Max

It is Gerrit (or "Gerard") Dou. Here another painting by Dou: "old woman reading"

6 hours ago, Ellen Stuttle said:

 In other words, I suspected that the testimonials were from fictional doctors, that the advertisers were outright lying, not that they were bribing doctors.  Outright lying would have been significantly less expensive than bribing.

I think that "doctors" in advertisements seldom are real doctors, that in most cases they are just actors/models.

That man is a crackpot. He doesn't seem to understand the difference between rest mass and relativistic mass. Relativistic mass is a somewhat outmoded concept. It is related to the total energy E of a particle, (m_rel = E / c² )and therefore dependent on the velocity with regard to the observer. If the particle approaches the speed of light the energy and therefore also the relativistic mass increase without bound. Today we prefer to use the rest mass (the energy of the particle at rest, divided by c²), which does not increase with its velocity. It is just a different definition, the calculated effects remain exactly the same.

He also seems to think that the neutrino doesn't exist, claims that it has no mass and no spin. Well neutrino's do exist, do have mass (even if it's very small) and certainly do have spin, and they can also be detected. So listening further to this man is wasting your time if you want to learn something meaningful, because he really has no clue.

26 minutes ago, Ellen Stuttle said:

PS:  Looks like you have to subscribe - which I'm not going to do - to read the article.

I can read the article without subscribing (following the link given above), no problem.

17 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Hell, sex even brought Max back out and he hasn't posted in ages. Tell me there hasn't been anything for him to mock over all that time since mockery is what you claim brought people around.

I haven't posted for some time here, because most discussions are now about American politics and conspiracy theories, neither of which interest me. In  most cases I don't know the people concerned, or have only a vague notion who they are. I prefer to discuss things I know something about.

9 minutes ago, Ellen Stuttle said:

PS:  I hope you've been ok.

Thank you, everything is ok here!

9 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

Most people look better with their clothes on.

A lot better.

Especially when they have those horrible silicone tits.

2 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

and Doris Gordon's been a long time gone--I suspect deceased

I suppose it is this Doris Gordon: https://humanlifereview.com/pro-life-movement-loses-doris-gordon-libertarians-life-founder/

11 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Max,

That's rich.

Can you point to a discussion where you yourself have not tried to get the last word or said, "Lets agree to disagree"?

Heh...

From what I've seen, your complaint only goes in one direction.

Michael

I just give some possible alternatives to Ellen's notion that "not being able to handle criticism" would automatically imply "banning your opponent", that's all. I myself don't continue a discussion if I've clearly stated my viewpoint and the other side is just going to resort to personal attacks. In such cases I let the other have the last word, I'm not interested in some endless ping pong game that doesn't solve anything.

11 minutes ago, Ellen Stuttle said:

Jon,

You claim that Michael can't handle criticism.  (I suppose that's what your "You [MSK] don’t do even the mildest criticism" means.)

Then why does Michael tolerate your presence with your chronic criticism of how he runs his list?

Ellen

"Not being able to handle criticism" doesn't necessary imply banning the other person. It could also mean "always insisting on having the last word", or "not being able to say 'lets agree to disagree'" for example.

The ten climate commandments:

Among the worshiping public, Pope Franciscus, German  Chancellor Merkel and President Steinmeier (the owl). April 2019. Of course, today many other politicians could be added...

Here a video of Greta without a script to read from:

23 minutes ago, Jon Letendre said:

Sorry, I took you for meaning the dumb ones’ failures are ignored, but you surely meant the fails, period, are ignored.

Do have experience with cats? Allowed outdoors? You’ve watched them while they are outdoors? In my experience the intelligence depicted in the video just scratches the surface of cats’ abilities.

Almost my whole life I've lived with cats. Only when the last one died, 18 years old, we've decided not to take another cat, as that one would probably survive us, and that is an unbearable idea to us, as we've no idea what would become of it then. And yes, they can be clever. When it suits them.

1 hour ago, Jon Letendre said:

Hi Max.

Wouldn’t the successes yet show what some of the felines can do?

We could throw out 99% of some test’s results, but that wouldn’t affect the proposition “some people can ... get a perfect score on this test.”

