TheVat

BMI is just another failed attempt to categorize people with an algorithm. The idea that 157 would be an ideal weight for a six foot male, in this part of the country would be preposterous. Lots of Scandinavians, Germans, Ukrainians, and others from northern European peasant stock who are built heavier and would be nearly emaciated at that weight. One thing I notice, related to that, is that the younger generation now seems to be averaging a slighter build, which leads me to wonder about the endocrine disruptors in our environment and the junking up of the American diet in recent decades. There could also be developmental effects for a generation that largely lives in an electronic coccoon, which should be an area for active research.

Cancel culture, what I've seen, translates as: people are holding me accountable for my s-t and I need to deflect! Or, as Phi and others point out, it's a marketing gimmick or a politician's buzzword to rouse donors and voters. My question is this (for those who believe there are genuine instances of free speech suppression) : do you have specific cases? Are innocent people being harassed, made pariahs, forced from jobs? Are good-faith open dialogues on touchy subjects being stifled? Is intellectual freedom withering somewhere? I know there was that letter signed by 150-odd prominent intellectuals and authors and published in The Atlantic a year or so back...and it did seem to raise a genuine specter of suppression. When you get JK Rowling and Noam Chomsky on the same page, it does pique interest. But it all seemed pretty vague to me at the time and I had to wonder if there was a real trend or just isolated oddball cases.

Commercial fusion was just meant as example of something a ways off in the future. Note to self: do not post and try to listen to spouse at same time. (thanks for noticing the confusingness)

The Collatz conjecture concerns sequences defined as follows: start with any positive integer n. Then each term is obtained from the previous term as follows: if the previous term is even, the next term is one half of the previous term. If the previous term is odd, the next term is 3 times the previous term plus 1. The conjecture is that no matter what value of n, the sequence will always reach 1. Here's a directed graph showing the orbits of small numbers under the Collatz map, skipping even numbers. Anyway, mathematicians keep saying this is beyond the reach of present day mathematics. Wonder if humans will solve this about the time we get nuclear fusion to be a practical power source.

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/11/05/1052961177/new-coronavirus-likely-from-dogs-infects-people-in-malaysia-and-haiti We found a coronavirus," he says. And not just any coronavirus, but one that many scientists believe may be a new human pathogen — likely the 8th coronavirus known to cause disease in people. Turns out, this coronavirus in the Haiti travelers has cropped up previously, on the other side of the globe. Back in May, scientists at Duke University, reported they had detected a nearly identical virus coronavirus in children at a Malaysian hospital. The researchers found the virus in the upper respiratory tract of 3% of the 301 patients they tested in 2017 and 2018. The genetic sequence of the Malaysian virus suggested it likely originated in dogs and then jumped into people. "The majority of the genome was canine coronavirus," virologist Anastasia Vlasova told NPR in May. Although the findings sounded alarming, the researchers had no evidence that the virus could spread between people or that it was widespread around the world. "These human infections with ... canine coronaviruses appear to be isolated incidents which did not lead to extensive human transmission," virologist Vincent Racaniello wrote on the Virology Blog. Now Lednicky and his colleagues have found an almost identical virus infecting people 11,000 miles away-- at the same time. The genetic sequence of the virus in Haiti is 99.4% identical to the one in Malaysia. Lednicky and his colleagues reported this past Sunday in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases. And the big question is: How does a dog virus in Malaysia wind up in doctors and nurses in Haiti? (sorry about the enormous font -- cut/paste here seems to force weird font sizes on you and I don't know how to switch it off)

Not neglecting the thread I suggested, things just got busy at the Vat household for a couple days. Still catching up on the readings posted. Things do not sound too good for the Hijra in India. Having to be a "sex worker" to survive suggests the kind of limited options usually associated with the term slavery.

Plus one on the "rampant use of outliers." Sounds like the guiding editorial principle of Newsmax and Fox News. It's funny that when you drive on a road or eat safe food, no one complains that the government took "other people's money" and used it to build the roads and inspect the food. But when the government makes direct payments to people who can't afford rent or food (often a result simply of being born in the wrong womb -- see John Rawls, the ethicist on this risky misstep), it's characterized as theft and the recipients as lazy. "You revolution is over, Lebowski! The bums lost!"

Plus one. Yes, winds are a complex phenomenon where topography, uneven land surface heating, the earth's rotation and Coriolis effect, altitude, and an array of influences all play a role. We could never place enough windmills to have more than a miniscule effect on the overall transfer of thermal energy on the planet.

I would be interested in a thread on anthropology and gender identity. How have other cultures approached it, what options existed for the mismatched or nonbinary before surgical or endocrine interventions were available, are there modern cultures where gender fluidity is easier, are there cultures where just a wardrobe change satisfies all parties, etc. (sorry, I realize I have probably suggested several threads right there) Just as economists benefit when anthropologists go out and study credit and debt in other societies, so too could psychologists benefit when anthropologists go where gender norms are different. We often get boxed into disciplines where it is easy to forget the vast range of possible human cultures and social norms.

