Your video, Just Add Water: rotifers survive amazing extremes when dry, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Awesome! Thank you — I was hoping someone would quality this one.

In reply to this comment by cybrbeast:
*quality

"Self Culture - a magazine of knowledge devoted to the interests of the Home University League" Vol. I, June 1895, NO.3

Page 155 - Bacteria -

The facts on which the Bacteriologists build need not be, and are not, denied. Specific Bacteria do exist, and they do more or less serve to convey disease, but adequate investigation compels some of the first medical authorities in the world to consider the inference of the Bacteriologists that infective diseases are usually conveyed by Bacteria utterly delusive; because they find that the universal efficient cause of the whole group of infective diseases is some form of miasmatic volatile poison, which on entering the human system, or any other animal system, produces the disease, and at the same time produces the Bacteria characteristic of the disease, a part of the poison, and probably a very small part only, being made up into the microscopic parcels which the Bacteria are.

Completely agreed. A more in-depth analysis of this and other reasons why diamonds are a very shitty investment (even as an engagement band!) is available at http://www.diamondssuck.com/

>> ^joe2:
two comments
1. diamonds are a scam - the price is kept artificially high by debeers keeping them scarce. they have warehouses full of diamonds and only release them to the market slowly to keep the price up. and they have very low resale value because of this artificial scarcity. if you buy an emerald, it retains most of its value, but if you buy a diamond the second you walk out of the store it's worth 75% less
2. man-made diamonds are more and more common and they are "real" diamonds (compressed carbon). debeers has had to add microscopic markings to their diamonds (only visible to a testing machine) so that dealers can tell which were mined and which were created. but the man-mades cost half or 1/3 as much

Hey hey! Don't speak bad about my awesome diamond. These things have value!1!!
>> ^joe2:
two comments
1. diamonds are a scam - the price is kept artificially high by debeers keeping them scarce. they have warehouses full of diamonds and only release them to the market slowly to keep the price up. and they have very low resale value because of this artificial scarcity. if you buy an emerald, it retains most of its value, but if you buy a diamond the second you walk out of the store it's worth 75% less
2. man-made diamonds are more and more common and they are "real" diamonds (compressed carbon). debeers has had to add microscopic markings to their diamonds (only visible to a testing machine) so that dealers can tell which were mined and which were created. but the man-mades cost half or 1/3 as much

two comments

1. diamonds are a scam - the price is kept artificially high by debeers keeping them scarce. they have warehouses full of diamonds and only release them to the market slowly to keep the price up. and they have very low resale value because of this artificial scarcity. if you buy an emerald, it retains most of its value, but if you buy a diamond the second you walk out of the store it's worth 75% less

2. man-made diamonds are more and more common and they are "real" diamonds (compressed carbon). debeers has had to add microscopic markings to their diamonds (only visible to a testing machine) so that dealers can tell which were mined and which were created. but the man-mades cost half or 1/3 as much

@mgittle

Can't see your link without a login, but I'd like to read it. I'll make an account later. Though I'm not sure how what you said directly after the link disproves the part of my article you quoted.



Well, the author you quoted states that:

1. increased ATP = increased metabolic stress
2. metabolic stress blocks mtor activity (*This point is wrong*)
3. increased mtor activity results in increased muscle gain.

He's basically saying increased ATP use results in decreased muscle gain, hence the rational for minimizing ATP use. However, this conclusion is incorrect since the literature shows that increased metabolic stress is actually GOOD for muscle gain.

"I'm not an expert, but I've always been told/read that tendons heal more slowly than muscle."



This is correct because your tendons do not have good blood flow compared to your muscles. I'm not sure that this also applies on a microscopic level that weightlifting may cause because I don't know how long it takes for your tendons to fully recover from specifically weightlifting induced wear and tear. Again, this plays into the whole overtraining thing. The key I guess is to avoid overtraining, and personally, I've never had any tendon problems as a result of doing 1 rep max lifting.

Alrighy then. I'm sober and moderately coherent, so let's carry on.

We have a very different view of science. Science can't possibly work by ruling out things, because there the universe is infinite, or, as infinite as we are able to measure at this time. The experiment that produces a result never comes alone. It's always there to support a hypothesis, and to prove it, if successful.

