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- Removed old questions and answers -Martin 00:01 Jan 2, 2003 (UTC)
I need help from Chinese speakers on some info I have here: Talk:Japanese language. It is about the influence of Chinese on Japanese. I would also like info from Korean, etc. --Juuitchan
I am an amateur computer fanatic. I have recently had a genuineintel x 86 family 15 model 11.6 stepping 2 (256 omb ram) installed in my computer, sold as a pentium 4. Can anyone tell me if I have been cheated?
Why do you get horny?
That's a little personal. Please see Human sexuality, sexual arousal
Why is insider trading widely made illegal and widely considered immoral? Strangely, insider trading doesn't even begin to answer these questions. Efficient markets theory gives the impression that insider trading might, according to some economists, leave financial markets in some kind of undesirable state, though I don't think it clearly spells out the details. Moral and historical dimensions of insider trading are apparently not considered anywhere on Wikipedia at present. I'm quite curious if there is any rationale behind the ubiquitous taboo on the matter. --Ryguasu 09:04 Dec 26, 2002 (UTC)
- Insider trading is only illegal if violates a duty of trust; see latest changes and the external link. Stephen C. Carlson 02:42 Jan 3, 2003 (UTC)
- information wants to be free but you can make lots of money if its not freely known. The game is rigged towards those with connections. The laws against insider trading are lip service paid to honesty.
- the claim that markets are efficient allocators of resources rests on the condition that people have equal access to information (some claim that markets would be the most efficient way to allocate resources if all people had perfect information). When you have insider trading, some people have fundamentally different access to information than others, so the market cannot work efficiently.
- I find both of the arguments above extremely shallow, at least as stated here. But let's move the discussion to Talk:Insider trading. --Ryguasu
Discussions comparing "form" and "content" abound. (Ian Hacking brings the distinction to bear on the philosophy of science. Douglas Hofstadter suggests (I think) the distinction is important in consideratiosn of what intelligence is. Advocates of LaTeX, SGML, or word processor style sheets claim such a distinction helps computer automation and increases productivity.) Does anyone know how this distinction got into Western intellectual literature? Are there any critical assessments of the idea as a whole? Any explanations of why so many people take it for granted that this is a useful distinction? --Ryguasu 07:26 Dec 30, 2002 (UTC)
- Concerning science, the use of 'this idea as a whole' and of the 'importance of this distinction in considerations of what intelligence is' may be reproduced based on the notion of Reproducibility.
- Frank W ~@) R Jan 3, 2003 (UTC)
I'd like to include a summary of a recent Canadian meta-analysis on sexual education in the Sex education article. The study: Interventions to Reduce Unintended Pregnancies Among Adolescents: Systematic Review of Randomized Controlled Trials. DiCenso A et al. BMJ 2002;324:1426. My problem is that I do not understand the statistical terms that are used to describe the results and how they can be expressed in a form understandable to the layman. From the summary:
- Data synthesis: The interventions did not delay initiation of sexual intercourse in young women (pooled odds ratio 1.12; 95% confidence interval 0.96 to 1.30) or young men (0.99; 0.84 to 1.16); did not improve use of birth control by young women at every intercourse (0.95; 0.69 to 1.30) or at last intercourse (1.05; 0.50 to 2.19) or by young men at every intercourse (0.90; 0.70 to 1.16) or at last intercourse (1.25; 0.99 to 1.59); and did not reduce pregnancy rates in young women (1.04; 0.78 to 1.40). Four abstinence programmes and one school based sex education programme were associated with an increase in number of pregnancies among partners of young male participants (1.54; 1.03 to 2.29). There were significantly fewer pregnancies in young women who received a multifaceted programme (0.41; 0.20 to 0.83), though baseline differences in this study favoured the intervention. tistically combined study findings, although most of the studies were surveys.
AFP made out of this the claim "The pregnancy rate among youngsters who took part in four pro-abstinence programmes was at least 50 per cent higher than among counterparts who did not." Can this be concluded from the above data? The actual study is here (PDF), I would appreciate if someone with the required statistical/mathematical knowledge could take a look. Thanks! --Eloquence 05:04 Jan 1, 2003 (UTC)
- Hi, Eloquence. The main topic for understanding the above is: What is a confidence interval? If you do a poll of say 1,000 youngsters and 15 of them got pregnant, you would say that about 1.5% of them got pregnant. But what does this say about 100,000 people? First idea would be 1,500 pregnants. But we know that taking a sample implies a certain error on the data. Perhaps we took some not-so-average people into account? The confidence interval tells us how valid our average is. A 95% confidence interval is the range that is containing the real average with a certainty of 95%. There is still a 5% chance that even this range does not provide the real value. If the 95% confidence interval is 1.0-2.0 than from a 100,000 pupils 1,000-2,000 would be expected to become pregnant.
