Glider

I vote Europa for much the same reasons as YT listed. Now we know about the deep sea life around volcanic vents ('black smokers' etc.) in our own oceans, it seems to increase the probability of finding similar life forms on Europa.

Fighting has nothing to do with honour, simply by virtue of the fact that it proves nothing. Fighting cannot win arguments, nor can it make a point. The only result is that the loser is no longer in a position to present their case, but winning does not make the winner right. Armies and politics aside, the only rationale for fighting is in defence (of one's self). Where there is a clear threat to one's physical safety and running is not an option (e.g. you are trapped or surrounded), then fighting is the last recourse. Under these circumstances, you are not fighting to win points or to prove a case. There is no such thing as a 'technical knockout' or 'winning by points' and Queensberry rules do not apply. The objective is simply to preserve yourself. To achieve that objective, any and all means are acceptable. Whatever method works, whatever is at hand, whatever it takes, use it. You don't get points for coming second. The probability is that you won't have the option of being magnanimous in defeat and congratulating the victor on a fight well fought. There is a high probability that you will be badly injured though. The bar-fights you see in the old westerns just don't happen. They probably never did. It's not a game. If you are attacked, you have a choice, run (preferred) or fight. If you choose to fight, have no further choices, you are committed. You have to put your opponent down; render them into a state where they are no longer a threat so you can get away, and you are committed to using any and all measures required to do that. The best option of all is to avoid the situation in the first place. Edit: I agree with the last posts by Sayonara and YT.

Nah...more likely a whip I think. They probably had whips before shower rooms (I'm just guessing).

Trees are very effective at locking up carbon though (deciduous trees in particular). Much moreso than algae.

I heard that the biggest spreader of plague wasn't rats (or rat fleas), it was in fact people. Wherever an outbreak occurred, people would migrate away from the site out of fear, including those who had already been exposed, and it was this that accounted for the rapid spread throughout Europe. An outbreak would occur in a town. People would panic and migrate to stay with friends/relative in other towns, often taking the plague with them and passing it on to the local population. Outbreaks would occur in the new towns and people would panic...

Just a pedantic point, but shouldn't your thread title read "A UK paper trashes Bush"?

Unfortunately, the whole issue is being replicated in the UK. The population is becoming more litigious and medical insurance is increasing hugely. I think I may have said this in another thread, but the the problem is being compounded by the encouragement (by the government) of unrealistic expectations in the public. Having said that, the government are not entirely to blame. They say "We want to reduce the waiting time until patients are treated". The public hears "We want to reduce the waiting time until patients are cured". People seem unable to realise that medicine is not an exact science and cures are not guaranteed. When tratments fail (as, occasionally, they will. That's just a fact of life), they get angry; it must be someones' fault! It all goes downhill from there.

You didn't believe me?

It's not an hypothesis. Post mortem studies on the brains of both adults and neonates have shown structural differences between the sexes.

Autonomy?

Yep. It shows how exactly symmetrical faces look a little disturbing. All faces are a little asymmetrical, but the further from symmetrical they are, the less attractive they become. It has to do with perceived fitness for breeding. On a deep level, we take pronounced asymmetry as a sign of either the effects of illness, or some congenital condition which signals to us that the individual is less suitable for breeding. YT is right. A lot of it has to do with socially acquired 'norms' that we accept as 'templates' from which we judge the degree of deviation. However, there are some signs of universality. For example, long necks are considered attractive in females in western society. The Masai (or is it the Turkhana?) just took it to extremes. But examples of going to extremes exist here too. E.g. Jordan. The stretched lips and knocked out front teeth that is a tradition in areas in Africa is not actually a beauty thing. Those areas have high prevalence of Clostridium tetani bacteria (tetanus). The stretched lips and absent front teeth mean that those people can be fed if (when) they contract tetanus, significantly increasing their chances of survival as a people. It is interesting insofar as it is an adaptive behaviour that has become entwined in the social history of those people and is now considered the norm (with respect to appearance and attractiveness) among them.

It's not the particular study I was thinking of, but it's certainly a part of the same field of research, ta for finding it (I didn't have the time).

