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Haha, yeah, I went through a slap bass phase. Flea, Claypool and Wooten are fantastic players. You've probably come across them already, but if you dig slap-style playing you should check out Mark King (from level 42 - in particular the instrumental 'Mr pink' which is a lot of fun to learn) and...

Nah, caucasian (with Aus and US roots). My avatar, assuming that it prompted the question, is a pic of Bootsy Collins - a funk bass player that I really dig (the man has the funk in him and he knows how to party).

Yeah, fair enough. I certainly act as though I were an atheist.

As you would expect it is a personal question, but I'll list what I find to be attractive (also, what do you mean by 'career success?'): - Medicine is academically engaging (I enjoy thinking). It requires good knowledge of science and research methodology (given the 'Evidence Based Medicine'...

Que?: (a) I'm not sure what you mean by 'it takes a huge chunk of your life'. The training is long, sure, but you practice medicine as you train - it isn't a nebulous period where nothing happens. Residents and registrars look after a lot of the nuts and bolts of patient care (and they get...

There is no problem as long as noone makes bogus statements or abuses statistics. A higher UAI predicts a greater likelihood of success (under some definition of success). It does not ensure success. Nor does it dictate some upper limit to one's possible achievements. If all one claims is weak -...

Arts/Med is a great mix. Just do it because you enjoy it.

More than (+/-)1.5 SD from the golden ratio

Some evidence of sorts: - From (Barry & Chapman, 2007) - Predicting university performance "Since university admissions are usually based on TER, we looked at final performance in semester 1 at university by TER, as illustrated in figure 2. As expected, there is a positive relationship...

It's an interesting subtle epistemological difference. When faced with an absence of evidence: (1) The fairy atheist asserts non-existence (2) The fairy agnostic refuses judgement either way (after all... who needs beliefs? Consider Sextus Empiricus, the coolest skeptic on the block)...

I could cry. That kind of attitude makes me think that we might be yet another evolutionary dead end.

Sure, there are problems in the dialectic setting - I'll grant that. But we still have the issue of how we, people of science, are to evaluate the claims being put forth by theists. I think it is wholly appropriate to use the scientific method in this case. It is begging the question because...

Bravo trolls, you've done it again. Think of it this way: Suppose you have a sample of 400 students with UAIs ranging 95-100, and 400 students with UAIs ranging 75-80, with each group studying a comparable range of courses. Would you expect a (statistically significant) difference in the...

You beg the question if you assume from the outset that the idea does not permit of scientific treatment (a fallacy which itself is poor intellectual/scientific practice). Some claims made about god generate empirically testable hypotheses. Even when the entitiy in question generates no...

Haha, perhaps in the right mood. I tend to find that there are easier, more productive ways of getting my kicks.

Of course. An abstract school mark clearly doesn't cause good uni marks. Underlying cognitive abilities and personality traits (intelligence, ability to delay reward, etc ) cause both, generating a correlation.

Few people are silly enough to suggest that a high UAI ensures good uni performance. The question is whether a high UAI tends to predict higher uni performance. I would expect a correlation (though it would likely vary over different degrees and cohorts). Do we have a way to accurately determine...

Within medicine at UNSW I've found that those who, from what I've been told, aced the HSC (i.e. state rankings and/or 99.9+) continue to be guns in the medical course (performing towards the top of the cohort). There are counter-examples of course, as there always will be, but the correlation...

This makes sense if we posit that there was a beginning of time. You can define north as the direction along the shortest line between one's position and the north pole. At the north pole there is no line (as two points are required) and so the definition breaks down. I assume the geometry is...

I don't know (perhaps it has happened before - maybe even an infinite number of times).