Phi for All

What does "not enjoying" entail? Do you simply look away and not think about it anymore, or do you frown, make a disgusted sound or comment, and avoid those two people no matter what? I think the first behavior is about preference, and the second is about prejudice.

It sounds like we're working with different definitions of "prejudice". If you're judging a particular sex act with distaste, and assuming you've never actually engaged in said act, aren't you pre-judging it to be distasteful? Or is this a binary problem, where sex acts are only either enjoyable or distasteful? I have my own prejudices, and I try to fight them when I think they're keeping me from understanding. It's a struggle, based on my upbringing in the Midwest US, to overcome my kneejerk reactions to certain people and things. But it's worthwhile if it makes me more adaptable and accepting of diversity (which seems to be a strong trait in nature in general). I've acquired each of them for various reasonable (to me at the time) reasons. None of them were innate.

Really well said, and clearly supports that this is something we learned, we practiced, and can now change if we want to. It may be natural for any animal to fear something different, but humans seem to have enough intelligence to reason past it, if we want to.

! Moderator Note We have rules about wild-ass guesswork when it comes to science. People like you waste a LOT of time with your obtuseness. This has been explained before, but you have a really shitty, shitty style of discussion. You push your ideas while ignoring replies that run counter to what you're claiming. That's just preaching, and we are a DISCUSSION forum with rules against preaching. You act like you're posing legitimate questions, but you're repeating the same mistakes, which get pointed out, and then you ask people to point out your mistakes, which again shows you aren't listening. I'm going to recommend we ban you, since you can't discuss in good faith and just seem interested in wasting everyone else's time.

This reminded me of the term "massive", which is very different in science than in regular English.

That's not a great example, imo. People who smoke or chew gum/tobacco are often leaving the residue of their enjoyment for the rest of us to deal with. There's a reasonable stance against certain behavior if it actually impacts you negatively. But I understand where you're coming from wrt gum. I'm prejudiced against people who smoke, and I'm not well disposed towards someone who wants to talk to me while chewing gum. "Distasteful" is probably the wrong word to describe how we feel about someone else's sexual preferences. We need a definition for things we don't like people doing that has no impact on us (like their sexual preferences or the clothes they wear or their religious beliefs), and a different definition for behavior that does (like spitting gum on the ground or blowing smoke in someone's face or cutting in front of others in a line). And if a "distaste" for homosexuals extends to public affection when one doesn't object to heterosexuals doing the same, then I'd say that's homophobic. And that's what I see most; heterosexuals claiming that homosexuals are grooming small children or offending straight people just by being in the same mall or public area. It's the very existence of an alternate lifestyle they find "distasteful".

The Bohr model of the atom originally used "orbits" to describe the path electrons take. That's changed to "orbitals" with "shells" and "subshells" as we learned more and needed to distinguish between observed behaviors.

Your truth is a bit weird, though, in context of the rest of our lives, don't you think? If you aren't participating in something, why do you find others enjoyment of it "distasteful", unless you believe they're doing something WRONG? Do you feel that way about anything else people do? If you hate eating fish, do you put down those who enjoy it? Are they doing something "distasteful"? What about people who dress up in cosplay? I've known people who think LARPers and Renaissance Festival fans are weird, and that there's something wrong with them mentally because they're so into fantasy and dressing differently.

Why would you want to be misled by encouragement when an idea is flawed? Most ideas are wrong, and discussion helps us find the parts we need to rethink. Even while speculating, you should keep a foot firmly in the science we consider our best current explanations. Why are you taking any of this personally, when it's your ideas, not you, that are being discussed? Some people spend years working on their personal explanations for various phenomena, then start discussing it with peers only to find out they misunderstood some part of the science, or didn't use the right calculations. If you know the science mind at all, you'll know we can't NOT point out mistakes, and part of that is that nobody wants to see you waste good learning time.

Same here. The ratio was the important part, not the total. For years, I'd read that insulin triggered many bad things, including reducing cell receptors that call for cholesterol from the blood. Then the cells produce their own cholesterol, leaving the cholesterol borne by the LDLs to fall to the artery walls, to be retrieved by the HDLs for recirculation. Fats in the body need to hitch a ride with lipoproteins before they can travel in the bloodstream. That all made sense to me. Now they tell us the total is what's important, and if what I'd learned earlier is true, using a total number makes no sense, except that cardiologists get to prescribe a lot of statins. The old system seemed to take into account that our diets are all so different. I really dislike the one-size-fits-all methodology.

! Moderator Note You can't soapbox ANYWHERE on SFN, even in the Lounge. You haven't been discussing these subjects, you've been misusing their information and then rejecting all attempts to show where you're wrong. You misunderstand many aspects of physics, you don't take criticism on board when this is shown, and you keep insisting your explanations are more valid than those with far more evidence. You're preaching, soapboxing, and it's a toxic way to approach a discussion. It doesn't work for us, that's why it's against the rules. Please go start a blog somewhere if you want to ignore replies and comments.

I agree with bufofrog. Only those who know what's inside the box can think outside of it meaningfully. Challenging any kind of physics without mathematics skills is just crazy, like trying to tell an Olympic gymnast what they're doing wrong when you've only watched a few people doing gymnastics and have never participated yourself. Speculation built on a shaky foundation is worthless. The box helps insure your explanation is based on what we observe in nature. If the OP would care to reread what's been written, they'd see that you did more than call it out. You asked pertinent questions, especially after it was shown that much of the OP was based on flawed understandings (e.g., that a sphere was a platonic solid, or that entropy is a conserved quantity). I must have missed where the OP corrected for this, because we're on page 2 now and I can't figure out why this explanation (NOT a theory) is still being discussed as if it wasn't shown false in the first few posts?

