You may be amused to note that in the USA (yeah, we're screwed up here) we use a comma to separate thousands and a period to indicate the decimal point. Therefore 100,000 is 1x10^5 while 100.000 is 1.00000x10^2 . Scientific notation does make a lot more sense, and I should have used it in the first place. Note always significant figures (of which you used five).

If you'll allow a '^' mark to represent 'digits after this until a space or carriage return or line feed shall be considered superscripts and/or mathematical exponents'.



As an aside, what's wrong with one hundred to three decimal places? While it may seem unusual in your profession, not everything is pounds and pence.



Nope. To claim accuracy, what you have done reading with 99.999% (Or 99,999%) accuracy implies that you have done at least one hundred thousand (shall I just write it out instead) readings and one was wrong. Or two hundred thousand and two were wrong. If you have only done one thousand readings and none were wrong, then you cannot claim five figures of accuracy.

This ain't so much science as middle-school math. 4th form, perhaps, to you.



Actually, I tried living by my bollocks for awhile, and you can guess how well that went.

Science is not anybody's god. It is merely a method for looking at what is and trying to understand it through the evidence presented.

The concept 'what is' does indeed include everything that is - And occasionally showing the world that, um, "Actually, that is not, you are merely fooling yourself". I have been fooled, and I will be again, and yet I still apply science to much of what I do. It is not science that fails - It is the people.

S.

I'm with RebelArcher on this - somewhat.

See, the law screws the poor six ways from Thursday.

It happens that many of the poor are also black. If this were a Venn Diagram, there'd be a lot of overlap. In many suburbs like Ferguson, the population is overwhelmingly black AND poor, while the cops are not.

It can be difficult to disentangle how much of the harassment is "because black" and how much is "because poor".

There is certainly some of both. I'd say there's a lot more "because black", but it is definitely mixed in with "because poor". No Capitol cop has thrown down Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas yet, as far as I know.

The studies I have seen tend to support this. Personally, I have been poor but have never been black, and anecdotal evidence isn't statistical evidence at all anyhow.

S.

Edit: also throw in a big box of "because young". Older farts (I was young once, too) seem to get a lot more hassle than their elders. S.

That being the extent of your evidence, LOL right back. IHBT. Have fun. S.

I think he's a righteous dude.

(Thank you, Ferris Bueller's Day Off).

S.

If you're expecting perfection when electing a human being to public office, you've another thing coming. But there is such a thing as the lesser of evils also. Even if they're all crooks that doesn't make the magnitude of their crimes equal. S.

Oddly enough, this seems to me perfectly consistent.

If your Holy Book says that both divorce and gay marriage are wrong, then if you live your life by that Book then you should not do either of those things.

Whether your job requires you to obey another law at this point is irrelevant - Your Book says No, so no. However, you cannot pick and choose one item to obey literally and the other item to interpret as metaphor - Or cheerfully ignore.

S.

PS - Of course, Pope Francis I has made it a lot easier to get annulments, should you choose to go that route.

PPS - In my personal opinion, the government should butt out of marriage entirely, but 'spouse' is written so deeply into so many laws, rules, regulations, ordinances, and procedures that rooting it out would be practically impossible.

S.

PS - Just for grins, I did some math. You claim 99.999% accuracy.
That means you've done 100,000 readings and one was wrong. In order to do 100,000 readings, at half an hour each, at forty hours a week, 52 weeks a year, you've been at this for 24 years completely and resolutely full-time so employed.

I don't believe that, either.

Elementary, m'dear. S.

Which is a wonderful thought, but it's not true. There is no such thing. If you could find such an energy and prove it exists, you'd be in line for about three Nobel prizes, as well as having your name ring down through history having completely revised physics.

No doubt you enjoyed yourself. But when studied carefully, it turns out that most readings are so generic as to be useless (yet agreeable to everyone) and those that are specific are mostly wrong.

We all tend to forget the misses and recall only the hits, and yes, someone will win the lottery in the next few weeks, but that's merely a matter of statistics, not through any energy outside that understood by any competent physicist.



And the outcome you want, either consciously or unconsciously in every reading, is to continue to believe. There is no outcome that will ever make you change your mind.



It is not impossible to say so. I am saying so now. I am saying your statistic is not backed up by facts, that it has not been carefully double-blind tested, and that while you are having fun playing cards I wish you all the best but I beg you please don't go into politics.

Thank you,

S.

I think I'm with TMommy on this, and possibly also WolfWalkwer527.

I'd add don't expect too much. If it's dinner, it's dinner. Even if the other one pays, there's no reciprocal obligation. Meet in a public place, fend off their grubby paws, and go home. Or chat in the parking lot. Or call them later. Or not.

Expect that most people just aren't your thing. Find out, move on. Reach out, experiment, and if it doesn't work out, try again. Keep all the privacy you can.

Volunteer. A quick Google search of <your home town> + "volunteer" will come up with a dozen options, and most importantly, the people there are there because they want to do volunteer stuff, not to hook up with someone. It can (and does!) happen, but it not being the primary focus does rather remove most of the stress (if sex is primary for you, you might be causing stress, and you may be asked nicely not to return. Don't be 'that one').

Anyhow. $0.02, FWIW. S.

Man may have very well descended from the apes - we're not much of an improvement upon them - but I think you meant 'decent'.

