The other thing I'd like to have an atheist tell me is how they believe water got here initially, and more specifically, why the water cycle starts on some planets and not on others. From what I was reading a while back, water actually initially gets produced in a closed-circuit chemical reaction, with the three elements, hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon. Once it gets started, the loop can keep going as long as those three elements are all present; my question is, how did those three elements become present here on Earth, especially when oxygen in particular seems to be rare almost to the point of being entirely unique in the universe, from what I've seen?
Hydrogen is by far the most abundant chemical element in the Universe. Helium is second. Oxygen is third. Carbon is fourth. None of these are in any way scarce; I have no idea where you got the notion that there was a shortage of oxygen in the Universe. As for water, the solar system is full of the stuff; water vapour is present in the atmosphere of Venus, water ice is present at the Martian poles, and the outer solar system is practically made of ice. The only thing that's unusual about Earth is the presence of liquid water.
On September 10th I wasn't afraid of my government.
The rest of the world had been bloody terrified of your government since the end of 2000. It was only a matter of time before Bush found a pretext to go on the warpath; if it hadn't been the terrorist thing, it would have been something else. Some diplomatic affront, some no-fly-zone violation, some extremely dubious intelligence about yellowcake, anything to provide the casus belli for the Middle Eastern campaign he and his cronies had been planning from the start.
This is where Osama fucked up - there are so many Muslims in western countries now that all they needed to do was wait two or three generations until they had the numbers to vote the infidels out of power in their own countries. In some parts of the UK it's already happened.
According to your link, there are two Muslim MPs in the UK. Two out of 646, in a country where Muslims represent about 2.5% of the population. So where exactly are the infidels 'out of power'? What power exactly do two backbench Labour MPs have under the British political system? Ah yes, the power to ask the Prime Minister sycophantic questions once a week. Impressive.
Are there any Muslims in the Cabinet? Are there even any local councils controlled by Islamic political parties?
If you want to find religious nutcases in positions of power I suggest you try Belfast, but they're not of the Muslim variety.
According to the article linked, 1 in 4 Muslims are sympathetic to the motives of the terrorists.
Personally, I'm sympathetic to the motives of the IRA. I also think they're a bunch of murdering scum who've set back their own cause by decades at the very least. Sympathy for a group's motives does not equate to sympathy for its methods.
Tell me that in 15 years when England is an Islamic State.
You think that's likely, do you? We had decades of Irish fuckwits letting off bombs here, and they were better at it. How exactly do you think these still greater fuckwits who can't even manage to get a truckload of gas canisters to blow up properly are going to successfully impose sharia law? What, are they going to march on London and conduct a coup d'etat? Or perhaps they're going to set up one comically poor bombing attempt after another, until we're all laughing too hard to resist?
The Inca were 13 million strong in the 1400s, 6 million in the main city. The Maya had half a million people in Tikal in the 600s AD.
Half a million for the Maya in 600ish I can believe. Six million for an Inca city though is absurd. Contemporary Cuzco only has about 300,000 people. Consider the task of feeding the population of such a megalopolis without the vast modern infrastructure of motorised transports and refrigeration of food supplies from a huge agricultural hinterland... Perhaps you meant '600,000'? Misplaced decimal points are not unknown in ancient record-keeping.
There was a particular local firm advertising on the biggest local radio station in these parts a few years ago. They basically took traditional melodies from things like popular nursery rhymes, and rewrote the lyrics to mention their company name repeatedly and the product they were pitching. After a while, they even ran an ad that had the lyrics "We know the songs get on your nerves", which I remember all too well, perhaps making the point for them. That was, however, the last ad they ever ran on that radio station as far as I can tell. I'm not sure what happened to the company...
Still in business, selling windows, doors and conservatories as ever, although it's been a long time since I heard an advert of theirs. They used to run practically non-stop on the bus to school circa 1994, though.
And so what happens when the reverse hits a culture, and easy credit replaces thrift, prudence, negotiation, and hard work?
Actually, there was an awful lot of easy credit around in Britain at the time. Certainly far easier than in the mediaeval period, where getting credit rather depended on there not having been any pogroms lately. Since William of Orange had become king, access to the stock markets and merchant banks of Holland had been easy, and similar institutions were being established in London. They were prepared to finance startups much as they are today. It's really just a question of what you do with your easy credit.
Would the better literacy and general education not yield more technology which would result in increased production?
