Nice reply. I don't claim to understand the Scottish-UK relationship, but your post help me gain insight into the mindset of some Scots. In fact I had not clue even that the UK is about to abandon EU membership, I live a sheltered life. I do know Switzerland and Norway are not in the EU for instance, they have long traditions of independence and things like right to bear arms, but France, and especially Germany want everyone united working together cooperating for a better future. And of course there are two sides to every story, all I know is that ultra-polarized extremes of any kind, including Soviet communism or mercenary merchant capitalism with slavery and pirates, neither of them is an idyllic world. Even the Chinese are relaxing on uber-communism and are allowing greater degrees of private ownership experiments with a strong central communist gov't still maintaining control and arbitrary decision of changing their minds back. Private property and individual rights vs. the tragedy of the commons and cooperation, both have their faults. So the people in England might have different views, especially when they have to drag the dead weight of Greece economically in the EU, which, it sucks for the Greeks, and I wish them happiness and good life and the best, but I think they must have some corrupt forces pushing them to such economic brinks, but facts are facts, and there is something to say about a friend in need is a friend indeed, except when its abused to where if I'm sinking and going under I'm pulling you down with me. It's hard to tell the future, or know whether united or divided is better, but Scotland united with England, is not the same thing as UK united with and dragging all the economic corruption weight of Greece and Ukraine and being bogged down by them to paralysis. It's like Greece and Ukraine will be dragged down as much as available from the EU to be dragged down by, so if they are somehow set independent, then there is nobody to drag down, you can't really go much below zero when there is nothing. I mean you can get debt but that's fluff, as debts get defaulted on and canceled and all that, so you have this hard wall of worst case scenario is there is nothing, zero, not negative, as opposed to being tagged on to the EU and Germany's and UK's economy and having something to feed off of as a parasite. I think the EU understands that the EU is not possible without equal economic well being throughout all member states, and that is extremely difficult, and the EU is shaking at its core, when you read things like Switzerland, Austria, Czech Republic and Hungary discussing austerity measures so severe, that, to save fuel, when there is a stray airplane through their airspace, they sign treaties that once one of them launches escort fighter jets, they escort the stray plane through the whole airspace, without individual countries having to launch their own fighter jets individually, to save fuel, when it would be a perfect opportunity for practice drills in real case scenarios. So austerity measures everywhere, then you can't help thy brother. Am I my brother's keeper? Well, they might pose that question to you as in am I my brother's keeper when we're both starving and the brink of death economically, about to collapse, and there is stuff, wealth, food available, to where one might survive but not both, are you supposed to be altruistic and let your brother live and you die, or selfish, and compete for that food. Unemployment and oil revenues and what not, a UK with US supply ships could fend off Hitler, which, when divided into smaller pieces, might be more difficult. How long til the EU breaks down under the pressure of forces wanting it to break down, and not be strong, and then you have another Axis vs. Allies war. It has not even been a century since the last one. I think being allowed to maintain identity, such as mother tongue and even racial identity or being allowed to freely marry with your own kind if you want to, is more important than the economic drag the ruling group poses, as in compensation for that "fee" you do get a pretty good military defense. The British Navy defended Scotland for a long time too, and if Scotland had been alone, it might have been an easy prey to the Germans in WW2 without the UK military.

I somewhat agree, but it could help tell us where to focus other search efforts.

I guess all theories are subject to experiment, and in absence of experiment, you have to go by anecdotes. Similar things apply to ball lightning, which has many anecdotes, but we have no way to recreated in the lab, so we don't understand it. All theories are subject to experimental verification, repeated and duplicated, before they can be accepted as some kind of a scientific truth.
There is a repeatable experiment with chickens though, where farmers cut the head off, and send the headless chicken running around the yard for the entertainment of the children. I don't know how to chicken head feels, but a simple sudden drop in blood pressure such as a missing head from the body is not an instantaneous death, as it takes time for the blood to flow out,even if squirting fast. So you do get at least a few seconds of medium blood pressure, and just because the blood pressure dropped, it does not mean the oxygen and energy storing and converting facilities of the braincells run empty right away, in fact they probably have minutes of reserve power left even in the complete absence of blood supplying the oxygen, and nutrients, and death most likely has something to do with pain overload and apoptosis like self suicide of let's all shut down, than running out of juice to keep working. A lot of the time the brain goes into coma under intense pain, even if the body stays alive and comatose for 40 years on life support. So there are these automatic shutdowns, though the brain is so oxygen and energy hungry, than when drowning, or a heart attack, you have 4 minutes to resuscitate somebody before there is permanent brain damage, though in ice cold waters and cooled head it's been much longer than 4 minutes with complete recovery and no brain damage. But 4 minutes is the reserve oxygen the brain carries, so a 35 second awareness before the comatose pain overdose shutdown happens is not that unimaginable. So it might be a myth, in absence of experiment, or properly conducted documentation of accidents where there is luck to have just such a recording. For instance, there in an anecdote of a car accident where somebody's buddy's head flew off the body, and landed on the car hood, and he lay there, blinking in horror, for about the same 30-40 seconds, before he stopped. Had this been a cops car with a front view camera recording the events on the hood, we'd have proper documentation and scientific evidence of some sort, as opposed to this whole thing being a mere anecdote, and having to take the other guy in the accident at his word.

