dusqi

I used to think it was cool not to try. After all, the really intelligent people are the ones that don't work for it, but still do well. Alas, no. Plenty of smart people fail, and after a few years doing a pointless job, they'll become as stupid as everyone else doing the job. There's no shame in getting the flipping work done, and getting it done well. Education is a wonderful thing, because for once in your life, the work you do and the achievements you manage, are for yourself... not for some employer who is making money off of you and taking the credit for your achievements. Of course.. if you want a simple life doing what someone else tells you to do.. then that's your decision.. and plenty of people make it at school without realising it. You can sit in the pub with them every Friday night when you get your paycheque.. because that's the highlight of your life.

Economic Left/Right: -1.75 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.38 I'm more economic left than social left though... I take this test periodically, I'll find my previous results when I get some time to do it. Edit: April 11th 2005: Economic Left/Right: -3.38 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.49 Jan 30th 2004: Economic Left/Right: -3.12 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.33 2002ish: Economic Left/Right: -0.50 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -1.00 2000ish: Economic Left/Right: +1.00 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: +0.50

Iceland in the middle of winter: Aurora borealis + hot springs Antartica: last undisturbed haven Australia: not so unusual perhaps Japan: completely different culture

Have the gender norms been removed through critical thinking or do people who just don't conform to gender norms (which exist objectively) prefer to join your campus? My opinion is that gender norms in sexuality experience are over-emphasised, but certainly still exist objectively. Though evolutionary psychology is generally untestable, it makes intuitive sense that men who have sex with everyone they can, and women who are more selective in their partners, will be more likely to propogate successfully.

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That's not the immigration issue at all. Allowing immigration isn't altruistic. Immigrants tend to do lower paid work, which means that you can buy things like houses, and get service in restaurants, for a cheaper price. The UK has recently had a similar debate... since the UK recently opened up its borders to some Eastern European countries, and had 600,000 immigrants (in a country with a population of about 60m) when the government had predicted 16,000. Sounds like a disaster? Far from it: "80% of new arrivals in the UK are working people aged between 18 and 35" "One study, by the accountancy firm Grant Thornton, concluded that as much as one percentage point of UK growth in 2005 and 2006 was contributed by migrants." Most people in this thread are talking about immigrants getting welfare. But no one has posted any figures. I expect the figures are similar to the UK. Immigrants work hard, and aren't on welfare. And this is related to the debate about the 14th Amendment... because you are all assuming that the problem with it is that immigrants are cheating the system to get citizenship, and then lounging about taking your tax money. Far from it. (and for the record.. I'm not massively liberal when it comes to these kinds of social issues. I've lived in an area of the UK that has a high proportion of migrants, and it makes me a bit uncomfortable. But, you can't argue with figures like those above.)

What interests me, is how when you're at school, and there are lots of people that you can be friends with, people tend to be very exclusive. They only tend to talk to people in their age group, people that are in a similar cultural group, and people with similar interests. However, if you put two random people together in a room for an hour, who don't talk normally.. they'll probably get along fine. They become friends with one another, because that's all there is. I think that this can apply to love also, it's based on opportunity. Your partner might be one in a million at the moment, but if there were only 10 people left in the world, you'd probably still find one of them to fall in love with (and in both cases you'd convince yourself that it was true love).

My view is that there is no free will, and no determinism either. There is no free will, because behaviour is dictated by the brain. The decision making parts of the brain are neurons. We understand these very well, and we know that they act completely based on their inputs. If you put electric current at the dendrites of a neuron, it will cause an action potential, every time. There is simply no mystical place in the brain where 'free will' can occur. However, there is also not determinism - the belief that everything is pre-ordained, and if you knew the state of all the fundamental particles at any one point in time you could model them and find out the whole future and past. This is because of the probabilistic nature inherent in quantum mechanics. Though large groups of fundamental particles can be said to operate in a deterministic manner, in neurons the difference between firing and not firing can be based on just a few calcium ions. So the chance of a neuron firing at any one point in time can only be described in a probabilistic manner. It is this probabilistic part of behaviour (e.g. "there's a 30% chance that I'll look up in the next second") that I think is mistaken for 'free will'. Since humans have to try and understand the intentions of other people, we think up reasons for the behaviour that they exhibit, especially if we can't really understand it. So we attribute them 'free will'.

Christmas is what you make of it :) It doesn't have any 'real' meaning that we should all aspire to give it - because it was long ago taken over by secularism, and it's not even Jesus's birthday on that day anyway - it was just a fairly arbitrary date chosen. If you want it to be about religion, then go to church. If you want it to be about family, then be with yours. If you want it to be about gifts, then give them (and hopefully get some back! ;) ). If you want it to be meaningless, then don't do anything for it. The Jewish families that give gifts, recognise that Christmas can have whatever meaning you want it to have. So don't have sour grapes just because other people gave it a meaning that you wanted.

