ballzac

Or, she just happened to have a stroke. It happens to individuals with even the healthiest of lifestyles. Correlation does not prove causation. If I buy milk and then get hit by a car, that does not mean that milk causes car accidents. That said, there has not been a lot of research into these chemicals, and it's plausible that there could be a connection. There would need to be real research into this rather than anecdotes and one or two case studies to actually work out what the dangers are. Unfortunately, that would be difficult considering that most people probably don't even know which cannabinoids they are taking, and if some of them are in fact dangerous, more people will have to die before a causal link can be established. Considering that there is a fairly well researched and relatively benign alternative, it's unfortunate that people are forced to potentially risk their safety with under-researched drugs.

I don't see anything indicating a lack of integrity in what you quoted. Stating your mission very clearly and then taking steps to advance that seems to me to be integrity. I think civil liberties are very important. Just because it began as a response to censorship of pornography doesn't mean that is the only issue they are tackling. You could be right that they lack integrity. I really don't know. Do you have an example of where they've conducted themselves in a way that lacks integrity? I never said they would be good leaders. None of the small parties have any expectation of actually leading the country. What I said was that "Given their position on civil liberties, including drug legislation and internet censorship, I could see them being a pretty popular choice here." There's no perfect party, and its rare that I see a party that has even half a dozen policies that I would support.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the Australian Sex Party. I don't pay too much attention to politics most of the time, but the ASP seem to be one of the few parties that have a level of integrity at the moment, perhaps more what the greens were like over a decade ago. Given their position on civil liberties, including drug legislation and internet censorship, I could see them being a pretty popular choice here.

That wasn't my argument. The argument I used was that if you want to make the money last, you would need to invest it and, for that, you need the corporations to invest in. I don't need to establish that major corporations have a long-term benefit to society as a whole for this to be a valid argument. All I need to establish is that major corporations have a long-term benefit to their shareholders, which in this scenario would be the organisation that was entrusted with these funds for the purposes of ending poverty. True, you could also ask when a truly democratic economic libertarian system has been attempted. It's always somewhere along the spectrum. I think it's inevitable given the nature of democracy. It's not like one person can have a grand vision and this gets carried out, so we end up with a blend of capitalism and socialism. I'm personally skeptical of both extremes. The problem is that it's not really about the money itself. Ultimately, it's goods and labour that need to be distributed. When the economy is stable, we can make assumptions about the relative value of money, goods, and labour. Redistribution of wealth on such a large scale will undoubtedly have a significant effect on the economy, and if the paper itself is worth less than it was before, it's going to cause more problems than it solves. I don't pretend to understand the world economy, but I would like to see evidence that it would be a good idea before supporting such an idea on principle. Essentially, our taxation systems are supposed to serve this purpose, with the "cap" actually being a tapering at the high income levels. Of course, we all know this doesn't happen in practice, and this is perhaps where the focus should lie, at least in the short term.

Perhaps if it was invested, then it could theoretically produce enough to help people scrape by indefinitely. But then you would also have to consider the effect on the economy of taking all this money from the rich. They are the ones who set up all the schemes to make money, and if people are aware that making money ends in it being taken off you and given to others, there's no incentive to build up a lucrative business. So what businesses would this money then be invested in? There would be none. It's basically a question of capitalism versus socialism. Both systems have been tried, as well as various degrees in between, and neither really works all that well for the majority of people. However, capitalism has generally worked better than socialism, and leaving aside the ethics of the utilitarianism/rights dichotomy for the moment, I'd like to see solid evidence that taking all this money off the rich and giving it to the impoverished would actually solve the problem before advocating for it.

I don't even bother trying to bake it into a pris anymore. I'd just end up with messy hands and a chunk would always fall off as I'm trying to put it in my mouth. I tried using a tool to bake them, but they make a very chunky and uncomfortable pris. The way I do it now is just to put some los on my tongue with a spoon, making sure my mouth isn't too wet, and then push it under my gums with my tongue. Works perfectly. I use the portions when I'm out for the reason you mentioned, as well as that they are easier to put in and remove discretely. I top lip the los and bottom lip the portions, so if my lip gets sore from the salt, I will switch to portions for a while until my top lip has recovered.

There are many other clues as to the reliability of the paper. First, google the lead Author. He has very strong beliefs about the origins of life, most of which fly in the face of a modern understanding of biology. I think panspermia is a very interesting idea, but there is no evidence for it. Even finding life outside Earth is not, in itself, evidence for panspermia. Yet Wickramasinghe argues, not only for panspermia, but a particular brand of panspermia that involves the information required to create humans already existing in the extraterrestrial life, rather than evolving from the extraterrestrial life due to natural selection. This goes beyond unproven, and is actually demonstrably false. Another red flag is the way the 'article' is written. It concludes with Stuff like that is very unbecoming of a scientist, and would not make it through peer-review in a respected journal. Compare the above arrogance to the humility of a paper like Einstein's 1905 paper for which he won the nobel prize. This is the paper credited with providing a theoretical framework for the photoelectric effect, and ultimately proof of the existence of photons: Look up any nobel prize winning paper, or any peer-reviewed research that is credited with a ground-breaking discovery, and you will see similar humility.

Well, I hear people say it all the time, but I figure it's spelt "soz". Considering bigred tends not to use punctuation and uses words like "spose", it flowed naturally with the rest of his style, and it never occured to me that "sos" stood for "self organising systems". ETA: ...and considering that "ah sos" was the first line of a response directly after a post informing him that he had gotten someone's gender mixed up, it made perfect sense in that context.

Maybe quoting a post will help avoid confusion, especially when responding to a post that is several posts back. I read, as others may have, "sos" as "soz"...or "sorry".

None of them really taste like tobacco as we all know it. The closest you can get, I reckon, is the Oden's extreme. It's very strong, but you can just use a smaller pinch to get a milder effect. General is also fairly earthy. It's the texture of clay, and has an aroma that reminds me of the smell of rain on a hot day. Probe might be worth you trying. It's similar to General but has a smokey element from added Islay whisky. Portions fail at the earthy flavours and most of the weak ones are strongly flavoured, so for what you want, I'd suggest only getting los. Ultimately, none of them taste all that good. It was fun for a month or so, but now I just try to ignore the flavour, and when I want something that tastes better, I take my chances with some pipe-tobacco or a cigar, or chew on some rope.

I'd take anything published in Journal of Cosmology with a grain of salt.

Well, I respectfully request that you don't make accusations about me if you're not prepared to back them up.

Misogyny is hatred of women. Where did I ever indicate that I hate women? I thought I made it clear that I had a problem with a particular ideology and that is all. In fact, you implied I was being chauvinistic in that thread, but when I asked you to provide a specific example, you were notably silent. You didn't manage to string together a coherent response to most of the points I made, and just resorted to ad hominem attacks as 'proof' that I'm wrong. And calling other members "retarded sheep" because they either agree with me or can at least appreciate the points that I was making? I'd normally consider someone who is unable or unwilling to question popular opinion a sheep. I mean, you claimed at one stage to not be able to understand my posts because you say you're not as smart as me, but you continued to "like" the posts by raketemensch saying that I was wrong (and reply with one-line slaps on the back). I wouldn't be so rude as to call you retarded. But sheep? Yeah, I think that's pretty much the definition. ETA: P.S. Would you like fries with that?

Wow, that's exactly what I did for my girlfriend for our last anniversary. It took a couple of months to set up, because I had to sneak things into the house and hide them and come up with a plan. The worst part was that she was on leave for our anniversary, so she was home and it was hard for me to get some of the stuff I needed. Flowers, for example, could not be obtained a month in advance (for obvious reasons) so I told her I was going for a walk...When I came back, I could see her through the front window standing in the kitchen making dinner. I freaked out and dropped the flowers on the ground and rolled them under the car with my foot. When we went to bed, I waited for her to go to sleep and then I quietly got up and went and got the flowers from under the car and started organising everything. It started with a poem on an envelope that I put her phone in (so I knew she would see it when her alarm went off ). Each clue was a poem that lead to the next clue. It involved a lot of little locked boxes and hidden keys (like one on the cat's collar for example), but also some other things, like a poem on the page of the melway of the place we first met (took her ages to find that one ). Anyway, it ended with a basket with champagne and chocolates and movie tickets, locked in the filing cabinet. The flowers were meant to go in with them, but I couldn't fit them in without squashing them, so I ended up just giving them to her separately . To be honest, anything that's fun, and personal, will win out over something that's just a trinket from a shop. For my gilfriend's birthday, I made up some vouchers in Paint Shop Pro. They were things like "free massage", "movie of your choice", "special meal"...(I know what you're thinking. There was one labelled "miscellaneous", and that could cover things of that nature). I made them look as professional as I could, even printing a watermark style pattern on the back. It took me only a couple of hours to actually make them, and cost nothing, and she was moved enough to cry. The hunt, on the other hand, took a couple of months of planning, and a whole sleepless night of preparation, and cost about $300 all up, and I don't think it was actually any more effective than the vouchers. It was good fun going to the effort for the treasure hunt, but it just goes to show that you don't need much time or money to do something special.

