Phi for All

The Rack, available at your local BDSM store. I couldn't find an image of one without a naked body on it, but I'll keep searching.

I was 6' 5" in high school 30 years ago. I get most of my above-average height from the waist up (a friend who is 5' 10" wears the same size inseam in pants as I do). Thirty years later I am 6' 3.5". The backbone does compress as you age. Your leg bones do not.

Also moved to Homework Help.

Moved to Homework Help.

A big part of why he was clear-headed and rational here is because we are well-moderated and don't put up with crap. Please visit Sciforums and see what a different, disturbed individual he is. Over there he is condescending and downright rude. And in one thread he has mentioned his monumentally vast intellect 11 times as proof of his observations, so I don't think he's being sarcastic. After 2 days they are referring to him as "Jackass" and "Oh Great Advanced Intelligence". They are openly laughing at him and ridiculing him. Our Experts worked with him pretty patiently for 3 months. I feel sorry for the guy.

AND we have sources to back you up on that.

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.--George Bernard Shaw Head-strong, viscious, authority trip, crock, these words have all been used inappropriately in this argument. The facts are that 3 Admins, 2 Mods and 4 Resident Experts deliberated over 2 months on Johnny5 and how to deal with him. I can't count the number of warnings he's gotten privately and in the threads about his agenda. He was given plenty of chances to prove his points. This was not a heated, ego-based reaction to a minor problem.

Then I apologise for my skepticism about you. Feel free to read the rest of his posts. We don't delete them just because he's been banned. Or as I pointed out, he is active over at Sciforums. Someone told me he already posted a record 5 pages disputing relativity. He always felt it was counterintuitive to his approach, and therefore had to be wrong. No one ever said Einstein was infallible. But Johnny5 never showed why he was, he just claimed it no matter what evidence was shown.

If his challenges had real merit that he was able to back up with real evidence, he would be taken as seriously as anyone else here. The fact that he invaded so many threads with his agenda hypotheses got his posts reported more than anyone in recent history. When that many people complain, I listen, always. You read the one thread then? Good science tries to look at all the evidence. Try reading all his other threads like Matt Grime and Tom Mattson and swansont have. It isn't a crime. Is that what you think? Is that what Johnny5 told you he was banned for? Believe me, it was a culmination of things, but the one that stood out most was that there were times Johnny5 could not be convinced that he was wrong, despite insurmountable evidence. That's not science, Thomas Kirby, that's religion. Johnny5 holds his beliefs sacred and that was his biggest mistake. Forgive me, since I don't really know you, but I find that unlikely. You joined a day after Johnny5 gets banned, you read one thread and are so primed to defend him? I hope you do stay so I can get to know you better. I hope you are someone who has watched our little community without joining, waiting quietly until you had something to say. I hope you can carry your convictions through in every post you make, because passion for what you are doing is important no matter what it is. Pointing out where you can find Johnny5 is hardly telling you to "love it or leave it."

Please trust us, we really have the best interests of the site and our membership at heart. Indiscriminate banning is almost as bad as letting every crackpot post thread after thread without moderation. Most people are here to learn. Some people join in order to preach an agenda which has been shot down by scholars everywhere else.

