dusqi

Some theories/models suggest that the universe is cyclic. E.g. See Ekpyrosis. Some suggest an infinite number of universes E.g. See Inflation. We'll have our best shot at finding out with some of our new satellites and the LHC. As soon as people start linking science and religion, that's when no progress will be made at all. We'll say that "God did it" and go home. I mean, that's basically what you're saying isn't it - science can never find out what caused the Big Bang, so we might as well say that God did it.

I agree completely with this. The challenge is to create exams so that when teachers teach to them, they (inadvertently) also teach useful skills. For example, I think that multiple choice tests nearly always encourage rote learning, especially when used in subjects like English. Asking vocabulary questions on the American SAT is just crazy in my opinion.

If one were to read the Bible literally, they would get nowhere. It is the world's most famous book in which many great minds to this day are STILL trying deciefer, to no avail. Such information cannot be given lightly, and until our minds evolve we may never know the full truths. As for the big bang, this is an arguement FOR creationism, not against it. For the people proving the big bang to disprove God, you are actually suggesting creationism is a fact. The big bang was an event which it's "bang" cannot scientifically be explained. The evidence for the big bang is overwhelming, no-one can deny that. If you look far enough into the sky, you can see the evidence for it. The topic title is pointless, the arguement swings in both ways for creationism and hence pro-religion. Until someone here can explain how the big bang started, this post is over. Some theories/models suggest that the universe is cyclic. E.g. See Ekpyrosis. I recently attended a lecture by a cosmologist who is also ordained as a priest. His view was that it's silly to use God as the answer for the Big Bang because if we do explain why the Big Bang happened, then God's place will be gone. This seems similar to me to how we eventually explained how humans formed (evolution), and how the sun rises (gravity) - things that were previously left to God's doing. The priest's view is that God is operating "behind the scenes", making the physical laws work (which I think is rubbish, but at least he does not use the "God of the gaps"). Since religious people read this thread, I'd like to ask a question that I recently read elsewhere that seems to pose a problem, although years of experience tells me that someone will have an answer (even if I disagree with it, I will respect that you have one). If animals do not have souls but humans do, at what point in evolutionary history did the soul suddenly appear?

My mistake on her job title. All MDs should bow down to your credentials in their utter ignorance. I didn't say that she was utterly ignorant, only that she may be going outside of her area of expertise when she strays into these kinds of areas. For all I know though, she might have cited a load of studies where they look at how women behaviourally react to conflict vs. men. But if she's just going by chemicals though then I am dubious, since they can be far removed from actual behaviour. But yes, in general I do find it annoying when people think that they know something about psychology just because they are a human. I don't pretend to know anything about kidneys despite having two of them.

Personality research suggests that women are slightly more emotional (easily stressed, anxious, upset), but not that women are different when it comes to preferring competition vs. co-operation. Importantly, Louann Brizendine is an MD rather than a PhD, so although I'm sure she knows a lot about brains and physiology, it is not certain that she is qualified to talk about psychology.

I take issue with the people who say that you'll never need to solve a quadratic equation in life. I research in psychology, and just the other week I realised that for what I wanted to do I had to solve a few quadratic equations. It surprised me at the time, but I was grateful that I knew how. True story. The point of me telling you is that you never know what you'll need. Also, you never really know what skills you have learned from your previous classes. I studied History at one time, and have subsequently forgotten all but the most general facts about the time period I spent two years on. However, I did learn how to write and structure an essay, and that continues to come in handy. Similarly, at some point I learned to think logically, but I don't know where that came from. I also disagree with people who say that highschool should be about preparing you for a job. Education is about general training in how to be intelligent and how to train yourself for the specific knowledge you need for a task. It's stupid to prepare people for jobs because jobs change. How many people think they'll be doing the same thing when they retire as when they take their first job? Many (most?) jobs that existed 40 years ago don't exist any more. Unless you learn how to communicate, how to think critically, how to find out what you need to know, how to put knowledge from various areas together, etc.etc. then you'll never be able to adapt as the world changes and you'll be left behind.

