Phi for All

First of all, I'm moving this to Pseudoscience.

 

Secondly, iirc, Titor predicted there would be a Waco-like incident in the US practically every day after the 2004 election. I believe some of his other predictions have gone down the tube as well.

 

I think it was all an elaborate hoax, and I think the guy who did it had a pretty fair grasp of what our future within 5 years might look like. He was around in 1999-2000, right?

 

Science-wise, he played it sly and claimed he just rode the time-machine, he didn't invent it. His search for an outdated IBM computer was compelling, but I believe someone debunked the idea pretty quickly.

 

Here's a year-old thread on John Titor.

Maybe I can help. I speak punctnot.

 

ru referring to the theory that parallel universes exist for every possible likelihood in every possible moment? since all possible universes would have been created by the big bang it wouldnt open wormholes between them maybe thats what the higher dimensions r 4

 

i also heard a hypothesis that gravity is weak because it moves thru all possible parallel universes and may be used to communicate between them but its just an idea

The Rack, available at your local BDSM store.

 

I couldn't find an image of one without a naked body on it, but I'll keep searching.

Over your lifetime you will get shorter as your backbone compresses. Maybe an inch or so over several decades.

I was 6' 5" in high school 30 years ago. I get most of my above-average height from the waist up (a friend who is 5' 10" wears the same size inseam in pants as I do).

 

Thirty years later I am 6' 3.5". The backbone does compress as you age. Your leg bones do not.

Also moved to Homework Help.

Moved to Homework Help.

OK, well, when I get a little more time I will look at more of Johnny5's posts. The two threads that I saw looked like he was staying clear-headed and responding rationally, with mathematical arguments.

A big part of why he was clear-headed and rational here is because we are well-moderated and don't put up with crap. Please visit Sciforums and see what a different, disturbed individual he is. Over there he is condescending and downright rude. And in one thread he has mentioned his monumentally vast intellect 11 times as proof of his observations, so I don't think he's being sarcastic. After 2 days they are referring to him as "Jackass" and "Oh Great Advanced Intelligence". They are openly laughing at him and ridiculing him.

 

Our Experts worked with him pretty patiently for 3 months.

 

I feel sorry for the guy.

"I am the universe"?......I thought I was.

AND we have sources to back you up on that.

I personally think there are a lot of cynics on this board. From expirience elseware, btw.

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.--George Bernard Shaw

It could be possible that both sids of the "argument" were just head-strong.

Head-strong, viscious, authority trip, crock, these words have all been used inappropriately in this argument. The facts are that 3 Admins, 2 Mods and 4 Resident Experts deliberated over 2 months on Johnny5 and how to deal with him. I can't count the number of warnings he's gotten privately and in the threads about his agenda. He was given plenty of chances to prove his points. This was not a heated, ego-based reaction to a minor problem.

I ran across this forum while looking for formulae used to estimate relativistic/gravitational time dilation. I ran across one of Johnny5's posts, and his style and manner seemed at odds with the "permanently banned" notice.

Then I apologise for my skepticism about you.

 

Feel free to read the rest of his posts. We don't delete them just because he's been banned. Or as I pointed out, he is active over at Sciforums. Someone told me he already posted a record 5 pages disputing relativity. He always felt it was counterintuitive to his approach, and therefore had to be wrong.

 

No one ever said Einstein was infallible. But Johnny5 never showed why he was, he just claimed it no matter what evidence was shown.

Phi, your explanation underlines my point. You talk around it a little bit, but the sum of your message is that Johnny5 should be banned because he continually challenges the experts.

If his challenges had real merit that he was able to back up with real evidence, he would be taken as seriously as anyone else here. The fact that he invaded so many threads with his agenda hypotheses got his posts reported more than anyone in recent history. When that many people complain, I listen, always.

I read the thread. He kept a civil tone, and he had one very good point.

You read the one thread then? Good science tries to look at all the evidence. Try reading all his other threads like Matt Grime and Tom Mattson and swansont have.

