ribuck

For the child's sake, don't call police or CPS. I think direct engagement is the way to go. Keep it positive. If it's going to have any chance of a worthwhile effect, the mother should perceive that you're trying to help her, not trying to help the child. From your point of view, the child gets helped as a side-effect. From the child's point of view, they get helped. Even if there's no long-term change in behaviour, at least the child feels a little less alone and helpless in the world, because he knows that someone actually cares about him. It's hard to be specific without knowing more details, but I can imagine this type of outcome: To the mother: "Hi, I see you're finding things difficult. Is there any way I can help?" To the child: "Hi mate. You're a handsome lad. What's the problem?" Mother: "I'm desperately late for a doctor's appointment. I have to get there before the surgery closes. I've walked a mile from the train station already and I'm only halfway there. My child is exhausted and isn't co-operating." Child: "I don't want to walk!" To the mother: "How about I give your child a piggy-back ride, and we'll soon be there." To the child: "Would you like a ride?" Mother: "Thank you so much!"

This is not about "denying yourself a valid emotional experience". It's about stopping the destructive re-runs of that same experience. To the original poster, I would say "have you considered journalling?" That way you can experience the no-longer-useful emotional experience one final time. Wallow in it with full intensity. Get some type of durable diary or journal and write it down. Everything. Write down the facts of what happened, and also write down how you feel about what happened, and about anything related. No holds barred. Then put the journal in a safe storage place. Your subconscious knows that once you have safely committed these unproductive thoughts and feelings to paper, there's no longer any need to keep them simmering away in your head.

Here is the difference: The condo owners can vote to operate without a condo manager. The electors of a city cannot vote to operate without a mayor.

In my experience, a discussion never leads to edification after one person has accused the other person of using an ad hominem. The best approach is to ignore the ad hominem completely, and focus relentlessly on the substance. Nowadays, I might sometimes point out an ad hominem to an audience (to illustrate the weakness of my opponent's debate), but I never mention it to the perpetrator.

Thank you, AccuTron.

There's a traditional Yorkshire saying which goes "There's nowt as queer as folk", which means that every person is strange in their own way.

No need to cut and paste the PDF, just post the page number and we'll see whether or not it supports the claim in your original post (which was that in residential settings an increase in radon was associated with a reduction in cancer). Unless you have data which supports that specific claim, it seems irrational for you to tell people not to have their home tested. I encourage you to withdraw that statement. In my opinion, it's worthwhile to test any high-risk house. A high-risk house is one that is built over radioactive granite (maps are widely available on the web) and which has neither a well-ventilated underfloor nor a radon-resistant underfloor barrier. You asked how much of the report I read. I read all of the textual parts that are available online. I closely read about a dozen pages of the detailed analysis, but found that I couldn't follow all of the math. Nevertheless I satisfied myself that the report's authors were taking account of the various factors that you have raised (correlation with smoking, mining vs residential, linear relation between dose and harm at low doses not fully proven, etc). The fact that these things are somewhat uncertain doesn't invalidate the whole study; it just explains why the estimate of excess deaths has such a wide range (3000 to 33000 per year in the US).

The wiki.answers page to which the OP links claims a negative correlation between radon and cancer. It mentions the BEIR VI report as the source of the claim, but doesn't link to it. You can find the BEIR VI report here:books.google.co.uk/books?isbn=0309056454 All I can see is solid evidence for positive correlation. The report's conclusions state that between 3000 and 33,000 deaths occur from radon-induced cancer each year in the United States, while acknowledging that the quantity and quality of data is not sufficient for a more precise estimate. This is followed by a couple of hundred pages of detailed data and careful analysis. If AccuTron (or anyone else) thinks the report's conclusions are flawed, they should point to the source of error within that report. However, one thing that AccuTron posted is not disputed by anyone: The purpose of testing a house for radon is to identify the small number of houses that have radon levels well above those "normally seen in houses". We tested our house for radon last year. We paid £45 for two small devices that measured the radon. We left them in place for two months, one in a living room and one in a bedroom, then sent them off for analysis. As expected, our house had a very low level of radon, as do most houses.

You don't have to worry! Obviously you shouldn't lie to your daughter, but it's not lying to say that "some people believe and some don't". At some point she may ask whether you believe in Santa. This can be a great opener into a discussion about evidence-based belief ("Well, I've never seen Santa, but if I saw reindeer pulling a sled through the sky I might need to change my mind"), or about society ("Do you count the people we see in shopping malls dressed up in red clothes with stick-on beards?").