There will always be things we can't perceive ourselves, and we will always work towards finding new ways to view the universe. If we would ever discover everything there is to know, the world would be rather dull, in my opinion.

This, however, does not grant anybody a license to invent facts, to make claims with no substantiating evidence and to basically invent a new universe and ask the rest of us to live in it.

Proving something by disproving every other possibility only works when there is a finite number of possible possibilities (I love that phrase, by the way). There is no finite group of Gods. Every person is free to come up with a new God every day. If someone were to ask 1000 Christians to describe their God, and then compile their replies into a profile, I'd be surprised if he wouldn't end up with at least 4-5 separate deities.

My problem with all religions, isn't about the nature of the faith, or of the God itself, but rather with the claim that they know something which they can't possibly know. Teaching Intelligent Design in a school and putting it on the same level as the science of Evolution, simply because a book tells you the world is 6000 years old, is ludicrous to me.

--------------------

I think we sort of diverged from the original point, and I don't have an actual argument to make anymore. Have a happy new year

In reply to this comment by Lodurr:
Let me phrase it differently: science defines which laws exist by ruling out alternatives. So an experiment that yields a certain predicted outcome doesn't itself prove a law. I brought that up because while we can rule out our old theistic theories on how the world operates, we can't yet rule out other aspects of their beliefs. We just have our five senses, and with those senses we can create tools that have other senses, but there is always more that we can't detect. Prior to the microscope, we had no idea germs existed. Prior to the discovery of radio waves, we had no reason to think they existed either. Similarly, we can't rule out the possibilities of extra dimensions that intersect ours, or new forms of energy and matter. That is why science only works in negatives and probabilities. It means more than "nothing at all."

When it comes to my personal beliefs on existence (which aren't Christian), my own reasoning is that my consciousness existing just once is more improbable than my consciousness existing more than once, given that time is infinite or recursive. A once-off universe doesn't make sense to me. Also, the idea that the force of my awareness is the result of atomic matter alone is implausible. My awareness is as of yet undetectable and unmeasurable, and even finding the consciousness switch in our brains wouldn't make it any more measurable. It'd be like theorizing that your light switch generates the electricity in your light bulb. Regarding the idea of god, I don't see any reason to seperate out another being to be the cause of all existence. I much prefer the idea of the Tao, the singularity with infinite regressions, in which everything is relative rather than absolute.

I don't think atheists are bad people--I am one, after all--but I find that we don't have the same easy access to community-based support groups that our theistic neighbors do. Of course there are secular alternatives to everything religion does, they just don't come as easily or automatically.

Any kind of forceful movement creates an unhelpful backlash. The Taoist way is to let change happen naturally. Education and rising standards of living made more atheists than Dawkins and Bill Maher ever will.

Let me phrase it differently: science defines which laws exist by ruling out alternatives. So an experiment that yields a certain predicted outcome doesn't itself prove a law. I brought that up because while we can rule out our old theistic theories on how the world operates, we can't yet rule out other aspects of their beliefs. We just have our five senses, and with those senses we can create tools that have other senses, but there is always more that we can't detect. Prior to the microscope, we had no idea germs existed. Prior to the discovery of radio waves, we had no reason to think they existed either. Similarly, we can't rule out the possibilities of extra dimensions that intersect ours, or new forms of energy and matter. That is why science only works in negatives and probabilities. It means more than "nothing at all."

When it comes to my personal beliefs on existence (which aren't Christian), my own reasoning is that my consciousness existing just once is more improbable than my consciousness existing more than once, given that time is infinite or recursive. A once-off universe doesn't make sense to me. Also, the idea that the force of my awareness is the result of atomic matter alone is implausible. My awareness is as of yet undetectable and unmeasurable, and even finding the consciousness switch in our brains wouldn't make it any more measurable. It'd be like theorizing that your light switch generates the electricity in your light bulb. Regarding the idea of god, I don't see any reason to seperate out another being to be the cause of all existence. I much prefer the idea of the Tao, the singularity with infinite regressions, in which everything is relative rather than absolute.

I don't think atheists are bad people--I am one, after all--but I find that we don't have the same easy access to community-based support groups that our theistic neighbors do. Of course there are secular alternatives to everything religion does, they just don't come as easily or automatically.

