@SDGundamX you're confusing psychopathy with insanity. Lots of psychopaths are perfectly sane. Being a psychopath vastly increases the likelihood of committing murder. And it's heritable. And it's a continuum. But it's rare enough to be a relatively minor cause of murder rates. In place of "genes for psychopathy" I should have said "genes for anything that predisposes one to commit murder".

First degree murder is less than 10% of all murder. Most murders are spur of the moment. Having a higher IQ correlates with doing better on the marshmellow test and having greater impulse control to avoid spur of the moment destructive behavior. IQ is a vastly better predictor of criminality than parental SES ( http://akarlin.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/bell-curve-crime-iq.jpg ) Japanese have 7 points higher average IQ than the US. IQ is >50% heritable.

I think people want to believe they're not racist, but I believe everyone is to some extent (like everyone falls somewhere on the racist continuum); I also don't think a lot of people are familiar with concepts such as institutionalized racism or redlining and probably wouldn't believe they exist even if they knew about them

To be fair, you were taught this in school if you were taught wave particle duality and the double slit experiment. Look at this. Now imagine a particle bouncing along in very small steps (quantum leaps if you will), and the direction it goes depends on the strength and orientation of the wave where it lands. You may never have been told to think about it like that, but that's what makes physics so amazing that sometimes all it takes is for someone to think about it slightly differently. The information was there all along, but who would imagine the 'particle' bit of an electron interacting with the 'wave' bit - the electron interacts with itself?

I absolutely love it, it's amazing, and simple and beautiful. It may provide insights into new ways we can model quantum behaviour, it might open up new questions to ask.

There's things I'd like to know. First, if the standing waves generated at each step in the droplet's progression interact with each other, the droplet is reacting according to waves it made in the past - what implications does that have for the notion of real particles in a spacetime continuum? For the double slits experiment to work in that model - in the ball on a rubber sheet sense - the sheet would have to stay warped to some extent after the ball had passed. In the quantum sense of the real double slits experiment, we would say it IS a wave, passes through both slits and appears according to statistical probability (the diffraction pattern).

Presumably several droplets released along the same path would go on to take a different route through the slits, to create a diffraction pattern as it must. Perhaps because of fluctuations in the temperature or density of the water at different locations? Is that a limitation of the model or an indicator about the nature of the fabric of spacetime? Perhaps even due to quantum fluctuations in the water particles - the water is never the same twice even if its perfectly still each time - which would potentially mean we're cyclically using quantum mechanics to explain quantum mechanics and we actually haven't explained very much.

The philosophy bit: But this reaches to the heart of the issue with quantum mechanics and perhaps science in general. How accurately can we model reality? The reality is beyond our ability to see, so we can only recreate simpler versions that are always wrong in some way... our idea of what happens - our models - can never be 100% because only a particle in spacetime can perfectly represent a particle in spacetime.

Scientific results and definitions are always defined with limits - "it works like this, within these confines, under these conditions, with these assumptions." There are always error margins. We are always only ever communicating an idea between different consciousnesses, and that idea will never be as true to life as life itself.

Sorry for the wall of text, it's a great and provocative experiment.

Ahem, sifty, I don't mean to correct you, but don't you mean, "Invocations (fear, lies) cannot be called by bobknight33 because the sheer hypocrisy of bobknight33 accusing others of these is so overwhelming it might cause a rift in the space-time continuum - sorry."

Continuum season one is ok, but don't bother watching the rest cause it sucks. there's a great new sci-fi show called The Expanse and I've also been watching The Colony which is quite promising so far ... As for Life on Mars I'd recommend watching the british version. I found Limitless extremely boring and unimaginative, didn't watch it past episode two
btw -- Choggie, are you there, you reading this? I miss your cajun cooking videos on yt

I read that poor white trash was a term used by slaves in reference to I believe it was white sharecroppers. Basically non well to do whites that didn't own plantations.

Throwing another point out there... I believe everyone's a racist along a continuum from full on to not much at all. I grew up in a very racist part of the U.S. How could I not be at least a little racist?

I think at least a couple parts of his premise are illogical. For example, no matter how liberal the presenters, or whatever label you want to paste on, it doesn't mean that say 'the white guy' isn't the best actor. I do like that he points out that none of us are perfect and just because we don't want to be a certain way doesn't mean that we can't be a little. I see these and most things as continuums. So you have balls out racist on one end and barely racist on the other. If you're striving to get to the far end then I think you're doing a good job as a human. Same goes for homophobia, sexism, ...

Brian Millikan, attorney for the St. Louis Police Officers Association, represented four officers during the internal investigation.

"The officers followed the use of force continuum," Millikan said. "They took the suspect into custody with the minimal force that was necessary that evening."