The old IBM keyboards use buckling spring switches. Anything that has switches instead of rubber domes will increase your speed. They're making some pretty trendy keyboards with switches now. I think the popularity is rising as many people are sick of the cheap design of even most of the expensive gaming keyboards. I saw a Razer keyboard at JB recently with cherry mx blue switches in it.

I'm curious how many of you guys who are getting 120wpm+ are managing this on a rubber dome keyboard.

Absolutely. Discrimination is everywhere, and if people are discriminated against in the workplace, they should do their best to get compensated for it. The libertarian argument (which I have a lot of respect for but am not entirely sold on) says that discrimination should not be dealt with legally or politically, because market forces make businesses who discriminate pay a financial penalty. Although some of these claims are testable, it arises from an ideological difference in thinking, and I don't have much interest in discussing the merits of various ideological viewpoints. I'm much more interested in uncovering the facts. When people are well informed, they can make up their own minds based on whatever principles they hold. Gillard did not say the data were misused. She said she had seen the reports that they were. She's still just trying to cover her arse while still pushing the gender discrimination line. Let's be very clear on this. GCA did the original research. Their "number crunchers" knew exactly what the data meant and what its limitations were. They published a ~10 page report explaining what the numbers mean, and what can, and cannot, be deduced from them. The WGEA then lifted some of the data from the GCA report, either without reading the report, or intentionally ignoring the subtleties and limitations, and then presented these to the media claiming that there is no explanation for these figures other than discrimination. GCA publishes these reports so that students can be better informed about their academic and career choices. The WGEA has an agenda to push. Here's the full report, http://www.graduatecareers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/GCA-GradStats-2012_FINAL1.pdf

Is it really the full movie? It's been a while since I saw it, but from what I remember, the sex scenes are the sort of thing that would usually get something taken down on youtube. ETA: The run time's a bit short. Looks like it may be the UK edit or something.

Seems that I was somewhat wrong about what the mainstream media is willing to address. http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/govt-agency-oversimplifed-gender-pay-data-graduate-careers-australia-says/story-e6frf7jo-1226547949451

I'm shocked at how many fast typists we have on here. Most people I know can only type at about 35-40 wpm. My girlfriend types at about 90wpm, and it annoys the hell out of me because she doesn't know where half the keys are, and doesn't use 'correct' finger placement, and can still usually beat me in a typing test. She types well over 100wpm most of the time but then has to look for the punctuation on the keyboard and the overall speed drops significantly if she's typing out a whole paragraph.