"I enjoy getting filthy rich and being hated by everyone in the country. Sometimes I punch children I pass on the street. My five year plan is to become the Prince of Darkness. I think that politicians were wrong not to claim more expenses while they still had the chance." That should just about cover it ;P

I am a doctoral researcher in psychology and have been spending a lot of time on personality research. Let me dispel/confirm some comments.... Personality tests are very much like horoscopes in the sense that they are written on the Barnum principle of appealing to as many people as possible within the reader base. If the respondent recognises some traits in himself, the 'tailored' result will attempt to re-inforce those thoughts. You are your own self, that 3.3% includes people all the way from prison pedophiles to millionaire businessmen and kind philantrophists. These can be useful as a reference for improving yourself & understanding your personality, but I would just treat it as entertainment. 3.3% of the population getting that result doesn't mean they have anything in common together besides possibly some rudimentary characteristics (such as overall higher percentage of introvercy) Proper personality tests are created using vigorous methods in order to describe as much of someone's personality as possible in as few traits as possible. Good personality tests are strongly predictive of other things - for example, a personality test gives a better indication of whether a job candidate is going to be good at a job than giving them an interview. In fact, it's a better predictor of job performance than viagra is at improving sexual dysfunction. Online personality tests properly constructed and validated can be as good or better than pencil and paper versions. Most are not, however. That predates the internet by half a century or so. Most personality tests are crap and pseudo science. If you want a GOOD personality test then you want the IPIP NEO. Most personality psychologists regard it as the most valid and accurate. It measures the Big Five, and traditionally costed a lot of money to take. A college proffessor put it up on the internet though, and you can find it here http://www.personalitytest.net/ipip/ipipneo1.htm It is 300 questions though, and could take upwards of an hour to do. The NEO-PI-R is the test that costs a lot of money to take. The IPIP is the International Personality Item Pool, which was founded by another of the people who pioneered the 5 trait model of personality. The IPIP have created their own public domain version of the NEO, which is free (and just as good). Eysenck started the criticism on the "type" kind of personality study iirc, and studies done backed up his idea that "types" are not valid ways of measuring personality. The IPIP NEO just measures the Big Five separately and doesn't attempt to link them together or anything like that. I also like that the IPIP NEO uses the Lickert scale (scale of 1 - 5, 1 being strongly agree, 5 vice versa) as opposed to just T or F. Not to mention the IPIP NEO specifically measures the big five, which have been tested every 10 years for the past 150 years successfully. IIRC, there is no statistical evidence to support the types theory, so it's done using traits now (Which have been organized into the Big Five). I mean, you can do the Myers Briggs and believe it if you want, but if you want a more accurate test try out the IPIP NEO. 1. The Myers-Briggs does correlate with 4 of the big five. Basically the Myers-Briggs is just a big five test with only four traits, and then instead of giving you a percentage of where you fit on the trait, they arbitrarily put a split on it so that you're either E or I, N or S, etc. As Bloodstain says, there is no evidence that "types" actually exist - most people are around the middle, so it's stupid to split them into two halves. Similarly, there's no evidence that the different traits mix together to form a unique result. In other words, INTJ is just a person that is introverted, intuitive, thinking, judging... they don't interact together to form the whole "INTJ". Another thing is that the 16 types that the MBTI comes up with are clearly not enough, there are more than 16 types of people in the world. However, as soon as you use 5 traits, each with a percentile from 1 to 100 - that gives you 10,000,000,000 subtle combinations - much better. Proper research doesn't use the MBTI any more - even when it was created it was just based on Freudian rubbish anyway. 2. Big Five has only really been around for 30 years or so. 3. I don't think that any of the free MBTI tests online are the "real" MBTI, since it's copyrighted and expensive. They are by groups who have created their own version of the MBTI. 4. "The test only gathers what you already know about yourself and puts it together" - this is a common misunderstanding of what a personality test is meant to do. It is meant to give you a structured way to understand and describe yourself - it's like if I asked you to describe yourself, you'd come up with all sorts of stuff, but it wouldn't describe the full you, and what's more it'd be almost impossible to compare how you describe yourself to how someone else does - but a personality test does all of that. So if a test tells you something that you don't already know, then it's probably making stuff up. I put the myPersonality application on Facebook to bring a real personality test (used in actual research) to a wide audience. It is simply a version of the IPIP test, so you can use that too, however there are some extra features on myPersonality. For example I found that personality is related to the college major that people study and the US state that they live in, so it will tell you which college major and US State is closest to your personality. You can also retake the personality test in the future and it will track how your results change over time. http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2490151219 You can also see our research blog: http://www.mypersonality.org/research - you won't find the MBTI being able to do that kind of analysis.

