The statement of a woman who is harassed is evidence.

Are you using evidence as some sort of legal term? Is this a trial? No, it's a situation where a person might have any number of reasons for wanting to screw with another con attendee, and potentially chooses to do so by abusing a zero-tolerance policy and launching an ejection-worthy claim against them falsely.

If someone's statement that they were assaulted is evidence... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by chudmonkey at 12:33 PM on August 26, 2008

languagehat writes "And I'm saddened that you feel no need to apologize for being a complete dick, or even to back down a little. "

I'm not being a dick. My initial comment was that I didn't find nasreddin's comment any more impressive than what is heard in many an undergraduate bull-session. The comment had some merit, but it suffered from pretension. But only after you replied to my comment did I mention the pretension, and that I found... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by orthogonality at 3:19 PM on August 2, 2008

Why are you reading such a fascist website?

We have cameras.

Actually, as much as I have my own reactions to what I've seen in their moderation, I'm not all that jazzed about talking about it as e.g. BB vs. Mefi—moderation of a busy place is a strange and complicated thing and for a lot of matters of plicy there's rarely a Right answer so much as there are different options with trade-offs.

I... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by cortex at 1:12 PM on June 30, 2008

The more I think about this question, the more concern I feel for the GF's actively negative reaction to being touched.

Precisely. The reality here is that when you take all of the OP's statements together as a whole they don't quite add up right. That's perfectly reasonable - interpersonal relationships are rarely equations that you can balance perfectly, both because of people not knowing their own minds and our inability to perfectly know the... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phearlez at 12:23 PM on June 6, 2008

wemayfreeze: "It's about time Obama stops dipping into the fray. Wouldn't it be great if his campaign released an official statement saying, "I'm sure she didn't mean anything by it"? When he tries to capitalize on her gaffes he admits that she still has a chance."

Are you kidding? Responding to a statement by calling it "unfortunate and has no place in this campaign" is the weakest, most boilerplate message that an... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by DaShiv at 3:33 AM on May 24, 2008

I'm sorry I started this thread with a joke - would a smiley have helped?
But honestly, I think the backlash against the couple of mac comments has been surprisingly overboard.

the backlash against the mac comments is more civil and well reasoned than the mac comments have been, and I'm saying this as a predominantly mac person. (I have an old PC from back before I switched sides which I use primarily to play gametap games, and i use a... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by shmegegge at 9:24 AM on May 13, 2008

OK, I'm going to be the grumpy animal person here. I work at a zoo and interact with a lot of people who are involved in rescue organizations. I think the best solution is to keep the cat indoors. An outdoor cat has an extremely shortened lifespan, often being prone to disease, parasites, attacks by predators, or sick humans, being kidnapped & sold to labs or used for dogfighting, being accidentally poisoned (antifreeze, rat poison). It seems to me that your kind-hearted neighbor might... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by caroljean63 at 5:19 PM on May 2, 2008

Not my experience, but the experience of 30 test subjects and the professionals who ran the experiment: No significant differences were shown in RMS [relief medication scores] between the real acupuncture treatment group and the sham acupuncture treatment group.

Not my experience, but the conclusion of professionals who performed a meta-study of 7 different studies which probably included hundreds of test subjects: A meta-analysis failed to show any summary benefits of... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by jepler at 9:32 AM on May 2, 2008

nothing.
posted to Ask Metafilter by docpops at 3:12 PM on April 22, 2008

We don't peek at user's memails for any reason short of some terrible legal threat and even then we'd be talking to our lawyer first. Sometimes, rarely, users send us something that someone else has sent them. This didn't happen here. I don't quite get what's going on here but we haven't warned stinkycheese about anything.
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 12:26 PM on April 16, 2008

Well, I think we've all learned a lesson here today.

Yes, I've learned that you can be an obnoxious flaming asshole, and make false and slanderous accusations, and people will give you favorites when you apologize for it.
posted to MetaTalk by Dave Faris at 12:53 PM on April 16, 2008

my entire family had been in this denomination forever. They couldn't all be wrong could they?

The entire civilizations of ancient Greece, Rome, and Egypt believed for thousands of years in pantheons of gods that are now dead.

So, yeah, they could all be wrong.
posted to Ask Metafilter by mr_roboto at 11:40 AM on April 8, 2008 marked best answer

Tell me, do gun nuts all have terrible diets?

From the pictures I've seen, many do.

"because you should eat healthy and grow up strong, you should eat as many vegetables as possible." And then you decided because the first clause wasn't a modification of the second, it meant you had the right to eat shitloads of candy.

