Phi for All

Smart man. So... the dishwasher cleansed all your sins away? I don't get the connection to your daughter wearing jewelry. You might mention that, since 1978, Protestants only ascribe Biblical inerrancy to the original texts, which no longer exist. The idea that differing versions of the Bible are all inerrant is ridiculous. Was she an atheist when you married her?

Global warming is happening and whether we are causing it or not we need to adapt. I attended a recent Greenbuild convention and I can tell you that the construction industry in the US is moving rapidly towards more efficiency in energy management and materials. Costs are only going to go up and no one wants to get paid less so better ways of using materials and manpower are being found and implemented.

As an alternative, can you give the assignment back to the student without reporting it and say, "I need *your* work by tomorrow. Whoever wrote *this* is trying to get you into trouble for plagiarism"? Implying that someone else wrote the assignment lets the student save face and reminds him you're on top of things and won't tolerate copying the work of others. I think you want to be liked AND you want to be a good teacher. Doing what will make you popular isn't always what a good teacher would do. Be the good teacher and the right ones will like you. And they'll ALL respect you.

I've had just over four feet of snow in the last three weeks, the most accumulation for a similar timeframe in over 100 years. I hear the worst blizzard is coming next week. I'm getting tired of shoveling all this global warming.

My daughter's 2nd grade class is studying the problem. The mutant mosquitoes actually come from the planet Mercury so ecoli's socioeconomic factors are further complicated by interplanetary concerns. Fortunately, Rickey Ricotta is bringing his impressive robotic skills into the fight to halt the invasion. He's brave but I hope he knows what he's up against. The better part of valor is discretion.

I was wondering the same thing. Wouldn't it be like trying to hold your breath until you die? Wouldn't your cardiovascular system be overridden by the autonomic system if you tried to slow your heartbeat past a healthy limit?

Of course. I agree with the others, you'll do it but you'll feel like crap, especially if you eat crap. This is a marathon so treat it like one. Prepare some better food in advance, take breaks to eat and walk around a bit. Remember that no chair (or sofa) is rated for sitting on that long. Treat yourself right. Maybe ask the cute neighbor across the way to leave her blinds open so you'll have something to get up and refocus your eyes on. Very important if you'll be staring at a screen for a long time.

Death adder reminded me of Black Adder, so my medieval suggestion would be a set of poleyns, greaves, and sabatons. Probably find 'em used on Ebay.

A beautiful woman who loved to work in her vegetable garden couldn’t get her tomatoes to ripen. Admiring her neighbor’s garden, which had beautiful bright red tomatoes, she went over one day and asked him his secret. “It’s really quite simple,” the man explained. “Twice each day in the morning and in the evening I expose myself in front of the tomaotes and they turn red with embarrassment.” Desperate for the perfect garden, she tried his advice and exposed herself to her plants twice daily. Two weeks passed and her neighbor stopped by to check her progress. “So,” he asked, “Any luck with your tomatoes?” “No,” she replied excitedly, “but you should see the size of my cucumbers!!”

According to informed sources, Gerber baby food didn't sell well at first in Africa. Gerber used the same label with a smiling baby on it and in Africa, where many people can't read, the convention is to put a picture of what's inside on the label. Frank Perdue’s chicken slogan, “It takes a strong man to make a tender chicken” was translated into Spanish as, “It takes an aroused man to make a chicken affectionate”. The Dairy Association’s huge success with the campaign “Got Milk?” prompted them to expand advertising to Mexico. It was soon brought to their attention the Spanish translation read, “Are you lactating?”

A woman decided to have her portrait painted. She told the artist, “Please paint me with diamond rings, a diamond necklace, emerald bracelets, a ruby broach, and a gold Rolex.” “But you are not wearing any of those things,” he replied. “I know,” she said. “If I die before my husband and he remarries right away, I want his new wife to go crazy looking for the jewelry.”

I did have that backwards. It's also easier to go smaller since going bigger might cause a tire to bind in a wheel well if you changed by more than a couple of inches. The trade-off here is that you may not get a speeding ticket but your odometer is going to show more mileage if your tires are undersized. Less value when you go to sell.

I know a policeman who sent each of his kids off to college with a new set of tires on their car. They were oversized so his kids never realized they were going 5-10 mph slower than what the speedometer read. The kids never figured it out and they never got a speeding ticket either.

Great point. In science, a theory is not just an idea, the way most people use the term theory. An idea or thesis must move through a very rigorous process and must predict outcomes which others can duplicate through experimentation. Even when an idea has passed through this process and can at least admit the possibility of being considered false (if a giraffe gives natural birth to a poodle then evolution may be wrong), it is still considered only a theory, not a fact. In science a theory is the best you can get. Here's a great link to check out on what makes a new theory. I'll sticky this in Speculations.

