The Student Room Group

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sugar_cane
They manage to have some sort of ball/occasion every week...the clothes are pretty amazing :o:

Though, I'm getting a little bored with the whole Chuck thing (especially after reading parts of the spoilers for next week's episode :o:).


Is this US time? I'm personally very very pissed off with the whole Serena/Dan thing. They randomly got together, and now he fancies (happened in US, if you haven't watched it, you may not want to look!)

Spoiler

I mean the whole suspension of disbelief thing is being pushed a little far...

And grr... I hate Vanessa. Hate her. Kill her. Now.


On another idea, I think I may have pushed the exhaustion to the stage where I'm throwing up. That cannot be healthy. And it's only 2nd Week. Either that or the dry pasta made me ill. Doesn't seem likely :frown:.
Mrs Carrothead
Is this US time? I'm personally very very pissed off with the whole Serena/Dan thing. They randomly got together, and now he fancies (happened in US, if you haven't watched it, you may not want to look!)

Spoiler

I mean the whole suspension of disbelief thing is being pushed a little far...

And grr... I hate Vanessa. Hate her. Kill her. Now.

Yeh, this is US time. I haven't seen the latest episode because I don't think there was one this week :s:

Yeh, the Serena/Dan thing annoys me, but not as much as the Rufus/Lily thing going on at the same time

Spoiler



Vanessa and the crappy dress episode for the Christmas ball was possibly the best - Vanessa just annoys me.
Actually, as avidly as I (and all the friends I got hooked :smile:) watch, I can't actually think of anything I really like about it right now :p:. Other than Blair, because she makes me laugh and I like her clothes a lot.

And I'm waiting for Nate and Jenny to get back together, although maybe if he stays with Vanessa, they could both die in a horrible horrible train wreck. That would be great.
Reply 7003
Drogue
This is my point! I'll go back and read the bits again as it was years ago I was reading into it and I'm not doing a good job of explaining what I mean, but the point made was that yes, these things happen many trillions of times, but the outcomes are orders of magnitude less likely. I'm not talking about alternate universes, or things not being kept or other things not being seen, I'm talking about even if every time it mutated independently it was kept, if it were random we would expect to see some things far, far less often than we do.

Just to check, are you actually arguing that mutations are random, or just point holes in my argument? The latter I entirely understand, as I'm not arguing it very well at all, though if the former, what is it that makes them random? I've never heard of anything* actually be random.


The way I see it is that natural selection removes diversity, and mutation results in new diversity. Both happen all the time, but if selection pressures (on what kind of life you planet can support, for example) don't change that radically, you will see a lot of the same stuff cropping up again and again and again, because all the other alternatives don't work...

Also mutations aren't entirely random - you have things like bacteria which can up-regulate their mutation rate in environments of rapid change, where they need lots of mutations to occur in the hopes that some will be beneficial and help them survive. The human genome is also full of hot and cold spots, where you get more or less mutation and recombination that on average.
Athena
Also mutations aren't entirely random - you have things like bacteria which can up-regulate their mutation rate in environments of rapid change, where they need lots of mutations to occur in the hopes that some will be beneficial and help them survive. The human genome is also full of hot and cold spots, where you get more or less mutation and recombination that on average.


Plus hyper-variable regions in Plasmodium and Trypanosomes that let them evade your immune response and give you malaria and such-like. Though I can't remember how the inheritance works so this might not correctly be evolutionary variation.
Yey! Done with work for at least a day! Though I feel rather sick and dizzy. Comes from getting 1hr sleep I think. I think 3hrs is the minimum I can take, then I start to fall apart :smile:.

Soo..... anybody want to talk about something pathetic that can counter the intelligence of the evolutionary discussion? :biggrin:
Mrs Carrothead
Soo..... anybody want to talk about something pathetic that can counter the intelligence of the evolutionary discussion? :biggrin:

I hate Vanessa? :p:

I should get back to my essay, sigh.
sugar_cane
I hate Vanessa? :p:

I should get back to my essay, sigh.


Ha ha, we all hate Vanessa. I just realised I've only slept 10 hours since Sunday. I think I may start hallucinating soon :biggrin:.

Is your essay on anything interesting? I was quite impressed with myself for basically writing a Land Economy essay for a filthy Tab last night. What is Land Economics anyway? Sounds like a doss to me :tongue:.
Morbo
I'll be honest, all I saw there was:

Spoiler


Dyslexic.
Mrs Carrothead
Though I have to ask, are you (thomasjtl) the CU guy that comes around with the brownies that I then don't have the heart to throw out, because a) your brownies are nice, and b) they're a cruel cruel trick!
Are you at lincoln? In which case I'm not the brownie guy, but I know who you're talking about. Yes, his brownies are very good. His mum makes them- see this is how much we care about you and want you to know Jesus!
I try to make sure though, more generally that whatever stuff we're doing it's clear to people that we want to talk to them about Jesus- the food just makes things easier to get people talking (not as good as alcohol, but we won't go down that route even though it would make us more popular).
Mrs Carrothead
Ha ha, we all hate Vanessa. I just realised I've only slept 10 hours since Sunday. I think I may start hallucinating soon :biggrin:.

