dusqi

Palin wants creationism taught in science classes in school: http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008 ... -want.html Not that she apparently cares about scientific facts. She says that the Polar Bear population has "risen dramatically over the last 30 years", whereas: Now, if she doesn't care about polar bears, then that's one thing, and if she came out and said it then that's fine. But ignoring science seems backwards to me - very much the same as the last 8 years!

What have you achieved in your life? :) As I got older, I have realised that being smart might give you an advantage, but that it is completely dwarfed compared to working hard and having an open mind.

I am (in order of money earned per year) a graduate student, personality test administrator, landlord, web designer, and odd jobs like transcribing and soon demonstrating in lab classes. I have never had a "proper" part-time or full-time job (much to my parents' chagrin).

The power of the community is good! (nothing to do with God).

...seriously?

You can't just say "oh, he's standing on his left leg with his right hand in his pocket, so he must be attracted to me", or whatever other ideas you have about magical body language techniques. What you can do is look at the difference between how he normally acts and how he acts around you. If there are significant differences, then that might tell you something.

Actually, I'd guess that they are about as intelligent or more intelligent than the general population. The same people that say every year that exams are getting easier, and how it was harder when they were at school, etc.etc. What someone needs to do is to put a short GCSE maths paper on the internet and let people take it and then have their paper automatically graded. That'd shut up the naysayers.

If you want a laugh, here is a link to a video of Radio One DJs getting their Maths GCSE result (9 of them took it as an experiment): http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/newsb ... 575406.stm Well done to all who got the results they wanted :) Don't let anyone tell you that GCSEs are meaningless or easy. Universities will use them to decide whether you get an offer or not, and those A*s are special because they put you in the top 5%, whereas an A at A-Level only puts you in the top 25%.

- GCSEs are done while 16 and decide whether you get into sixth form. People take 10-12 of these. - AS Levels are done while 17 and are sent to universities when you apply for courses. The university then offers you a place as long as you get certain marks in your A-Levels. People take 4-5 of these. - A Levels are done while 18 and determine whether you meet the requirements of the university. People take 3-5 of these. Congratulations to everyone! I can however confirm that in 4 years you will have trouble remembering what subjects you took at A-Level ;)

I am God. Everyone is God. I believe in myself. I believe in my life. I believe in my freedom to do anything, to do my best to change anything. I believe that if something goes wrong ultimately I should rely on myself to fix it. I believe that I control my own destiny. I believe that I decide what is important in my life. I believe that I am responsible to myself. It's an empowering belief, because it believes in the potential of humans.

I laugh at you. Ha! :lol: Russia would never be that stupid. If they launched their nukes, it means absoltute annihilation for both sides, also known as Mutually Assured Destruction. Nukes are an absolute last resort. Oh btyw, we already have technology to disable I.C.B.M.'s mid-flight Well, if America or Russia launched their planes, it would mean absolute annihilation for both sites... because it would lead to nukes... A few nuclear submarines could do the job. Never mind the fact that anti ICBM defences are not great at best. They are to avert a rogue state or group sending up a single missile, not for the hundreds that a war would lead to. I worry about Americans' arrogance! A sense of your own vulnerability would do world diplomacy much good.

If there was a war, we'd all be nuked by now. Don't expect a warning or something... You'd just be dead. All those ideas you have about getting underground, leaving the country, forget them. It wouldn't be a movie war.

Actually, Mel asked me one day a while ago if I knew who I was. I thought about it for about 5 minutes and had to answer no. Most people (and by most I mean close to 98%+) wouldn't honestly know who they are. They know who they THINK they are but that's not the same. So next time someone asks you you can say "I'm a distinctly expressed introvert. I am pretty much the same as millions of other people in the world." You are you. Personality tests do only tell you what you already know, but they tell you it in a way that is more organised than you typically think about personality. For example, if I asked you to write down a list of adjectives that described your personality, you could probably do it. But the result might not be that useful, especially when it comes to comparing you to other people, or to guessing what you might do in future situations (e.g. what jobs you might like) based on your list of adjectives. So a personality test still basically gets you to describe yourself, but in an organised framework that takes account of the different areas that personality is made up of. Yes, everyone is unique, but it would also be stupid to say that there aren't similarities between personalities also.

You've obviously never seen my one then ;) :P

I am trained to administer professional personality tests. This test has no available evidence about its reliability or validity. Its results are based on the Jungian Types, but it is not the actual MBTI. Even the real MBTI has the disadvantage that it puts people into Types, which the evidence suggests don't actually exist in real personalities (e.g. there is a continuum between extroverts and introverts rather than two discrete Types. In other words, there are more than 16 different personalities in the world). Because of this, the MBTI shouldn't be used in occupational selection. So, what I'm saying is, firstly the test may or may not be accurate in picking your Type. Secondly, even once you have your Type, don't take it too seriously because there may only be a point or two between you being an INTJ or ENTJ, but the feedback for the two is very different. Edit: also, you'd never see a professional personality test saying that such and such famous person has this or that Type. That's just based on guess work. Although it probably makes everyone feel good that reads it, since there is bound to be someone that you admire on there ("omg, I'm just like J.K. Rowling!!!").