Any kind of forceful movement creates an unhelpful backlash. The Taoist way is to let change happen naturally. Education and rising standards of living made more atheists than Dawkins and Bill Maher ever will.

In reply to this comment by demon_ix:
But you just contradicted yourself... You say in one sentence that if the LHC fails to detect the Higgs boson, it'll be proven not to exist, and then you say that "what we can't prove doesn't exist" is a false statement.

Einstein's quote is correct, but it's meaning doesn't relate to what we're talking about. The best way to counter a scientific theory is by a single example of where that theory is fallacious. If someone were to claim that all odd numbers are prime, all you would have to do in order to "prove" him false is demonstrate that his statement fails in one specific point, like the number 9.

There is a massive difference between "what we can't prove doesn't exist" and "what we can prove doesn't exist, doesn't exist". The first statement actually should be "what we can't yet prove, may exist, but may not", which in scientific terms means nothing at all.

My gripe with your comment, though, wasn't because of the science remarks, but rather over the atheist ones. I'm not sure if you noticed it yourself, but your comment is built on a premise that atheists never do any of the good things Christians do, like participating in the community and so on.

I'm not sure why Christians believe Atheists are the scum of the earth. I don't know why you believe that if I don't believe in the story of the Jewish zombie who was his own father and is coming to save you, but only if you pretend to eat his flesh, drink his blood and communicate your desires to him telepathically, that makes me a bad person. I'm really not.

And about the argument from ignorance, believing in God is an argument from ignorance. You assert a claim that something exists, even though you yourself acknowledge there is no way to prove it, and that it has to be taken on faith alone. That is the very definition of an untestable theory. Your comment was based on the claim that religion is somehow superior, when the core of religion is the deity, or God.

To conclude, I'm a little annoyed right now at work, so don't take this post as me being offensive, please. It's really not meant that way. Maybe I should have put some emoticons all over it to express that

In reply to this comment by Lodurr:
Science does in fact work through falsifiability. If the LHC doesn't end up finding a Higgs Boson, then the Higgs Boson theory in its present form will have been disproven. That is just how science and experimentation works. "What we can't prove doesn't exist" is an inherently false statement and incorrect world view because there are countless things we cannot test or prove that must exist. To quote Einstein, "No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong."

I wasn't arguing from ignorance because I wasn't asserting an untestable theory. All I said in my comment was that many religious practices have personal and societal benefits that atheists tend to undervalue because they are associated with religion. I've seen data that supports my theory.

Love Haricot's analysis.. though what really bothers me here is the fall weather in the background. You really do need the Canadian winter to nail the original video's mood.

@spoco (there really needs to be a way to put my response BELOW the quote... is there?) - You should really hang out with more singer-songwriters to learn that... no wait, just stay away from them, to keep the peace.

>> ^spoco2:
In Morisette's own words

"For me the great debate on whether what I was saying in ‘Ironic’ was ironic wasn’t a traumatic debate. I’d always embraced the fact that every once in a while I’d be the malapropism queen. And when Glen and I were writing it, we definitely were not doggedly making sure that everything was technically ironic. It’s a testament to the fact that we didn’t think it was going to be put under the microscope by 30 million people. For me the sweetest moment came in New York when a woman came up to me in a record store and said, ‘So all those things in the “Ironic” aren’t ironic.’ And then she said, ‘And that’s the irony.’ I said, ‘Yup.’ To me it’s a real snapshot of a nineteen-year-old’s definition and version of how life worked at the time. All that ‘Ironic’ touches on spawned all my future inquiries into and current understandings of the mysteries of life."

Which basically means... "Um, so I hate the english language and really can't be f cked using words correctly". In saying 'we definitely were not doggedly making sure that everything was technically ironic' she misses the point that NONE of them were. I mean, she does didn't have a friggen clue what the word meant. And you'd think that if you're going to write a whole song about the word you might actually at least spend a few minutes finding out if you understand its meaning... because she obviously didn't. It really grates that song... really does, so this makes me happy.

