How to make a free throw in Basketball 100% of the time

http://www.fearofphysics.com/cgi-bin/proj.cgi?x0=15&xunits=feet&h0=5.9&hunits=feet&v0=20&vunits=mph&theta=69&phys=on&animdetail=High&mode=wrap

It’s quite simple really; all you need is to be at the right angles every time. Professional ballers practice for literally hours every day. This allows them to make almost 100% of the shots they take in a game.

The Form:

Step 1: Slowly approach the free throw line.
Step 2: Visualize (This is crucial)
Step 3: Become one with the ball.
Step 4: Lift the basketball to hip height.
Step 5: Slowly raise ball to above your shoulder and keep elbow tucked in.
Step 6: Alter your stance to an athletic body position.
Step 7: Bend with your knees and let the ball roll of your fingertips.
Step 8: (Most important step) Finish with your hand in the cookie jar or top shelf where your dad puts the girly magazines.

Here is some footage of a real live NBA player (please watch). In this video he takes a total of 6 shots from different places on the court and only misses the last one. Incredible!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCPLEjtbusY

Stereotypes

Stereotypes aren't true.. at least not always true. Meaning of stereotype: a thought or image about a group of people based on little or no evidence. There we go, it's based on little or no evidence which means for example not all women are emotional, and not all Americans are rude. Stereotypes reduces people or things to a category which might sometimes make it easier to make a false judgement about someone or something. People tend to make jokes out of stereotypes but again, it may be true for some, but not all. Even though there are both positive and negative stereotypes, we should not judge someone just based on that because if you say Asians are good at math in front of one who sucks at math, they might be offended.

Rationalizing

Rationalizing is determining which side you believe, and then selecting and interpreting evidence to support it. So rationalizing is basically fake reasoning or after the fact reasoning. (Reasoning: examines the evidence, and determines which side the evidence supports. An example of this would be: “We hate Microsoft; therefore everything that goes wrong on the computer is Microsoft’s fault” (and dismisses any problems with a Mac). Just because a person hates Microsoft and thinks that everything wrong with the computer is Microsoft’s fault doesn’t mean it actually is Microsoft’s fault. It could be many things wrong with the computer so rationalizing just because something else went wrong and to blame a party for that whole problem is definitely a fallacy.

Video Games effect Adolescence

People have always claimed that video games have a negative effect of teenagers. But is it true and to what extent? The video game industry is a vastly growing area in the realm of entertainment, so it’s important that we understand the effect they have on kids.

Video games in general have good and bad aspects. For instance they can help improve people’s reaction time when for example you need to throw a grenade away and you only have a second to do so (Call of Duty). In the story mode of games, puzzle solving and decision making in trained. The ability of recognizing threats which is obtained in any shooter game and high speed racing games; this skill is helpful when driving a car. For all their pros games also have cons.

For instance video games can result in less physical activity, which can lead to obesity and a less healthy lifestyle. Violent video games have also been claimed to make teenagers more aggressive. This claim has been proven correct in a number of studies using MRIs to study the after effect of violence in video games. Violent video games are shown to increase emotional arousal in adolescence after game play. I believe this to be true because I have witnessed “gamer rage” before. I also think that it depends on the game as well. For example, “Call of Duty” is a fast paced shooter game, and I have seen and heard people swearing over the microphone in online multiplayer because of uneven balance in fire power. On a different note “Battlefield” game play is a little slower and has a fairer weapon arsenal. Therefore I have witnessed far less “gamer rage” and outbursts over this game. Violent video games have also been shown to desensitize kids towards fighting, killing, blood, and violent acts. This may or may not be a bad thing. On one hand teens would not feel as much mercy and regret about committing violent act towards people because it does not bother them. On the other hand I would rather have a desensitized teenager with me when a natural disaster strikes or if there is a shooting; because they would be able to react faster and think clearer without the worries of fear.

In the long run, though violent video games still do make teens more aggressive, nothing has proven that teenagers are going on killing sprees because they want to let out some steam. In fact, I bet there are fewer teens committing crimes because they’re all in the homes trying reach the next level of the game.