It always surprises me when I realise how many successful people went to top universities, not just "suits" but movie directors, film stars, musicians, comedians... people that kids look up to. I think it'd be inspiring to get a load of them to make a video praising their education. Even the most creative jobs that we don't associate with being intelligent often benefit from a good education - it's a case of being open minded, seeing opportunities that others miss, making connections that others don't make, being able to think critically and logically, knowing the world around you. They are skills that don't get taught, but they do come with a good education.

The assumption from people who want a "fairtax" is that when someone earns twice as much as someone else, they must have worked twice as hard. Hence, everyone should pay the same percentage of tax, because every $1 that anyone earns involves the same amount of effort so they should be taxed at the same rate. In other words, they assume that dollars are directly equal to effort. This assumption is wrong. Do you really think that a garbage guy on $20k is working only a fifth as hard as a marketer on $100k? Do you really think that for the garbage guy to get another $10k, it would take him the same amount of effort as it would take the marketer to go from $100k to $110k? The reason that 30% or 40% tax for people earning hundreds of thousands of dollars is fair, is that it's far easier for them to earn an extra $20k compared to someone who is currently only earning $20k to start with. It's possibly hard to imagine for most people here that a rich person would bother to earn an extra $10k when they're going to lose $3k of it. But that's because for most of you earning $10k would require a lot of effort - you're probably earning $7/hour or something. But put yourself in the place of an executive earning $500/hour, and an extra $10k might only need a tiny bit of extra work, so even with the higher rate of tax it's still worth doing it. There are very few executives earning $500/hour who work 3 hour days because any longer and they'd reach the higher tax band.

Yeah I'm really looking forward to it. ...and then college is better than sixth form, and grad school is even better :D So you have good things to look forward to! :thumbup: You can't do college AND 6th form can you? I'm gonna go straight to uni afterwards, and I dunno what grad school even is? Unless you mean the same things in different terms? Apologies, I was using American terms, which was silly since this is a thread about British people and I am British myself. Bad internet habit. College in America = University in UK Grad school in America = Doing a postgraduate degree (masters, PhD, etc.) at university in the UK

Yeah I'm really looking forward to it. ...and then college is better than sixth form, and grad school is even better :D So you have good things to look forward to! :thumbup:

But the point is that airbrushed photos pretend to be real, whereas romance novels do not. If the flawless car has not been digitally enhanced then it at least exists even if generally we don't have the time to polish and buff up our cars to make them look like the picture. No matter how hard a girl works on her makeup she will never be able to stretch her neck and change the position of her eyes like the model's enhanced digital photo, because it never existed in reality in the first place.

How are you meant to know when a picture has been touched up? Some are obvious, yes, but some are not. Are you meant to assume that all pictures are touched up? And in that case, it just means that you shouldn't trust anything. What if advertisers had to add a little * to any pictures that had been digitally enhanced, to denote that they have been changed (beyond cropping)? I imagine that advertisers wouldn't do it if they had to make it explicitly known that it had been changed.

This article was vacuous.

Not having to care about what anyone else thinks if I don't want to (i.e. freedom). Also, getting something done well (i.e. achievement).

Sounds like you need to start by accepting yourself before worrying about what anyone else will think. Edit: A few people posted at the same time, this is mostly redundant now.

People also dream in NREM sleep, although dreams are usually not as vivid. It is assumed that the eyes moving around while in REM sleep is the individual looking around their dream. When one goes into REM sleep, the body paralyses the muscles however the eyes are unaffected. Researchers did something to undo this paralysis in sleeping cats and the cats acted out their dreams.

