dusqi

I don't expect any future large-scale wars to be fought between a large percentage of the population. The next world war won't have large armies with tanks and infantry. The only need for the military is to do highly specialised operations that require professional soldiers (peacekeeping, mostly). So, I see no need for military service.

So, people spend hours and hours lining up in order to "save" maybe $100. Is it really worth it compared to just going to work for the same amount of time?

I know that companies have to provide an opt-out on their e-mails/letters so that you can tell them to not e-mail you again. For individuals, I imagine that laws regarding harrassment would apply or something similar.

No: He was taking over others' accounts and using them to spam their friends. There is no freedom of speech issue here.

Broadly I agree. People earn money because they do something that someone else wants to pay for, which is great for society. However, my issue comes at the highest levels of income. Some people earn tens of millions or hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars per year. Can we really accept that they're being 500 to 50,000 times more productive than the guy earning $20,000 per year? So, sure, I think that some people deserve more than others, because they work harder, because they produce more, because they spent longer educating themselves, because they take greater risks. I just don't think that anyone does enough work to be worth the same as 10,000 other people. This is why the rich should be taxed more.

What depresses me about this debate, is how people posting here from groups who are discriminated against or were recently discriminated against (Muslims, blacks, women, Mormons, etc.) are happy to discriminate against homosexuals. Apparently the reason that the anti-homosexual marriage laws passed in some of the US states in the recent election was because black people had a high turnout, and a high proportion of them voted for it. Surely it's not a stretch of the imagination to realise that discrimination against homosexuals is just like discrimination against their group. But no, when it comes down to it they are just self-interested and don't have any higher morals or empathy at all. As soon as their group is OK, they turn around and beat down the next group - the oppressed becomes the oppressor. I find that to be a big shame, and a slur on human nature.

I knew of this, but hadn't bothered to do it. Now that your topic badgered me, I have :)

Intelligent, interesting (doing something with her life, surprises me, has viewpoints, goals, plans, hobbies, ambitions - all good, I just don't want a doll), not fat (sorry, I am thin, I've just never been attracted to larger women - although I wouldn't necessarily rule it out completely), caring.

Hi all, can we get back onto the topic please (Bush's legacy). Maybe he lied about Iraq WMDs, and maybe he didn't - so perhaps phrase your responses in the terms of "I think that history will decide that George Bush lied to take us into Iraq, and so I think... but if history decides that George Bush didn't lie to take us into Iraq, then I think..."

Mine is about 4 years old now. It's a Samsung, but the model number has rubbed off, so I don't know it. I only really use it to call and text, it works, I'm fine with that.

Now that George Bush's presidential reign is almost over, I wonder what history will remember George Bush for. Where do you think he ranks in the history of good/bad presidents of the USA? Here are some of the larger events that I recall from the last 8 years: - 2001 Indicates that he will not ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Now 8 years on the existence of climate change is conclusively demonstrated to most, and oil is far more expensive and is dragging down developed nations' economies - 2001 Leads America through 9/11. Has the highest approval rating of a President in modern history (92%). Signs the Patriot Act - 2001 Sends troops into Afghanistan with UN approval, beginning the "War on Terror" - 2002 Sends troops into Iraq without UN approval - 2002 Establishes Guantanamo Bay to house "Enemy Combatants". Waterboarding and other torture of prisoners occurs. Torture also occurs by US soliders in Iraq detention centres - Dates Unknown? Presides over "extraordinary renditions" where prisoners were transferred to other countries by the CIA where they were subsequently tortured - 2004 is Reelected with a larger electoral college majority. - 2005 Presides over Hurricane Katrina's assault on New Orleans - 2008 Promotes US bank bailout, totaling $700Bn. Averts banking collapse. Has the lowest approval rating of a President in modern history (19%) - 2001-2008 Doubles aid to Africa from $10Bn in 2001 to $23Bn in 2006 As you can tell, I'm not a fan of President Bush. What do you think his legacy will be though? What do you remember about his term in office? What has he done or not done that will have a significant impact in the future? Many of my recollections are international in nature, as I live in the UK, so I am genuinely interested in what Americans remember.

I see two replicators that humans are involved in. The obvious one is procreation, and DNA being fit for survival. I think that DNA is random, extremely slow, and doesn't really get "better" (it's just either fit for survival or unfit). So, I don't really consider it as a worthy endeavour to pass on my DNA. But also now we have culture and science. These have improved extremely rapidly (in historical terms) through people being able to teach their offspring (rather than waiting for the randomness of DNA evolution). They have also "improved" in the sense that they build upon each other and people decide what gets taught to the new generation and what doesn't. So, I like to think that science and culture are getting better and better. Therefore, I will consider my life as worthy if I can contribute something to the progress of science. Even when I die and am forgotten, my contribution to science will still be a part of the future, and I will feel that my life has been beneficial.

There are a fair number of ads around my university and local area with the headline: Is this all there is? They then go on to encourage people to come to the Christian Alpha course. I've always wanted to graffiti one of those signs and write underneath "Yes, it is. Look around. Isn't the world amazing?" At least this ad is positive and upbeat, rather than preying on the vulnerable.