In Morisette's own words

"For me the great debate on whether what I was saying in ‘Ironic’ was ironic wasn’t a traumatic debate. I’d always embraced the fact that every once in a while I’d be the malapropism queen. And when Glen and I were writing it, we definitely were not doggedly making sure that everything was technically ironic. It’s a testament to the fact that we didn’t think it was going to be put under the microscope by 30 million people. For me the sweetest moment came in New York when a woman came up to me in a record store and said, ‘So all those things in the “Ironic” aren’t ironic.’ And then she said, ‘And that’s the irony.’ I said, ‘Yup.’ To me it’s a real snapshot of a nineteen-year-old’s definition and version of how life worked at the time. All that ‘Ironic’ touches on spawned all my future inquiries into and current understandings of the mysteries of life."

Which basically means... "Um, so I hate the english language and really can't be f*cked using words correctly". In saying 'we definitely were not doggedly making sure that everything was technically ironic' she misses the point that NONE of them were. I mean, she does didn't have a friggen clue what the word meant. And you'd think that if you're going to write a whole song about the word you might actually at least spend a few minutes finding out if you understand its meaning... because she obviously didn't.

It really grates that song... really does, so this makes me happy.

>> ^shole:
reformat is irrelevant.. it can be recovered just as easy as deleted files.. you'd have to do a multiple pass security format which can take an hour or so depending on disk size and speed
this 1984 shit will force us all to encrypt our harddrives and internet connections
then what will they do?

No you don't. A single pass is nearly good because of the drive density, and overlapping rewrites on a drive as the sectors are rewritten on a normal pass. You should look up some of the more current information on drive fragmentation and magflip recovery using pass electron microscopes. Seriously if they're going to use an electron microscope to look at your drive, they're only going to recover 30% or so anyway.

Topic at hand: I'm just going to say that the law in the US on this stuff is broken. You guys are pretty set on the whole "think of the children" no matter what, yeah well wake and start fixing your judiciary as well as your laws. He had possession by the barest thread of proof, but he didn't have knowledge of it. KCC people. Knowledge, Consent, Control.

>> ^deathcow:
These people have lost all touch with reality now in Alaska. They still want to live in their remote villages, but they dont want to live the lifestyle that goes with it. So they bitch and moan that they pay $6 for a gallon of gas, $9 for a gallon of milk, etc. They want roads and infrastructure and airports and sewer systems, and regular flights to support their microscopic communities. I say if their historical lifestyle is dead, and their diet is now white bread and pepsi, they need to get the hell out of the arctic desolation and move to a city.


Sounds very similar to where I come from, except that I would be the one bitching about $9 milk (more like $14 where I come from).

Are they not deserving of the same infrastructure as you? Do they not pay taxes the same as you do?

How very thoughtful of you, I presume of European descent, to bitch about the folks whose land you now live on. Something must be wrong with THEM, right? Inuit were living quite happily before your ancestors moved in. It's kinda like you crashing my party and then complaining I don't stock the type of Gin you like.

'Lost all touch with reality'? That's a bold statement - so bold in fact I think it's worth pointing out to you that the city you want them to move to was built in the very Arctic 'desolation' they call home.

These people have lost all touch with reality now in Alaska. They still want to live in their remote villages, but they dont want to live the lifestyle that goes with it. So they bitch and moan that they pay $6 for a gallon of gas, $9 for a gallon of milk, etc. They want roads and infrastructure and airports and sewer systems, and regular flights to support their microscopic communities. I say if their historical lifestyle is dead, and their diet is now white bread and pepsi, they need to get the hell out of the arctic desolation and move to a city.

Engineering is much more academically difficult than medicine, imho. Anyone with a rich enough daddy can get a MD. Getting a PhD in advanced engineering...well it doesn't matter how rich your daddy is if you can't pass your classes.

And as longde said...the time required to finish a PhD and MD is really not that much different...

Our level of medical knowledge is barbaric. Cancer? Cut out the tumor. Heart disease? Cut out your left ventricle. Diabetes? Cut off yout foot. Periodontal disease? Cut out your teeth. The only reason medical science seems advanced is all the engineering equipment they use...x-rays, ultra-sounds, microscopic cameras, pacemakers, etc. etc...but thats not medical science at all...thats engineering.

Unless you are surgeon, why do you need a $250,000, 10 year education to google symptoms on Web MD and treatments on drugs.com? Even my friend who is a hemophiliac can give himself shots, so what purpose does a general-practice doctor serve in the age of the internet?