Nor can discrimination. You presented the figures, and implied that it must be due to discrimination because they are starting salaries. I used those examples to show that different choices can still account for different starting salaries. I wasn't specifically making any claims that I thought the data you provided could be used to test. I was just showing that you can't use a process of elimination to conclude there is discrimination if you don't know what the variables are. Nope. I would be saying it's evidence of a general gender wage gap. There is very little in those figures that can be used to actually conclude a cause of the gender wage gap, so it's not evidence in support of either position, though I do believe it is slightly more consistent with my position than yours. Yet it's being presented in the media as though it is evidence of discrimination: http://www.theage.com.au/national/gender-pay-gap-widens-for-graduates-20130103-2c718.html http://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/gender-pay-gap-widening-as-female-graduate-salaries-stall-222644291.html http://www.smh.com.au/national/tertiary-education/gender-pay-gap-doubles-in-a-year-20130103-2c78q.html http://www.watoday.com.au/business/young-women-pay-dearly-for-gender-gap-20130103-2c6m9.html I didn't see anything in any of the mainstream media articles on this that even mentions any other possible factors. Where is the critical analysis of any of this? It's just indoctrination, and it's the reason so many people cling so strongly to the idea that the gender pay gap is due to discrimination. I don't know of a single study that has looked directly at discrimination on a large scale, and perhaps there's no viable way to do it. It is always inferred from an unexplained residual, and the actual results vary enormously between different studies, but there are plenty that find that this residual accounts for a very small amount. Why can't we have a little honesty in the media and from 'gender equality' organisations? You keep calling them "bad choices". I refer to them as "different choices". They are only bad choices if you want a certain outcome. If you want to learn to write poetry, then taking a poetry-writing unit as an elective is a good choice. If you want to be paid more in your future career as an engineer, then it is a bad choice. If you want to earn a lot, then working a dangerous job is a good choice. If you want to live longer, then it's a bad choice. It's not a problem for my position, because when you have a multitude of different causes that interplay, then you will see differences across occupations. It's only a problem if you assume that there is one major cause. Perhaps women who have/want children are less likely to choose a career in geology or oceanography because they would expect to have to travel more, so the women who do degrees in Earth sciences are less likely to have children than those in other fields. I doubt this is the reason, and I'm not going to bother speculating on other possible reasons, because we have no way to test any hypotheses, but when you have a multitude of combined, and interrelated, forces that influence the choices of individuals, and consequently their starting salaries, it is much easier to see how there may be such different wage gaps for graduates with different degrees, than if you put it all down to gender discrimination. You're now changing the subject again. You brought up recent university graduates because you thought that personal choices couldn't account for differences in starting salaries among recent graduates. I used the example of WAM (among others) to show that choices and personal attributes can affect starting salaries. If you want to go back to talking about the average wage gap, we can do that too. The research suggests WAM is a large contributing factor to starting salaries. This is where better studies are required. There are a lot of studies out there, but it would be hard to find this specific information that breaks down specifically Australian data, without doing the actual research ourselves. I didn't say this. I gave these as examples of ways in which recent graduates under 25 can have different starting salaries other than due to discrimination. Some of these may depend on gender. Some may not. Some may benefit men. Some may benefit women. I think there would be a huge number of differences in the choices of men and women that will affect pay generally, and starting salaries specifically. I don't pretend to know what all these factors are. But the next step after publication of these figures should be research that does look at possible causes, rather than presenting the figures in the media as though they are proof of discrimination. And again, I would like to point out that the organisation that performed the research never mentioned discrimination, but gave some other possible causes. The data was then picked out by the WGEA, and presented to the media as though there was no other possible explanation for the gap other than discrimination.

I don't know exactly what you heard, because I couldn't find anything specifically from JJJ. But I gather it was something like this: http://www.abc.net.a...13/s3664067.htm The research executive manager of the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, Carla Harris: So it appears that Carla Harris didn't read the article that her organisation mined the statistics from, or chose to ignore any explanations given, because they had some explanations which I quoted earlier none of which are discrimination. Harris and Trembath then go on to discuss details of the possible reasons, discussing everything with the prior assumption of discrimination. There is no discussion of any other possible factors, and it makes it seem like this 9.1% difference in earnings is solely due to discrimination, ignoring all the evidence that the gap closes until it is statistically insignificant if you control for enough factors. Frankly, I find it embarrassing that stuff like this is considered journalism, and it's this sort of bias that I've been complaining about. But that's pretty standard in the media and in politics. It would be political suicide to mention that there are many factors that influence the gender pay gap and that systemic discrimination has not been shown to be one. And journalists would be inviting hate-male hate-mail, if they aired the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, rather than broadcasting feminist rhetoric. And Raketemensch, so far I have not really been bothered that you haven't been posting peer-reviewed stuff because none of what you have posted has contradicted my position, but if you want to be taken seriously, you need to start looking at more reliable sources. Peer-reviewed work from a respected journal will have standards that mean there are no throw-away comments. Every assertion will have a reference, and you can check this reference to find out where this information came from and how it is known. When you have something from an organisation called "Workplace Gender Equality Agency" even if there happened to be a line in there saying that the gap is due to discrimination, if it doesn't have a reference to peer-reviewed work that actually shows this, then it's just a baseless assertion from an agency with an agenda. An example of peer-reviewed work would be something like this: http://onlinelibrary...0471.x/abstract which had this to say on starting salaries: And this to say on gender: Somehow, I feel, you will read the above quotes as proving that the gender wage gap is due to discrimination . I also find it interesting that you refuse to address statistics that I posted on the grounds that you don't think statistics are enough to demonstrate anything, and then you go on to post a very simplistic statistic in order to 'prove' your point. You have never addressed the arguments I have given to explain why the gender gap can be explained by personal choices, and then go on to post statistics that can be explained by many of the same factors. Yes, some of the factors are not applicable when looking at starting salaries, but if you read/understood my arguments to begin with, you would have realised that many are. The fact that the WAM received at university has the biggest influence on starting salaries (at least in this study) and you never even considered it as an explanation for why starting salaries might be different for different demographics, suggests to me that you haven't actually looked at much research, and are just looking for things to support your argument and listening to the mainstream media to get your 'facts'.