My view is that the difference between so-called "talented" and "untalented" people is just based on their motivation to sustain practice in their specific area, probably caused by individual differences in personality. After all, what's really important is your enjoyment of those 10,000 hours otherwise you'll do something else. If I could master anything without the necessary work, then I'd choose statistics. As a sidenote, I had lunch with David Shanks when I was considering going to grad school at UCL :) (I didn't go there in the end).

I'm trying to give up caring about what Americans do or think. But I'd like to say that most Brits like our national healthcare system, despite any adverts or comments about death panels you may have seen. Here was a Have Your Say on the BBC website which asked the question: "Do you support the NHS" Here are the 10 most recommended comments The comments go on and on...

You. Yes, you.

I don't know much about aquatic sports, but I imagine that there are lots of other disciplines that are involved that you might find potentially useful to know about. For example, one day you might want to set up your own swimming school, so do you know anything about business and entrepreneurship? People have already suggested marine biology which might be useful for scuba diving if you wanted to be an instructor. Then there are things like materials science to create swimming costumes, probably fluid dynamics and things like that for swimming technique, engineering to create efficient boats, or both to design cool water slides. Management if you wanted to run a large aquatic venue. If you wanted to teach Olympic athletes then it might be useful to know something about sport psychology. Orthopaedics to provide therapy for people who get injured, possibly even chemistry to keep pools clean and all that. It's about educating yourself to the next level, to have that little extra specialism that makes you... special. Without all those knowledgeable people you probably wouldn't be doing many of the aquatic things that you're doing, so open your eyes to all the other people involved. As you yourself have proved, a highschool student can get a swimming instructor qualification, and you don't want to be competing with highschool students for the rest of your life.

1. get domain name and hosting (e.g. www.dreamhost.com ) 2. install wordpress 3. either find whatever mod they used, find a different one, or make your own since it looks like you're a novice, you could start by just getting a google blog: www.blogger.com

I enjoyed the descriptions which were certainly vivid and engrossing. I find it inconsistent that Stacy apparently cares about the protagonist, yet did not go to find him even though he was apparently outside for quite a while as almost the whole bar emptied. Perhaps she does not care about him as much as he thinks? Assuming this wasn't your intention, my point is not that the inconsistency troubles me, but that from my limited experience of the few books we analysed in class, the top top books don't just tell you something, they show you it so that you end up thinking it without realising where you even got the idea from. If you were trying to demonstrate that Stacy is just as rootless as the narrator and no one really cares about anyone, then that would be a lovely way to do it.

As Racheya posted, in the UK we have a public healthcare system, but that hasn't stopped private companies setting themselves up for people who want the best and most convenient service. Rich people can still receive better care than everyone else. The incentives are all wrong in the US. Insurance companies try to find excuses not to give treatment because it costs them money. Doctors charge high prices to insurance companies because it's not as if the insurance company can take their patient elsewhere. Patients find any excuse to sue their doctor because they get massive payouts. That means that doctors charge even more because they have to get expensive malpractice insurance. Pharmaceutical companies market their products to the public by scaring them into thinking that they are ill, because they know that doctors are under pressure to do whatever their patient thinks they want, and since the insurance company has to pay for it it's not as if the doctor cares. Firms that provide medical insurance have an incentive to scale it back as much as they can. No one cares about the health of normal people because there's no money in telling people not to eat junk food and smoke, so it's left up to individual people to be doctors and understand the medical literature on how to be healthy. This is from a 2008 report in the BMJ: The only advantage with the US system that I can see is that more medical research is done since there is a lot of money to be made. As someone said, I imagine that this goes some way to explaining why the odd rich foreign person goes to the US to get the latest treatment. I can't say that this would be a priority for me if I was a US citizen though.... Even then though, the answer that the research gives is always going to be "use our slightly better patented drug" because other potential solutions don't make them money. Still, I do appreciate the irony in the fact that Americans don't want to pay for their neighbour's healthcare, but they're happy to fund the rest of the world's medical research :thumbup: