dusqi

I read that legalised abortion doesn't decrease the birth rate (or only slightly), because women just have the same number of babies later in life when they are more ready for them. Sadly I can't reference the original article since it was a few years ago. A quick google search came uip with this though which seems to say a similar thing: http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_brief ... ndex1.html Something that can't make a choice should make a choice? What are you saying man?? Haha, also, don't forget, when the foetus does grow into a child, it's not allowed to commit suicide because that's a sin ;) So, in fact, no one is allowed to make any choices. The Bible already made them.

Are the people here who are against abortion also vegetarians? Because the cows, pigs, sheep, etc. you eat are far more intelligent and mentally able than the zygotes you seek to protect. Wow, thanks for pointing that out, so hilariously ironic. :lol: :lol: :lol: For those things you can wait to make a decision. One cannot wait in order to decide whether having a child is a good decision. Not only this, but only the girl can decide whether abortion or having a baby will be best for her. She's the one that will have to live with either decision, not her parents or her priest. Girls aren't really able to make informed decisions, but given the emotional situation there is no one else who can make it for her, and at least she'll know that she was the one to make it rather than resenting whatever someone else decided for her. I think that there's a philosophical point to make here about parents making decisions for their children. Parents should make decisions in order to stop a child causing irreparable harm to themselves. Stop a child making the type of decision that cannot be undone, so that they can make it in future if they still want to. Pro-choice parents realise that for a girl who becomes pregnant, whatever she chooses cannot be undone, so it is too late to protect her by making a decision for her and all they can do is give her advice and guidance. However, I tend to find that people with right-wing political views don't see it this way. They think that they somehow "own" their child until it is 18, as if it is a possession. With this viewpoint, they think that of course they should be able to make whatever decision they want for their daughter.

We British people also tell the time by saying "it's half eight", meaning "half past eight" - I am told that Americans find this humourous.

When you've been around as long as many of us have, you get too old to participate in the "fun" threads, and you get too wary to participate in the "philosophical" (divisive issue) threads. News threads are always new!

twitter is a microblog. Like a Facebook status update - you write a few words about what you're doing at the time.

Ive wondered what if he fails majorly. What do all the crazy Obama supporters do if he does really bad? (I wanted Obama to win) It's an interesting situation, because he has high hopes pinned on him, but on the other hand he's succeeding perhaps the worst administration in American history - so he will have a lot of trouble doing any worse than Bush and whatever he does will be an improvement on the past.

I support the Chinese system ;) They spend more time at school than their parents do at work. :thumbup: (did I mention that I'm done with school? ;) )

I agree with this. I used to be against closer integration with Europe on the basis that I have nothing in common with the rest of Europe, but 8 years of Bush and the rise of China have taught me that I disagree even more with the rest of the world. The EU needs to be strong, so that even though we have to listen to Brussels from time to time, at least we'll be able to ignore Washington and Beijing if we want to.

Firstly, when in class I make my own notes, including comments and clarifications. Don't just copy down everything the teacher says - put it in your own words so that you understand it. When it comes to studying, I start by reading through everything I've written from class, making key notes. Then mark up the key notes by highlighting and clarifying. Then write key notes on the key notes. Then test myself repeatedly on the key key notes. Most things I've had to learn so far I've found can be boiled down to at most a page of key key notes. If they aren't enough to jog your memory, then you probably didn't learn the material properly in class in the first place. In that case, studying isn't your goal, it's learning. Good strategy. I always picture my key key notes on the page. It helps with remembering the order of things, and also whether you've missed something out. A related point is that I once tried recording myself saying my key key notes. I then put it to play on repeat while I was doing other things for a while. Eventually the sounds of the words stick in your mind like song lyrics do (although not the meanings of the words.. but if you are just trying to remember facts then that's fine).

I have a desire to learn to fence and to learn to shoot a gun. I don't know if they are interesting to you or not, I know nothing about you :P

I think that it was The Economist that reported that the cost of dealing with climate change would be 1% of GDP. That's hardly going to lead to struggles to find food or an epidemic of disease.

Happy new year to you!

These are myths. Read the truth: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1 ... lexed.html

I always thought a science was a subject with definite answers, whereas an art, or humanity, is open to interpretation (no answer is wrong so long as you explain the relevance). That makes maths a science and psychology an art. Acyually, come to think of it, if you graduate from my university with a maths degree you recieve a BSc (bachelor of science) and psychology is a BA (bachelor of arts) I got a BSc in Psychology from my university. Psychology has definite answers. It isn't based on introspection any more, nor do modern psychologists have time for any Freudian explanations, like the public seems to imagine. My own psychological research, for example, looks at decision-making. I get people to make lots of decisions, record them all, and then do statistical analysis on the data. This is just like in physics, where they run lots of tests, record them all, and then analyse the data. If you tell a physicist that the world is flat, then he tells you that you're wrong because of his observations. If you tell me that people make good decisions all of the time, then I tell you that you're wrong because of my observations.

Your ears genuinely look fine to me. Whoever says they stick out is a git.

