BC

Was that estimation peer reviewed?

You know, "consent" is kind of tricky business. If you go to the hospital, you will be asked (kind of required, really) to sign a consent form giving ...

But the effect is the same whether the reviews are truthful or not, which of course, we don't know.

That depends on whether you are very attractive without pants and socks.

Yes, the public vs. the private is a piece of it. When I say, "Due process. You are not a court." I mean "you have not seen evidence from a prosecutor...

Due process. You are not a court.

What I meant by "Keep it in the family." would include the parents of the 14 year old visiting your family. Though, it might be more appropriate for y...

Yes, that small constitutional problem... Actually, the interpretation that everyone may own any gun is a recent interpretation (like, less than 50 ye...

You seem to be having a problem with "proportionate response". If you think you are morally obligated to inform the parents of the 14 year old that yo...

I'm perplexed, because I don't see the means by which we can undo decades of gun acquisitions by a good share of the population. I am not, and never h...

I was agreeing with "deleted".

I agree completely. Whoever decided that those three guys should go out on the runway looking like that should be taken away and not be heard of again...

Take China: if their economy does not grow at a high rate, it can not keep up with population growth, or even minimal aspirations for a better life fo...

A hedge, perhaps, and not a tree. What has been gotten at in the hideous portrait of HMQEII?

The image you posted is better.

In what way???

An inspired insight.

IF being in possession of a gun and ammunition was related to using the gun, then we would see far, far more gun violence than we do. There are a repo...

Supposing "Tree Falls" was a professional who had a mandated duty-to-report child abuse, rape, plans for murder, etc. Would loyalty to family trump th...

Some people will see a clear open and shut case: He's 40, he's obviously abusing young women. Report. Punish. Tell everybody. I do not like that appro...

There is the magic, mystic crystal revelations of the New Age, and then there is just ordinary secular meditation. The neophyte in secular meditation ...

Unfortunately for TimeLine, it's hard to get matching lipstick, eye shadow, nail polish and tattoos in magenta. I've gotten many men; none of them wor...

I believe we have will, and I believe it is largely, but not entirely, free. A problem of our mind is that so much of it is inaccessible to the consci...

Congratulations on correctly spelling a less-frequently used word that sounds a lot like its antonym that one can't escape hearing.

good point about community. One robot would probably not wend its way through complex traffic; if all the robots were linked in a community, however, ...

Of course it is. A lot of what people are calling "artificial intelligence" is just better programs operating with a lot more data. For instance, spee...

It is my belief (don't have file cabinets full of evidence) that instinct and genes do play a significant role in human behavior. Humans, however, hav...

I like the pose. I loathe the light blue background. I don't like the the artist's coloring of the First Lady -- it's too grayish, and the execution o...

I loved the Jaywalking bits that Leno used to do. It confirmed ever so many suspicions.

understanding astrophysical theory is above my pay grade, let alone finding holes in it.

Are you familiar with the steady state theory (Fred Hoyle)?

Did wisdom come through and within human thought or did it come from outside human thought? Aren't we the authors of such wisdom as we know?

Once upon a time we didn't know anything about nerve cells and their associated molecules. We knew what we felt, our joys and our sorrows, and we knew...

I don't find that to be the case. Neurons, genes, endocrine glands, enzymes, neurotransmitters, synaptic gaps, the limbic system, pre-frontal cortexes...

Andromeda is just doing the Local Motion (as in, C'mon baby, do the locomotion -- see below). Galaxies do collide every now and then, but it won't be ...

Of course, which road leads to knowledge and which road leads to the veils of ignorance isn't agreed upon. And never mind the road, we aren't agreed o...

Actually, we already know how it is turning out: Not good. But that's what I mean by tech, bio, and mens don't always jive: We can figure out how to s...

Much of individual life is 'fragile'. Toughness and resistance to nature's roughness is found in groups more than individuals. It isn't just us. Every...

I will grant that it is difficult to feel like an animal as I sit here in cold Minnesota in front of a computer screen made in China communicating wit...

It can be and is argued because our behavior is a mosaic pattern of instinctive and learned behavior. I do not know whether we can definitively sort o...

I would submit that the language instinct is at the heart of your "linguistic-cultural" behavior. Besides language, general cultural features such as ...

The G of E story is the prime explanation of all our misfortunes, and since it is archetypal, everything else is going to seem like a footnote. That l...

One explanation is provided in Genesis: Adam and Eve were expelled from the G of E for their disobedience, and because they were no longer innocent. L...

baby exposed to human speech.. It WILL learn the language it is exposed to whether it likes it or not. It might have preferred to learn Parisian Frenc...

Thanks for your response. I don't understand what a holographic universe is, or what these waves of the correct frequency are. I am afraid that an exp...

I have tendencies to entertain utopian ideas, but with good medication and regular therapy, it's under control. I would go for the maximal version, ex...

I did read the title. Yes, I understood that you were passing along information you had read. The "you" in my response was less "Rich" and more "anybo...

Whether one thinks that consciousness survives death, or not, can't be proven until someone reports back after having been dead for a while (let's say...

Karl Marx's epitaph. It's refreshing to see a new participant who has a positive attitude, rather than the more frequent nihilist drill. Welcome to Th...

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over...