Clean Water, Dirty Tricks

Scare tactics have been used for centuries. From the caveman days, right up to the moment you are reading this, someone is being taken by a sly guy’s scare tactic. It’s like when you go and drive into a car lot, and ask how much that new car is, and they salesman goes off how this new Toyota is safer, with more airbags and ABS. This is when your old car is really just as safe. (Safer if you drive a Prius with the sticky gas pedal syndrome) There are millions of scare tactics in the world, some silly and some just pure genius.

Featured on CBC news’ Marketplace feature was the story of one of their reporters that went behind the scenes to uncover the scare tactics used by water purification system salesmen. These are salesmen that go around to the homes of people in American suburbia and tell them their tap water is dirty, when the fact it, the only dirty thing is them. The salesmen come to your home with a whole ‘testing kit’ and take a sample of your tap water, and a sample of their filtered water, and perform a test that was later found to be fake by scientists that are experts in that field. CBC found one elderly woman that was talked into spending $3500 on a full-home water purification system. After CBC had conducted its own tests on the water and showed the lady that bought the system, she was shocked that someone would actually be that low.

There are many people who will come to your door to try and sell you something. It’s all part of living in the ‘burbs. It’s unbelievable how many people will buy that new cast iron skillet that is way over-priced from the guy knocking on their door so they don’t get relatively harmless amounts of Teflon in their food. The salesmen tell the people how bad the effects are, when the truth is he is blowing them way out of proportion and basing his facts on small numbers.

Be it a $3500 full home water system or a guy with a pamphlet coming to your door, the population falls for scare tactics constantly. It all started with the cavemen, up until the present. The method is the same, and humanity hasn’t learned how to not fall for their tricks.

Link to CBC Marketplace’s ‘Clean Water, Dirty Tricks:’ http://www.cbc.ca/marketplace/2011/cleanwaterdirtytricks/

The good, the bad, and the ugly of the internet

   The last few decades have proved to be some of the most influential, innovative and advancing decades of our civilization's history. Medicine, information, technology... everything has been advancing and is continuing to advance. Many people would agree that one of the biggest advancements during this time was in fact the invention of nothing other than the Internet. However, with the invention of the internet, came the good, the bad and the ugly of the web.


   The beginning of the internet would result in the beginning of the "Information Age". The internet has connected the world on a whole new scale- information is easily shared, and it has changed the way people interact, work and play. Now information can be exchanged within a matter of minutes instead of a couple of days via mail. Information is available at the tip of our fingers- anything we want to know we can access through the web. Friends and family can chat or video call while half way across the world. The internet has created a whole new platform of jobs and opportunity. It was only 30 or 40 years ago when university students had to hand write everything, when governments had a lot more hassle in order to communicate. The internet has, in no doubt, advance our communication of ideas and increased the amount of information available. However, just as the internet advances in greatness, more flaws and bad aspects of the internet are revealed.

   With so much information ready by our side, people tend to take advantage of the availability of the net. The internet is used to commit fraud, hoaxes, plagiarism and also use the internet to post non-credible resources and false claims. Things like Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites let people post whatever information they want, and this information tends to be extremely easy to access. There are a lot of shady people out there that will use any personal information that has been shared for their own good. People have become easier targets for fraud, identity theft, and money scams, which the internet has made easier. Another negative aspect of the internet is that along with the huge amount of information presented, a lot of fake information is presented as well. Along with the bad of the internet comes the ugly of the internet.

With the introduction of online chatting and social networking came some of the ugliest aspects of the internet. Sure, you can chat with your friends and family instantly, and browse family pictures, see what your friends have been up to in the last few months and catch up with old friends. But what happens when you let a stranger into your online world? With the new availability of transforming yourself online, with a new name and face, people have done a lot of ugly things. More and more online predators have been caught in the last 10 years, and this really proves the dangers of the internet. With so much output of personal information, it has made it easier for you to be followed, and found. Little kids without any knowledge of this danger become easy targets for sexual predators.

   The good, the bad, and the ugly of the internet has been presented. You may be thinking, "Well why have the internet if it is so dangerous?"-but the answer is simple. In this day and age, the good outweigh the bad, drastically. If not, the internet would just be a useless commodity only used by the shadiest of people.