And that's the issue right there. I think you and I are arguing about completely different things. In terms of the person who stole the photos and posted them, yes there is no middle ground--that person 100% committed a crime and needs to be punished.

However, in terms of responsibility of people for putting themselves in the position to be victimized, there is a huge range of possibilities--but often this range of possibilities isn't examined for fear of someone shouting "Blaming the victim!" The link I posted above goes to great lengths to point out that the criminal who commits the crime is 100% responsible for the criminal act (by virtue of having made the choice to commit it) but that the victim can in fact also have contributed to the crime in a continuum of ways starting with not at all (100% innocent, as in a child who is abused) to fully responsible (as in the case of a rapist who is killed by a potential victim in self-defense during the rape attempt--in this case the rapist becomes the "victim" of a shooting that he brought completely upon himself). There is lots of middle ground between these extremes.

Let's examine a simple case:

I am walking down the street in LA during the early evening in a neighborhood that normally has very little crime. A homeless man shambling past me suddenly pulls a knife, rams it into my chest, and steals my wallet which happened to contain several hundred dollars. I think we can agree in this situation I've no responsibility for this incident occurring. I could not have predicted it would happen and there is little I could have done to anticipate or prevent it. I am 100% an innocent victim in this scenario.

Now let's change the situation. I go down to Skid Row in the early evening and start showing all the homeless people there wads of $100 bills and telling them how worthless they are and how if they only got off their asses and worked hard like me they could have money too. Again, I get shanked in the chest and my money is stolen. Am I 100% an innocent victim in this case? It seems a bit absurd to say yes, doesn't it? My actions (choosing to go to an area that is not often policed, at night, alone, and flash money while belligerently accosting random people who don't have a lot left to lose) are directly linked to the stabbing.

Note that in both cases the person committing the crime is still 100% responsible for their own actions--they chose to stab me and steal my money. But in one case I clearly could not have foreseen or prevented the attack coming whereas in the other it was reasonably foreseeable that my actions were going to lead to problems (not necessarily a stabbing but at the very least some sort of altercation, unless the most patient and forgiving homeless people on Earth happened to be gathered on Skid Row that day). Does that mean the stabber in the second case should get a lighter sentence? No. But it does mean I have some responsibility for what went down and can be justly criticized for my actions. I can't hide behind the "don't blame the victim" catchphrase. I still deserve justice, though, despite being an offensive idiot.

Back to the case at hand.

You are correct, the woman did nothing "wrong" in the moral or legal sense, and the person who violated her privacy is 100% responsible for making the photos public. But I dislike the idea that because she's a victim of a crime, her actions can't be criticized. She might not have done anything "wrong" but she did indeed make a huge error of judgement when she decided to snap naked pics of herself and post them to a social network which is known for dodgy privacy practices. Given the state of technology today, one should be able to infer that there is a pretty high risk that racy photos are going to get leaked at some point, particularly if posted online. If you are okay with that risk, go ahead and post them. And if they are leaked, by all means prosecute the offenders. But don't expect people not to criticize you for gambling that nothing is going to happen, especially when there is plenty of evidence to believe the contrary.

If Bernie Sanders ran with Elizabeth Warren as VP, and they somehow collided with McCain / Palin, I'm pretty sure it would rip a hole in the space time continuum.


edit...also, yeah, credit unions are great. Most people probably have access to one and don't even know about it.

Cops have to be one step more violent than the people they must take into custody. That's a simple fact. That is the use of force continuum. You can probably google it.

But people who have no knowledge of it or think a cop can 'shoot the guy in the hand' will never understand it.

I love 'Utopia' and I can add the Canadian science-fiction show 'Continuum' to that list, which criticizes the rise of corporations and portrays a dystopian future in which corporations have taken over the government and police force. Season 3 deals with a villainous corporation not so subtly named Sonmanto and also addresses the issue of GMO.

You know, research has shown that men and women have more similarities than differences. There is a continuum, of course, but we are all in it together.

So. Since we have many similarities, let me say this.

If you insult a male, you insult a female.

As a woman, I am telling you that women hear the insult. The folks who put together this video hear the insult. The Mythbusters hear the insult.

Or would you like to tell me how my personal experience over 60 years is incorrect? Would you like to explain that to me?

Would not agree or disagree with your statement Lann however, one's definition of 'artistic' and 'ability' as well as 'gift' can be both subjective and objective in the realm of 'art', that realm being also a subject for debate and discussion with a view to perception. Formal training and perseverance does not necessarily produce a universal guarantee of quality output. Art unfolds out of an experience and richness of life lived as well...

A proliferate and evolving continuum of interpretive output plays a larger part for myself than mere study...

....and Stormsinger, that word crazy???....Fundamentally subjective based on a society's imposed or implied rules of perception.