! Moderator Note Thread closed.

It's flammable, and the vapors are denser than air. It will definitely deter or kill certain bugs if you use a lot of it, but higher concentrations pose higher risks of combustion. Don't use it around wood or leather. Keep it away from bleach. It's probably keeping some bugs away the way you're using it now. If you still have bug problems, you should look for a solution other than increasing the amount of alcohol you use.

! Moderator Note No, since this alternative has gone through 17 pages of you avoiding responses that disagree with you and ignoring the science presented. This is a science discussion forum, and we rely on both sides of an argument LISTENING to each other, otherwise you're just soapboxing, and nobody wants to hear THAT. I wish there was something in your posts that made me think you might have a Eureka! moment, especially given the patient and instructional replies you've gotten, but you've shown that you're going to continue to double down and ignore attempts to teach you something. Thread closed due to insufficient support, so please don't bring the topic up here again.

It's not very efficient as a pest deterrent, and can be very dangerous.

What do you call a joke that isn't funny? A sentence. Regardless of what we don't like, is it ever right to attach that dislike to whole groups of people? The joke referenced Israelis and Americans, not anti-Zionists and fascist US hardliners, that was how YOU took it. And criticising "Israel" as a state for its policies is different than labeling all Israelis as being one way or another. Honestly, comedy isn't an excuse we should use to throw decency out the window. I know there are a LOT of folks who think, as an art form, that it should have no restrictions, but I'll never be one of those. I've seen too many "comedians" vent their prejudices only to claim later "it was just a joke, can't you take a joke?"

Or there were 8 votes on that joke, with half being negative and the other half trying to undo the first half. Unless you truly thought it was funny, but Moontanman is the only one who said that. Part of why I didn't like the joke is that it was obviously copied and pasted here, with no attempt to clean up it's sloppy wording. mistermack is funnier that that normally, and his timing is much, much better. It seemed to me he was posting the joke for the politics involved and not the humor.

It's really not about a category. IMHO, it wasn't a worthy joke. It was poorly worded, inconsistent, and the punchline sucked pond water. IT WASN'T FUNNY, so I'm left with the conclusion that it was meant to disparage two large groups of people, Israelis and Americans. You can claim it was meant to "poke fun", but then you have to show me where this joke was funny in the first place. In point of fact, people were willing to assess that joke using the rep system until you decided to defend it with a post (which didn't contain ANY political humor), in which even you claimed the joke wasn't very good. I have to ask you too, do you really believe the author/teller of a joke is free from responsibility, that they can say whatever they want and the audience should just accept it? Why do we need an objective arbiter? Can't we just let the joke-teller know how we feel individually? I thought that's what I was doing when I downvoted mistermack's attempt at humor, but now you're saying he's protected from my criticism. You cancelled my downvote, which was based on the same parameters I use for any joke, but it sounds like you didn't do it because you thought the joke was funny. You did it because you thought we shouldn't be offended when we obviously were.

Do you know all the laws of physics? I have evidence that you don't, so how can you make this claim? You're not capable of making conclusions based on "the laws of physics". I find most of the threads you start suffer from misunderstandings right at the beginning, and then the rest of the members try to set you straight while you keep insisting your opening arguments are still valid. It's not interesting, and it's also not a very productive way to discuss anything, let alone science. Can you cut to the chase and explain why you think your brain is supernatural?

Oooh, I very much disagree with this! This is carte blanche for a diseased, hateful mind. This supports all kinds of victim blaming, stereotypes, and callous insensitivity. Why should humor be allowed to violate taboos we hold others accountable for? This sentiment allows me to say whatever I feel like saying, and to hell with how hurtful it is to some in the audience. It allows a hateful comic to become the victim of "snowflake sensitivity". Do you really believe the "author" of a joke should be forgiven for whatever they say?

! Moderator Note Titles to these threads are important. Some people only read titles, and can get the wrong impressions. If you don't know something for sure, please don't assert it in the title.

Not inspiring?! Did you see them doing the hokey-pokey?!

When you have advertisers to promote, you use familiar imagery. They aren't selling science. Iirc, the first time I saw a movie/TV show where the spaceship didn't make a roar or a whoosh moving through space was Firefly in 2002. It really caught everyone's attention for a second. It seemed like they made a technical error before you realize that's the way it would be, quiet even when the engines fire.

Without knowing their history I don't know how to respond to this argument. You claim regret, but obviously haven't thought it may have been vastly different without the nightmare they must have endured needing to lie to anyone about such a core part of themselves. I'm sure you know your friend much better than I, but are you sure you know the source of their unhappiness? I'm reminded of stories I've heard about children doing impulsive things because they felt their parents weren't listening to them. Most children have a stable sense of gender identity by the age of four. They've known for a couple of years what the physical differences between boys and girls are. By four they generally know whether they feel like a girl, a boy, a bit of both, or neither. They've begun now to feel the pressures of gender role behavior, and are deciding how they feel about the things boys are supposed to do and the things girls are supposed to do. I said children can figure out their own gender identities better without pressure from their parents, because I assumed that pressure is focused on making a typical choice. The children who make typical choices would still make them (which makes the parent's interference worthless), but the ones who feel differently will end up getting villified (which makes the parent's interference detrimental).