To play devil's advocate in "I'm New Around Here"'s defefence, it was the user "Third Position" who posted the racist link in his sig, and the comment from "I'm New" himself wasn't (necessarily) condoning the views expressed.

What he *was* clearly doing was defending Third Position's "right" to express his opinion without being attacked for it. Which is, of course, stupid and ignorant, because no-one has such a "right" under the freedom of speech in the US constitution (which I assume is what "I'm New" has misunderstood when he referred to what was "allowed" in "this country"), despite many thinking it does. Freedom of speech obviously cuts both ways, otherwise it's not true freedom of speech. (Anyone making such a deal about it should have realised this already.)

But that misunderstanding doesn't *necessarily* mean he's a racist... just stupid and ignorant.

The implication in your reply being that he mocked and attacked you because he disagreed with you?

Either that's a strawman or you really weren't paying attention.

The paragraph you replied to was mocking you not because he disagreed with you on a matter of opinion, but because your belief that "people were allowed to have their own beliefs in this country without others attacking them for it" was *factually wrong* (and by implication showed that you really don't understand what "freedom of speech" does and doesn't get you.). End of story.

Look ass-hat AC, I'm a Rep and I find the teacher's, school's and police response intolerable. Most Rep's do, by the way. We're not the ones freaking out over any mention or play acting concerning a gun.

That the "pet" is an imaginary creature suggests he might have serious guilt problems associated with having killed a real pet, or even a human; or witnessed such a crime.

Oh bullshit. Stop playing psychologist, this wasn't some six year old. Every time I was asked to write about myself I fabricated stuff and made it plain that I did. It's not a teacher's job to investigate a kid's psyche.

Reading at -1 is like having your soul sucked out and replaced by liquid nitrogen.

Worst piece of enterprise software I've ever seen.

Judging by what you write, Oracle should give your company a whole bunch of red shirts as a freebie. If nothing else, it would be a great example of truth in advertising.

Khan Academy isn't smart. I watched one of their "courses" on moments of inertia. It's a colored etch-a-sketch of someone writing, with voiceovers. There were major factual errors and wrong signs. It's low-budget content with no proofreading or editing. Subjecting kids to that is just wrong.

If we're going to have have massive online courses, the quality needs to come up to at least History Channel level.

Not to mention the fantastic Dune/Star Trek crossover. The best scenes are where Nurse Chapel seduces Baron Harkonnen (and much hilarity ensues) and Paul Atreided and Captain Kirk compare whether the Weirding way or the monkey kick are more effective. Best catchphrase "dammit Jim, I'm a doctor, not a Bene Tleilax facedancer."

Why do you actually care how much time your washing machine uses?

Because although you can do other things while it runs, you really can't just take off and go about your day (Ever had an unbalanced washer shake itself loose of the drain hookup? Not a pretty sight). So if you have four or five loads to do on a typical Saturday, at one hour per load it means getting out of the house by noon to enjoy the day; at 2.5 hours per load, it effectively kills your entire day.

Just don't sing their praises and make sure they understand it's only one component of who they are and can easily be out-balanced by bad traits. Or, similarly, as it once told my daughter "Remember, a pretty bitch is still a bitch."

The goal should be guiding them towards being a decent and well-adjusted individual.

My theory is that the illiterate medieval peasants who invented those systems had an intuitive knowledge that a duodecimal number system would make a lot more sense than decimal, and they ended up creating various half-assed implementations of it for their measurements. (The mile thing is different; it's a Roman decimal measurement of steps).

Unfortunately we did end up using decimal, and reinforced it with Arabic numerals, which makes those intuitions worse than useless in the modern world.

Oh hell, Jamie and Adam are guilty of the same thing - missing the obvious. I just watched the stripped down version of testing the myth that being in the presence of an attractive member of the opposite sex 'dumbs you down'. Test was read the color of the word and not the text. On the second time through, both sexes' scores improved. and J&A were surprised. Wow. The same people taking the same test a little later in the day (usually called practice) improved. They simply concluded the myth was busted and didn't at all consider the practice session. There are a number of other episodes where the obvious was ignored as well.