I wasn't denying that NS had past diverse population, just saying that the reality was that most North American schools were not inclusive, and that it seems like a policy of honesty to not conceal its early crops of pale people. If they were only doing it to liberate wall space, or go Minimalist on decor, sure, no problem. But current prospective students are really not going to freak out, are they, if they happen to see that the class of 1905 was melanin challenged. Indeed, it might be inspiring to see the contrast between then and now.

LoL your asterisks, and please feel at ease in this thread referencing population, which seems pretty relevant to this topic. As Peterkin noted, any planting is good, and young growing trees can fix plenty of carbon. Stopping the clearance done for beef ranching will take both policy changes, iron enforcement, and cultural changes on how some view "real meat." While I view some of the recent plant-based meats as pretty tasty, I know I am in a minority in my country, and even considered a traitor in some circles. Which is a silly way for the beefeaters to be in the viselike grip of an ideology, IMO.

Will admit the removal of pictures of early graduating classes at the Nova Scotia college struck me as ridiculous. Yes, most students were white then, as I assume was true of Nova Scotia generally, and so what? So, yes, when academic institutions start erasing history or suppressing open dialog, that is kind of Maoist and antithetical to the intellectual freedom that such institutions are supposed to foster. George Santayana leaps to mind.

De Sitter's experiment Consider a distant binary star system (two stars, A and B, orbiting each other) and assume that the orbits of the stars obey Kepler's laws (so they trace out ellipses). Assume Ritz's theory so that the speed of light depends on the velocity of the star. When star A is moving towards us (at speed vv) in its orbit, the light it emits in our direction will be moving at speed c+vc+v. When it is moving away from us (also at speed vv), the light it emits in our direction will be moving slower, with speed c−vc−v. Therefore the motion will appear very nonuniform: the star will seem to speed up as it comes towards us and slow down as it moves away. This is not consistent with what we observe in practice, which is uniform Keplerian motion. This means that Ritz's theory cannot be an accurate description of the motion of light. This is an incredibly simple explanation. There are many ways in which you could criticise this argument (maybe the motion we see is the result of Ritz's theory and highly eccentric elliptical orbits?) and he gives a more detailed argument with reference to specific binary systems in a follow-up paper. In this follow-up paper he phrases the conclusion slightly more conservatively: one can put an upper bound on the dependence of the speed of light on the velocity of its source using astronomical observations of binary systems according to the argument sketched above. Of course, there are many other experiments which confirm the predictions of special relativity, but this one has the advantage that it only requires you to have a good telescope rather than some complicated configuration of interferometers. It's also the simplest imaginable experiment you could design to directly test the constancy of the speed of light: essentially racing lightbeams against one another! https://www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~ucahjde/blog/lightspeed.html

The standard has been ten days and 24 hours with no fever, if we are talking of mild or asymptomatic covid. But isolation can be longer if the infection is severe or if the person is immunocompromised. Here's the CDC page where you can scroll down a ways to see all the various scenarios: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/your-health/quarantine-isolation.html

From today's COP26, an attempt at least (not getting excited, as the pledge has been made before...) GLASGOW, Scotland (AP) — More than 100 countries pledged Tuesday to end deforestation in the coming decade — a promise that experts say would be critical to limiting climate change but one that has been made and broken before. Britain hailed the commitment as the first big achievement of the U.N. climate conference known as COP26 taking place this month in the Scottish city of Glasgow. But campaigners say they need to see the details to understand its full impact. The U.K. government said it has received commitments from leaders representing more than 85% of the world’s forests to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030. Among them are several countries with massive forests, including Brazil, China, Colombia, Congo, Indonesia, Russia and the United States. More than $19 billion in public and private funds have been pledged toward the plan. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that “with today’s unprecedented pledges, we will have a chance to end humanity’s long history as nature’s conqueror, and instead become its custodian.”

Yes, the supply chains of stuff like palm oil are a big piece of the puzzle. With coffee, we can promote shade tree varieties (coffea arabica) but it is harder to get consumers to even know how to stop buying the thousands of products that contain palm oil. As @String Junky noted, it is hard to educate on long-term consequences when people are living hand-to-mouth. Those people will likely subscribe to the famous adage, "money talks, bulls*** walks. " So maybe it would take fallow payments, where money rewards leaving a forest alone, because otherwise there will always be economic drivers that we cannot stop just by not buying. Even if rich nations said no more robusta beans, palm oil, tinned beef, copper, latex, etc there would still be hungry farmers nibbling away at the edges of the forests. They would need incentives to just walk in there and gather nuts instead.