Absolutely. There were a lot of large-scale circumstances that made it possible, but in the end it wouldn't have happened if not for a lot of entrepreneurial Northern gentlemen coming up with gadgets to improve efficiency and making a fortune doing it. And making it worthwhile for people to build canals to ship their raw materials and produce around because of the hugely increased capacity. And then build an empire to keep the raw materials coming. And then build steam engines because water power just won't cut it any more...
Boiling water helped decrease disease among city workers.
This may actually be a major component in why the Industrial Revolution took off in England.
Between the fall of Rome and the rise of London, the only cities on earth to approach a million in population were in China. Once the tea culture took root in England, the habit of boiling water allowed urbanisation to increase dramatically, where hitherto cities had been limited by our frankly shocking approach to sanitation.
Well, that and the establishment of imperial trade routes across the world, the merger with Holland linking British resources with Dutch financing, the convenience of not having to spend much on the army and instead putting all that money into boats (see Imperial Trade Routes above for the uses we found for 'em)...
In your home, you have some reasonable expectation of privacy.
But what if putting cameras into homes could save lives? Just imagine if there'd been cameras in 25 Cromwell Street, Gloucester. These bleeding-heart privacy considerations are worthless compared to the many lives that could have been saved from a sadistic serial killer! Surely if it saves one innocent life it's worth it, and these civil liberties activists should really start living in the real world.
More seriously, the chief problem with cameras is that they're asymmetric. Put a policeman on the street and he can see us, and we can see him. We know he's there and we act accordingly. Put cameras everywhere and they can see us and we can't see them. We have to assume we're being watched the whole time, and if coverage is continuous, being tracked from one screen to the next. Putting cameras everywhere isn't the equivalent of putting a uniformed policeman on each street - it's the equivalent of putting a secret policeman out there to follow you everywhere you go. Logging your every move in detail for future reference. Keeping a file on you.
If you do something ILLEGAL outside your home, you DESERVE to get caught.
Why do you specify 'outside your home'? Don't the laws apply just as much inside? Surely we should also install cameras inside the home. After all, if you're doing something illegal, you deserve to get caught. The cameras won't create new laws by themselves, only enforce the ones that exist. And if you're doing nothing illegal inside your home, you have nothing to worry about.
When you start using "crime" and "Terrorism" in the same sentence to justify the actions of government, I think there's a big problem on the horizon. How long will it be before the two are used interchangeably?
Personally, I only object to the redundancy. Saying that the police will combat 'crime and terrorism' is just like saying they will combat 'crime and murder', or 'crime and counterfeiting', or 'crime and burglary'. Terrorism is just one of many crimes the police are expected to combat, so saying 'crime and terrorism' is redundant.
"Will we now create false gods to rule over us? How proud we have become, and how blind."
-- Sister Miriam Godwinson, We Must Dissent, on the Self-Aware Colony
But it probably won't matter much because the sun as a red giant will be far hotter and far more luminous so the orbital distance increase won't be enough to compensate.
It will be far more luminous, but substantially cooler: around 3000K rather than the current 5800K. It'll still cook the Earth without difficulty, though.
The army is plenty familiar with how to make a no-man's land, it's the press, and consiquentially the American People that will not allow those kind of tactics. This war is going the same way Vietnam went, because it has about the same support from the people that Vietnam had. War is terrible and ugly, the people don't want terrible and ugly, because they don't really believe in the cause. So the Army is asked to fight the Disney version of War. In DisneyWar only bad guys die, the oppressed welcome us as heroes, and all the soldiers come home in time for Christmas. The problem being of course DisneyWar doesn't really exist.
You make it sound like the disaster in Iraq is the People's fault. Blame the People, for not supporting the army enough. Blame the People for wanting their armed representatives abroad to be held to reasonable humanitarian standards. Blame the People for not thinking this is a cause worth levelling entire cities for.
Here's a thought. If the people don't really believe in the cause, why not blame the bosses? The regime that sent the army out there despite the wishes of the people? They're the ones at fault here.
He's been screwed by piracy? You mean robbed, raped or murdered on the high seas? If not - then *call it what it is* - bootlegging.
He's being screwed by bootlegging? You mean his records are being smuggled across the Mexican border in someone's shoe? If not - then *call it what it is* - copyright infringement.
The also used dogs w/ bombs strapped to them and trained them by feeding them under tanks. They set them loose on the battle field and the ones that didn't freak out ran under the tanks where they were promptly blown by radio control.
Alas, the dogs had learned in training to associate food with the undersides of Soviet tanks, not German tanks. The result of all this was predictable.