Presumably, we knew how big the world is before we knew how fast light is. Any subsequent adjustment to the defined length of a meter was therefore probably considered an increase in accuracy with a more universally generalizable unit of measure?

It has to do with control, predictability and afferent feedback. When you are tickled by another, you are not in control, it is also unpredictable. When you try to tickle yourself, you are in control and the sensation is predictable as you have afferent (proprioceptive) feedback telling you that the sensation you are feeling is being generated by you. This seems to nullify the effect. There was an experiment done in which a robotic arm was designed to reproduce the movements of an individuals' arm, but the servo had a built in delay (less than a second). So, the robotic mechanism would reproduce exactly the movements of the individual, but after a very short delay. It was found that this delay was enough to disrupt the 'nullifying effect' of proprioceptive feedback, so although the individual was tickling themselves (for all intents and purposes), the slight delay between the proprioceptive feedback and the tickling sensation meant their brain could not reconcile the two as being the result of that person's volitional actions, and the person lost control (i.e. was tickled).

Habituation. If you see a sufficient number of 'tomorrows', you will get used to them.

There was an instance of an individual blowing out a large part of his prefrontal cortex, but it was nothing to do with hayfever. He was a railway worker and he was using a tamping rod when the charge went off. It blew the rod up under his zygomatic arch and out through his skull (temporal region). It took much of his prefrontal cortex with it. He survived, but suffered a personality change and became 'frontal' (as nurses call it). That is to say, he suffered poor impulse control, poor social judgement etc.. If you want to look it up, his name was Phineas Gage.

No face is symmetrical. If you look at a photo of a face that has been made to be symmetrical (e.g. a composite of one side and its mirror), you will find it quite unattractive. As it happens, people tend to find the 'average' more attractive. Research done in the area (forgive me, I do not have the reference), made composite faces by morphing together many other faces. The greater the number of faces used to create the composite (i.e. the closer to the population mean the image became), the higher became its attractiveness rating.

Aurigus: There are structural differences between the brains of males and females (e.g. the cortical areas associated with language are larger and more developed in females). Male brains tend to be more lateralized too. These differences are not huge, but they are significant and they do indicate an evolutionary difference rather than the effects of environment. It is unlikely that upbringing could result in significant changes in basic structure given the differences in upbringing between individuals, i.e. the differences between male and female brains are more stable than the differences in environmental history of individuals of each sex. Thus, if the structural differences were due to upbringing, we would expect far more variation.

"If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment." (Marcus Aurelius Antoninus). In other words, any pain you suffer as a result of our discussion is down to you, not us, and it is quite within your power to stop suffering. .

This illusion demonstrates the principle that, to us, colours, to a large degree, are not defined by what they are, but by the colours surrounding them. Another example is a TV. When you watch TV, say, a sci fi film in space, the images of space appear dark black (as you would expect). However, when you turn the TV off, the screen appears a dark, murky green. It is not possible for a TV screen to produce a darker colour than it is when the power is off, so in these cases, the colour of 'space' is mainly defined by its contrast with the 'stars' or any spaceship or planets also shown. It looks darker by contrast, but it ain't.

You can't put a price on experience. An experience like that is worth only what you say it is. If, to you, that's more than $750, then you should go for it. You can get another $750 sooner or later and a dollar is pretty much the same as any other. Experience is unique, and once you have it, it's yours forever.

True, but well, I mean, steady on! Let's not get carried away!

The most common error is when people are classified as having 'schitzoid' personalities. Understandably, when people hear this, they immediately think schitzophrenia, but schitzoid traits have nothing whatsoever to do with schitzophrenia. The term refers to a social split (i.e. from people), not a psychological one (i.e. from reality). Schitzoid characteristics are social withdrawal and isolation. People with schizoid personalities avoid social situations, tend to live alone, may be socially awkward and tend to be introspective. This is not a clinical condition. It may stem from severe shyness, or may be a function of an affective disorder; people with depression or depressive tendencies may display schizoid characteristics. This is simply because people who are depressed tend to withdraw into themselves and don't like to be around large groups of 'happy' people.

Same way you increase muscle power. Exercise and practice.