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Phi for All

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Everything posted by Phi for All

  1. It's definitely cheap to point out parts of someone's body as being "less than ideal", especially when it's something one has little control over. Jokes on genetics have ALWAYS been hurtful and antagonistic. Big noses, red hair, no hair, big butt, small breasts, pigeon-toed, harelip, buck-toothed, non-white skin. People are often expected to be good-natured about things they can't control. Bullies are allowed to poke fun because "they don't mean anything by it", and they're "just giving you a hard time". I think there's a difference when it's something that attacks you like autoimmune disorders. I don't know enough about it, but it's my impression that alopecia isn't as genetically predictable as knowing you're nose is going to be as big as your grandfather's, or that you'll be bald by 30. If Jada Smith had rheumatoid arthritis, and hobbled when she walked, would it be appropriate to joke about her Olympic marathon chances? If she had Type 1 diabetes and had a severe hypoglycemic reaction, is it OK to joke about the seizures, or that all those holes in her arm make her look like an addict? MS can make a person look unbalanced and drunk, so there's a bunch of low-hanging fruit there. Lupus often starts as an unsightly rash, and we all know how easy it is to give a hard time to someone with skin that doesn't look right. I've often felt like some people need a back-of-the-head clout (grandma-speak for "What's the matter with you?!") for calling out the differences in others, but I don't actually do it. And I have to admit that I was a bigger fan of Chris Rock before his divorce. The last special of his I watched showed how bitter he's become towards women, and because of that I suppose I read some extra venom into his remarks about Jada Smith.
  2. An aspect that's being overlooked is that extra bit of privilege a famous comedian gets in front of an audience of those intimately familiar with being in front of an audience as well as among them. There's a meta-performance issue at these awards ceremonies where fellow performers are expecting a known comic to be really funny and they also know their reactions are being filmed, and when the comic times a comment just right, the laugh is automatically on the lips, which doesn't give enough time to process what was actually said. Without that expectation, the ideal reaction to Chris Rock's cheap shot would have been nothing but crickets from that Hollywood crowd. They would have listened more closely to the words and realized the difference between roasting a colleague and attacking someone's illness. It would have shown Rock that he went too far and lost favor, momentum, and laughs. That's how you show a comedian your disapproval, not by assaulting them on stage.
  3. If you don't understand the Big Bang Theory, how would you understand "documentation" regarding it? It has a LOT of evidence to support it, and where it's applicable it's shown to be remarkably accurate. Incredulity is a weak argument when it's clear you haven't really studied the science.
  4. It has nothing at all to do with "more detailed". It's hard to figure out if you're serious about discussing science, or more interested in pushing the views for your YT channel. Videos often require the viewer to keep going back to make sure they heard things right. The written word allows us to do this practically instantaneously. It's much easier to put mis/dis-information that goes unnoticed into a video than a written study. Video often adds an emotional element that's unnecessary. You yourself admit you used a "provocative title" to grab attention. Then there's the whole element of illusion. With modern tech, can we really trust what we see on posted videos? In science, you can't get "too detailed". There will always be someone who requires more clarity and precision simply because they can understand it and use it to promote even better explanations for various phenomena.
  5. The evidence is more supportive of "most serial killers started off being animal abusers", I think. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12613433/
  6. It's a common misconception that the BB was an explosion radiating outward into something, but it wasn't. It was a sudden expansion that happened everywhere at once, since it involved everything at once (the entirety of the universe). The model is very clear on this, and the theory explains the model.
  7. ! Moderator Note We attack ideas here. We don't attack groups of people, verbally or literally! This is an unacceptable violation of the rules you agreed to when you joined.
  8. You have evidence of a center of the universe? And that it has the mass to gravitationally attract all other matter?
  9. Actually, with the Bannon strategy, it seems like it's never expected to officially stick so much as obscure and delay. The goal is to make it much more difficult to figure out what's NOT shit rather than persuading anyone any of it is true.
