pears

yes Oh OK - that makes more sense now. Thanks.

Huh??

What's the difference between observing length and distance?

How are you trying to remove it?

When you lift a car you are fighting against gravity and bearing its whole weight yourself. When you push it you are just moving it. Its weight is mainly supported by the ground.

Regardless of the fact it doesn't 'seem severe' to you, and isn't affecting your lifestyle I would still check it out with a doctor. Do you have free health consultancy in Belgium?

In general the passive voice weighs a sentence down while the active voice has much more impact. The active voice emphasises the subject of the verb (which is usually what you want when writing fiction) The passive voice becomes useful however when you want to emphasise the object of the verb. E.g. 'The car hit him' is weaker than 'He was hit by a car' because the latter emphasises the victim rather than the car, and we care more about the person than the car in this case.

Yes. A faulty conclusion has been reached because of a faulty premise. Logic itself contains no truths, it's just a mathematical relationship between premises and conclusions. One could start with a sound premise, and use flawed logic to reach an incorrect conclusion. That would be a fallactious argument. You could examine the logic to see what the fallacy was. Or, one could start with some flawed premises. E.g. All actors are men. Sandra Bullock is an actor. Therefore Sandra Bullock is a man. There is no flaw in logic here but the conclusion is clearly wrong because the premises are flawed. This is like your case. Worth is a direct measure of experience. Person A has more experience than Person B. Therefore Person A has more worth. The logic itself is sound but the argument fails based on the weakness of the premises. To attack this argument you must attack the premise, and show why it is illogical or flawed. Essentially it's just an opinion. What is worth? Why must it be measured in this way? Is a newborn baby worthless? Ask any proud new parents and they'll give you a firm no. Does arrogance have any bearing on worth? It sounds like whoever is making this argument has arrogance in bucketloads. The definition of woth in the premises is just a made-up definition. You might just as well define worth as experience minus arrogance, in which case they may have little, or none, or a negative amount. Challenge the assertion that worth is solely based on experience. Good luck and don't let anyone tell you they're better than you.

It sounds like a flawed premise. Given that a person's worth is based on their experience, then person A (with a lot of experience) is worth more than person B (with little) is a valid argument. (I.e. the logic is sound) However if the premise is wrong to start with then the conclusion is unconvincing.

This implies a choice - a decision to be what sort of person we are and what to believe. How is that any different from free will?

Go to the doctors. This forum does not give out medical advice

Oh how utterly adorable! What a little sweetheart Many congratulations YdoaPS

Welcome jaydnul, phildukephd and Skeptic134

It was a dream and not a real church.

Do you have a specific example of the argument you're attacking? It would be useful to have something concrete to discuss otherwise this could be a very one-sided conversation

They look a little like sea pansies but I suppose the must be quite different to have been given a brand new classification. Pulled from the ocean in 1986 apparently. Why has the classification taken so long? Some more here http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/09/140903-evolution-animal-dendrogramma-mushroom-species-ocean/

They want independence from the UK parliament in London, not the EU. There's a huge difference between the two.

The crux of the Horizon documentary was that we are ecosystems of bacteria and have evolved alongside environmental bacteria which have informed our immune systems over millenia, but lifestyle changes (such as e.g. spending a lot of time indoors) mean we no longer have the diversity of bacteria in our guts that we used to (or as do those from developing countries now, and they have signigicantly less allergies than westerners). The documentary claims children delivered by C-Sections are 52% more likely to develop asthma because of the lack of bacteria encountered by the baby at birth. This is corroborated here: http://www.webmd.com/baby/news/20080521/c-section-tied-to-childhood-asthma Also breast milk contains a lot of (good) bacteria which may be why breast-feeding is linked to allergy prevention http://www.unicef.org.uk/BabyFriendly/News-and-Research/Research/Allergy/Breastfeeding-reduces-risk-of-five-types-of-allergic-disease/ There were lots of other interesting examples: people who grow up on farms have less allergies than those who don't, children exposed to lots of antibiotics are more likely to develop allergies. Also tapeworms and other internal parasites are less common now and they are thought to suppress our immune systems, since the parasites don't want to be rejected by their hosts. Some scepticism was expressed as to whether such research could result in cures for existing allergies, with the main hope being with prevention, which is why I found the story on the use of Clostridia bacteria to reverse peanut allergies so interesting. Allergies suck!

This seems promising: http://www.nhs.uk/news/2014/08August/Pages/Common-bacteria-could-help-prevent-food-allergies.aspx Also here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-28887088 The horizon documentary about research on the link between changes to our exposure to bacteria and the increase of allergies in the west was also very interesting, probably only available in the UK though? http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04g507y

Barcelona as the capital of Scotland? Now there's a thought!

Welcome Tentacle. I hope you enjpy the forum

Well there are atheists and anti-theists. Not necessarily the same thing, though one is mostly a subset of the other.

I like 1 and 2 but not 3 so much. A genetic abnormality may lead to better health in some cases

Welcome CreativeCatastrophe

For English devolution, given the size of the population, I think you would have to more than one English Parliament, more likely several regional bodies for the North of England, Midlands, South West etc. On the Scotland question, I don't think there would be much effect worldwide. Personally I am fairly impartial (I mean if they want independence then go for it) but I have slight leanings towards union. I do wonder how much a split would cost and would it be worth it?