Psychological tests aren't meant to tell you things about yourself that you don't already know. Since you're the one who knows yourself, why pretend that a test can know you better? A test that asks you random questions unrelated to depression, and then tells you that you're depressed or not, is likely to be a bad test. What a test does is show you how your answers compare to other people, and puts your responses and resulting feedback in a framework that is easy to understand (i.e. on this test: you might feel like crap, but then you take the test and realise that actually you're not doing too bad compared to the clinical diagnosis for depression). Whether this test is reliable and valid or not, I don't know (these words have very technical meanings and require a lot of data to explore fully).

It didn't have to be filled with statistics. A few anecdotes, some witticisms, some nice rolling phrases, and some facts thrown in too. Sorry, but this just happens to be a recent pet peeve of mine. I think that people are too afraid of facts, as if they're too difficult. Without facts, you can say anything. Hi trapical! :o) I saw in your other post that you're 22... I recently hit 23.. we're old!! You should stick around, I find that tip.it is a good place for testing out extreme statements/arguments that I wouldn't say in real life yet ;) One of the major ways that psychology (and economics) looks at happiness is by just basically asking people how satisfied with their life they are. By making the question general, it allows people to prioritise however they want. If they are feeling satisfied with their life because they just built a fence, or because they are in love, then they rate it highly. If they have a job that they hate but a good home life, then if their home life is more important to them then they'll still say they're satisfied. Then, you can try and break down their satisfaction rating by asking a bunch of people questions like how much money they're earning, whether they're married, etc.etc. and you can see how the factors are related to their satisfaction with life. This way, we assume that people don't actually know what makes them happy, but that they know whether they're happy or not (which seems fair to me). So they rate their happiness, and then we can go ahead and find out the likely causes of it. I would say that this is a better method than introspecting.

You don't even bother to read the words that he wrote, yet you criticize him because you didn't see any numbers in the text? Wow, don't even bother replying if you don't know what other people are talking about. Please tell me why my point (that the assertions in this post are without evidence backing them up) is incorrect. I know a bit about research into happiness (having done some myself), and I know that lots of studies have been done which give us some good insight into it. It is a shame to ignore the evidence and instead rely on philosophical wanderings in a post which obviously had a lot of time and thought put into it.

I didn't read all of this thread, but I skimmed it and couldn't see any numbers. I think that some evidence is needed to back up (or not) the philosophical ideas. Here are a couple: Around 30% of your satisfaction with life is accounted for by your personality. In other words, some people are born to be dissatisfied whatever happens. Concerning things you actually have control over, the best predictor of satisfaction with life is health.

You can never know what your life would have been like otherwise. For example, maybe it seems that seeing your friend playing RS was a big change, but then maybe you're just the type of person who gets into online games anyway, and if you hadn't got into RS then, you would have got into it later anyway, or you would have got into a different online game leading to similar experiences. Maybe although there are these events that seem pivotal in our lives, we are almost attracted to the same kinds of experiences anyway just because of what we're like.

Photo looks fine to me. They already airbrushed out the devil's horns on her head...

I tend to read the BBC news website usually. I also read Time Magazine for a while to get an American perspective, although my subscription ran out. Also I read /. to get tech news, have a nice left-wing rant, and mostly to read the commentary. Google also suggests news that it thinks might be interesting to me, so sometimes I end up on other random websites. Mmm.. are you sure that this doesn't just say more about you? Maybe it was nothing to do with class, maybe he just thought that you were a right-wing nutjob (an understandable position given your choice of newspaper) :P

I think that the looking up and to the left/right is not accurate. It is based on the idea of the right/left sides of the brain doing different things (one being creative, one not), and then the assumption that eye movements actually reflect which part of the brain is being activated. For a start, left-handed people tend to have opposite brain areas. For another thing, even among right-handed people not everyone has the same brain topology. For a final thing, I'm not sure I've ever seen any evidence that eye movements are linked to which part of the brain is being "accessed".

A lot of people don't seem to be taking the next mental step on from the bailout. That is, if the banks aren't confident to lend to each other, then they won't lend to consumers either. That means no college loans, expensive house loans leading to lower house prices, businesses can't get loans to fund investment leading to lost jobs, so then people can't buy things, so businesses lose sales... and the recession becomes a very big problem. On the other hand, if the government takes the "toxic debts", it can sit and hold onto them, until such time as the market goes up again, and then it will sell them on or wait until they're paid back. The banks can't do that, because other banks lose confidence in each others' ability to pay back loans, but the government is so big that people won't lose confidence in it. It's not as if the government is just giving $700Bn away - as far as I can tell, there is a fair record in other countries of these interventions actually turning a profit in the long term. Even if it doesn't turn a profit, I thought that there were clauses in the legislation that would require banks to pay to fill any loss. Of course, people are simple, and simple messages like "omg, the government is spending your $700Bn and giving it to rich banks" makes a nice sound byte.

Your American politicians are scared. It came down to the fact that most of them wanted the plan to go through, but they didn't want to go down on record as voting for it in case it went wrong and they were blamed in future for "socialism". In the end, the politicians were as surprised as everyone else that the bill failed.

Lots of people believe horoscopes are true. See: http://mypersonality.org/2008/01/22/hor ... decisions/

Some people use close to 100% of their brain. It's called a "seizure".