Oh, ditch the strawman argument about "what if 1 innocent man" crap, we have confessed killers and rapists who will one day be out among us...
I seem to recall six Irishmen who confessed to having planted bombs in pubs. These confessions to appalling acts of terrorism, along with positive tests for explosives residues, were enough to convict them and send them down for life, with the judge expressing regret that the death sentence was no longer available. The extensive bruising all over their bodies courtesy of the West Midlands police had, of course, nothing whatever to do with any of this.
Of course now they're out and their names fully cleared. Had the sentence still been on the books, though, they would surely have hanged.
Every British astro-geek knows who Patrick Moore is. Mad monocled xylophone-playing astronomer, who has presented the programme The Sky at Night since the days when we didn't even know what the other side of the Moon looked like. This show is an institution. Generations of astronomers grew up watching it. Every other science show on the BBC has dumbed down into nonsense - apocalypse of the week shows, mostly. The Sky at Night on the other hand is a proper old-fashioned science show.
Patrick Moore is extremely old and sooner or later will permanently stop presenting the show. Brian May is appearing on the show more and more frequently as time goes by. Someone is needed who (a) knows astronomy and physics thoroughly enough to maintain standards, and who (b) can hold the attention of an audience. I spy a candidate...
Strip bars are far too vanilla. You do know the kind of parties Queen liked to throw, right? Sex midgets carrying trays of cocaine around on their heads, that kind of thing?
But men also want a woman that other men find attractive.
Genetically speaking, that makes sense too. Your daughters are likely to look a lot like their mother, and it's good for your genes if that is something other men find attractive.
Slashdot Mirror
Hydrogen is by far the most abundant chemical element in the Universe. Helium is second. Oxygen is third. Carbon is fourth. None of these are in any way scarce; I have no idea where you got the notion that there was a shortage of oxygen in the Universe. As for water, the solar system is full of the stuff; water vapour is present in the atmosphere of Venus, water ice is present at the Martian poles, and the outer solar system is practically made of ice. The only thing that's unusual about Earth is the presence of liquid water.
The rest of the world had been bloody terrified of your government since the end of 2000. It was only a matter of time before Bush found a pretext to go on the warpath; if it hadn't been the terrorist thing, it would have been something else. Some diplomatic affront, some no-fly-zone violation, some extremely dubious intelligence about yellowcake, anything to provide the casus belli for the Middle Eastern campaign he and his cronies had been planning from the start.
According to your link, there are two Muslim MPs in the UK. Two out of 646, in a country where Muslims represent about 2.5% of the population. So where exactly are the infidels 'out of power'? What power exactly do two backbench Labour MPs have under the British political system? Ah yes, the power to ask the Prime Minister sycophantic questions once a week. Impressive.
Are there any Muslims in the Cabinet? Are there even any local councils controlled by Islamic political parties?
If you want to find religious nutcases in positions of power I suggest you try Belfast, but they're not of the Muslim variety.
Personally, I'm sympathetic to the motives of the IRA. I also think they're a bunch of murdering scum who've set back their own cause by decades at the very least. Sympathy for a group's motives does not equate to sympathy for its methods.
You think that's likely, do you? We had decades of Irish fuckwits letting off bombs here, and they were better at it. How exactly do you think these still greater fuckwits who can't even manage to get a truckload of gas canisters to blow up properly are going to successfully impose sharia law? What, are they going to march on London and conduct a coup d'etat? Or perhaps they're going to set up one comically poor bombing attempt after another, until we're all laughing too hard to resist?
Half a million for the Maya in 600ish I can believe. Six million for an Inca city though is absurd. Contemporary Cuzco only has about 300,000 people. Consider the task of feeding the population of such a megalopolis without the vast modern infrastructure of motorised transports and refrigeration of food supplies from a huge agricultural hinterland... Perhaps you meant '600,000'? Misplaced decimal points are not unknown in ancient record-keeping.
Still in business, selling windows, doors and conservatories as ever, although it's been a long time since I heard an advert of theirs. They used to run practically non-stop on the bus to school circa 1994, though.
Actually, there was an awful lot of easy credit around in Britain at the time. Certainly far easier than in the mediaeval period, where getting credit rather depended on there not having been any pogroms lately. Since William of Orange had become king, access to the stock markets and merchant banks of Holland had been easy, and similar institutions were being established in London. They were prepared to finance startups much as they are today. It's really just a question of what you do with your easy credit.
