No, if something is tested and works then that is no longer "alternative medicine", it is simply "medicine". The classic example is aspirin, which is derived from the bark of a willow tree. It was then tested and has now been accepted as medicine.

Just because the FDA accepts woo for political purposes, doesn't make it science.

As for FDA approval of St Johns Wort, there is some dispute about the bias of these studies, as it is unexplained why it works so much better in Germany http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD000448.pub3/full#CD000448-sec1-0005.

But for the sake of argument, let's assume there's plenty of evidence to support it. Again the answer is to streamline the approval process, not just let any muppet with some potpourri market it as a miracle cure.

I would much rather people pay 10 times the cost for medicine that actually works, and even better, doesn't kill people.

Of course, if you lived in a country with a sane healthcare system, you wouldn't actually worry about this, because in most of the world, it's considered poor form to let your citizens die from treatable diseases ,just because they can't pay for it.

Again, it's really simple, either you understand and accept the scientific method or you don't. Healthcare is complex and requires a lot of work to determine if something actually works. That costs money. It's unfortunate, but the results don't lie.

By assuming we are "close minded conspiracy theorists" simply off the basis of having a different conclusion than you, you're simply avoiding the discussion, and you still fail to make any legitimate arguments; you merely repeat the "tired and naive" talking point of how "it's not the best, but it's the best we have" to defend an unjust system.

When has that attitude ever done us good? We have such amazing technology and understanding of the universe because of the way we as a whole ultimately reject that argument and instead say "some of this works quite well, but we need a lot of work in other areas."

Personally, I'm a fan of the free market concept. I think a fair amount of those who you are so eager to write off as fools also do. The problem comes down to what our concepts of justice are. We speak fondly of "equality of opportunity," but anyone can see we have no such thing. Only when everyone has equal opportunity to pursue learning in the fields of their choice without having to give up on adding to our collective culture/knowledge because of the economic pressure of survival can we truly say people are free. So long as anyone is taking a job they hate just to scrape by at the bottom of the chain, and we exercise violence against each other to try and force our ways onto others on a massive scale, we are, in my opinion, a profoundly unjust society.

Of course, violence will never end, scheming and exploitation and all our evils will continue to plague us. We can't make a utopia. What we can do, though, is decrease the potential for abuse in our current systems. I, and many others, think that separating the means of survival and self-actualization - the things required to develop, grow, and contribute to humanity at a high level (namely, food/water/shelter, basic healthcare, and free, equal access to education) - from the rest of the market is one way to make a huge impact on that potential for abuse. Think about it: how many times do we let corporations damage our environment and abuse us simply because speaking out means losing your means of survival?

I think the rest of the market is going to have to stay the market, nobody can really say how it's fair to divide up all our resources (though I hope for an increase in democracy going forwards for things related to our environment and health). Amusingly, though you rail against anarchy, the actual ideals of anarchy fall in line with the concept of a free market (anarchy is really all about freedom of association rather than coercive structures; not a lack of order).

I grew up on a farm, and my dad used to work hard to lodge a rooster's head between two railroad spikes so that he could extend the neck and dispatch the rooster with a quick axe/hatchet to the neck. The rooster knows something is up, so it is scared and looking for any possible escape, and it takes a lot of work to get/hold them in position. Then an older fella visited the house one time and showed us this technique.

Yep, it works so well that you can just draw the line, lay the rooster down and "hypnotize" it, walk away and come back with your axe ... and it'll just wait right there patiently until the thwock.

Of course, then it'll still get up and run around headless; but I am told that is more of a muscles unwinding issue than any result of headless consciousness.

That looks like a lot more work, when I already get fantastic coffee just following Aerobie's instructions. I can be almost done with my cup before this method is finished.

That said, I'll give it a whirl over the weekend.

And back on point, it's amazing how quickly the time passes here. No way does it seem long enough for the Sift to be eight years old...even considering I missed the first year and a bit. Kudos to everyone involved.

Exactly what do you propose they should have tested? Do you seriously think the console should be able to understand the semantics of natural language (i.e. tell the difference between "xbox, sign out" and "xbox sign out is trolling me")?

I used to do a similar thing in university. We did a lot of work on VAX machines. Because there were a limited number of terminals, once you signed out, you were locked out for 30 mins.

When I needed a terminal I'd say to first year students, "hey remember logo? They just installed it." Student would then type "logo" at the command prompt, which the os would automatically lengthen to "logout".... oh, you're done with that terminal? thanks

Once again, I am horrified at the number of pre-teen kids playing CoD online.
Parenting fail.

Wow, that's a lot of work.

Looks like they got a lot of work to do, that plume did not look too laminar.

It seems like a great way to quickly build a lot of fairly simple objects including a base texture. There would still be a lot of work to do, since this appears to only create a color layer (specular, bump/normal, and luminosity would still need to be created) and it lacks fine details in the model which some uses would require.

And Drones are doing a lot of work on creating terrorists now. Obama and the Government don't care about protecting us, or they would work on lessening terrorism rather than increasing it.

Alright,

this Wikipedia entry is a good start on the neuroscience and chemistry that goes on inside our brains when love happens:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_basis_of_love

As for the chemistry of conciousness, I'd recommend the book Neurochemistry of Consciousness: Neurotransmitters in Mind. I believe it's a free download on most readers. It's also a neat read.

It is exciting that we are those things. Because we all have roughly the same physical materials in our head, and we are all different people. The majority of us have the ability to record, interpret and recall information and stimulation, and it's all those chemicals and receptors in our heads.

We fall in love, or hate, or feel "meh" about something because of the stuff in our brain that makes our personalities. Even identical twins are still different people. That's amazing to me. The fact that we even reproduce at all, it takes a lot of work on a cellular level to even have a kid. That is amazing to me.

I have yet to see any proof that this is a god or a soul. What we can do is, look inside someone's brain and measure what's happening and what reactions we have. We can see it, we can observe and form conclusions from it.

We know that if you give a type I diabetic insulin, that insulin will act as a replacement inside their body. We also know, from the news, that if you try and think positive about getting that pancreas to work again, it fails to do so.

So, when someone says, that spirituality can cure disease, all I ask for his some hard proof. Not a bunch of hokem.

This game is cool and looks pretty good but it needs a lot of work. It's certainly not a "plug-and-play" affair, as you'll need to do a lot of fiddling with control schemes and keybinds and whatnot. It also doesn't seem to like being non-windowed at certain resolutions. It's not something I could recommend to someone who isn't a hardcore gamer.

That's a lot of work for a freakin omelette.

$90k on a commuter car is a tough sell. My Tesla would be getting beat up in the lot at work all week, and I'd be making the 2-hour trip home to see my parents in a 1995 Hyundai Accent.

I can only hope Tesla survives long enough to have an impact on the real-world car market. Having a large company doing/driving battery R&D is also a good thing for all sorts of markets.

Did anyone think to tell these guys the obvious, that it's not possible to do what they did in 45 minutes? Would have saved them a lot of work, and me a lot of shame at my wasted life.

I tried Crossfit and although I observed really troubling cult like behavior, you simply cannot argue with the results. A lot of the people who do crossfit are extremely fit and able to do just about anything.

However my criticism over it despite it's cult like atmosphere is the fact that no serious professional athlete is a crossfitter. Now they may do various crossfit exercises but they don't do anything like what Crossfitters seem to be doing. As well, the Crossfit competitions lack skill and mental tactics to be all that interesting. It's literally just watching people do a lot of work, which is fine but not exciting nor really a good advertisement of the sport.