Given living in Singapore, I'm sure you know many languages far better than I.

S.

I respectfully disagree.

There is one kind of Tarot reading, and that is only finding what seems to be a pattern or meaning in what is actually completely random (or badly random, depending on card shuffling. Much of that is weirdly (statistically) predictable).

Human beings are very good at pattern-finding. It's what kept our ancestors from thinking a wave in the grass was merely a breeze and not a lurking tiger and thus surviving to have many more children who thought the same way.

Human beings are also very good at fraud - It's what allowed some of our ancestors to have children with a lot more mates than the others. The traditional lady with the crystal ball has gone a bit out of style, but the accoutrements of pseudo-legitimacy are still there - Think of the cards themselves. Would a seven of diamonds mean as much as "Death"? Why not? They're both the same card...

There's open-minded, and then there's being so open-minded that your brain falls out*. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. An anecdote here and there does not qualify. Outcomes require mechanisms. "It would have happened anyhow" is a very serious objection.

If the Tarot did predict something, it would be delightful. Imagine all the college counselors talking to high school students about where to go with their lives ("Sorry Harry, you'll be a gangbanger and stabbed to death in prison at 26. Nothing you can do." "Luis? It'll be dropping out of Harvard and making billions in a dotcom for you. I hope you like Ferarris.")

Unfortunately, it doesn't work.

It's fun to play, but it's a game. Never mistake it for anything more than that.

S.

* first said, I believe, by Carl Sagan. Again, not original with me.

My opinions do not. The facts do.

S.

This is indeed true. Everyone is entitled to an opinion. However, that does not mean everyone is entitled to their own set of facts.

Food, be it tofu or beefsteak, is made out of chemicals. Water is a chemical. Beer is made of many chemicals. I like chemicals. Eating lunch is stuffing yourself with far more chemicals than any doctor's prescription.

"Natural" products are loaded with chemicals, in wildly varying amounts and with atrocious process control. Nature is like that.

What the doctor prescribes is going to have in it what it supposed to be in it, and nothing else. Any 'herbal remedy' may have all kinds of stuff in it, possibly including the herb that is supposed to be in there.

Yes, there are agencies that are supposed to deal with purity and stuff, but herbalists and their pals in the U.S. Congress have basically forced them to totally abdicate their regulatory duty with regards to "natural" remedies. One in three were tested to find no trace of the alleged herb in them - Imagine if there was a one-in-three chance that the white bottle didn't actually contain any milk?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/05/science/herbal-supplements-are-often-not-what-they-seem.html?_r=0

(Linky might need fixing again)

You may wish to argue that you meant only specific chemicals, in which case you should have made that clear. While language does change over time, words still have meanings. If you say 'dynamite' to refer to a large hooved quadruped I'd call a 'horse' we will look at you funny when you say you like riding on a stick of dynamite.

Thus "chemicals". That word does not mean what you think it means.

S.

Er, everything natural is made out of chemicals. Have you ever eaten food?

Just curious,

S.

Um, actually, no. One is based on experiment, learning from failure, and slowly and irregularly advancing. It ain't perfect and they don't claim it is.

The other is horses#!t made up by some clown with nothing on their mind beyond making money off gullible people. They claim it is perfect. They are yankin' your chain. They are lying.

Not all that is natural is bad. Aspirin came from the bark of a willow tree. One of the major complaints about loss of biodiversity is that there's still a lot of things out there we haven't found yet.

Not all that is natural is good. Cyanide is perfectly natural. So's botulism and anthrax.

Finally, no.

Mixing science and nonsense is like mixing an apple pie with a cow pie. It does not improve the cow pie; it only ruins the apple pie.

(That's a quote. I did not originate the above. Think it was Richard Dawkins, but I'm not sure).


Have fun,

S.


(fixed typoes)

Go for it. Unless your pediatrician is a naturopath, a homeopath, a sociopath, or Dr. Mehmet Oz (can be difficult to tell the difference, sometimes). If that is the case, get another pediatrician.

Keep in mind multiple possibilities, including the possibility that a 5yr old who doesn't like to eat his peas has discovered that pretending to have a headache gets him out of having to eat his peas. Or anything else unpleasant.

S.

It's a bit like waving your hands over a flat tire and expecting it to reinflate itself. Or giving a ridiculously diluted dose of gasoline and expecting the car to start.

Thanks for the link fixing.

S.

One.

"alternative" medicine has been studied to death (literally, in some cases), and you know what? It doesn't work.

"alternative medicine" that does work is called, guess... "medicine".

Here's two links that none of the true believers will appreciate, and that those who, I dunno, care more about science than 'My brother's friend's uncle said it worked for his friend's sister's daughter'-like anecdotes will cheer.

You cannot reason someone out of a position they have not reasoned themselves into.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhGuXCuDb1U
https://youtu.be/RWbkvCMuU5A

Have fun,

S.

"It is impossible to truly enjoy idleness unless you have a lot of work to do".

I don't know where that quotation came from, but I concur with it.

S.

I suppose it would be silly to point out a bit of science among the bulls#!t.

A chap called Milton Meyer did the research, tested the assumptions, and wrote a book on the subject, called "They thought they were free - The Germans from 1933 - 1945."

Read it. Then comment.

Thank you,

S.