Irrelevant Considerations: The “Science” Behind Them

Irrelevant Considerations. That's the topic today folks, so first of all: what the heck are they? Defined in the official dictionary of Princeton University, something that is irrelevant has "no bearing on or connection with the subject at issue", and a consideration is "information that should be kept in mind when making a decision". Therefore, we can assemble that an irrelevant consideration is something that has no connection with the issue at hand, but is still used as important information to out decision-making process. Now this can be anything from people who just 'know' that someone is lying, to techniques that claim to read a person like a book, based on the colour of their shirt. Today, we're going to look at some of the "science" behind these claims, and determine how accurate they really are based on our own common sense, irrelevant or otherwise.

The first claim I found interesting was the completely unbiased, not-looking-for-a-profit, purely-science-and-facts-based writers at Forbes, who "teach" people to tell if someone is lying, based on certain 'tricks' in their face-to-face behavior. One might think that you merely need to be perceptive to master this method, but at the speed that everyday conversations move, you'd have to be someone of superhuman reflexes to "look for slight signs of dilated pupils" during brief glimpses of suspicious retellings. And even if this were possible, the author herself admits that "Psychologists who study deception... are quick to warn that there is no foolproof method". Well there goes my faith! Any "proven method" of using unrealistic skills to do something not even the experts in the field believe in is total garbage (link, bullshit) to me. Don't trust me? See the studies of a one Bella DePaulo, professor of psychology at University of California, Santa Barbara (cited in the article). No matter how hard you concentrate on someone's ever-so"slightly elevated pitch", or observe the "length of speech pauses" down to the millisecond of your subject, you wont accomplish much more than a vague idea of their ulterior motive, depending on how the 'liar' is feeling. To quote the expert: "Lying is not a distinct psychological process with its own unique behavioral indicators. It does matter how liars feel and how they think."

Man Wearing Red

The other claim I thought I would focus on is the so called "colour science" (color for our American friends). And no, I don't mean chromatics, the actual scientific studies behind the material properties of colours, and how to qualify them; I'm talking about those out-to-lunch coo-coos slightly mentally unstable individuals that believe the colour of your shirt on a given day exposes your innermost secrets! Now to begin with, I'd like everyone reading this to stop and think for a minute. When looking at a ridiculous claim such as the one presented to us here, it is always best to first ask ourselves if any of the given information conflicts with our previous experience, and background knowledge. I don't know about you, but I have never, ever felt either a "strong sexual passion" or, alternatively, somehow been terribly intimidated by someone simply because they are wearing the colour red. I can assure you that most people would not be attracted to this (in a red cardigan, or otherwise). What about some of the other colours? White: extreme cleanliness, yet my brother's white shirts would tend to disagree. Blue: Trustworthy and warm personality, but Charles Ponzi loved it! Green: Worn by people of a compassionate and relaxing nature, also happens to be the colour that the antagonizing Green Men of the Vancouver Canucks happen to wear when they wish to rile up opponents. Must we go on?

Now let's look at some of the "science" behind these claims. First things first, the source. Neither of these claims are posted by a doctor with a Ph. D., in fact, one is merely a reporter for Forbes, on anything from privatizing native lands to good hiding spots. There is no research or studies to back these claims up, no experiments to prove beyond a shred of a doubt that they cannot be false... not even a girl with a video camera walking around analyzing clothing clouds and their effects on personality. Nothing! One would think that something as sure as colour-scicence would have lots of hard evidence to claim something outrageous, but it is all just speculations from an irrelevant source. Not only that, but our common sense tells us that our close friends do not change their mood (or perspective on life), based on their quirks, or clothing colours!

The point is, these claims have absolutely no science behind them whatsoever. They cannot be tested, have no experimental data behind them, come from uneducated and irrelevant sources, and cannot be proven through the scientific method. So always remember, while some coincidences may occur, with our current scientific data, and the lack of evidence and credibility behind these claims, there is no way you're ever going to read that one elusive captor's mood, based on the colour of their hoodie. If you still believe in this stuff, I really think you need to give this a read over.

Is using fallacies based on emotion okay?