One more point. Note that these data are divided into industry of education, not industry of employment. This means that if two people complete a degree in engineering, but one chooses to work as an engineer, and the other chooses to do data entry for a small company, not necessarily an engineering company, or heck, one might choose to work at Mcdonalds or Safeway, then they will still both be classed as engineering graduates, but their earnings will be significantly different. If you fail to see how this can be influenced by the personal choices of the individuals, then I'm not sure what more I can do to help you understand.

I thought you were done? I've covered the problems with data like this already, which you haven't addressed, but I'm happy to go over it again. The most obvious problem is that it is divided by industry. To conclude that the gap is due to discrimination requires the assumption that everyone in the a particular profession does the same work. Notice that the biggest difference is construction, where some jobs involve a lot of danger, hard physical labour, and exposure to the elements. It is not clear whether "architecture and building" includes people working in payroll, administration, etc. I would like to see how these categories were defined, and what individual jobs fit into these categories, but I can guarantee that not all people working in that industry are moving concrete blocks atop high-rise buildings. I knew someone who had a job where they had to abseil from the top of skyskrapers to do repairs and install the lights on spires and stuff, and the pay was incredible. Next is the definition of "full-time". I could not find an explanation of what is considered full-time, but it is usually anything 35 hours or more. This means that people who knock off at 5 o'clock, on the dot, are put in the same category as people who stay until 9 o'clock to get the job finished. How might this relate to gender? Well, in a family with two working parents, I would not be surprised if it is more often the wife who takes on the duties of collecting the kids from school or soccer practice, while the husband is expected to work harder to help pay off the mortgage. This particular scenario might not be as likely in the case of recent graduates, but these data include anyone under the age of 25, and there would be a large number of these graduates who are married, some of whom will have kids. I'm sure there are hundreds of different possible scenarios that might result from the different choices men and women make that would lead to women choosing jobs where they work fewer hours than their male counterparts. This is also testable, I have not seen such data for new graduates, but this is exactly the case for the average worker. One study I remember showed a difference in full time earnings for doctors (I can't remember the figure, but it was something like 15%), but the average weekly hours for a full time female employee was 40, whereas for men, it was 48. If you doubt the accuracy of this claim, I can look for the study again and post it. If you can find any data to show that this is not the case for recent graduates, feel free to provide it. Also, you may be implying that this is not possibly a factor in starting salaries, but if hours are agreed upon before hiring, or discussed in the interview, this can make a big difference. There are also choices that can be made at university that affect employability. Picking your electives wisely. Two people may both be doing a degree in engineering, but if one person chooses a class on finger painting, and the other a class on materials science as an elective, it will make a difference as to how employable they are. In many fields there are also research projects you can do as an undergraduate. If a mechanical engineering student designs a new type of engine as part of a research project, they are going to be the type of graduate that employers will value more highly. There may be things as simple as grades, considering that many employers look at your academic record. I don't know which, if any, of these examples depend on gender, but it is undeniable that not all recent graduates are equal, and the differences depend highly on the choices of individuals. Considering that this is for anyone under the age of 25, there is about a three year period where some people may have worked full-time in the industry they want to work in, while others may have worked at maccas, some may be 21 and not had a break at all, while others spent 3 years on the dole. Some people work part-time during their studies and some don't. Some in the industry they plan to work in as a graduate, and some not. Again, not all graduates are equal. Another point is that the data you linked to shows that the gender gap is in favour of men in some industries, and in favour of women in others. Now, if this gap is due to discrimination, then your explanation must become much more convoluted, because you must have a 'boys club' that favours men in some sectors, but a 'girls club'? that favours women in others. You say you can't see any other possible explanation for starting salaries being different other than discrimination, so you must also believe that men are heavily discriminated against in the "Earth sciences" and "pharmacy" industries. In fact, the data you linked to is a summary of the data from another article that is cited. The authors of this article have their own explanations for some of the differences: I haven't read the entire article, but Ctrl+F comes up with no instance of the word "discrimination". And this is the best that YOU could come up with to 'prove' discrimination. And in case you didn't read it the first time, here is the quote from the article cited by the page YOU provided that best contradicts your assertion that it must be discrimination because we are only dealing with starting salaries:

Best I can do right now. My natural speed is about 65wpm. A few months ago I was practicing daily and eventually broke the 100wpm barrier, but after some time without strict practice, my speed has dropped back pretty close to what it started. Or...