I don't feel particularly obligated to defend my actions as a Moderator here at SFN. I do feel our membership has a right to well-moderated threads which pursue scientific topics. Our purpose here is not to censor, but to make sure that the information posted at SFN is consistently worthwhile and doesn't waste our membership's valuable reading time. Some people join and we find out pretty quickly that they are inconsistent with that purpose. They are warned several times before banning takes place. That is something that is done privately for the most part. Some of the warnings are posted in the threads to highlight anti-policy behavior. I think it's great that Johnny5 has a friend like you, Thomas Kirby, who will defend him against all criticism. Johnny5 certainly had some good posts here. He was civil for the most part and that probably accounts for his longevity. He also showed some fairly disturbing tendencies as well. I know you'd like to think his ideas were all ground-breaking and earth-shattering. Here is an excerpt from his last communication with us: The majority of our membership are very level-headed and some of the smartest people I know. I like reading all their posts I can. Science is predicated on the basis that nothing is sacred and all of our Experts, Moderators and Admins are well aware that one of our own posters could well be the next Einstein. Why wouldn't we want to encourage that? But some parts of science have been proven to the point of near-positive certainty. It was some of those points that Johnny5 consistently refused to ackowledge, even after multiple people pointed them out. Thomas Kirby, you should know that I was just the Moderator on board at the time it was decided to finally put an end to Johnny5's account. It had been discussed by every Mod, Admin and Expert we have and the consensus was that Johnny5 was a crackpot who was always going to be a liability to the membership. If you are a disciple of his, he is currently posting over at Sciforums, where he has proclaimed himself the most brilliant physicist that ever lived. We wish him luck with that.

Enough. This thread was designed to show one member how to save time and space in his postings and has gone on now for 3 pages. Once again we have tied up a Resident expert's valuable time to solve the problems of a member who seems to relish being a problem. This is not what we're here for.

Let's not forget swamp cooling. A fan behind a porous padding which is moistened by a recirculating pump. Cool and no ice to melt. Humidifies dry air too. Go swamp!

Everyone wants to be in it but no one wants to animate it. We are looking for anyone who can do flash animation (simple South Park-type, the cheesier the better). Without that we are dead in the water. I'd even settle for a comic strip setup, with dialogue balloons so we don't have to do sound or animation. But we still need an artist who can draw simple characters, maybe only from the waist up, wearing t-shirts with their names on them and wielding various weapon-like devices.

Our new tourism marketing campaign: "The United States. Deep water, shallow people."

Fear of lost control is very common. Please see a professional. Did you or your parents choose not to pursue a corrective course when you were diagnosed with OCD? My daughter had control issues when she was 3 years old. It was leading towards OCD-like behavior and ADD symptoms as well. We did some unconventional sensory integration work with a unique clinic in Boulder, CO. Her behavior has improved dramatically. atm is right, though. Without knowing you, all the advice in the world is meaningless, except to let you know you are not alone and that others care about you. Please go see a professional. At thirteen years old, you've got a lot going on right now and your fears needs to be addressed.

Are you trying to be funny here? So how did the exam go? Did you pass? Better one, better two?

This is a big part of the problem I see with media hype. You, like so many others, are lumping an 18-year-old girl, boozing it up and making out till 2am with strange men in a foreign country, with a 9-year-old girl abducted from her bedroom by a child molesting murderer. Both are terrible crimes but I can't help pointing out the not-so-fine line between them. I'm not saying violence was the necessary outcome in both cases, but in the former case much could have been done to prevent it. Yet it becomes another in a seemingly endless line of predator crimes paraded before us on the nightly news, and too many people think it is becoming the norm. It's Jerry Springer-esque hype trying to make it seem like the whackos are taking over, and it's driving the United States farther and farther from unity. My point was not to detract from a community's right to know where repeat offenders live. I merely wanted to show that the media unfairly influences the public's perception of their safety when it comes to passing legislation of the kind Pangloss has brought to our attention.

Perhaps in the end it is our own morbid curiosity that is at fault, but I feel that the media plays up each and every child abduction case on a national stage. If the child is being sought nationally, or the suspect is still at large and authorities are hunting for them, I can see the reasons for such coverage. More often than not, as with most of the recent cases, the police know the boundaries of the search and they are quite small. Why then the constant media blitz? Rather than being a lesson to keep better care of our children, I think this type of attention actually encourages copycats and those who crave the limelight. And worse, it makes everyone distrustful and overly sensitive to dangers that are being over-dramatized to boost ratings. The stories are awful. I feel very sorry for the victims. As I stated earlier, I think crimes involving such helpless victims should carry an extra penalty due to their impact and the seemingly wasted efforts toward rehabilitation. But again, the media is capable of focusing on each occurence as it happens all over the country, with the random assurances of probability you get when dealing with hundreds of millions of people. They make it seem like it's happening every day with more and more frequency. And if it is becoming more prevalent, I think we have the media to blame for giving some of these sickos the attention they crave.