Absolutely. There were a lot of large-scale circumstances that made it possible, but in the end it wouldn't have happened if not for a lot of entrepreneurial Northern gentlemen coming up with gadgets to improve efficiency and making a fortune doing it. And making it worthwhile for people to build canals to ship their raw materials and produce around because of the hugely increased capacity. And then build an empire to keep the raw materials coming. And then build steam engines because water power just won't cut it any more...
This may actually be a major component in why the Industrial Revolution took off in England.
Between the fall of Rome and the rise of London, the only cities on earth to approach a million in population were in China. Once the tea culture took root in England, the habit of boiling water allowed urbanisation to increase dramatically, where hitherto cities had been limited by our frankly shocking approach to sanitation.
Well, that and the establishment of imperial trade routes across the world, the merger with Holland linking British resources with Dutch financing, the convenience of not having to spend much on the army and instead putting all that money into boats (see Imperial Trade Routes above for the uses we found for 'em)...
I'll complain a bit less loudly when I see how much tax came out of my last pay cheque, then!
But what if putting cameras into homes could save lives? Just imagine if there'd been cameras in 25 Cromwell Street, Gloucester. These bleeding-heart privacy considerations are worthless compared to the many lives that could have been saved from a sadistic serial killer! Surely if it saves one innocent life it's worth it, and these civil liberties activists should really start living in the real world.
More seriously, the chief problem with cameras is that they're asymmetric. Put a policeman on the street and he can see us, and we can see him. We know he's there and we act accordingly. Put cameras everywhere and they can see us and we can't see them. We have to assume we're being watched the whole time, and if coverage is continuous, being tracked from one screen to the next. Putting cameras everywhere isn't the equivalent of putting a uniformed policeman on each street - it's the equivalent of putting a secret policeman out there to follow you everywhere you go. Logging your every move in detail for future reference. Keeping a file on you.
Why do you specify 'outside your home'? Don't the laws apply just as much inside? Surely we should also install cameras inside the home. After all, if you're doing something illegal, you deserve to get caught. The cameras won't create new laws by themselves, only enforce the ones that exist. And if you're doing nothing illegal inside your home, you have nothing to worry about.
Personally, I only object to the redundancy. Saying that the police will combat 'crime and terrorism' is just like saying they will combat 'crime and murder', or 'crime and counterfeiting', or 'crime and burglary'. Terrorism is just one of many crimes the police are expected to combat, so saying 'crime and terrorism' is redundant.
"Will we now create false gods to rule over us? How proud we have become, and how blind."
-- Sister Miriam Godwinson, We Must Dissent, on the Self-Aware Colony
Terrorism?
I think they're mostly paying for that through borrowing, not taxation.
It will be far more luminous, but substantially cooler: around 3000K rather than the current 5800K. It'll still cook the Earth without difficulty, though.
You make it sound like the disaster in Iraq is the People's fault. Blame the People, for not supporting the army enough. Blame the People for wanting their armed representatives abroad to be held to reasonable humanitarian standards. Blame the People for not thinking this is a cause worth levelling entire cities for.
Here's a thought. If the people don't really believe in the cause, why not blame the bosses? The regime that sent the army out there despite the wishes of the people? They're the ones at fault here.
He's being screwed by bootlegging? You mean his records are being smuggled across the Mexican border in someone's shoe? If not - then *call it what it is* - copyright infringement.
Alas, the dogs had learned in training to associate food with the undersides of Soviet tanks, not German tanks. The result of all this was predictable.
I seem to recall six Irishmen who confessed to having planted bombs in pubs. These confessions to appalling acts of terrorism, along with positive tests for explosives residues, were enough to convict them and send them down for life, with the judge expressing regret that the death sentence was no longer available. The extensive bruising all over their bodies courtesy of the West Midlands police had, of course, nothing whatever to do with any of this.
Of course now they're out and their names fully cleared. Had the sentence still been on the books, though, they would surely have hanged.
Would that be because poor neighbourhoods contain a lot of people likely to vote for parties of the revolutionary Left, by any chance?
Patrick Moore is extremely old and sooner or later will permanently stop presenting the show. Brian May is appearing on the show more and more frequently as time goes by. Someone is needed who (a) knows astronomy and physics thoroughly enough to maintain standards, and who (b) can hold the attention of an audience. I spy a candidate...
Strip bars are far too vanilla. You do know the kind of parties Queen liked to throw, right? Sex midgets carrying trays of cocaine around on their heads, that kind of thing?
Genetically speaking, that makes sense too. Your daughters are likely to look a lot like their mother, and it's good for your genes if that is something other men find attractive.