Please don't be offended by being put in the Speculations forum. EVERYBODY who starts a thread to lay out their "new theory" is put here. If it isn't part of accepted, peer-reviewed scientific theory, it is speculation. It may prove to be a valid theory but not if all you're going to do is complain that it's not speculation. I hope you can see that new ideas *must* undergo the trial by fire that makes the scientific method so effective. This forum was created to act as an early step in running your theses past some very knowledgeable people including scientific professionals

I doubt we'll ever find out. Ku likes to start threads but rarely participates in them (out of 188 posts, 93 are thread starters). He's started some extremely interesting topics, don't get me wrong, but I like it when the OP participates a lot more. More substance, less speculation. How about it Ku, will you answer any of the questions your thread has raised?

I used to pour my views but I had to stop drinking. Happy New Year though, and stay safe if you're partying. I'm tired of you guys calling me from jail. Use those big brains everyone and don't drive if you pour.

People always get in trouble taking the Bible literally. Especially those old Mosaic laws. I think there were over 600 of them and they all had their purpose at the time. But nowadays its hard to see a reason why people should be stoned to death for blending fabrics like linen and wool. Severian's point was that this should not have come as a shock to someone who marreid and had a child with someone. The fact that it is a religious difference rather than political or otherwise is irrelevant. If this is Ku's natural daughter by his wife then a minimum of three or four years has gone by and it seems odd that her refusal to weaqr jewelry is coming up for the first time. What if your beliefs are that religion is bad, or that playing in the street is dangerous, should you not force those beliefs on your child? Children get many of their beliefs from their parents. I would be willing to bet that when you have children, you will try to force them away from any religious beliefs. How is that different? So any reason that *you* approve of is OK for *her* child? The OP may be questioning this behavior from a religious perspective, but Severian's post seemed to just ask why this behavior should come as a shock to Ku. Didn't he notice that she never wears jewelry? Didn't he ever try to buy her a necklace?

If you won't eat cows you won't get your bovine growth hormone....

I would grab the one closest to the train, figuring that at least I'd be giving the other child a tiny bit more time to get saved some other way. Edit: I was assuming one set of tracks, one train coming. You are by the side of the tracks and the children are on the tracks. You could absolutely save one just as easily as the other but absolutely not both. There shouldn't be any other assumptions, like you know one of them or one might be more dangerous for you.

This question seems loaded. There is nothing in it that could allow you to defend an answer of "no". If the child was in the path of falling rocks you could at least argue that it was natural, or God's will or something. A child on the train tracks is the result of negligence and I think most would consider it their unspoken duty to, whenever possible, protect any child that has escaped the vigilance of it's guardians from a lethal situation. What if there were two children on the tracks, one black and one white, both equidistant from where you are standing, and you can save one child but not both. Which one do you save?

Writing is communicating and it must be appropriate to the situation and be able to convey your meaning to your audience. If your whole audience is going to understand you if use text speak then it's probably appropriate. If it's for school or work you have to be a accurate as possible and that's where proper spelling insures that the most people will understand what you're writing. When you lower the bandwidth of your communication by writing something down instead of speaking directly you've got to do everyth8ing you can to make sure it's understood. They're *your* ideas so you should be interested in making sure as many people as possible *get it*.

I should have said "larger" when I said "large". I just think a person with a high tolerance for a substance has a higher chance of becoming addicted to it. This is opinion and I have no studies to back it up. Are we defining addiction as an habitual use or a compulsive use? Is two beers every night (without being inebriated) an addiction because of it's regularity? Or is an addict more of a gotta-have-it buzz seeker who has to exceed his tolerance levels regularly or become ill from withdrawl?

Part of it is a tolerance level issue. People who tend to get addicted to something have a large tolerance for it. Someone who takes one drag off a cigarette and doesn't want any more is hardly likely to become a daily smoker. The person who can't finish half a beer with out getting a woozy buzz probably won't keep drinking long enough to gain a tolerance for 10 times that much. Someone who *can* drink a fifth of scotch in an evening is more likely to become addicted. People who can tolerate a large amount of a certain poison will tend to ingest a large amount of that poison in order to maintain it's affect, furthering the addiction.

You have a great understanding of the way English is put together and you write well. Communicating this well will really help you learn at a faster pace. Don't try to learn it all at once. Knowledge is best in chunks you can take in and figure out how they fit with the rest of what you know. Picking something that interests you will insure that you stick with it and find a lot of practical uses for your knowledge. These days it's not *what you know* as much as *how you apply what you know* that counts. Ask questions and poke around with our Search function. Have fun, be welcome. Lebanon, right?