Phi for All

Bad note? You're extremely angry about something I understand, but don't understand why you condemn my stance so much that you have to leave. I don't feel we're that far apart on this issue, and I've gone into some amount of depth on why I feel the way I do. I've also tried to draw a line between my personal feelings and the kind of evidence required in a court trial, and the legal differences between defamation and abuse. I'm sorry, but I recognize the process of the court system, even if I don't always agree with it. This is probably where the real problem is. The last several years have blurred the lines between factual and fake, and what you see as bias seems more to me like an effort to stick to the evidence. I'm sorry that's not how you perceive it. All those extremists you mention are still out there, and maybe we're wrong in this approach, but the only effective way to fight the fake is with facts and evidence and sound reasoning. But you make me question myself on this, and I'll take a step back to see if I'm being too subjective. It was a good thread idea, and I'm sorry it went in this direction.

! Moderator Note The claim made was about viruses evolving, which they do. The claim said nothing about viruses being alive. So no, this is NOT false information, but thank you for reporting it. In the future, this is the type of information you can verify online at reputable sites.

I agree.

I don't require a separate trial, but Depp isn't trying to prove anything to me.

I think that would support a physical abuse case against her. Verbal and psychological abuse are a lot harder to prove, but it sounds like her testimony in the defamation case might help Depp's abuse case... if he decides to pursue it.

I don't find it hard to accept that he speaks the truth, at least as he and the jury saw it. I think the court case was resolved well. I think it's abuse to treat people like a punching bag, or to make them miserable with your words. I think money and fame and publicity and privilege make it all worse. I'm not sure what you're accusing me of here. Depp won his case, but it was a case of defamation. That's the way the courts works (I guess, I've never been, even my jury duty gets cancelled). What more do you want? What does Depp want? Is he going to pursue a legal case of abuse? Without that, isn't it just our opinion that he was abused?

We're already used to the mechanics of it, so yes, it would be like flying ordinary space vehicles. If we're using Star Trek examples, and taking lots of people with us, we need the dampeners or whatever they use to keep from being squished against the bulkheads when the ship accelerates/decelerates to/from a fraction of c. Impulse and warp drive (and perhaps your FTL jump?) propel a vehicle through spacetime, but teleportation takes your molecules from one point and makes them appear (or recreates them) at another point (very limited in distance, iirc). And the stargate and portal are more like the folded space from Frank Herbert's Dune, where two points in space are basically joined (usually by a wormhole) so travel from one to the other is instantaneous. Why would these modes of travel necessarily lead to one another as in the diagram you've drawn? It's definitely hard to call it dumb when the premise is that it does work.

I now remember you from that grammar forum where you kept writing "affect" when you meant "effect".

Do you mean ordinary space vehicles? Because no space vehicle drives like an ordinary terrestrial vehicle. Space destinations move, so you have to predict where it's going to be and meet it there. Impulse power is kind of dumb. It's not that different from any other sub-light propulsion, so it would still take a long time to travel within a system, even if you went faster than the usual "one-quarter impulse". And the relativistic effects would be difficult to overcome. Time dilation effects are cumulative. I haven't watched much Stargate, but there's not that much difference between a Stargate and a "portal" from the way you describe them, except one is faster by being instantaneous (the Stargates aren't?). I'm not sure what you're hoping to accomplish with your diagram, but as Moontanman says, most of your list is fairly fanciful. And if we figure out teleportation, isn't that the same as a stargate or portal? I'm having a hard time seeing how one leads to the other as in your diagram. It would seem as though one makes the rest superfluous.

The verdict said that Heard defamed Depp in all the instances cited, and that Depp's lawyer defamed Heard in one instance. It's rock solid evidence of defamation of character, but they'd need to go through a different trial to make abuse charges stick, wouldn't they? I don't like that Depp drinks/drugs and then gets into situations like this, and I don't like that Heard thinks slapping and hitting are different things. They both seem culpable in this situation, and I wish we were talking about a better case to include in the public discourse regarding men who are victims of abuse. I think it's under reported because men aren't supposed to be that sensitive to emotional abuse (but we are!), and traditionally would be expected to stand up to physical abuse, but modern men are also more understanding than in the past, imo.

Not a fan of videos about science, especially with that host, but I would think any species that can leave it's own planet deserves some interest from any alien intelligence that can observe it. We may not notice ants much in their own environment, but when they enter ours, it's hard to ignore them.

Oh yeah, you're hooked. The crazy has you now. Congratulations! This is the start of your personal brand. You're a learner. With that basic template, you know generally what your response will be to any situation. You'll try to learn as much as you can, and relate it to your skillsets and what really interests you. Things should continue to seem so obvious as long as you stay on brand.

It's obvious that StringJunky is Sean Bean's handsomer little brother, and String Bean is what Sean affectionately calls him.

Hillbilly for mountain is... hill.

How is this newfound inspiration affecting the rest of your life? I'm betting most things in your life are slightly better since you've found this passion for learning. There is a profound difference in the way we navigate life when our feet find a path that excites us.