  10. CarlDarwin has been banned as a sockpuppet of symptom378, Jalopy, Adelbert_Einstein, Karen Brown, and thequeenofhearts. Anti-intellectualism professional determined to waste their own time along with everyone else's, it seems.
  11. ! Moderator Note I'll leave the thread open if you want to continue to discuss this, but the OP is a sockpuppet of a banned account, and won't be defining terms for you.
  12. This is one of my smaller manors. I usually rent it out as a B&B, but I'll let everybody here use it for free if you can sit down inside and speak respectfully to each other while you discuss this issue.
  13. ! Moderator Note Moved from Homework Help to Speculations. Please clarify your concerns and perhaps link to a trustworthy source of the phenomenon you're talking about. You've made some claims, so please support them with evidence.
  14. ! Moderator Note We don't delete anything, but we're a science discussion forum and we'd appreciate it if you'd abide by the rules. This isn't the opening post to a science discussion thread, so I'm closing it.
  15. ! Moderator Note I'm going to call for more civility here, or I must assume this long thread has run its course. There's been little discussion of late, so I'd like to remind you all that belittling someone else's stance doesn't count as support for your own. You're at a table, not on opposite sides of a fence.
  16. Some of the problems we had with "nature" is the tendency of fruits and vegetables to be covered in insects as they quickly rot in the outdoor markets. So we developed canning technology to make them safer and last longer, and it was a complete game-changer. Now though, we turn to "nature" to save us from technology, and I'm not sure it's wise in many instances.
  17. Are you writing papers on these topics for your classes in school? Is the assignment really only about "men" in engineering, or about "people"? "Men and society" benefit from having engineers, and I suppose engineers would have a lot less to do if people didn't band together in societies, but it's such a broad question that I find it hard to believe you "didn't find any resources regarding this topic". Do you really have no idea why a society might benefit from having people who can design mechanical workings on a large scale, or why an engineer might benefit from having people interested in living in denser population centers?
  18. ! Moderator Note Moved to Homework Help.
  19. Basis points, which reflect percentage change in value, and each represents 0.01%, so this increase in interest rates is a quarter of one percent.
  20. Not in any scientific sense. Theory is as strong as it gets in science. I suggest your suggestion renders the term meaningless. I'm assuming you define "hard" as "a bar I can set wherever I want". Theories have models and mountains of evidence to support them. When they lack observational support, such as with String Theory, we rely more heavily on the models, but they still have to have evidence if they're considered a theory. No evidence? Are you using your earlier definition of "hard evidence", because his work had plenty of observational evidence, and much of it was based on experiments carried out by others. His explanation solved the mystery with the orbital precession of Mercury. His explanations wouldn't have been credible at all if "he had no evidence". You make assertions rather than ask questions or pose problems, and many of those are either incomplete or just plain wrong. It makes you appear to be doing it consciously to waste time or provoke reactions. I wanted you to know so you can adjust your posting style, or at least know why you get so much pushback on many of your posts.
  21. SuperSlim has been suspended for two weeks for uncivil personal comments. Attacking people isn't as strong a strategy as attacking their ideas, and name-calling should be beneath intelligent humans.
  22. ! Moderator Note Moved from Classical Physics to Homework Help.
  23. Her name is Marina Ovsyannikova, and she's been an employee at Russia's Channel One state TV, and she chose to interrupt a heavily watched news show Monday night. She's definitely a hero!
  24. Since this is just one possible outcome out of an almost infinite array of outcomes, why do you think this article's author is correct? I'm only interested in why this is worth any amount of time thinking about, unless one is writing fiction about it, and then it's quite obviously up to the author. It seems to be a topic that probably has about 7 billion different opinions, each unique and equally meaningless. Edit to add: Over the time periods you're asking about, I don't think the even most educated biologists could do more than guess at how evolution will affect our overall appearance. But this is just an argument from incredulity, so I'm willing to be educated.
  25. I figured the OP would eventually claim the answer is: the rooster.

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