This doesn't make any sense as stated. If we're... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by adamdschneider at 9:38 AM on April 4, 2008

jonmc, you just discovered that phenomenon known as 'human nature.' :)
posted to MetaFilter by kyrademon at 8:10 PM on March 30, 2008

The community consensus is that if your spouse starts to resemble Jabba the Hutt, you are obligated to somehow be sexually attracted to Jabba the Hutt. I don't think it's shallow to say that I have never gotten an erection from Jabba the Hutt. The thread says a lot more about the insecurities of some people who are worried that they look like Jabba the Hutt than it does about the OP.
posted to MetaTalk by Mayor Curley at 6:51 AM on March 16, 2008

This is actually kind of true. The worst, in my experience as an engineer, are electrical engineers. Why that is I have no idea. Show me a professor who is a Holocaust denier or other wacky type and I'll show you an engineer 95% of the time.
posted by Justinian at 1:32 PM on March 10

The reason for this is simple - other engineers are idiots. Mechanical engineers? Wow, you built a bridge. Go home and play with your legos, kid, the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Pastabagel at 1:11 PM on March 10, 2008

If 500 people favorite this comment, I'll disable my account.
posted to MetaFilter by hermitosis at 3:54 PM on February 10, 2008

If you look good in a tight sweater, why not wear it?

But I doubt anyone sane, professional person wants to be ogled all the time

Someone dresses in a way that makes them look 'good'. So in a manner that appeals to the people that find them attractive on a purely aesthetic level. So if you dress in a way that will make people want to look at you, then don't be completely surprised if people do look at you.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Brockles at 4:43 PM on January 23, 2008

Hello, I am a desperately lonely man. Sometimes I go to these places. It's a reason to get out of the house, albeit one that I realize might cost me far too much money. Stripjoints are places that a man can go and sit by himself and not look so out of place. I'd feel too old and uncool walking into a real nightclub, and would stand in a corner not knowing what to say to anyone. In the strip club the women come to you and pretend to like you, and you know why they do that. Either fending them off... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by TimTypeZed at 11:29 AM on December 30, 2007

Speaking only for myself, I would have been fine with that.

Yeah, me too. Without being all special snowflake about it, my issue is that they were just links to three jpgs, not pages with photos/comments/titles (the photos are all also on Flickr, yes?). So, there was no context, no "hey she actually TOOK these photos" indication, no indication of what the accompanying article on Speigel Online was.

The photo of her... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 10:00 AM on December 30, 2007

Regarding weight ratios: Here's Harvard's Steven Jay Gould in a 1974 Natural History Magazine article, Size and Shape: The immutable laws of design set limits on all organisms.

"Simply by growing larger, an object that keeps the same shape will suffer a continual decrease in relative surface area. The decrease occurs because volume increases as the cube of length (length x length x length), while surface increases only as the square (length x... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by sdodd at 11:54 AM on December 6, 2007

Dextroamphetamine. Its cognitive and behavioral effects in normal and hyperactive boys and normal men:

The effects of a single oral dose of dextroamphetamine sulfate on motor activity, vigilance, learning, and mood were compared for normal and hyperactive prepubertal boys and normal college-aged men using a double-blind crossover design. Both groups of boys and men showed decreased motor activity, increased vigilance, and improvement on a learning task after... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by occhiblu at 11:02 AM on September 23, 2007

Many people do not realize that there are two types of midwives in the US. This is different from all other industrialized countries. There are certified nurse midwives (CNMs) who go through a rigorous education program involving substantial clinical experience. These midwives are equivalent to the midwives in other first world countries.

Then there are direct entry midwives, a second, inferior class of midwives. Anyone can call herself a direct entry midwife. Direct... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by DrAmy at 4:51 AM on September 21, 2007

Okay Effigy2000, I'll bite. It's hard to find comparable ages/poses from that list you generated, but let's see here:

Zhang vs Flickr: dad/daughter on bed.

Pose: ZOMG, Flickr photo has one of Dad's hands on the Daughter's upper buttocks and the other right up against the underside of her crotch! But look at the context given for the touching -- cradling her in a very paternal way with his legs in a natural repose -- whereas Zhang's photo has... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by DaShiv at 3:09 PM on August 23, 2007

Now to frogan, I don't believe that softball is unbalanced

Baseball has been played at a major-league level for more than 100 years. In that time, strategy has not changed significantly, and neither has the nature of the day-to-day, routine plays. Guys are still thrown out at first about two steps away from the bag, and the base length hasn't changed, but the athletes are 10 times faster. That's balance. And since softball is... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by frogan at 1:44 PM on June 7, 2007

From the first study:
Results indicated that more attractive men had higher starting salaries and they continued to earn more over time. For women, there was no effect of attractiveness for starting salaries, but more attractive women earned more later on in their jobs. By 1983, men were found to earn $2600 more on the average for each unit of attractiveness (on a 5-point scale) and women earned $2150 more.
So unattractive men incur a greater proportional wage penalty... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dgaicun at 3:58 AM on May 31, 2007

"...Only 2% of mature adipocytes can undergo mitosis with appropriate stimulation. Therefore, adipocyte hypertrophy, rather than an increase in cell number, seems responsible for diffuse or localized increases in fatty masses..." from here

Translated slightly, given the right conditions only 2% of fat cells in the body are able to produce more cells.

"...although the relative contribution of adipocyte... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by 517 at 12:54 PM on April 14, 2007 marked best answer

Meat Puppets.
posted to MetaFilter by Meatbomb at 8:57 PM on July 30, 2006