jhsmurray

Yes, I think this thread is worthwhile talking about. I hope I'm not appearing hot-headed about this, and my opinion is indeed my own, I just wish I could express it so that it was easier to understand. I'm not on the offensive. I am taking a stand based on my opinion, is that wrong? But I'm not sure what I can add to it to clarify my point. So, unless I'm invited to respond, this will be may last post on the matter. Dont let news articles give you the wrong idea. Thats it. And thats what appears to be happening here. Everything else I was trying to say points to that single point. I'm not arguing that the study is was poorly conducted, and I'm sure these scientists are perfectly competent. I'm pointing out the danger of not understanding the results because of the language of a few news articles. Look them up and you'll see what I mean. Succesful experimentation determines a direct cause and effect relationship, from what I understand. Without that, you do not have proof. Thats why I added the story of the census at the bottom of my last post. My issue here is that the enthusiasm here might be misconstrued - see note above. Aggrandizing in the sense of exagerrating. Exagerrating the significance of the find without solid proof of the significance of the find. Sorry if I sounding tedious. I'm just trying to give you as much information to explain why I am saying what I am saying. Don't worry, I've gone past the level of granularity that I wanted to, and will go no further. The information is there if anyone cares to explore it some more.

To clarify The quote says the following: I read it that if one "sticks" with something, it implies causality, because the outcome is apparent over time. Did you read it differently, like smarter people have the ability to maintain a vegetarian diet, because they are smarter? I didnt really get that out of the article. Heres another quote: The high statistical validity only means that the point difference is significant because so many people were tested, and is not likely a random phenomena. But it still doesnt prove anything. As far as the journal itself says, it does not have the proof to claim causality. If one cant prove causation, one is guessing. Conjecture defined: The evidence is only complete if you are trying to establish correlation. But thats not really the point that I'm trying to make. It could be simple circumstance that vegetarians are statistically smarter. If the study shows that particular analysis then fine, I suppose I might accept those results for what they are. My issue is that the news article appears to me to be aggrandizing over the idea that people who eat a strict veggie diet over time will get smarter because of the vegetarian diet - but the study is not saying that. That is where a major discrepancy lies, as I see it. What if the next study, conducted the same way, showed that statistically vegetarians scored with lower IQ's than the meat eaters? Like suggested causation of food intake and IQ, that cant be ruled out as an impossibility either, right? [yet another edit] I forgot about a fairly equatable example of selection bias from history, that might help explain my skepticism. I wish I could find a link to it. Anyways, at some point when phone books were first distributed, census was based on the entries in them. The figures were consistently surprising in that they showed a dramatically higher family income than expected. It turns out that not all of the population owned phones, only the relatively richer families owned them when they first came out - hence the innacuracy of the results. This experiment in question is of course more thoroughly designed than that to avoid selection bias - but have all the confounding variables really been addressed? I mean, they've taken measures to address this with socioeconomic factors in mind and have used both men and women in the study, but surely there must be more factors involved. Anyways, I know the article is intended as a launching point for a hot topic, theres no denying it is. I am just trying to point out one potential interpretive pitfal in about 30 different and certainly valid interpretations and opinions.

Now, the quote at the beginning of this thread specifically said that vegetarianism was the cause of higher IQ, according to the study. It wasn't a misquote - a couple of newspapers really were reporting it that way. But it is innacurate. It wasnt saying it proved that a veggie diet increases intelligence, but it was likely that intelligence might cause a veggie diet. So, if you read the actual study, they explained that that conecept was mere conjecture. Here are a couple of quotes: Kudos to all you people who said that kind of thing already in this thread. Now, I wouldnt expect that to changeanyone's personal opinion on the matter, but I thought that might clear the air a little bit. Moo.

I have an XBOX360, an XBOXLive account, and a wired router. The box has a NIC in the back and it works great, so no worries here.

There is debate to the validity of IQ tests. But it is still an interesting experiment all the same. I have a vegetarian friend who is much smarter than I am. Come to think of it, he was smarter than me before he became vegetarian. In the realm of anthropology, there is discussion that because our ancesters ate meat, their heightened protein intake allowed for the development of higher brain mass. Just a theory, but worth pointing out. Nowadays, agricultural development has progressed enough to allow well balanced meals even on a vegan diet. Although a meat eater myself, I can appreciate the decision made by our vegetarian friends. I've been eatring only salad for the past few days for health reasons, and I must say it does take some determination.

Have you tried Spybot S&D? Sometimes that picks up stuff that Adaware doesn't.