Our (banned for being unsafe) campus bar crawl had a great page on Wikipedia, until 22 days ago when it was deleted because it "doesn't show any evidence of being interesting, influential or notable outside the local community where it takes place" :evil: (surely most of the wikipedia pages about highschools and such aren't interesting, influential or notable outside of their local communities either??) Fortunately the page is still available on answers.com ;) http://www.answers.com/topic/campus-14

hence "leftish" :)

Perhaps there should be some kind of philosphy 'life' class, that emphasises questions like "why are we here?", "is there free-will?", "what is existence?" - it would encourage independent enquiry into the various available answers to the question (religious, scientific, philosophical, etc.), and would allow pupils to go their own personal direction, whatever that direction is. In reality, I expect that most pupils wouldn't take it seriously. Ideally though, I'd say that it would be a good opportunity for people to develop their own personal ideas about life, rather than just following the ideas of their parents and the culture they were brought up in.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Whig_Party Britain has had 3 main parties for the last 100 years: Labour (leftish), Liberals (centreish), and Conservatives (rightish). Tony Blair is lambasted for lying about Iraq, and will stand down next year and be replaced most likely by Gordon Brown the current Chancellor. The Conservatives have a new leader, who is charismatic but has no real policies. The Liberals, despite being the only main party to oppose the Iraq war, aren't particularly making headway, so their only hope to have any 'real' power is that there is a hung parliament. If you have any kind of real interest in British politics, I suggest that you read a bit about how the democratic system works here, since that explains why we don't just have 2 parties like in America, and smaller parties can make a difference.

However, as VOV already said, "The helmet itself does look horrible but I can't wait until this type of thing becomes a standard in gaming". I'd love to be playing a FPS game with a 360 view, having to turn my head to see all around, with a gun that I can hold and aim also. Only problem then is making movement around the game arena realistic. The only way I could see making movement realistic is to have a sort of... treadmill thing under you. If you start to take a step the treadmill realizes it and starts moving at the pace your moving at. :) It'd have to be some kind of 360 degree treadmill though :S able to cope with all the small sharp movements that you'd make. Then what about jumping also?

Originally I agreed with this comment on the article itself: However, as VOV already said, "The helmet itself does look horrible but I can't wait until this type of thing becomes a standard in gaming". I'd love to be playing a FPS game with a 360 view, having to turn my head to see all around, with a gun that I can hold and aim also. Only problem then is making movement around the game arena realistic.

Having been reading here for 5 years, and having seen many of these "it used to be awesome" posts - I'll let you in on a secret: Tip.it doesn't change. Only you do.

People aren't very good at being random, everyone will have a playing style... So if you repeat the game enough times, eventually the person who is better at reading the other person's playing style will win.

I've never given money to a homeless person. I don't have an opinion about giving money or not, it's just something that I don't know much about. People on this forum are saying "it's their fault" or "it's not always their fault", and "they just buy alcohol"... and it's all just conjecture and hearsay. Show me the results of a study that finds that 80% of homeless people are on the street through no fault of their own and they spend any money they get on bread and water, or something like that, and I might take an interest. But as I say, at the moment, it's just something I don't know much about. My own intuition suggests that a high proportion of homeless people have mental health problems, and are most in need of serious and sustained psychological support, not just random handouts from people on the street... But I don't know.

My Dad rocks, he works far too hard. I should do something for him even though it's not fathers day in the UK. Hmm!

Here's what has been baking my noodle. Men and women should get the same amount of pay for doing the same job, right? But then.. I'm thinking.. as an employer, would I prefer a 23 year old woman or a 23 year old man? I'd go for the man, not because I have anything against women, but I just think that it's more likely that a woman would get pregnant and leave to have a baby, then as an employer I'd have to find and train someone new. Is that sexist? Because.. it's something that women can never get away from. They're always going to be more likely to get pregnant and leave (because obviously only women can get pregnant). Even the women that have no intention of leaving to have a baby might get paid less, just because there's always the higher probability "on average" that they will - so it's a greater risk employing a woman.

Nearly everyone I know at uni has had their house broken into in the last year or so, some of them twice or more. ...Have fun tonight ;) :twisted: Really.. you should do one thing each day that scares you. So just accept that it's good for you :)

Happy birthday!! :D

The West would not provide support. This kind of altruistic world idea reminds me of The Day After Tomorrow. Remember in the film when all the Americans rush across the border into Mexico, and the film ends with a happy glow where everyone is helping each other out and being grateful to one another. More likely, the Mexicans would set up machine gunners on the border and mow anyone down that tried to cross - and why shouldn't they? Since if it got to the stage where the climate was screwed up, then it would be due to the selfishness of developed nations. The real issue with global warming isn't anything to do with science in my view - the science was concrete long ago. The real issue is due to the selfishness of nations not banding together for the common good. This is what will cause the destruction in future, as nations begin to war over the diminishing resources. Saying that, I don't think it will lead to mankind's destruction. There will just be fewer of us.

I think it comes in waves... and we're VERY due for a liberal reform. I think it will go the way of religious fundamentalism, where people get taught creationism in science classes and criminals are flown around the world in order to torture them away from the rule of law, before we finally realise how mentally challenged we're being and switch things up.

Lol :D I love this "recap", I think I might start doing that!