It wouldn't affect that proposition, but neither would it prove it. The file drawer effect or publication bias is a serious problem in many research fields, like psychology or medicine, not ot mention more dubious fields (it's the way to "prove" with spurious significance values desired theories.)

1 hour ago, Jon Letendre said:

“That species can get a perfect score on that test” is then true, even though 99% of the results don’t happen to help support it.

In any case, I have owned many cats and dogs (the latter of which I trained to point game in the field) and I have looked into object permanence research and the video offered looks to me like about average skill a cat can attain after moderate training.

My best would be to say they do it the way we do it — in their mind they see the thing is “right there” and they keep track as it moves a couple times. They’re highly evolved predators and you see to it during training that their successes equate to mouth treats, that’s how you hack them.

If the skill is genuine, I think the cat uses a different strategy. In the video you can see that the cat sometimes doesn't look at all at the cups, so it wouldn't have been able to keep track of the right one. I think a more likely explanation is that it reacts to the sound of the ball. No need to keep track of the relevant cup, it just hears under which cup the ball is still rolling a bit at the end, That said, I think that a perfect score as in the video is unlikely, so there probably has been some cherry picking for the end result.

Very funny and charming, but of course cheating is very easy. Just don't publish the articles that don't confirm your thesis, um... I mean. don't show the videos that don't contain the desired result. That's called the file drawer effect.

I think it's highly unlikely that any sophisticated form of life that is not carbon based can evolve anywhere in the universe. It's the carbon chemistry that is at the basis of the enormously complex and sophisticated machinery that makes such life possible.

2 hours ago, Peter said:

I wrote: Imagine a globe with thousands of dots or pixels equally distant from each other on its surface. In our three dimensional space can a section, piece, or circle be cut out and be reformed, into a smaller globe without losing any of the dots on the piece's surface?

 

And Ba’al responded: Yes. Consider this.  A north pole, Polar Projection map and a south pole Polar Projection map.  Two planar maps covers every point on the surface of the earth.  If you don't mind losing the poles a Mercator Map will do you just fine.  Of course sizes and shapes are distorted. Size and shape is faithful only near the equator and vastly distorted (enlarged) near the poles.  The poles themselves are lost. end quote

 

A Mercator Map is a flat representation of a globe which is very handy as a navigational tool, but I was thinking about a true globe. I am trying to imagine a variation of what you suggest, consisting of a globe about three feet high. Would cutting the globe in half and then reattaching it be a successful solution? I think that would work, but it does not satisfy the requirements for a loss of pixel count and smaller size.   

 

If you cut it in half and then shaved an inch off the largest sections of the two remaining pieces then they would not “fit,” and still be a globe. They would be an ellipse, I think? Of course Earth is not a perfect sphere. If you run your hand over a topographical model of our globe there would be a lot of bumps from mountains, valleys and even skyscrapers. And I think any circular planet changes shape in a minor way as it reacts to gravity.

You could just  shrink the map to a smaller size and project it back onto a smaller globe. After all, you can buy globes in all sizes... Cutting away some pieces will of course not conserve the number of "pixels". The result of reattaching your cut halves wouldn't be an ellipsoid, but a "globe" with a discontinuity in its tangent planes at the "new equator". You could deform this thing to a new spherical globe, that is however missing the pixels around the original equator. Too bad for the people who lived there, they've disappeared.

Nathaniel Branden in "Who is Ayn Rand" (p.92):

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In length, Anthem is closer to a novelette than to a novel; in style and form, it is closer to poetry than to prose. It is by far the most abstract of her works, in its method of stylization; it is a projection of the issue of individualism versus collectivism dramatized in its purest and starkest essence. 

There is nothing moral in Roark's blowing op that building. He made a serious error of judgment by surreptitiously helping Keating in designing that building, and therefore he would have had to bear the consequences when that went wrong. In spite of all the noble excuses for a "morally perfect hero",  this was just an unwarranted  act of scorched earth.

5 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

To answer this with 100% certainty, I need to go back and look to verify certain patterns in my mind from observing this stuff and, frankly, I'm spending way too much time on it. I like Max except when his insecurities get in the way of contributing value (which he has some really good brains to do) and start hogging discussions with silly oneupmanship games. 