Challenging the experts should be zero percent of an offense, no matter how many times someone does it.

It isn't a crime. Is that what you think? Is that what Johnny5 told you he was banned for? Believe me, it was a culmination of things, but the one that stood out most was that there were times Johnny5 could not be convinced that he was wrong, despite insurmountable evidence. That's not science, Thomas Kirby, that's religion. Johnny5 holds his beliefs sacred and that was his biggest mistake.

I'm not defending Johnny5 in particular. I don't know him from the possum who crawls across my feet into my bedroom closet to get away from the cats under the trailer. I am defending the right to challenge the status quo, pure and simple.

Forgive me, since I don't really know you, but I find that unlikely. You joined a day after Johnny5 gets banned, you read one thread and are so primed to defend him? I hope you do stay so I can get to know you better. I hope you are someone who has watched our little community without joining, waiting quietly until you had something to say. I hope you can carry your convictions through in every post you make, because passion for what you are doing is important no matter what it is.

I am also offended by the "love it or leave it" attitude.

Pointing out where you can find Johnny5 is hardly telling you to "love it or leave it."

Please trust us, we really have the best interests of the site and our membership at heart. Indiscriminate banning is almost as bad as letting every crackpot post thread after thread without moderation. Most people are here to learn. Some people join in order to preach an agenda which has been shot down by scholars everywhere else.

I don't feel particularly obligated to defend my actions as a Moderator here at SFN. I do feel our membership has a right to well-moderated threads which pursue scientific topics. Our purpose here is not to censor, but to make sure that the information posted at SFN is consistently worthwhile and doesn't waste our membership's valuable reading time. Some people join and we find out pretty quickly that they are inconsistent with that purpose. They are warned several times before banning takes place. That is something that is done privately for the most part. Some of the warnings are posted in the threads to highlight anti-policy behavior.

I can't divine what Johnny5's terrible crime might have been. His posts seemed to me to be persistently intelligent, civil, and on topic. He seems to have been the one who questioned ideas, while one of the moderators decided he had a personality defect, visible only to the moderator, that was serious enough for a permanent ban.

I think it's great that Johnny5 has a friend like you, Thomas Kirby, who will defend him against all criticism. Johnny5 certainly had some good posts here. He was civil for the most part and that probably accounts for his longevity.

 

He also showed some fairly disturbing tendencies as well. I know you'd like to think his ideas were all ground-breaking and earth-shattering. Here is an excerpt from his last communication with us:

[b']I want to curse you out, by my superintelligence prevents it. Keep your latex. You don't know how to use it anyways. And to all those who liked me...Yeah I'll miss you. Phi for all whined about something a day or so ago. I suspect I threaten his lack of intelligence. And mokele, you weren't there now were you. Bye all You are just nerds after all. I am the end of the evolution of the human race. I am the Universe. And I'm out.[/b]

The majority of our membership are very level-headed and some of the smartest people I know. I like reading all their posts I can. Science is predicated on the basis that nothing is sacred and all of our Experts, Moderators and Admins are well aware that one of our own posters could well be the next Einstein. Why wouldn't we want to encourage that? But some parts of science have been proven to the point of near-positive certainty. It was some of those points that Johnny5 consistently refused to ackowledge, even after multiple people pointed them out.

I am not going to speculate on or try to investigate the nature of Phi for All's problems. I think it is just best for a human being to stay out of the way of people who act like he just did. There is something truly vicious about what I saw, and I want no part of it or this board. I would be proud to be permanently banned here.

Thomas Kirby, you should know that I was just the Moderator on board at the time it was decided to finally put an end to Johnny5's account. It had been discussed by every Mod, Admin and Expert we have and the consensus was that Johnny5 was a crackpot who was always going to be a liability to the membership. If you are a disciple of his, he is currently posting over at Sciforums, where he has proclaimed himself the most brilliant physicist that ever lived. We wish him luck with that.

