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This was posted by the US Embassy in Kyiv. An amusing rejoinder to Putin's statement that Ukraine had never been a country.

I wonder where the cutoff is for those who are opposed to torture under any circumstances. To protect yourself or others would you: 1. Hit someone? 2. Beat someone? 3. Kill someone? 4. Put someone in stress positions or cause sleep deprivation? 5. Break fingers? 6. Cut off fingers? 7. Go medieval? I assume the "no-torture" group would not do #7. But what about the others? How far would you go to attempt to save the lives of your children or a subway system full of strangers?

Trump must be sizing up these new separatist republics as possible hotel markets.

The report in OP is also severely misleading. The case under discussion is this here: N Engl J Med 2021; 384:953-963 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMcpc2027093 And the final diagnosis is Which is not a food-borne disease. The report linked in the article in OP was part of a diagnostic survey where folks could try to perform a differential diagnosis based on all the information provided. The article then heavily suggested a food-borne disease (and I can only speculate that the "Chinese food" angle was just to tempting to pass up). The full case was then reported in the article I indicated and revealed Neisseria mengitidis as culprit. Sources, sources, sources...

SwansonT, studiot, and joigus, thank you for your responses. I studied all of the references you suggested, but unfortunately, the mathematical equations were beyond my comprehension. I was left with just general impressions. ............................................................ SwansonT, my minor problem in response to a question by studiot, wasn’t an understanding of the 15 degrees C and the -18 degrees C, but the reference to how the -18 degrees C was calculated. You at least gave me a source for that. and I thank you accordingly. I can understand that our atmosphere discharges some heat energy into space and that this probably conforms to some extent to the SB Law. This student is dumber than you imagine, and can only understand the very basics. ...................................................... studiot may have provided a better understanding for me concerning the role of SBL principles within our atmospheric dynamics. He points out that “There are two coefficients called emissivity and absorbitivity which relate to energy in the general case and heat in a particular case...... All bodies are in a state of both continual emission and continual absorbtion.” He suggests that a grey body is an imperfect black body; i.e., a physical object that partially absorbs or emits incident electromagnetic radiation. So, in one sense he seems to be suggesting that the SBL is not restricted to ideal black bodies and that virtually every body at molecular or macro- level can be regarded as an emitter or absorber to some extent, depending on temperature and other factors. Now I may have totally misunderstood studiot, and misquoted him, but it is becoming obvious to me that I’m not going to be able to satisfy my curiosity about climate science matters by persisting in this thread. ..................................................................... joigus spoke about ‘periodicity’ or lack of it, being the aspect that I’m missing in the whole picture. To some extent he re-inforces studiot’s notion when he states “Indeed, the Earth is not a black body, but you can rest assured that the part of the radiation spectrum from any physical body that contains thermal information about that body (that is, excludes reflected light, or light that goes through it) nicely fits that of a black body. A black body does not reflect any light, that way you get to the part of radiation from anything made of atoms that's only due to radiation having been in thermal equilibrium (or bouncing around long enough inside the body) and then started to re-radiate those photons. Most of the light you receive from a rock that's sitting on your desk is reflected light. Certainly the one in the visible frequencies is (at room temperature). But if you were sensitive enough to see the infrared, you would see a frequency-dependent graph that agrees with the black-body spectrum.” ............................................................. My thinking about climate change commences basically with my own mental images initially of temperature-recording devices in Stevenson Screens on land, in ships and buoys, and in satellites. I picture the gases in the atmosphere around the land and sea becoming active due to absorbed energy at the molecular level and transmitting emitted energy to the temperature sensors. To my mind, that is what climate change is all about. If the average global annual temperatures weren’t rising due to increasing energy fluxes at the temperature-sensing device mechanisms, there would be no problems associated with ‘climate change”. I can understand the science of how the the energy reaching the surface from the sun and radiative forcing appears to be calculated as a global average at about 156 Wm-2, and how this results in a change in the Earth’s near surface annual average temperature from 255 K to 288. If it’s mathematically incorrect to equate that 33 degrees K with the 156 Wm-2 affecting the atmosphere near the temperature-recording devices, my question would be whether there’s a more complicated mathematical connection, or is it an indirect association. I’ve not received an answer that I can comprehend. I’m unable to glean that from the answers I’ve received, so my curiosity has turned to confusion. I’ve concluded that I can’t learn any more in this forum about the basics. I concede that the reason is most probably my own inability to comprehend the mathematical equations used in the science you’ve all provided but I thank you for your efforts. I’ve decided to retire from this thread because of my own inability to comprehend the responses you have all made in an effort to satisfy my curiosity. I repeat that I thank you all for your efforts..

One thing we know, more Americans died of COVID-19 than people of any other country. It's almost as though the COVID-19 virus was fitted with a American-genome-adhesive feature that particularly fancied Americans. No really, look at the trajectory COVID took after "It's origination in the Chinese area". It could have spread out like a breeze, or it could have spread towards the Asian areas, but it took a definite course towards the USA....think that ain't weird? Now, who would want Americans dead? Many people, and not just people from middle eastern countries. If you look down history, who have Americans messed with? The list is long. Vietnam, Iraq, and Japan, in World war 2. Now the original deceased of Japan in Hiroshima and Nagasaki may be too dead to hate, but their kith and kin, their descendants, probably do take umbrage that grandpa Liang and Grandma Chang were taken out for no reason by a great big atom bomb in WW2. The descendants of the dead in Japan probably work respectable jobs today. Some of them are scientists, (and we know Japanese scientists are world class for brilliance. Technology is their middle name) Did one of those Japanese scientists devise COVID-19 to take revenge on the United States for what they did to hiroshima and Nagaksaki? Just asking the logical question.

I think there is another solution. You will feel a rather unpleasant mental resistance when you think about this problem, it is the strength of the will of the Aliens that you will feel, if we are enough of us to counter it with our minds we can weaken their will and they will give up their desires and their weapon around the Earth.