- So what does the above study tell:
- pregnancies among partners of young male participants (1.54; 1.03 to 2.29) The average is 1.54 which realy is 50% above the 0.99 and 1.03 values above. But the confidence interval is rather big. Apparantly they had only few sample data for this group. By a chance of 95% the real value is between 1.03 and 2.29. This might mean the real rate is 1.03 which would be very near to "no effect". Or it could be 2.29, a very high difference to other groups. So, personally, I would not consider the statement "50% higher" really proven by this poll. There is a high uncertainty here. It might be only 3%, but it could be even over 200%! -- JeLuF 09:35 Jan 4, 2003 (UTC)
- Thanks for the explanation! Now it makes a lot more sense. Note that these are pooled estimates, the individual studies vary, but the abstinence programs all had a clear and significant negative impact. I'll include a detailed summary in the relevant article. --Eloquence
What was the relationship between the Far East Air Force, USAFFE, and the Philippine Army Air Corps? Likewise, what was the relationship between the Philippine Department and USAFFE Headquarters. Where can we get a good OOB and composition figures? Was the Offshore Patrol part of USAFFE or not? What are some good books on this topic? Vera Cruz
Can anyone provide some information on Aristotle's "four causes"? I don't know much about them, but I know even less about what article they belong in: Aristotle, Causation, a new "Aristotle's four causes" article? Also, any insight into the two following claims:
- Aristotle's "causes" are a classification of the sorts of answers one might give to a "why" question.
- "Why" questions usually are or should be answered in terms of a "final cause".
The latest treatment I've seen of this is in Daniel Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea, and it seems a little idiosyncratic. --Ryguasu 02:24 Jan 10, 2003 (UTC)~
Marshall Mcluhan deals with this issue extensively and updates the notion idiosyncratically in 'Laws of Media' w/ Eric his son.Two16 02:53 Jan 10, 2003 (UTC)
Some questions that were posted in the article namespace, need to be refactored: Eloquence 03:11 Jan 19, 2003 (UTC)
Following are some questions that I would really like answers for. As for whether these topics (when answered sufficiently) can be turned into normal Wikipedia articles down the road - we'll see. I am of the opinion that no question is stupid, though I am a little leery of saying this (it sounds too much like a challenge). Anyways, on with the questions:
- Shouldn't the saying "You'll be the first to know" actually be "You'll be the second to know". Usually I'll find out before you do and therefore I will know first.
- Umbilical cord (how did early humans sever it and clamp segment near belly button)
--- They probably just bit it off. -Juuitchan
- That's what dogs and cats do at least. I'm sure others are similar.
Or did the baby just drag the placenta around until it naturally came off. This could be a deal-breaker on the theory of evolution. What about non-humans?
- How do biologists know what is actually "junk" DNA?
- That's pretty simple: we've already broken the code for how sequences of nucleotides are decoded to build proteins, and how protein expression is tuened on and off. "Junk" DNA is simply all the nucleotides that don't fit into that program, and so don't ever code for proteins. It's like spotting a long string of random letters inside a book--it's pretty easy to tell the difference between meaningful English words and random letters.
- Does cloning result in shortened telomeres? And if so, does this result in premature aging?
- Under present technology, yes and yes, though the latter isn't as simple as "aging"--some things look like premature aging and some don't. There's more to aging than ust telomeres, though they are clearly important.
- If cloning results in shortened telomeres, how does the human reproductive system generate chromosome copies without shortened telomeres?
- The enzyme "telomerase" builds new, long telomeres in egg and sperm cells.
- If the reproductive system creates eggs and sperm with the same chromosomes that the adult has (what else would happen?), why in families with a large number of kids do we not end up with "clones"?
- Chance. Eggs and sperm only have half the DNA of the parent who produces them, and which allele of each pair goes into the gamete is more or less random. There are so many thousands of loci that might have one allele or the other, that the odds of an identical egg meeting an identical sperm in a family are essentially zero--unless a single couple could manage to have billions of children. Of course, if a single zygote spits /after/ conception, then you do get clones--otherwise known as identical twins.
- How would evolution explain the creation of viruses and prions?
- How could it not? I'm not even sure I understand the question. But if a certain pattern of proteins causes itself to be reproduced under certain conditions, how could it do anything but reproduce and evolve over time?
I have noticed some peculiar features of the English language:
- "I want to not..." seems to be ungrammatical. You must substitute "I don't want to...", even though, logically speaking, not wanting to do something is not the same as wanting to not do it.
- "...supposed to not..." also seems to be ungrammatical.
- It seems that it is acceptable to refer to a child of unknown gender as "it", yet it is never acceptable (and would be very insulting) to refer to an adult as "it". Why is this?
Under what heading(s) do these belong?
- They are Idioms: "an expression whose meaning has little or no apparent relation to its wording. Encounters with idioms can be frustrating for non-native users of a language" Ortolan88
- Regarding it, there was an explanation at gender-neutral pronoun, but it got moved to meta: [1]. Basically the word it has been used in the past as a deliberate attempt to dehumanise certain groups of people, and by association is insulting when applied to adults. It's acceptable in idiomatic sentences like "it's a girl!", though.
- Incidentally, I think the distinction between "I don't want to" and "I want to not" is definately not an idiom. An idiom is something like "raining cats and dogs" - the examples here are examples of obscure grammar rules/guidelines rather than idioms. Martin