The irony is that when everybody swears for emphasis, it no longer works. So, by definition, swear words will always be words that are not used by everyone.

But at the same time China made it clear that individuals can freely transact with Bitcoin. I saw this as an overall-positive development.

From the same article: As a voluntary free-market currency, the bitcoin network will never consume more energy than the benefit that Bitcoin provides to its users. On the other hand, with a compulsory fiat currency there is no upper bound to the monetary or environmental costs of that system.

The carcinogenic effects of burned food are real but small. Unless you're eating badly-burned toast for breakfast every day, and charred barbecued meat every evening, it's unlikely that burned food is your highest cancer risk.

Yes, it's totally possible, just not very likely. Mining a block doesn't require solving one big complicated puzzle, which a faster computer would always solve first. It involves solving billions of relatively simple ones in the hope of finding one that produces a good answer. If there are two computers on the network and one of them is 100 times faster than the other, the fast computer has 100 times as much chance of solving the block. Think of the Grand Canyon filled with lottery tickets. A certain percentage of them are winners. All miners are checking the tickets one at a time, to see if they can find a winner. The faster miner has more chance of finding a winner, but it's still possible for the slower miner to find a lucky ticket. Your computer is not "working towards" mining a block in some cumulative process. In the next microsecond your computer has the same chance to solve a block regardless of whether it has been working on that block for five minutes already, or whether it has been switched off for those five minutes.

I'm glad to see that this board doesn't asterisk out any of those words.

It's always OK to swear, but that doesn't mean it's always a worthwhile thing to do. As a (very broad) generalization, profanity is used more often by those who are less educated. If you swear excessively, some people will form an opinion of you as being less educated and/or less eloquent. This may make them disinclined to spend time listening to what you have to say. It's your call whether or not you care about this.

My suggestion may not be practical, but it's what I'd consider doing if I were in a similar situation. How about suggesting that the two of you go to Mexico together? You can go sightseeing, and she can meet her guy. Whenever she comes back to the hotel she can pour her heart out to you and work through her feelings.

Economic well-being comes from production and mutually-beneficial exchange. Anything else just adds friction to the system. Empirically it's obvious that the multiplier effect is effectively "one", i.e. ineffective. Despite all the Keynsian tools in the armory of US and European governments, they have not been able to achieve their target GDP growth since the fiscal crises. If the multiplier was anything other than "one", those governments would have been able to achieve any GDP growth rate they desired.

I agree with wdiaz03. By all means pay your son for doing things that are good for you (like washing your car), but don't pay him for doing things that are good for him. If he doesn't yet understand that a thing is good for him, then he's not ready to do that thing yet. People can do school grades even as adults, so he can do them when he is ready and motivated. In the meantime, you can make sure that he's getting an education (as opposed to grades).

Most of the big names in the freedom movement use their real names: Stefan Molyneux, Jeff Berwick, Jeffrey Tucker, Doug Casey, Lew Rockwell...

Bitcoin is not a get-rich-quick scheme. No-one knows where the price will eventually settle. One course of action is to put 3% of your savings into Bitcoin, then go and do other stuff. Check the price again in a year or so to see whether you've lost your investment or whether it has done well for you. I think it was Max Keiser who first suggested 3% as an amount small enough that you can afford to risk losing it, but big enough that you will benefit significantly from any gain. It's not worth investing so much that you get sick with worry watching every twitch in the exchange rate. Meanwhile, in the years ahead, the really big money will be made by entrepreneurs who build businesses around Bitcoin. That's going to be the gold rush of the next three years. Bitcoin is now where the internet was in 1994.

You need to hang out where the non-shallow females hang out. In my younger days, I was an active member of a caving club. None of the females in the caving club were interested in television, fashion, or celebrities. The only problem was ... there weren't very many of them compared to the number of males.

One strategy is to invest 3% of your savings, then don't worry about the price. Come back in a year or two to see whether you've lost 3% or gained a fortune.

The requirement that UK parents educate their children "in school or otherwise" is not "progress", it was just a lucky break. The wording was intended to allow nobility to educate their children with private tutors; it was never intended to allow the masses to opt out of institutionalised schooling. In the 1950s Joy Baker took her child out of school to home educate. She was imprisoned for her trouble, and spent ten years fighting to legitimise home education in the eyes of the state before they relented. If not for that accidental phrase "or otherwise", she would not have succeeded. That's why the largest home schooling support organization in the UK is named "Education Otherwise".

By "role playing" I mean that they are getting involved with this avatar as if it was a person.