Also be wary of critiques of ET which go after only one type of evolution when there are five different mechanisms. Especially if the critique centers on mutation, which by itself generates variation but not evolution. Evolution arises only in the interaction of the mutant variation with the other four mechanisms. As for the attack on mutation plus NS, one need only find an adult who can drink a glass of milk to dismiss it.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/01/cop26-what-is-deforestation-and-is-stopping-it-really-possible-aoe The loss of forests and their capacity as carbon sinks, as well as their effects (especially rainforest) on weather patterns, poses serious problems for us. Where do you think effort would be best concentrated? Paying developing nations not to chop, giving them carbon capture credits, seems like one practical approach.

Consider me doubled over - good one! And makes the point about intent. I would say a lot of humor (at least the kind that makes people laugh) is somewhat transgressive, and that's a good thing. It means we are laughing about something that otherwise we might anxious or fearful or sad about. Humor is a vital social coping mechanism which alleviates negative feelings and distrust. When it is transgressive, it says we are mutually trusting in the intent to soften life's blows by taking them less seriously. As you indicated, you have to "read the room. "

Dress codes in schools should address distraction, a universal human malady, not stereotypes about unbridled libidos. Pretty sure my GPA in middle/highschool would have dropped a point or two if students had worn swimsuits, but I would guess after a semester or so I would have adjusted to the new norm.

You have not made any case for a genuine scientific framework in which Saturn would be closer to the sun than Earth. Wormholes don't alter the layout of our solar system, nor do playing a cute semantic game with spreadsheet sorting, and when we make a valid statement (valid, as in true) on Saturn's location, it is quite simple and has been so for centuries to confirm or falsify that statement. Science, when it comes to this sort of matter, does very much deal in determining the truth of the matter. And sometimes, as in the matter of planetary locations with respect to stars, it is quite warranted to make a truth claim and hold that claim to be universal. When you say "everyone" is making claims about truth, I don't know who everyone is or what their specific claims are. But I believe the sort of empirically based claims I have exampled here are legitimate claims to truth. They can be proven or falsified, and it is easy to determine which was arrived at. Future science isn't going to discover Saturn is actually beneath a shopping mall in Omaha. It is where it is, farther from the sun, and will remain so unless some interstellar interloper, a brown dwarf perhaps, yanks it drastically out of its orbital path. Saying something is true for a certain span of time makes it no less true.

Yeah, I tend to think indoctrination connotes uncritical acceptance of whatever is being taught. Hard to be "imbued" if someone is presenting it as a debatable. Anyway, in common parlance, the more pejorative definition seems to now dominate conversations. I'd wager more people think Uighurs in reeducation camps or children in madrassas now, when they hear the word. Not places where teacher says, I'll open this up for discussion now.

Dan, science currently has enough suspicion and hostility directed at it. To have scientists start advising people on their religious practices and how to allocate their personal resources, would only worsen the situation. Maybe putting flowers by the Buddha or the blessed Virgin, while viewed by an atheist as a waste of effort, gives someone deep peace and satisfaction that ripples throughout their day. Seems like science best remain silent on this. Atheism I've always taken to mean the active assertion there are no gods. Agnosticism being the other view that knowledge of such an entity is beyond our human epistemic limits. I go with the latter and find serious atheists smug and off-putting.

Gosh, if only there were books that had all the words in a language, and gave agreed upon definitions of them. Hey... Definition of indoctrinate transitive verb 1: to imbue with a usually partisan or sectarian opinion, point of view, or principle 2: to instruct especially in fundamentals or rudiments : TEACH (From Webster's) So clearly, in definition one, just learning the Monroe doctrine, as an historical fact, is not indoctrination. One must be imbued with it. One must be led to a particular opinion or perspective, usually sectarian or partisan. In this example, one must be persuaded that any foreign intervention in American politics is bad for the nation and should be viewed as hostile. I would venture that many pupils just learn what the doctrine is, without necessarily being imbued with a political opinion of it. I myself am not convinced it is always applicable.

A true vacuum would lower the boiling point of water to room temperature. This suggests that a true vacuum anywhere in or around a body would be catastrophic for the person. Cells would burst and their contents would vaporize. Anyplace in the GI tract would equalize pressure with the external environment since the tract is technically not separate from the exterior and has no hermetic seals at larynx or anus. A slightly higher pressure in the tract, from methane and hydrogen formation, results in burps or farts, or bloat if those don't happen due to temporary food blockages or constrictions of sphincters. And then there's this fact, one which I am mostly encouraged not to share at social functions: prolonged sitting in a chair can compress the anal sphincter to where it effectively seals the colon. In theory, you could, say, eat a bag of white flour, with some water, then sit for a prolonged period, then induce vomiting while in the seated position followed by laryngeal compression and you might achieve (and "achieve" is really the word here, eh?) a small partial vacuum in your GI tract for a brief period.