ecoli

It depends on the definition of "you", but I refer you to the story of Phineas Gage for the classical medical case of brain damage causing a severe change in personality: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage

here are some papers which demonstrate direct evidence of the hygiene hypothesis IBD: http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/2/60/60ra88.abstract http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15825065 Asthma/Allergies: http://gut.bmj.com/content/57/5/561.full The matter is obviously far from settled (and my hunch is that too much is attributed to microbe-immune interactions, simply because its a hot field right now) but, in general its always better to source primary research than things like half-digested press releases from WebMD. Often the research and researchers quotes are taken out of context. But to the OP: 'strengthening' the immune system by eating recognized probiotics (yogurt, sauerkrauts, etc) is a good idea and, at worst, just isn't harmless. Eating spoiled meat is almost assuredly NOT a good idea. Though there are safe ways of purposefully fermenting meat products.

basically its all bunk. The interviewees where either not real scientists or real physicists edited out of all context: http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2005/04/what_the_bleep_.html

you can build that kind of uncertainty into a predictive/probabilistic model though, which should properly reflect the odds, point spread, w/e

herpes virus is not an organ. Unless you've re-purposed words to mean different things.

I deny vehemently that user friendliness is the main difference between the two OSes, especially as you mentioned that Linux has good GUIs these days.

I'm proud to have been a member of SFN for some of those 10 years, and here's to many more!

Not sure I follow what you're trying to do (music from a pentagram?) but for the later you might want to implement a hash function.

hey Assumption, have you met Data?

And how do you jump from current belief about QM to near certainty that we know why the multiverse was created (ignoring for the moment that multiverse theory is one interpretation). Even if all your assumptions and "proofs" are correct, the why question shouldn't even enter into it.

we use the tags [math] [/math]

that's hollywood for you... all fluff

Not sure I understand the P# development stage jargon.

I'm not sure how you reached this conclusion, nor how this presupposes that the "evolution" of universe space is directed by a diety (as opposed to anthropic selection) Admittedly, I havent read the original work, but I'll definitely add it to the reading list now. Thanks for the suggestion.

my guess is to signal/strengthen group affiliation. As in, excluding a member from a group signals attributes that emphasize your similarity to others in the group by pointing out differences in an outcast. Pleasing a majority would definitely enhance one's survival.

But you haven't accounted for observational effects. The anthropic principle (illusion of perfect design) can also be explained by observation selection. If the universe's physics (or evolutionary laws) had been different than maybe other types of beings would be observing that universe and commenting about how perfect it is. Or maybe there'd be no conscious beings to observe it at all. "Not being here today" could be the effort of graceful design (which is pure speculation) but this hypothesis doesn't rule out the above observational biases. This is the equivalent to throwing partially cooked pasta at the wall to see what sticks and calling the whole pot perfectly cooked by ignoring everything on the floor. (wow what a terrible metaphor!)

not really. Viruses 'hijack' host cell machinery in order to reproduce.

I don't think it is. The left wall is thicker because that's where the major pump mechanism is and the whole thing is slightly slanted, hence why it sounds a bit louder on the left side.

Invoking interstate commerce on health care never made much sense to me anyway considering you can't buy health insurance from a provider based in a different state.

Kudos on getting this right. I've been reading a bit about this (admittedly I haven't been following the case closely) and I don't quite understand how taxing individuals for not engaging in a specific kind of commerce (whether they think its in the public interest or not - though this is a separate issue) doesn't fall under the commerce clause. It seems that using taxes as penalties to get people to buy what congress wants sets a bad precedent (products that congressmen/women own stock in, for example) in addition to violating the "spirit" of why the bill was rejected under argument of the commerce clause. I'm trying not to be too reactionary on this.

Right.. but you've failed to uphold the other requirement of a scientific model, which is that it has to rule out alternative hypotheses. This one doesn't rule out unified physics by a means other than a deity, thus making lack of direct evidence even more damning to the theory.

What do human instincts have to do with physical reality?

Choosing a door changes the probability, because the host opens a door with a goat. However, choosing a specific door doesn't change the prior probability since you don't have additional information. It's always better to switch if you play the odds (like it's always better to not hit on 20 in blackjack), it doesn't mean you'll always be right, think of it this way, if you play the game 100 times in a row, if you always switch you'll win 67 times. If you decide not to switch for any number out of those hundreds, the total number of trials that you win will almost certainly be lower (though you could calculate the exact probability of that if you were so inclined)

This is always fun. I have some doozies from my younger days.

I think holistic is broadly misused. It just means considering the whole/all the parts. From this definition, any kind of preventative medicine is holistic, 'western' or otherwise.