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It seems to be a thing with the human psyche that self-righteous anger is often out of proportion. The idea that you are some sort of hero, putting less thoughtful or caring people to rights is very appealing, and often sends people over the top. Especially if you can picture yourself as some sort of heroic defender of the innocent. In the news recently, Disney cast a straight actor, Jack Whitehall, as their first gay character. There was a self-righteous clamour of protest, that they should have cast a gay actor. Stephen Fry popped up, and pointed out that he'd been playing straight parts all his career.

Actually, this is not correct. The charge that is associated with the weak interaction is a quantum number called “weak isospin”. All particles possess this, and it is conserved in all types of interactions - unlike flavour, which is carried only be quarks, and is not conserved anyway. Thus, the weak interaction concerns more (elementary) particles than just quarks. To be honest, I don’t think there is an intuitive way to really understand the weak interaction. It’s really quite a complicated mechanism, and requires quite a bit of background knowledge in quantum field theory to fully understand.

What happens to one's concentration, if one drops a scolding substance into one's lap?

To me this misses the point. The focus should be on ensuring homosexuals (and everyone else) has equal opportunity for various roles. Focusing on one type of role ignores the fact that a lot of thought goes into casting, and it may even limit opportunities in the future as the next group may claim that since they were actually poor farmers before going into acting, that only they can play a poor farmer with conviction.

Not even the parables? Apples and oranges, Jesus spoke the words and many years later someone else wrote them down. Let's imagine the teachings were about contentment (addicts can't be content by definition) 40 days and nights away from temptation is about right to reset one's dopamine levels, then the water into wine metaphor comes into focus.

I can't really speak for him - but I am guessing it is because he cares about what people think about him. He cares about how he behaves and self reflects and self monitors his own behaviours (much in the same way a Christian repents from wrongs). Basically he is a good guy who cares about people and the world and doesn't want to make bad judgements and is 'checking' his thoughts and reasoning with peers and people he trusts - like his pals on this site. Maybe - as I said I can't speak for him - but I think I get why he is self reflecting on the situation rather than just assuming he was in the right (which he is imo). I could be wrong - but he was the first person I ever 'friended' on here back when we had that facility - this is because I like the respect he treats everyone with... and he can be funny too. I was walking through the street late at night in Canterbury a year ago... I was a bit tipsy. I gave some homeless couple the rest of the money in my pocket... paper and coin. I was talking to them for a bit and some drunk guy who knew them came up and told them to be careful of me as I was "clearly a wrongun". He could see it my eyes apparently and was trying to start a fight with me. I thought about fighting him, but I had a bad back and didn't fancy it.... although I reckon he'd have been easy enough to deal with presuming he didn't have a knife tucked away. I am a pacifist anyway so wouldn't really have wanted to. It thoroughly depressed me - I try to be nice - I try to be a good person - I was Christian for many years - I was totally at a loss as to how my very appearance would cause someone to hate me so much - you just have to accept that some people are arseholes I think and write them off and move/drive on.

I think it is because of the lack of direct contact (rather like posting on an Internet forum!) that rather "dehumanises" the other person in these interactions. My approach, when I lived in a country with particularly insane driving, was just to sit back and enjoy the show. As long as I kept my distance, I didn't have to worry about what others did.

I'm not sure I agree with that. The electron was discovered long before quantum theory was developed.

Yes. Did not I say it in the first post? I made such application (entire network), for steelworks..

There are existing such applications. How is that different from e.g. video conference.. ? One smartphone/tablet is recording video from front, back or both cameras, and sending through Internet, to yet another smartphone/desktop/FTP server.. Your application would have to be special with unique features for specific client, to be worthwhile purchase.. ps. Don't waste time on asking these "questions". Better buy C/C++, Java, PHP, Perl, Python books, read them, and learn programming.. During reading and learning you will see what is feasible to be done.

The evolutionary factors which lead to the complex social behaviors may make it possible to believe in we cannot explain especially those that provide a positive feedback in our neurological system. This may help in cooperative behavior and it may make it easier to believe in a god or goddess or spirit but science cannot predict the belief in "god". It also cannot give any proof that you cannot be an atheist. It only explains at best that we have the capacity in believing in things beyond our explanation. When people connect it to believing in god or any specific belief it creates a connection that is not supported by what is known. This can be interesting speculation but when it is presented as fact becomes a negative use of the information. There has been speculation on whether chimpanzees have behaviors that suggest ritualistic like pattern thus may suggest possible support for some aspect of religion. We have seen how both birds and mammals are affected by death of one of their own. Whether this is the beginning of religion with similar behavior patterns to humans is very interesting but no one has suggested yet that they have religion.

You are being bizarrely irrational in this thread. I'm not sure what point you are trying to make, but you are failing brilliantly. The last sentence doesn't follow from the previous ones. There are many possible reasons for stories of miracles, none of which prove or disprove the existence of the historical Jesus.