I think I have it pretty good when I am now. Many hardships have been overcome since the beginning of history. All that said, If I had to pick, I'd go for the time period of the naturalists in the nineteenth century, like Lamarck and Darwin, or maybe the time when psychological study was beginning with Freud. To be involved or even just reading about it as it was happening must have been pretty electrifying.

You are absolutely correct. Word adds so much extraneous code that the page is basically over-bloated and doesnt perform well at all. I think frontpage isn't all that great either (but probably better than Word). I hear Dreamweaver is good, and there are also some free ones out there that you can download that do an OK job - I've heard good things about HTML-Kit, for example. You also have the option of hand-coding. HTML is a quick learn, and kinda fun once you get the hang of it, IMO.

In that case, psychiatric help would be more important. Punishment does not serve as a deterrent to suicide.

@Saint_MichaelMy sincere condolences to you and Trevor's family. And thanks for the CNN link - so many casualties are from roadside bombs, not from combat...

Agreed! I'll go as far to say that all races as we see them now will be merged in less than 300 years. This does not preclude discrimination of other types though.

A couple of days ago I heard that the US had lost as many troops in Iraq as casualties in the initial Sept. 11th attack. I consider the effort in that part of the world as completely demoralized at this point. But I dont blame the troops for it. We should of course support the troops of our respective nations while understanding and questioning the real policy makers. Many of the troops in Iraq are people who are simply using the job as a means to get by, not because they have particularly strong convictions one way or the other. I was considering getting a job as a truck driver over in that area because the pay was so good. I thought better of it later. I once asked a friend of mine how he felt about having to go back to Iraq. He said he couldn't wait, because the rest of his unit was still there. That is an incredible amount of loyalty, don't you think? I respect our troops enough to say that their profound sacrifice should not be wasted on this ridiculous cleanup effort. The criticism mainly lies with American foreign policy. One of these "interests" of the US is to promote a stable democracy in a situation where the US picked up a proverbial "hot frying pan" with "no place to put it down afterwards". The situation requires more training and more heavily armored equipment than is currently provided. We're not even giving them all the required tools to get the job done, whatever that is. Not surprisingly, last I checked Bush is losing poplarity: I think we really need to have credible, solid "intelligence" on what would happen if the US pulled out now. No more "spooky house" crap. That's what started the whole problem in the first place. And then we need to find a leader who wont be so cavalier with other people's lives. Just one person's opinion.

Tax free? I'd think about doing it this way:50% would go to purchase rental income property. 40% new house8% friends and family2% charity

I read somewhere (I think it was a Carl Sagan book) that the developing baby in the uterus is suspended in a solution believed to be similar to the primordial sea where all life comes from. Its kind of an interesting observation.

I believe it to the extent that the number is a hebrew number code for the name of a Roman who was especially nasty to Christians at that time. You can read about the theory here. It was initially thought to be Nero (Neron Caesar), but I guess that there is a timetable problem with that theory. I still think the general idea is correct. On 06/06/2006 I had a hamburger. It was delicious.

I dont have a particular book per se, but I would say my favorite classic literature would be Poe. As far as philosophy is concerned, I appreciate the clarity of Thomas Paine's argument for deism in The Age of Reason; and yes, I enjoyed reading it too.

I think it stems from Tannenbaum. Here's a link that seems to explain it better than I could: https://www.serve.com/shea/germusa/xmastree.htm Not to get too far off topic, but I did just see this video - water your tree!

The human brain is able to multitask, and does so every day, at all times. The intricacy of these tasks can be quite complex - breathing, digesting, observing, interpreting, learning, etc etc. should not be underrated. From a purely physical perspective, the neural network of the biological brain contains a very large number of neurons (100 billion for human brains), with synaptic connections between them to introduce an exponentially huge number of possible calculations. Someday computers might catch up, but I don't think it will happen in the near future. It's also important to observe that much of this multitasking is "behind the scenes", in the human sub-conscious. That aside, I read somewhere that we can train our minds to consciously do up to three relatively simple tasks simultaneously. But I think matak's question is: how can we either 1) increase the number of conscious tasks, or 2) increase the level of complexity of conscious tasks? My answer is that I'm not sure if we can. Even though our brains are physically very complex, so are the tasks that we might be trying to do. But latent functionality may be in the sub-conscious... A side question to this thread is, how can we tap into this sub-conscious power and make it work for us on the conscious level? Even if we could, should we? I mean, if we change how our brain works on such a fundamental level, do we change ourselves into something else? We might have to wait until research illuminates the darkest recesses of the mind (cue theme to the movie Forbidden Planet... )

It's very possible she's being totally honest with you when she wrote that email. It sounds like shes young and doesnt have a solid idea of what she wants, and is still "playing the field". That's the idea behind dating. Good point. The question is, was she aware of this fact while all this was going on? Because if not, you should tell her - not in a mean way of course, but say it just to be fair. It will be interesting to see if that changes things (or not).