Insecurities? Psychobabble framing. 

5 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Here are some observations and I know people will sound off about psychologizing, but thinking about people's motivations is exactly one of the things human brains were designed to do. Hell, intent is even a legal consideration in judging crimes.

I'll tell you what my intent in this discussion was: to show that your arguments for implying tampering with the picture were false. Reread our discussion on that matter. You'll see that I quite neutrally, without any personal remark, told you why your argument was fallacious. You return with new arguments, which I also show to be false. Then you start with personal remarks: 

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Here's what I see. You don't think like someone who has messed with this stuff. 

I'll try to explain it, but you seem to be predisposed to belief, not speculation and thinking outside the box. So this may be wasted effort.

 

Observe the condescending tone, and the start of psychologizing: I would have no experience in such matters. How do you know? Because I disagree with you? Further I'm a "believer" who "cannot think outside the box", and therefore explaining it to me will probably be "wasted effort".

Don't you see that you're now exactly doing what you are reproaching me for? Not that it bothers me, but your double standard does.

5 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

So I'm not going to apologize for it or avoid doing it anymore. Yes, I do analyze human motivations and comment on them. Including my own. I may be wrong at times, but I'm right a hell of a lot of others. Besides, it's awful to think things from an "identify" perspective (that cognitive before normative thing I always talk about), but never be able to talk about what I observe because this will ignite a shitstorm. Screw that. I'm not a lover of shitstorms, so I still avoid them when I believe there is not enough value in my thoughts to risk one, but for the rest, screw that. 

Here in O-Land, there has been way too much shutting down discussion based on peer pressure and thin skins. 

Yes, and you are a great shutter down of discussions.  When I wrote (about the beard of the statue): "Curious, I just see a beard, an ear and hair on top. No, it's not very clear, but that is due to the fact that the image of the white statue is rather bleached out by overexposure, and it isn't very sharp anyway. That seems to me to be a more likely explanation of what you see, than the notion that some evil conspirator has painted an extra beard on the statue or has removed some embarrassing details of the statue", your reply is:

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Likely" is an interesting word the way you say it. It sounds like, "the only, you dumbass."

It sounds like a barking dogma.

 

Escalating again, after a quite normal remark of mine. Probably because you think with your all-knowing psychologizing mind that this must be what I'm really thinking. Well, even if that were the case, I didn't say that, and it is nowhere implied in what I really said. Talk about thin-skinned.

5 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

This is exactly what the PC leftie brigade tries to do: shut people up through fear and shaming by victimization, mockery and banishment, with a huge emphasis on victimization. Here in O-Land, it's the same damn thing, except the emphasis is on mockery and banishment. (Not all mockery, victimization and/or banishment is for this purpose, but this kind of fear and shaming is used as a weapon so much because it is quite effective as a weapon.)

The problem with silencing people as a principle form of social control (and getting power) is that when people get intimidated into not speaking their minds, they don't become convinced. They just shrug. The moment they believe their voice will mean something in the society in which they live other than getting a lot of grief and horseshit shoveled at them, they will speak up and generally act to remove the power of those who silence them. This is how many major social movements happened, for example, the civil rights movement. This is also how President Trump got elected.

Notice that everybody who relies on silencing others--not winning arguments enough to convince people, but silencing others--as one of their main forms of social interaction have thin skins. Why? Fear. Fear of losing social standing within groups one identifies with is a fundamental fear. That's why. This universal fear evolved over millennia from humans living in small groups under harsh conditions. An outcast literally died way back when and the dead don't reproduce. Surviving and reproducing are the evolutionary imperatives of any species. So those who developed a healthy fear of being cut off from the group are our ancestors. Those who did not develop such a fear generally became dinner for some other species.

The thin-skinned have this social standing fear (and a fear of being inadequate) way out of whack in relation to other evolved fundamental fears (like fear of spiders and snakes, fear of attack by organized enemies, fear of the unknown, etc.). Also, they don't try to achieve good standing by providing value, but instead by showing the deficiencies of certain group members they target. They may provide value, but they expend a hell of a lot of energy trying to get the group to look at someone they consider inferior.