Well, for that there are a couple of indicators. First, is the increase in political clout. There are folks in the White House that are close (or actual) white nationalists who actually enact policies aimed at limiting influx of non-whites. Plus the lack of condemnation of white supremacists when they actually killed someone or the way the President reacted when he got endorsed by the KKK. These factors do not necessarily increase the numbers of white nationalists, but it certainly mainstreams their ideas. An additional indicator is that there a handful of GOP candidates that are openly supremacists or of similar ilk. While they generally do not have much support, the fact that they are in the mix can be seen as a signal. Now, the issue of actual rise in white nationalism on the population side is more difficult to assess. It is one thing of having organization with declared goals, but there are also the diffuse groups and individuals who knowingly or not sympathize with the same ideologies. Finding good data set for a baseline and finding evidence for significant change is going to be difficult no matter what, due to the diffuse characters of associated ideologies and the short time frame of the current administration. At the same time, belonging to a hate group sends an open signal of ones ideology and while certain folks sympathize with certain aspects of white nationalism (or just good old xenophobia) actively joining a group may be a bridge too far. Likely, many of the same folk would agree that racism is a bad thing and joining such groups unless they manage to polish their sheen of respectability would be an issue. But you mentioned social media. Here, it is important to note that social media are not only used to propagate the rise of hate groups, but it is also becoming the major platform to recruit and perpetuate these ideologies. Similar, in fact, to Islamic radicalism, which increasingly uses these platforms to radicalize folks. If you look at current lit, you will find that researchers struggle to get a grips on e.g. the "alt-right" movement (a term, which incidentally was coined by white supremacists to normalize their stance it kind of worked). But since much of it is internet-based, it is difficult to assess the scope. More work has been done in terms of their tactics, but some studies indicate an increase in reach. But since it is a relatively new movement, but also bleeds over from fringe conservatives, it is difficult to establish a quantitative trend. That being said, according to various polls starting 2017 only ca. 5-10% of respondents share all core values including a strong sense of white identity and white solidarity coupled with a sense of white victimization (as expressed in slogans of concerning white genocide/ fear of replacement) with these white nationalist/identity movements. My suspicion is simply that a part of the population always had ideologies that at least partially align with white nationalist ideals. A certain amount of xenophobia is present in virtually all societies. What I think has changed (and again, it is pure speculation) are two things. On the one hand the normalization of certain rhetoric emboldens some to be more open with regards to certain attitudes as they may not be seen as racist as they used to be. This increase in open hostility is not new and happens periodically, especially when there is a crisis (or perceived crisis) of sorts. Typically these worries are masked as economic worries, but when e.g. politicians are openly using a certain verbiage (in congress folks like Steve King come to mind) and face no blowback, the racial elements tend to become more apparent. On the other hand, there are counter movements that expose or try to expose (with different levels of aptitude) some hitherto accepted norms as racist or at least controversial. For example, while controversial in some areas the conclusions offered in The Bell Curve was still often mentioned or taught in class with little skepticism as facts some 20 years ago. The pushback nowadays is not exclusively due to newer findings but also because of an increased sense that the original studies used biased selection and ignored confounding factors to build a narrative. Or because nowadays there is a sense that folks are not only in poverty and/or crime because of poor personal choices, but because they were in an environment where good choices were harder to come by. I.e. instead of punishment, social and economic policies and interventions were found to have a deeper impact on crime rates. The latter serves as a threat of the former worldview and at least seemingly leads to more conflict, amplified by social media, which can lead to a general impression of an increase of extremism. Another interesting element is that extremists, even on different sides tend to have similar interests. I remember reports where there was a weird level of support from neo-nazis to black separationist, for example. The reason being that both groups eventually want segregation.

Personally, I felt such restrictions were unwarranted given that the previous administration had already addressed problems with the system. In 2008, the family reunification program was suspended not because of a security threat, but because of fraud. It was found that people from Kenya and Nigeria weren't actually related to those granted asylum in the U.S. In 2011, it was discovered that Iraqi operatives infiltrated the Iraqi refugee program. As a result, that program was also suspended to address the problem. The operatives were arrested for arms dealing and plotting attacks against former military personnel they encountered back in Iraq. Having said that, we still have to look at the data to see if these policies actually limited the overall number of "non-whites." BTW, "Non-whites" is a rather poor choice of words considering the amount of immigrants coming from various parts of Africa, India, and China that weren't subject to such policies. There is also a proposal to cut immigration overall by 50% within 10 years, but pushback and criticism from both the left and the right will most likely result in it's failure. So again, the case for the problem of white nationalism worsening is speculative at best. No, this is neither a signal, nor an indication that the problem with white nationalism is worsening. And it's not just because these people get very little support, but because they've already reared their ugly heads to a greater extent in the recent past. Your link showed an exhaustive list of 17 right wing extremists/supremacists, 5 of which have already lost. James Ulsup won the renowned high office of the most prestigious Whitman County Republican Precinct Committee Officer [/sarcasm] - But he only won because he went unchallenged - and now the GOP has denounced him and desperately searching for loopholes to remove him, so what does that tell you? The rest of the pack probably doesn't have much of a chance either. Art Jones thinks he can win in Illinois (Chicago) against a guy named Dan Lipinski. It just goes to show how delusional these people are. I would definitely agree that this is a case of Trump "emboldening" white supremacists if Jones wasn't doing this same thing for the past 50 years - hasn't won yet. But anyway, back to my point. Compare your ADL list of 17 extremist candidates in 2018 to a list compiled by the SPLC in 2010 of 23 extremists candidates, 5 of which actually won. https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2011/electoral-extremism-23-candidates-radical-right This is just another example of the data showing that the problem really isn't getting worse. And that pretty much holds true for almost everything we argue about today given the fact that we have 24 hour on demand access to bolster whatever negative perspective we want. Anger is a very powerful stimulant, and we as a nation are practically addicted to it. But overall, things tend to get better and progress marches onward. I understand that the majority doesn't like Trump, therefore the perception of racism is heightened in order to link it all to back to him and get him out of office - and I suppose that's all fair game. Just don't get yourself killed over it by picking a fight with a bunch of delusional rednecks over a statue. I think there are more constructive ways to fight hate, and your link to ADL is a very good starting point. Thanks for posting that. As for the rest of your post, I don't really have much to add. I hope you don't feel that I'm just trying to dismiss your points. I really enjoy reading your posts and appreciate your thoughtful response. Cheers!