Phi for All

If you want to be taken seriously here, you will avoid generalities like this whenever possible.

Showing your friend how much you care is different than showing her how worried you are about her. You fear that the hospital will make her more depressed, so if you're allowed to visit, visit often. Just being there for her will make the hospital seem less like the hospital. We often feel frustrated when we can't help a friend. Your friend may need to help herself out of this problem in order for the cure to be long term. She's getting help from the right people, and I'm sure they want to place her on different meds and do some observation to make sure they've got it right. Besides that, the next best thing your friend has going for her is a friend like you. You can't fix her, that's not your job. Your job is just being a friend, showing her that she is loved and that she doesn't have to go through this alone.

As far as I'm concerned, this is an OCD thing. The victim lowers his nutrition intake and finds he likes the "lanky look", so he lowers it some more, hoping for a lankier look. He keeps obsessing about his lanky look until there is a major health problem. By this same logic, if two aspirin cures your headache in an hour, twenty aspirin should cure things in about three minutes.

It IS obligatory for the staff here, Cathy Pa, and when ID threads use bad science it is required that we refute it. As Mokele pointed out, and which you refuse to acknowledge, allowing misinformation to go unchallenged is a tacit acceptance. We feel an obligation to promote good science here (imagine that!). When each thread uses the same bad science to argue it's point, and requires us to repeat ourselves ad nauseam, it becomes an excercise in frustration. It is NOT an open-minded discussion we are objecting to. It is the tactics that ID proponents are using for their agenda to bring religion into the science classes. IDers spout inaccuracies, forcing the scientific community to refute them, then claim there is a controversy and that schools should teach the controversy. And here at the forum, if you could be bothered to read the many ID discussions we have already had, you would see that much effort has been expended and no progress has been made to bring ID into acceptance with science. ID is creationism, and science has accepted theories that put the world much older than 6000 years. Good scientists will retain a small skepticism about all theories, and the staff here would probably all agree that there is a miniscule possibility that an omnipotent being magically poofed the world into existence 600 years ago. But we spend an inordinate amount of time refuting that miniscule possibility. It's just that simple. Tiny chance, huge burden. Sorry you can't understand why our time is limited, and why it frustrates us to spend half that time on something that really is outside the purpose of this forum.

I happen to be one of them. I have very deep spiritual beliefs. But the part that relies on faith is outside the purview of science. Ah, now I get it, you think we think we're smarter than you, and that science knows everything. I think it will be tough to convince you that's not the case. You've demonstrated a determined lack of willingness to understand the very fundamental points we're trying to raise here. In this case, I don't think you do "get it". Try this: Religion = Good; Science = Good; Religion trying to use Science to prove itself = Not Good; Science trying to disprove Religion = also Not Good. Science can't be what you are asking it to be and possibly that is where religion takes over. But please don't ask science to work outside of observable, demonstrable, testable phenomena. That's just not what science is for. Now I know you don't get it, Cathy Pa. You're calling us phoney's while you sit there with your fingers in your ears, screaming "LA LA LA LA!" and posting insults about Mokele's mother and then complaining when you're warned about it. To me, since I'm quite a bit older than you, you seem like the petulant sixteen-year-old. Please take this in the proper spirit. Have a Happy Thanksgiving and enjoy your family.

It's one thing to ask questions about destructive behavior, that's encouraged. It's completely different to advocate those behaviors on a public forum, that's against our policies.

Why is it these things have to be explained in every new thread? Does no one retain ANYTHING from reading other threads? Exactly. The scientific method is very exacting and rigorous about what constitutes a theory. Things that aren't testable by this method are NOT science. They are free to be religion, but should not masquerade as science. If religion wanted to claim that everyone must read the Bible or face a jail sentence, would you let religion masquerade as civil law? Omnipotence is one of the claims that puts most religions outside the purview of science. Unobservability and lack of falsifiability are others. People are free to have their beliefs, but they are not free to label them as science. According to the religious community, the religious community. According to science, NOT science. Some of the discussions of alternate realities and wormholes (and other "nonsense" that may seem counterintuitive to you) use parts of actual scientific theories to base their theses on. Religious discussions, while stimulating and interesting, do not. There is no theory that there is such a thing as God, not with the kinds of testing and evidence science requires of a true theory. Seriously, if you want a religious discussion, there are plenty of better places on the web to get one. We would like to be known as a place where science has priority. I'm very sorry you view that as arrogance.

I think we're very close to that right now. If the people who argue in favor of ID would acknowledge any of the many points raised about it's lack of scientific backing, or stop misrepresenting accepted theories over and over to make their cases, or approach their claims in a manner that hasn't been refuted time and time again, I think you could trust us to be objective and patient in our approach. In the US, a company called Verizon Wireless has commercials where a man with a cell phone travels all over, going to every out-of-the-way section of the country, making sure Verizon's service range is adequate. He keeps asking into his phone, "Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now?" With regard to the ID threads, the staff here at SFN has begun to feel like the poor slob at the other end of the phone whose job it is to sit there day after day, hour after hour, and give the same answer, "Yes. Yes. Yes." Your point is taken and respected. Suggestions?

I'm not as drunk as thinkle peep!