I keep up with xkcd (already mentioned) and PHD Comics (grad students will understand). Also Real Life Comics from time to time.

I am from the UK. Americans seem to view it as a downside if people in other countries argue for a specific candidate, so I don't bother getting involved. I look forwards to a day when no one else has to care which candidate that Americans elect!

I coloured in the bottom of the blade.

Aw, it was me! HI! :D Yea, I fixed the T and P, but didn't have enough to finish Erusia (whatever that is)

They do: http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/26/152239 I know that this thread is about unethical thoughts that cross your mind before you stop and think about them, but since so many people said it, I wanted to point out that obviously it wouldn't work because there are so many people that have AIDs but don't know about it. So then even if you tested everyone in the world, there would be people who came up as false positives and false negatives, etc.etc.

Nup, from what I read (my source), it is used in combination with solar cells. The solar cells create the electrical power from the sun, and then this new cell uses the electricity to split water and create hydrogen. Therefore, the hydrogen fuel cells can work through the night even when the sun goes down. So, the solar cells are still just as inefficient as they were before, they just have this extra addition. So, what is it good for? Currently you'd have to connect your solar cells to the national grid in order to put power into the grid during the day and get power out at night. With these new things you won't have to because the fuel cells will charge up during the day and then charge down at night. Also, apparently they already have a system that does this already using Nickel oxide, at a similar efficiency level. The downside is that it reacts with the air, so it has to be protected from environmental contaminants. This new system has the advantage that it is 'green', and so cheaper. So, from what I can tell: - It has the advantage that you don't have to connect to the national grid - We could already do this before, this is just a cheaper method. - It doesn't actually make solar cells themselves any more efficient. Not a "breakthrough", I'd say. But nevertheless, good stuff. ~~~ Also, I frequently read claims about how oil companies are stifling invention. Does anyone actually have any examples of this?

I would like to be better at networking with people, this includes making more of an effort to remember names, and being better at "small talk". I would like to be more proactive in the range of activities that I participate in. This includes going to new places, and doing things with new people. I would like to be better at getting up early in the morning, and following a stable personal routine. These aren't "flaws", just personal goals. I don't think that I am "flawed" in any irreversible way.

Awesome! The weeds in my new garden are also about a metre tall. I may also have to "nuke" them ;)

http://www.dailytech.com/Survey+Less+Th ... le8641.htm I found the published paper: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/image ... _fomat.pdf The reason that 48% of papers are "neutral" is debatable. Perhaps they have no opinion, or perhaps they just did not state their opinion. If there is a consensus, scientists won't waste journal space restating the obvious. That would be like writing a physics paper and starting off by stating that you think gravity exists. A better survey would have looked at all of the papers of individual scientists, and looked at those who accepted/rejected climate change in at least one of their papers. I think that the percentage of "neutral" scientists would drop significantly. And, after all, that's what is important - what the individual scientists think. Concerning the 6% of papers which explicitly or implicitly reject climate change, I don't think that that number suggests that there is no consensus. The IPCC says climate change is 90% likely due to humans. That leaves more than 6% doubt. But, I think that they are poor odds. A couple of other methological issues are that not all scientific papers are created equally. There were papers supporting intelligent design in obscure journals, but that didn't make them worth reading. The other methodological issue is that there is no discussion of how papers were judged to be implicitly/explicitly supporting or against. It looks like it was just one guy (the author) going through them all. Psychological research tells us that the best thing to do is to have at least a couple of raters going through them all independently, and then a third rater who sorts out any disagreements. For example, one of the scientists that he quotes as writing a paper explicitly against human induced climate change (Cao et al., 2005), I read as just giving the opinion that climate change models are still uncertain. This is far from explicitly denying that human-induced climate change is occurring. "The Great Global Warming Swindle" tv program was investigated by the Office of Fair Trading in the UK. They ruled that it misrepresented the views of some of the scientists quoted, who were told that they were going to be in a fair and balanced program. They also ruled that "the link between human activity and global warming... became settled before March 2007" and so it was OK to air the program because global warming was not a matter "of political or industrial controversy [...] and therefore the rules on due impartiality did not apply." In other words, the program did not interfere with political debate because the debate was already over. Edit: I scanned the rest of the article, and the main point it seemed to make is that the sun is causing climate change. This myth has been debunked here (see 6 and 7): http://environment.newscientist.com/cha ... th/dn11462

Not amongst scientists (see Myth 3: http://environment.newscientist.com/cha ... th/dn11462 ) Even oil companies accept it (hear the Chief Scientist at BP talking about how we need to quadruple energy efficiency: http://webcast.berkeley.edu/event_detai ... 1&ipp=1000 - the 90 minute talk contains a nice overview of the whole climate change area, based on numbers and from a source that many climate deniers will find acceptable, so I recommend it) In fact, the only debate seems to be amongst lay people. The podcast that I linked above contains some talk about why this might be the case. Basically, people can't see it happening, so they don't understand it. The real question is what can be done about climate change. Which is what this topic is about.