"Why" is a tricky question, because it could mean either "How did something come about" or "What was the purpose behind something" or etc. etc. My view of evolution is an atheistic non-deterministic one. I dont think we should try to assign the "why" as if there was a preconceived purpose behind evolution. I see evolution as just patterns of life. They "are" because they incidentaly survived thus far. Some random set of adaptations just happen to work out in the current state of the environment so that that living thing survived and as such was able to propagate offspring with the same (or similar) traits. That in mind, there is evidence that very interesting things happen when environments change over time, because the rules of the "struggle" will change. You'll hear of "struggle" alot in evolutionary theory - it was adopted from a guy named Malthus who had a particularly non-Utopian view of society: in any given group the resources in which it relies will eventually run-out. An interesting side note: These patterns are not limited to living things. Technically, biological viruses are not alive, per se. They are just sequences of genetic code that replicate themselves. So, to get back to your question, I'd say that animals first started to come about because the features that make an animal, say the eye (the eye has been part of anti-Darwinian discussion for a long time as irreducibly complex) started to develop because it helped those creatures survive. I may not have originally been used for seeing. It just happened to go through positively adaptable changes as the ages rolled by. Those with positive results, survived. So, if our environment changes so that monkeys are better suited to the environment, get ready to put on your monkey suit

I imagine that it's probably pretty hard to get caught at it, if you know what you're doing - but it is parasitic. I'm a novice with networks, but if you join a network arent you at risk to it's vulnerabilities in some way? Couldnt you catch a worm or virus from it? I mean, if whoever is running a network can't secure it from you (as the intruder), then isnt it likely that other nasties may have accomplished access to it as well, in turn infecting your machine?

This is definitely good to know. My router (as most others) is always at the internal IP address of 192.168.1.1, and has DHCP functionality so that the last octet (192.168.1.xxx) of the rest of the internal IP's on my network are automatically assigned as they are added. So all I do to keep updated on all the devices on my network is check the DHCP table in my router UI from time to time. Also, there are some important security measures done through the UI that need to be taken, at least initially. You'll want a security protocol enabled, such as WEP (this requires an encrypted password from the machine trying to gain access). Also, routers can have "MAC Address Filtering", which helps too. You can limit machines access to your network by their MAC address, kind of like an invitation-only party. It's not infallible, but its a start. Read up on you're routers documentation for more security options.

Hey fr0z3n,Sounds to me like you have some very strict parents there - but you say this is normal for where you live? I'd have picked a college somewhere far, far away. If you live at home (and dont pay rent), and they are paying for your school, then its a tricky situation. Maybe you could strike a deal with them - you know, like "if I get an A on this test, can I go to the concert" type of thing. I suspect that this would only work if you dont mormally get A's all the time though.

Personally, if Hillary Clinton was elected for office of the President I think it would be great, sort of like a Bill without all the mess Seriously though, I do have respect for her. She makes mistakes, but she also owns up to them it seems.

Hmm. I would tend to think that there is about 50/50 percent nature versus nurture which influences human behavior (where divine aspects are nurture sided, me being an athiest and all ) Call me a romantic, but I think that although a child will adopt behavioral cues from its environment, that child will still likely have developed feelings of compassion. It might explain the problem of domestic abuse. The is both love and violence in the home. If you've ever interacted with a baby, there are visible cues of [edit]compassion[/edit]. But I agree with you that outside influence is an important factor. Erm, this may be a myth, but I've heard somewhere that one of the reasons a baby cries in the maternity ward is because it hears other babies crying - which implies a hardcoded sense of sympathy. I like the reference to these things being an adaptive strategy. I'm trying to remember if Carl Sagan's book "The Dragons of Eden" might apply, but I cant - too many brain cells fried But I know that the Book The Moral Animal is a good one on the topic of Evolutionary Psychology (again, another contraversial piece of work ) To avoid treading too far off topic, I think that either way, the main idea is that the person is "selfish" (either consciously or unconsciously, and not in the pejorative sense).