Enough. This thread was designed to show one member how to save time and space in his postings and has gone on now for 3 pages. Once again we have tied up a Resident expert's valuable time to solve the problems of a member who seems to relish being a problem. This is not what we're here for.

Let's not forget swamp cooling. A fan behind a porous padding which is moistened by a recirculating pump. Cool and no ice to melt. Humidifies dry air too.

 

Go swamp!

Everyone wants to be in it but no one wants to animate it.

 

We are looking for anyone who can do flash animation (simple South Park-type, the cheesier the better). Without that we are dead in the water.

 

I'd even settle for a comic strip setup, with dialogue balloons so we don't have to do sound or animation. But we still need an artist who can draw simple characters, maybe only from the waist up, wearing t-shirts with their names on them and wielding various weapon-like devices.

my first impresions of america were good although orlando is somewhat superficial.

by the bridge do you mean THE bridge? biggest bridge ive ever saw.

Our new tourism marketing campaign:

 

"The United States. Deep water, shallow people."

I have episodes, where I literally go crazy. I feel like I have a nervous breakdown. I scream for hours, lying on my floor. I run away, I can't control it. I am scared of all of this as a whole.

Fear of lost control is very common. Please see a professional. Did you or your parents choose not to pursue a corrective course when you were diagnosed with OCD?

 

My daughter had control issues when she was 3 years old. It was leading towards OCD-like behavior and ADD symptoms as well. We did some unconventional sensory integration work with a unique clinic in Boulder, CO. Her behavior has improved dramatically.

 

atm is right, though. Without knowing you, all the advice in the world is meaningless, except to let you know you are not alone and that others care about you. Please go see a professional. At thirteen years old, you've got a lot going on right now and your fears needs to be addressed.

See ya later!

Are you trying to be funny here?

 

So how did the exam go? Did you pass? Better one, better two?

This teen in Aruba was raped on a beach and killed out of pure lust. They weren't looking for headlines.

This is a big part of the problem I see with media hype. You, like so many others, are lumping an 18-year-old girl, boozing it up and making out till 2am with strange men in a foreign country, with a 9-year-old girl abducted from her bedroom by a child molesting murderer. Both are terrible crimes but I can't help pointing out the not-so-fine line between them. I'm not saying violence was the necessary outcome in both cases, but in the former case much could have been done to prevent it.

 

Yet it becomes another in a seemingly endless line of predator crimes paraded before us on the nightly news, and too many people think it is becoming the norm. It's Jerry Springer-esque hype trying to make it seem like the whackos are taking over, and it's driving the United States farther and farther from unity.

 

My point was not to detract from a community's right to know where repeat offenders live. I merely wanted to show that the media unfairly influences the public's perception of their safety when it comes to passing legislation of the kind Pangloss has brought to our attention.

I'm not being sarcastic because your a lot smarter than me, but I want to know how you believe the media should report a child abduction and the progress that is being made in his/her recovery.

Perhaps in the end it is our own morbid curiosity that is at fault, but I feel that the media plays up each and every child abduction case on a national stage. If the child is being sought nationally, or the suspect is still at large and authorities are hunting for them, I can see the reasons for such coverage.

 

More often than not, as with most of the recent cases, the police know the boundaries of the search and they are quite small. Why then the constant media blitz? Rather than being a lesson to keep better care of our children, I think this type of attention actually encourages copycats and those who crave the limelight. And worse, it makes everyone distrustful and overly sensitive to dangers that are being over-dramatized to boost ratings.

 

The stories are awful. I feel very sorry for the victims. As I stated earlier, I think crimes involving such helpless victims should carry an extra penalty due to their impact and the seemingly wasted efforts toward rehabilitation. But again, the media is capable of focusing on each occurence as it happens all over the country, with the random assurances of probability you get when dealing with hundreds of millions of people. They make it seem like it's happening every day with more and more frequency. And if it is becoming more prevalent, I think we have the media to blame for giving some of these sickos the attention they crave.