Is your essay on anything interesting? I was quite impressed with myself for basically writing a Land Economy essay for a filthy Tab last night. What is Land Economics anyway? Sounds like a doss to me :tongue:.

Managerial bonuses...not a particularly fascinating topic in my opinion, but it's gotta be done!

I never understood Land Economy as a subject, hence why I went to Oxford's supposed doss subject - E&M :p:
as far as i can make out, land economy seems to be a course for people who will be shortly inheriting their family estate and need to know how to run it. All sounds rather vocational to me.
thomasjtl
What I take to be literally true are the gospels, written much later in the new testament where you have carefully written accounts of what Jesus said and did, the impact he had, and ultimately of his death and resurrection. It's clear from reading any of the gospels that their authors were writing them as fact, as biographies of Jesus, and given the historical context of the early christians and their grizzley ends it's appears that the authors genuinely believed what they wrote to be true. It is these documents that I have been convinced are true and accurate, despite their incredible contents of miraculous healings and ressurection of the dead, and which i take to be literally true. If anyone's interested in what convinces me so strongly i can talk about that some more- pm me or something, but essentially this is my starting point and where my belief in christianity stem from, and everything else comes from working from Jesus.


I take issue with this. Why, if you are prepared to accept that the Old Testament is largely allegory, and not strictly fact, are you not prepared to say the same about the NT? I'm not an expert, but do know a fair bit about the Luke-Acts debate. Acts is the only record we have of that period, so there is little we can do to recreate true events other than trust it. The synoptic gospels however disagree in many ways with John, for example. Luke claims to be the most detailed and truthful, but still many of the situations seem to be created in order to give the punchline; in other words, a saying of Jesus was recorded, the story behind it forgotten, and a generic story created to give a background to the more memorable phrase.

Similarly the healing episodes are so generic: in very many cases all details are removed other than the illness from which the person was cured, while in a few we find names, and further details. Luke's claim to give as much precise information as possible means that either the information has been lost (in which case the background story has been fabricated in order to create a setting for the miracle) or Luke is not actually trying to give precise information - in which case we can discount much of the book as allegory anyway.

I'm not saying that what the book contains is untrue, that is a matter or belief. But the evidence is very strong that, just like the Old Testament, Luke (and by extension Acts as well) must be allegory. The basic teachings, sayings and miracles can be taken as probably correct (according to Christian beliefs) but the situations in which most of these things occur are more likely to be made up in order to turn the book from a list of actions and sayings into a book more in-line with the ancient biographical genre.
thomasjtl
as far as i can make out, land economy seems to be a course for people who will be shortly inheriting their family estate and need to know how to run it. All sounds rather vocational to me.


Nah, that's what Cirencester Ag Col's for! And the girl I know who's doing it is a de Beer so she probably will need to know how to run an estate..... :p:


Ah see now I try to avoid E&M considering my economics was/is pretty atrocious (considering I do PPE), though I do have a friend at Brasenose doing it, so I know it's not a doss! Not as much as psychology at least :p:. And you're at Merton. I applied there so I know the craziness involved!

Oh, and thomasjtl, the brownie guy is a bit hardcore and scary. The first time he came around he told me that when he read the bible, God was speaking directly to him. The girl is a lot more.... is normal the word? :smile:
Feefifofum
I'm not saying that what the book contains is untrue, that is a matter or belief. But the evidence is very strong that, just like the Old Testament, Luke (and by extension Acts as well) must be allegory. The basic teachings, sayings and miracles can be taken as probably correct (according to Christian beliefs) but the situations in which most of these things occur are more likely to be made up in order to turn the book from a list of actions and sayings into a book more in-line with the ancient biographical genre.

I really don't see how it shows that. Or for that matter why it would be. Most of the OT was committed to paper a long long time after the events it describes happened, or were first used as a teaching aid. The NT in contrast was all set down on paper about 70AD by eyewitnesses or people who were themselves close to eyewitnesses (e.g. Peter's scribe) so there's far less reason to assume the use of allegory.
Reply 7014
I tried to do 'Christian Union' handing out cookies as a way of getting into people's rooms for assassins. The gun under the cookie bowl was nice and discreet. Unfortunately no one would answer the door for me.
Reply 7015
Woo, just passed Sports Fed's minibus assessment. But the ciabatta I got from the ATS as a reward for two hours of driving is actually really nasty :s-smilie:
id be so mortified if a christian came bringing brownies. do they really think that will work?
vapid slut magician
id be so mortified if a christian came bringing brownies. do they really think that will work?


It wasn't the bringing, it was the 'here have a brownie' on your second day, so you think maybe they live on your s/c. You take one. You bite. WE'RE THE CHRISTIAN UNION! And the first one wouldn't leave for about 45 mins. He kept going... you just haven't found the right church, by which time I'd told him more than enough that the problem wasn't the forced chapel at school.... it was that I don't have any kind of belief in anything vaguely Godlike. Then again, he never gave up hope :biggrin:.

Off to tute, then bed, WONDERFUL WONDERFUL BED :woo:.
Reply 7018
I find using brownie/bible bringing visits as opportunities to try to convert them to atheism seems to discourage repeat visits.
Teebs
I find using brownie/bible bringing visits as opportunities to try to convert them to atheism seems to discourage repeat visits.

probably works better if you try to convert them to Islam