Phi for All

Why am *I* paying higher medical insurance premiums because *you* want to ingest an artificial substance that has been proven to ruin your health? Until I start getting the "non-trans fat users discount" I think you are harming me with your selfish ignorance and insistence on your right to be stupid (absolutely no ad hom intended ). I agree with Sisyphus though. Requiring restaurants to list nutritional information is a better solution. I can see both sides of this argument and this seems to be the most logical next step.

Because partially hydrogenated fats are an artificial additive to normal food to increase it's shelf life. When other artificial means of enhancing food have been found to be unhealthy we've had no problem justifying their removal. I don't see this as trampling our freedoms. I see this as identifying the deleterious effects of an experiment and taking steps to correct it. Freshness will have to be addressed in a way that doesn't cause so many problems. It's not right that manufacturers get to save money on distribution at the cost of our health. If the trans fats can't be made healthier then they should be removed.

Don't know that it affects seminal production, but it will certainly increase the amount of leaping about screaming bloody murder you do in a day. Try to wash your hands before smacking yourself in the forehead since you don't want it in your eyes either.

I know laundry detergent and dishwasher detergent don't create as many suds because they are in closed machinery. Hand-wash liquid dish detergent seems to encourage lots of bubbles, so that may be harder to rinse out of clothes. There may be sanitizers in the dish soap that isn't in your laundry detergent. I think your murky water is probably what happens in the washing machine with every colored load. Colorfast is just a useful term for marketing, and all colored clothes are going to fade a bit with every wash, otherwise you'd buy clothes less often. Adults aren't as hard on clothes so they usually fade and *look* old long before you're actually wearing holes in them.

True? In my house, this is called "foreplay". Oh well. I think it's experiment time. Remember the video camera and take lots of notes.

Most other logical fallacies have valid applications, such as the Slippery Slope you mentioned. Post hoc ergo propter hoc (before this, therefore because of this), another common fallacy, is very often true (you walked into the room and it started to stink so it must be you :D ). What is wrong about logical fallacies is to accept the reasoning behind them as sound in every case. While it is a Slippery Slope to expect burning one book to lead to the burning of other books and yet it is actually quite likely to happen that way, it is a mistake to assume that one bad action will *always* lead to a similar inevitable bad end. Strawman, however, always allows one to demolish an argument and thus seem like the victor in a debate. The fact that it wasn't the argument in question is very often lost during the victory celebration. Ad hominem is another fallacy that is wrong in just about every case, which is why we warn for Flaming and the like. There's no reason to call someone naive for voicing a certain argument. Showing why the argument is naive is a much firmer stance.

Right. The violation is for *Persistent* Strawman. It's hefty because people who rely on the use of this particular fallacy derail many threads and force others to defend everything but the original argument. Strawman is also one of the few logical fallacies that is almost always wrong to use in an argument.

I see this as being the big stumbling block. While a good design can take care of the debris problem, the erosive effects of water and the corrosive effects of salt water are difficult to overcome. Ceramics might be the key here, since gold plating wouldn't be prudent.

Happy Birthday! Welcome back! Don't be such a stranger!

I make it a point never to rely on evolution. It's never helped me personally and that makes me heritable, if you get my drift. And for me, natural selection means having three kinds of organic apples available at the supermarket.

This is because Nevada is very familiar with how easy computers without verification can be set to tamper with the odds. Banks, unlike the voting public, are smart enough to require paper receipt printouts.

Doing stupid things is always more poetic with an audience, and more so when the audience is made up of friends who won't let you forget. My oldest friend still tells the story about me pulling out of a drive-in movie without removing the speaker from my window. Did I rip the speaker from the post like so many others have done? No, the speaker broke out my car window and showered all four of us with safety glass.

While I'm collating all my stupid things, I'll tell one about a total stranger this story reminded me about. At a certain Colorado ski slope one balmy May they had a contest where they dug a large pit at the foot of one slope and let it fill with icy runoff water and then challenged skiers to come downhill and try to ski across without falling in. One young lady, wearing a tube top and denim shorts, didn't keep the tips of her skis up and hit that icy pit full speed face-first. When she popped up out of the water her tube top was around her waist. She was embarassed about her little dive but didn't realize she was topless in front of several hundred spectators. As she slogged through the waist-deep water to climb out her friend was yelling, "Your top! Your top!" The young exhibitionist misunderstood, thinking she had made it farther across than anybody else, and proceeded to raise both arms above her head in an "I'm number one!" victory gesture, misinterpreting the roar of applause untill she got to the edge and finally looked down. Her friend had grabbed one hand to help her out but the young woman suddenly decided she wanted to get back in under the water to correct her wardrobe. She accidentally pulled her friend in with her to complete the comedy of errors.

It is inconceivable to me that the US would pay for a system that is so easily corruptible and leaves no evidence of tampering. Equally inconceivable is the fact that affordable solutions providing a paper check to assure voters that their ballot was entered correctly have all been swept under the rug. With so much at stake, and with so much past history of questionable practices, why is the opposition argument, which boils down to "Just because someone CAN tamper with the vote doesn't mean they DID tamper with the vote", allowed to continue thwarting attempts at fixing the system? When the Diebold machines were first introduced I started voting by absentee ballot because I don't trust Diebold (mostly because of the partisan bias of their CEO, as swansont points out). Then I found out that my absentee ballot was entered into the same Diebold system and was almost equally as insecure as the machines used on election day. * frustrated sigh *

Never! She's what keeps me drooling.

Reminds me of Kathy Bates' great scene in Fried Green Tomatoes: (Evelyn Couch has patiently waited for a parking spot, only to have a couple of girls in a sub-compact steal it from her) Evelyn: “Hey! I was waiting for that spot!” Girl #1: “Face it, lady, we’re younger and faster!“ (Evelyn snarls. She rear-ends the girls’ car a bunch of times, pushing it out of the space. The girls freak, screaming that she’s crazy and what the hell is she doing? Evelyn just smiles, looks to them and says:) Evelyn: “Face it, girls, I’m older and I have more insurance.”

Oh absolutely. That's probably why the old pick on the young, as a defensive gesture because we were just as inexperienced once and hate thinking about the inane things we did. Yeah, but my 20/20 hindsight beats your capable mind every time, kid. At my age, doing those three things plus drooling and complaining at the same time is a pretty impressive skill set.

I was going to say no because all the Brazilian women would like you better. But my wife says I can't play with them anyway, so welcome to Phiforallia!

I was going to say the UK but you all are leaving.... Can I emigrate to Phiforallia, where the roads are German, the food is Indian, the communication system is from the US, the women are Brazilian and the cost of living is comparable to Paraguay? All the property is beachfront and housekeeping is paid for by the government. Besides the rainforests and mountains, how is this different from your place?

You should post your pics of the Brazilian broccoli forests. And tell him about parachuting in with nothing but your sandals, a broken Swiss Army knife and a pot of Hollandaise.

We have a winner in this week's Hit-the-Nail-on-the-Head contest. Congrats, mike90, on some world-class hammering!

Rebiu, is this the course you wished to take for this thread? It seems a bit antithetical to putting a face on the residents of the Middle East. Back in post #59 you seemed to jump from putting a face on the Middle East to a critique of some of it's members. Should I close this one so you can start another?

Oooh, I had the same thought as gcol. Perhaps the colonel's recipe has an extra ingredient.

You can still snag links to threads when you Google specific information, but it would be better to have a higher ranking for searching "science forum".