Nottingham TRENT uni :P I go to Nottingham Uni (two universities in one city), and there is some rivalry! :P But yea, the link is to a university website, which has all the stuff you'd expect from a research study, so it looks legitimate to me, and I encourage people to contribute to the research :)

That's a misconception about personality tests. Proper tests are not meant to tell you things that you don't already know. If they do, then they're probably not a very good test (e.g. tests that ask you to pick colours). What a good test does is gives you a framework to describe yourself, so that with your results you can compare your self-description to how others describe themselves. By standardising the results in this way, it is also possible to see how far a certain personality predicts various outcomes. For example, anyone can say "I'm shy", but until you get them to answer a personality test, you can't find out whether they're "more shy" than someone else who also says "I'm shy". It's also difficult to find out the extent to which people who say "I'm shy" are also likely to become accountants rather than salespeople.

Hence why you're encouraged to read other personality types. Knowing your own is useless if you've nothing to compare it to, or cross validate it with. Most websites will confirm that the types are merely archetypal, you won't completely match with any Jungian personality type, and you aren't meant to 'box yourself' in to a given personality because of the results. The whole point is to be aware of your negative traits, and work on ways to counter them. In the same way Hippocrates is no longer relevant to modern day medicine, or Homer is no longer relevant to modern day poetical literature, yes. The fact of the matter is this: the whole field of personality psychology is subjective, since we all have distinct personalities. 'Subjective' doesn't equate to 'wrong' though, so long as it doesn't claim to be a scientific analysis without objective evidence first. I've not come across any interview process which does use it. In some ways, that entire statement is like the IQ test debate. It's a non-issue since so few organisations actually use them, and they're more designed for team-building, personal development, and above all else, to point out how irrelevant they actually are on the grander scheme of things. Again, you're raising strawmen. Of all these tests I've taken, not even one has been offered to me by a workplace! No one's claiming there are 16 personality types, and every single person fits perfectly into one of these types. There's other people who have been flagged the same type as me in this thread, but are not otherwise similar to me in any way. The test is not meant to be taken literally as a guide on how to perceive or act on things in life in accordance to personality. As Quoi_Tu says, it's meant to provoke people into thinking critically about why other people and themselves act the way they do, what qualities we like in other people, and why some people just can't get along with one another. So you're saying that the Myers-Briggs isn't an accurate representation of personality, but that people should use it anyway for self-development purposes. In that case, why not just use a random number generator to generate a random personality description and then get people to reflect on it? Or, better yet, there are personality tests that do not have the disadvantages that the Myers-Briggs has (e.g. Big Five personality test). So why not just use one of them?

I don't know what I want. I read this topic hoping for some ideas, but nothing piqued my interest. I have an old mp3 player, it works, it's fine. I have a phone, it works, it's fine. None of the new games consoles have any games that make me really excited. I don't travel enough to want to play a hand-held console. None of the new movies out on DVD interest me. Anyone got any really original ideas?

No, gap between rich and poor is increasing. See: http://www.cori.ie/Justice/584-rich-poo ... -says-oecd It just compares income of lowest 10% to highest 10%. Obviously both are affected by inflation to the same degree.

I think that music is a bit like drugs. Drugs make you feel a certain emotion, and so does music (usually to a lesser sense). Why do noises lead to emotions? That's more difficult. Especially as the same music can lead different people to feel different emotions (even if most people find something uplifting, there will be some people who do not).

Wikipedia says: AFT.org (American Federation of Teachers) says: So, Miley Cyrus works as hard as more than 490 (average) teachers? I think not. Next time you see someone rich and feel all gooey inside about them, I suggest that you stop for a minute and consider whether what they've actually done is worth your admiration. Money isn't the same as achievement. Various others are talking about how rich people have just earned it. If the US is a meritocracy, then one would expect no correlation between the social class you are born in and the social class you end up in in later life. If you're born in the bottom 20%, in a meritocracy you have an equal chance of working hard and joining the top 20% as someone born already in the top 20%. In fact, there's a high correlation between the social class you're born in and the class you stay in. That's not to say that some people don't work hard, end up earning lots of money, and eventually move up in class, it's just much less likely if you're born into a working class family.

The Myers-Briggs is a poorly validated personality test. I am not aware of any evidence that the traits interact with one another, i.e. INTP is just the addition of I + N + T + P, you don't get a whole different kind of personality by putting them together. Therefore the explanations of the whole personality category are inaccurate, and it would be better to just describe the difference between I vs E, etc. Additionally, there is no evidence for the Types. If everyone is either E or I, then you'd expect lots of people to score high on E and lots of people to score high on I. In fact, what you find is that most people are near the middle. So, splitting it up into a dichotomy is a stupid idea because the person that gets 51% isn't very different from the person who gets 49%. Myers-Briggs is also based on Jungian psychology, which no one uses any more and has little relevance to modern psychology. Myers-Briggs should also not be used for candidate selection at job interviews because it is inappropriate. You will also struggle to find any research papers that use the Myers-Briggs for anything. Basically, the only reason the Myers-Briggs is still around is because it has a big marketing budget behind it, and managers like it because it puts people in one of 16 neat categories. But they're taking you all for fools! Think about it, are you really one of 16 types of people in the world, or is it more complicated than that?

I wouldn't be so sure... I was 15 when I first started browsing tip.it... am now 23. But the good news is that when you're 18, you can get f'ed in the A legally.. :P

America's Next Top Model 8-) (I'm a guy... from England)