You seem to be describing yourself. Getting power, bullying, silencing dissenters, you must have a big social standing fear.

2 hours ago, Jonathan said:

False.

Why? Suppose you can identify the position of one of the lamps. Then you can draw lines from that position to the head of the person (light ray, shadow margin). But where the ray hits the wall, will depend on the distance of that person to the wall. What from the current perspective is one single line, may, seen from above, be a series of diverging lines, resulting in different positions of the shadow on the wall, depending on the position of that person. And that is known in only one dimension, the second coordinate is unknown. We don't know where his feet are, nor how tall he is.

2 hours ago, Jonathan said:

I suspect that you're misidentifying either the number and positions of lights in the room, or whose shadows are whose, or both, and also maybe the depth of the room and the variations of its surfaces.

You're right, I had confused the right shadow of the tall man with the left shadow of the small woman.

14 hours ago, Jonathan said:

There's an overwhelming over-abundance of more than enough information. And that's just in any single frame of the video. Consider all of the content of all of the frames, and there are multiple, layered, redundant means of determining whether or not any entity, attribute, action or effect seen in any frame conforms to reality. The space, the objects within it, and the motions are all precisely measurable.

Then add all of the visual information from other cameras at other vantage points...

I was just talking about the picture with the red and green circles. In that message it was claimed that a shadow was "missing" and that that would be evidence of tampering. That picture (I didn't know then it was a still of a video) does not contain enough information to predict where the shadows of the walking people would fall on the wall behind.them. For that you should have to know where on the floor their feet are (what their x-y position is), and that information is missing. When I later saw the video and other photos, it became clear that the tall man (whose shadow was supposedly  "missing") was walking farther away from the wall than for example the small woman who followed him, just as I had expected. 

27 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Max,

Actually, come to think of it, you're the one lying. I won't speculate why, though. You must have your reasons.

At least I showed how you were lying, you just utter wild accusations without substantiation.

1 hour ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Now back to the beard. You are treating the beard and the artifact as the same thing simply because the same statue appears in both photos. But they are not the same thing.

The beard doesn't explain the artifact in the photo I had trouble with. That kind of artifact, in my experience, can easily happen as the result of sloppy alignment when superimposing images on each

You don't understand the importance of the second photo, although I've told you that already. When you compare (enlargements of) both statues, you see that the viewing angle is slightly different (can best be seen in the shadows), but on the face of the statue the difference is practically imperceptible. However, there is an important difference: the resolution. Compare the light distribution on both photos, then you'll see that they are completely in agreement, only is the first picture far less detailed. But there is nothing in the first picture that you cannot find back, in much greater detail of course, in the second picture, so there isn't any artifact in the first picture, it's just a rough, overexposed picture that may stimulate the imagination, like clouds in the sky may do. There is a nice example in astronomy of this effect: the "face on Mars". In a first, low resoluton picture, it did resemble (with a bit of fantasy) a face. But later photos showed that this was just accidental in a noisy picture, the "face" disappeared, no artifact, no sculpting Martians. 

3 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Not when he can't even see a face-covering artifact that is right in front of his eyes and hasn't even looked at the picture correctly before he sounds off.

Oh, now you are also a clairvoyant? You "know" that I haven't even looked at the picture correctly before I gave my reaction? Well, for your information: I dowloaded the picture first, and opened in my photo editor, tried different settings of brightness and contrast to enhance the details. So you're just lying to dismiss my criticism.

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I also dispute his technical explanations as the only ones valid. Also, I'm not even convinced of the validity of some of what he said. But I don't want to spend long hours delving into this. I merely keep at it a bit because I want to make sure readers know there are different views--valid possible and plausible views--that they can consider. That way they can come to their own conclusions. Independent thinking and all...

If my technical explanations show that there is no evidence that your arguments are valid, that is enough to dismiss those. No, your views are not valid: motion blur in walking persons is no evidence for tampering, sharpness artefacts are no evidence for tampering (except for using a sharpness filter, which may be a default option of the camera), equal fuzziness before and after a walking person is no evidence for tampering, and neither is lack of detail due to overexposure.  I can understand that you dont want to spend long hours, delving into this, yours is a lost cause, and I suspect that deep down, you know that.