lot of sex doesn't necessarily make you good at it, or make you a good teacher for young children.

I hate pinup posters. They work loose, you re-pin it in a different hole but it's never quite right again, eventually you have too many holes and need to spackle and repaint, the paint never matches unless you do the whole wall, then THAT wall looks weird so you have to redo the whole room. All for some self-centered celebeauty who probably thinks an equation is an ugly Chinese person.