I disagree with you big time on this...... Because of the justice system it IS[/i'] everywhere......and I'm glad the press puts everyone of them in the news. I don't care if they make money on it or not. I want parents to be reminded to keep there kids on a tight leash and watch them even on there own porches.

There is no doubt that an aware parent makes a safer environment for their children. But the media is guilty of pandering to the shock mentality that is so prevalent in the US these days. And the danger to all of us overshadows the danger just to our children, imo, because fearmongering drives us further apart as communities, making us distrust even our own neighbors. It is one thing to be cautious and aware, it is completely different to be suspicious and distrustful to the point of unstable, explosive paranoia.

 

It's not just stories about abductions that the media distorts. I was in San Francisco last weekend and a native there told me how the national press exaggerated the whole Loma Prieta earthquake there in 1989. I remember seeing the Bay Bridge shaking and a section collapse. I also saw fires seemingly raging across the city. There were a total of 22 fires but most were extinguished before the media showed up. What they showed us was three houses on fire in a single neighborhood, shot from all possible angles to make it look like different homes, and then aired every 20 minutes on national television. It kept people riveted to their TVs and it kept ratings at peak dollar for longer than necessary. It was also a complete distortion. They had things under control very rapidly for such a major earthquake. But stories about efficient city systems doing their jobs effectively don't sell as well.

They should also be kept further from the neighborhood with any children in it.

Which neighborhoods don't have children somewhere?

The official reason for both of these is to serve as deterrents (jail or related could also supposedly be used to rehabilitate), and could not be used keep them away from others, especially when there are many other ways to do so. And although I am fiercely conservative, I still see killing another person when they are helpless as wrong, imagine that.

I didn't understand the first sentence at all, and the second one sounds like liberals don't mind when the helpless are killed.

Its there problem, they have been shown to be a danger to a part of our population that is relatively helpless to defend itself.

I'm unsure why you quoted part of my post for this (and I would appreciate it if you credited the quotes from multiple posters). My point was the knee-jerk legislation, which actually has very little to do with sex offenders, and more to do with a media-whipped public.

People give up some of their rights when they commit crimes, it's true as well for all other crimes.

How would you feel if you'd supposedly paid your debt to society, decided to turn over a new leaf and yet found that legally you couldn't live where you wanted to?

We are making it harder for them to commit a crime, a crime they have commited more than once.

I guess if someone really wanted to commit a crime they had shown a proclivity for, proximity to the victim is not necessarily an issue. They would probably just case their victims from a moving vehicle.

 

I personally think that sex offenses involving children should be dealt with in the harshest manner possible. It's not enough that someone who is attracted to pre-pubescent children and can't control themselves be given a standard prison sentence. Most pedophiles can control themselves. When they cross that line, I'm afraid there is no redemption.

 

As for the teens, my heart goes out to them, but teens are a bit more capable of defending themselves than children are. They can stay in groups and shouldn't be as easily led astray. An 18-year-old girl traveling in Aruba who goes out drinking alone till 2 am with locals she just met? I'm not saying she deserved to meet with foul play, but this is hardly an good example of what Floridians are up in arms about, but it still feeds their outrage as if it happened in their neighborhood.

 

I think this reaction has been fueled by a media that makes money when they tell us about every abduction across a country of 300 million people. They make it seem like it's everywhere.

It's a good thing this wasn't posted in the Maths forums. Dave would ban you all.

 

Callipygous is right.

The wild-west thing can get a bit tedious though....

I see it as the society of their time doing the retro thing and reviving the old west pioneer spirit as they venture out into the galaxy. It's more realistic than everyone having a totally futuristic look.

 

In the 2-hour pilot episode, I enjoyed seeing Kaley with one of those old fold-up lawn chairs that haven't changed since the 60's. Nice to know some designs can't be improved upon.

 

And I love that they can swear in Chinese and get their meaning across. Although most of the time what they say is kind of wierd like, "Bad news ass-crack!"