There is no doubt that an aware parent makes a safer environment for their children. But the media is guilty of pandering to the shock mentality that is so prevalent in the US these days. And the danger to all of us overshadows the danger just to our children, imo, because fearmongering drives us further apart as communities, making us distrust even our own neighbors. It is one thing to be cautious and aware, it is completely different to be suspicious and distrustful to the point of unstable, explosive paranoia. It's not just stories about abductions that the media distorts. I was in San Francisco last weekend and a native there told me how the national press exaggerated the whole Loma Prieta earthquake there in 1989. I remember seeing the Bay Bridge shaking and a section collapse. I also saw fires seemingly raging across the city. There were a total of 22 fires but most were extinguished before the media showed up. What they showed us was three houses on fire in a single neighborhood, shot from all possible angles to make it look like different homes, and then aired every 20 minutes on national television. It kept people riveted to their TVs and it kept ratings at peak dollar for longer than necessary. It was also a complete distortion. They had things under control very rapidly for such a major earthquake. But stories about efficient city systems doing their jobs effectively don't sell as well.

Which neighborhoods don't have children somewhere? I didn't understand the first sentence at all, and the second one sounds like liberals don't mind when the helpless are killed. I'm unsure why you quoted part of my post for this (and I would appreciate it if you credited the quotes from multiple posters). My point was the knee-jerk legislation, which actually has very little to do with sex offenders, and more to do with a media-whipped public. How would you feel if you'd supposedly paid your debt to society, decided to turn over a new leaf and yet found that legally you couldn't live where you wanted to? I guess if someone really wanted to commit a crime they had shown a proclivity for, proximity to the victim is not necessarily an issue. They would probably just case their victims from a moving vehicle. I personally think that sex offenses involving children should be dealt with in the harshest manner possible. It's not enough that someone who is attracted to pre-pubescent children and can't control themselves be given a standard prison sentence. Most pedophiles can control themselves. When they cross that line, I'm afraid there is no redemption. As for the teens, my heart goes out to them, but teens are a bit more capable of defending themselves than children are. They can stay in groups and shouldn't be as easily led astray. An 18-year-old girl traveling in Aruba who goes out drinking alone till 2 am with locals she just met? I'm not saying she deserved to meet with foul play, but this is hardly an good example of what Floridians are up in arms about, but it still feeds their outrage as if it happened in their neighborhood. I think this reaction has been fueled by a media that makes money when they tell us about every abduction across a country of 300 million people. They make it seem like it's everywhere.

It's a good thing this wasn't posted in the Maths forums. Dave would ban you all. Callipygous is right.

I see it as the society of their time doing the retro thing and reviving the old west pioneer spirit as they venture out into the galaxy. It's more realistic than everyone having a totally futuristic look. In the 2-hour pilot episode, I enjoyed seeing Kaley with one of those old fold-up lawn chairs that haven't changed since the 60's. Nice to know some designs can't be improved upon. And I love that they can swear in Chinese and get their meaning across. Although most of the time what they say is kind of wierd like, "Bad news ass-crack!"

My best friend bought me the DVDs for my birthday and I am SO hooked! Serenity the movie is coming out soon (all the pre-screenings sell out minutes after the tickets go on sale). I so hope someone picks Firefly up again for production before the cast gets too involved in other work. It needs to be developed for a few more seasons. That would be shiny!

Recent science fiction books thread Another thread about favorite sci-fi books Perhaps this thread should be about sci-fi stories we'd like to see, or books we'd like made into movies. What do you think, Arcadia?