Many people use scare tactics, which is a fallacy based on emotion, but does that mean that to use it is right or wrong?

Parents often use arguments from guilt and scare tactics to influence what their children think. If a mother tells her daughter that the oven burners are the devil's hands, so that she will not touch them and burn herself, is it wrong? The mother is trying to protect her daughter, but does that make it okay? The mothers use of scare tactics is to protect her daughter so most people would wind this situation okay, however there are people who use scare tactics to persuade people for other reasons. For example to try and scare teens out of partying, a trip to the hospital where students see patients who have been in alcohol related accidents, drug overdoses and things of this nature is arranged for all students. Is it okay to scare these teenagers out of partying by only showing the negative possibilities of partying? Is it right to use scare tactics in either situation?

People may believe that scare tactics are okay when being used to protect, or for good. Others may believe that it is not right to hyperbolize situations, that people should just be told the truth. Neither of these really matter though, people will continue to use scare tactics whether they are ethical or not.

Discrimination Against Homosexuals

Many homosexuals in the world face discrimination everyday. As sad and cruel as it is, there are many places in the world where being gay is illegal. There are laws that legalize being gay, but do not allow gay marriage. There are laws that recognize women being gay but not men. Canada, South Africa, Israel, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain are the only places in the world where being gay is legal, same-sex relationships are recognized, same-sex marriage and same-sex adoption is legal, homosexuals are allowed to work in the military and anti-discrmination laws are put in place for homosexuals and people who are transgender. What people need to realize is that being gay is not a crime. It has just been taboo to so many cultures and religions in the world that some people don't understand that discriminating against homosexuals is wrong.

The Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, is "built around a core of anti-homosexual theology" and the churches slogan is "God Hates Fags". Members of the church go to the funerals of soldiers or people who have passed away from aids and protest their hatred for homosexuals. The Most Hated Family In America is a documentary made about a family who attends the church. Religions and people like this are what make homosexuals feel uncomfortable and hated.

Hopefully one day the world will realize that being gay is not something to be ashamed of. Many places in Canada and other parts of the world have gay communities and pride marches. It's important to be proud of ones sexual status, and no one should ever feel inferior just because they're a homosexual.

Is Osama Bin Laden Really Dead? Conspiracy theories

On May 2nd of 2011 the US government claimed to have found and killed Osama Bin Ladin. However, many people find it somewhat strange that his body was taken to sea and buried instead of the US government keeping his body. His was apparently tested for facial recognition after being shot in the face several times, I am not to sure how recognizable his face would have been. They then claimed to have preformed genetic testing in order to further confirm that it was the body of Osama Bin Laden. It seems a little strange to many people that his body was taken withing 24 hours of his assassination to be buried. FOX news reported that "Osama Bin Laden died a peaceful death due to lung complications". By lung complication do they mean he was shot in the head and chest several times? These conspiracy theories come out of no where and often have nothing supporting them. This web page has many more examples of conspiracy theories of Osama Bin Laden: http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/osama_dead.php

Why is it that we like conspiracy theories so much over the simple explanation? We are genetically made to like secrets or conspiracies because for some reason we like the fact that people lie to us, or we just like the idea of it. It also has to do with bias, many people do not like the US government so they will believe the idea that the US government is lying to them. 2 examples of this are that 9/11 was an inside job and now that Osama Bin Laden's death was faked. Conspiracies theories appeal to us because they can be twisted and involve a lot of thinking which we like. Next time you hear a conspiracy theory remember that your mind may just as well just be tricking you.

I introduce you to my favorite bottled water. This $6 per bottle water is available in Still and Sparkling form in glass bottles (375ml and 800ml), and Still in PET bottles (330ml, 500ml and 850ml).

This "special" water comes all the way from Norway.
Apparently this bottled water has an amazing taste, and it is so special it has won the best tasting water '07. The bottle was designed by former creative director for Calvin Klein.

Does this water really have a taste to it? And how do we know its actually from Norway? How do we know it's unlike other bottled water companies? Such as Alaskan Bottled water, where the water is actually from a factory in one of the southern states. Is it really worth $6?

Oh why not just spend $6 on bottled water designed by Calvin Klein?