I want you to know before you read this that I feel very sad that you would treat yourself this way. It actually makes me ache that you think anorexia is cool or that the people you call friends would reject you if you weren't emaciated. Others will give you physiological advice about starving yourself which I really hope you will listen to. I will offer only this: without proper nutrition, you will never realize what a misadventure this kind of experimentation is. You are thinking only of your body when you should be concerned with your brain. Without those nutrients, you are compromising your judgment, learning and motivation systems. Your cognitive functions will suffer. Your emotions will be unstable. You will soon be too stupid to realize how stupid you are being. I'm sure you've encountered someone who was too drunk or stoned to function rationally. Isn't it always amazing that the guy who can barely walk thinks he is able to drive a car? They're always just FINE, aren't they? This is the kind of brain dysfunction you can look forward to from voluntary starvation. Before you risk neurological disease I beg you to reconsider.

Funny you should put it like this. I usually use analogies because I'm unsure if the connection I'm trying to make with my audience is readily obvious. If I'm explaining a position and get a blank stare, or if I'm writing about something and assume the readership will be composed of those who understand the position and those who won't (and I'm cursed with continually underestimating my readership), I will resort to analogy. I'm not really trying to develop isomorphy between two things as much as clarifying the former by using the latter. It's like trying to explain evolution to a farmer by using the analogy of plowing and planting his fields in order to make it clearer. Ooops! There I go again....

I don't know about the traumatic event part. I think it's more a case of the high-tolerance individual looking for escape and it just keeps taking more and more poison-of-choice over a period of time until dangerously high levels of toxins force an adverse reaction of some sort.

For me, Tarkus is sunny and mild, with the first side being sunny and brilliant, and the flip side too mild and uninteresting (except for Emerson's keyboarding which is NEVER dull). It's almost like they rushed too much of the second side to release the album on time. I usually like Lake's voice and lyrics over his guitar playing, but not on Tarkus' filp side. But back to the weather, is it hot in here, or is it ELP?

From a non-medical standpoint, I don't think you can control alcoholism through diet or amino acid supplementation. Affecting it is almost certainly probable, however. I'm not a big fan of classifying alcoholism as a disease in the first place. I think it's more a matter of high tolerance levels coupled with a psychological affinity for escapism. How many diseases can be cured by NOT drinking something? Do you consider chain smoking a disease?

It would be a cold day in Hell before I'd disagree with you about Trilogy. You may think I'm either balmy or partly cloudy, but I would put Brain Salad Surgery in second place.

Speaking of weather in the UK, which is your favorite ELP album?

Low 60s for Denver through Thanksgiving. We've only had one snow that stuck to the ground in the city, tons of snow for skiers in the mountains. I like your sig, ecoli. I was a huge ELP fan back in high school (when the P in ELP was for Palmer, LPs were groovy and CDs hadn't been dreamed of yet).

OK, if you've still got at least one toe on the board over which you are trying to go, you might spend your relocation time and money trying to get a job that reduces or eliminates your commute. You can't escape the need for oil or products made using oil completely, but you can learn to be a citizen instead of just a consumer. While learning to be self-sufficient is a good thing, going all Grizzly Adams may be getting ahead of yourself. Several years ago I invented Instant Water as a powdered mix and I'd be happy to sell some to anyone here. It's portable, easy to use and sounds like the perfect solution here. You just put the powder in a clean cup and add fresh water. Voilà!

WARNING: Gir Stand-ups coming for the holidays! In the meantime, here's an answer from one of Dave's old geometry exams:

I must remember to bate my breath whilst I wait. I'm actually kinda glad we have someone in Pseudoscience we can mock. I don't get much chance to mock much anymore and my mocking skills are atrophying at an alarming rate.

In the building industry, fiberglass is used to make siding and even FRP (fiberglass reinforced plastic) prefab strtuctures like sheds and even homes and offices. It's got a high strength to weight ratio, it's inexpensive, weather-resistant and relatively easy to mold into a desired shape. YT2095, Anonymous521 was originally asking about fiberglass in connection with airsoft guns, which I assume are a kind of paint pellet gun. I had asked him not to discuss making guns from a material which would pass through metal detection, but I don't think that was his intent. I'm perhaps being too sensitive, but the use of fiberglass and ceramics in arms manufacture is a touchy subject these days.

I didn't see anyone else mention this, but if you eliminate all emotion, currency, religion and everything else that is a source for conflict, why do you need a warrior caste? What will be the source of your "times of war"? Here's the perfect world: Exactly what we've got. Make things perfect and you stagnate completely. Take away the incentives to improve imperfection and you create ennui. Take away emotion and you destroy spirit. Take away all obstacles to living and life becomes a crutch where everything is done for you. Utopia always sounds nice because striving for perfection is what we do. But actually reaching perfection would probably destroy humans within a few generations.

I told you I'm uncomfortable with allowing discussion on how to make guns from fiberglass. I merged your two posts, combined your questions, eliminated the part about the guns, and then deleted the earlier comments which were made useless by the edit. Now you've messed it up again and we are left with a thread discussing guns made from fiberglass which would pass through a metal detector, which I am closing. If you would like to post another thread inquiring about fiberglass, please do so but DO NOT mention making guns from it.