I feel this is the way it should be with any artform, that it's all about the feelings that are invoked by the work. But then I find out that the performer enjoys things I find abhorrent or inhuman, and that also invokes feelings about their work. When I was a teenager, I loved doing impressions of the actors of the day. I was a Western fan as well, so I would listen to Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne, Walter Brennan, and Henry Fonda. Wayne was an admitted white supremacist, Jimmy Stewart openly disliked blacks and Asians, and Walter Brennan practically threw a party when Martin Luther King was killed. Fonda though apparently saw a lynching when he was 12, and it left an impression on him. He was one of the few in Hollywood at that time who was actively anti-racist.

I thought I was doing that by ignoring fan information and personal lives and stories that might or might not be crafted and spun. But I can't separate the artist from their art the way I thought. It makes a difference if the guy I used to find witty and entertaining is a blistering racist in real life, actor or not. There are actors out there who are really good people as well, and I can support them, still be entertained, and feel like I've made a better choice.

Not at all the way I thought those boats worked. How fascinating!

I think it's a strawhorse. Attacking one of the dead founders of evolutionary theory is MUCH easier than attacking the current theory. Attack Darwin, then keep calling the theory "Darwinism" to give it a sour taste. Sort of like what was done to attack Obamacare. Attacks on science in general NEED ignorance and misunderstanding in order to be successful. It's part of what hides the religious agenda, so people think they aren't promoting religion. It's misconstrued, because ID proponents are professional misconstruction workers.

Or, OR, you started out misrepresenting the case as about abuse instead of defamation, and instead of switching to those points while continuing to explain your position, you started lashing out about pre-established views. I tried to tell you that you had several good points to make, but you were attacking those you thought were arguing against you, when they really seemed to want clarification and support. I'm fairly convinced that Depp was a victim of physical and mental abuse by Heard, but I'm also a big fan of his, and not at all hers. Long before all this tabloid crap, I'd made up my mind about her supposed talent as an actress, so I felt like I had a heavy bias against her when the case came out. I know how I FEEL about her as a person, but that's based on her acting, and I know that's wrong. I didn't follow the case super closely, and I wanted actual evidence to support the way I feel about her. You seemed to feel the same way about Depp as I do, so for my part I was hoping you would bring something more concrete about Depp being victimized. I've been waiving my hands about this just fine on my own, so I'm sorry if I was trying to hold you to higher standards than I set for myself.

You don't have to believe me, but moderators don't delete anything, and it's a long-time policy. We do hide posts sometimes while discussing behind the scenes what to do with them, but we generally either move them to an appropriate section/thread or we put them in the Trash, but they should be visible somewhere. I don't know about Admins, but Mods can't read a private message unless they're included in it by the author. I do get a readout that shows how many posts, registrations, polls, and private messages a member has, but it doesn't even show who the message is to, much less what it says. I definitely think there is a bias in science towards liberal examination of evidence. Everything about the methodology tells us that objectivity functions best without preconceived notions, and that we should simply follow where the evidence leads. Conservatism urges us not to question tradition, to fight change and innovation, and that often seems antithetical to scientific study. Science is always supposed to be the best CURRENT explanation, which can change if the evidence changes. The members often nitpick that fine line between known science and hidebound resistance to change.

Patterns are everywhere, and I think it's a mistake to conflate something mechanical (and fairly straightforward) with human behavior or biology. A water bottle may only have 3 states wrt being open but humans have a spectrum of feelings about being thirsty. What does your concept do or help explain?

My brushes have never been that wide. I acknowledge my conservative leanings when it comes to several areas, as well as my liberal leanings in others. Wrt guns in the US, I'm a gun owner who would happily participate in a national buyback program with the aim of removing all the guns. I'd also support Japanese style background checks done by the police for anyone who claims to need a gun. I think that's extremely liberal (for the US). I'd pay for all the extra police work by moving their funding around and instituting passive radar checks and automatic ticketing for running red lights, which actually enforce the law on vehicles and don't care what color/gender/other privilege flavor you are. I think that's extremely conservative, but I'm not interested in being exempted from punishment just because I'm normally a lawful driver.

I agree that capitalism has a big part to play, but I do think modern conservatism is also to blame. People who identify as all conservative tend to want a system that separates the deserving from the non-deserving. They want laws that supposedly apply to all, but are only enforced on the non-deserving. They want benefits that the non-deserving don't get. They want their guns and the ways they use them to be protected while the non-deserving have their guns taken away and are thrown in jail. I think right-wing beliefs are definitely part of the problem.

The one about AH abusing JD. I think evidence was asked for to determine what kind of abuse you were talking about, but instead you went with the Argument from Incredulity again, in essence arguing that you can't believe we've made up our minds to ignore the abuse she put him through. You're Begging the Question also, so you're raising all sorts of red flag pushback. Oddly, I think there are plenty of members who would love to acknowledge that you have a point, and that abuse of men is a problem that needs to be addressed, but they want to make sure the reasoning is sound, and that any conclusions were arrived at with little to no jumping.