Dak

are you sure? I've made thin steel (eg, butter-knife thickness) easily pliable and glowing cherry-red using a barbeque and a hair-dryer, whilst merely putting a butter-knife into a BBQ isn't sufficient to even make it glow. maybe something like secondary fule (in the fire sence -- ie the jet fule set fire to something else that burned hotter), insulation of the heat, or convection currents sucking fresh air up the tower acted as an air-pump raised the heat to the point where the steel was malable (melting isn't neccesary). plus, as cap'n said, it wasn't merely immolated -- it was whalloped by a rather large plane and then set ablaze.

isn't aircraft fule specifically chosen 'cos it burns really hot? i.e. this was the first skyscraper in modern history to have to attempt to tolerate such heat?

ok. i understand what a tautology is now (ta). but how could it be used as a rebuttal. for example, i've heard it said (more or less) that 'that's invalid because it's tautological'. I would have thought that, being true by necessity, you couldnt say that a tautology is invalid?

ah, of course. and all the transgenic pigs, with more human-like hearts. I knew there was a reason i was dubiouse about that. cheers. (afaik, transgenic is synonymouse with chimeric)

I see. But i've heard that, whilst they're not faliciouse, they shouldn't be used in logical arguments (not just because they're redundant). any idea why?

I've looked it up from many sources, and even searched this forum to see how the word was used, and i plain and simple don't really understand what it is, and specifically why it's bad.

ooh, logic would be great.

cells can be divided into two classes: germ-line and somatic. basically, any cells that could pass on their genetic information to the ofspring of an individual are germ-line, whereas those that can't are somatic. In a male, sperm are (obviously) germ-line. testicle cells, giving rise to sperm, are also germ-line. all other cells in an adult are somatic. in a developing foetus, a stem-cell that will, at some point, give rise to testicular stem-cells is germ-line, etc. germ-line gene thereapy is just gene therapy of germ-line cells. It represents huge risks, in that any mistakes made in somatic gene therapy will only affect the individual 'tinkered with', whereas germ-line gene therapy will effect the individuals offspring, and their offspring, aswell. In other words, germ-line gene therapy could effectively introduce new genes into the species. for this reason, germ-line gene therapy of any animal is, i believe, illegal in every country. certainly in the US and UK*. Germ-line gene therapy is legal on plants, i believe. ========== * having said that, i'm not so sure.

the letter being written on wisci doesnt seem too bad, and it benifits from input from several people of variouse disiplines. I'd both suggest and request that you attempt to address and fix whatever issues caused your desision to leave, rather than wrighting a second letter. or, if a second letter is to be written, may i suggest that you wright it against a different creationist source, so as to not duplicate effort within the scientific community.

lol. what about the kkk... their take on christianity is that the killing of blacks is sanctioned by god. terrorist islams take on islam is that the killing of civilians is sanctioned by allah. surely, in these two cases their religions genuinely reflect badly on them. "No textbook or other instructional materials shall be adopted by the state board or by any governing board for use in the public schools that contains any matter reflecting adversely upon persons because of their [...] religion." would having stuff about the KKK or terrorist islamics in a text-book prevent its adoption by schools? what about paedophillia (reflecting badly upon because of their sexual orientation)? Do all three of these groups have to avoid being talked about to avoid painting them in a bad light (bearing in mind that the bill seems to be some kind of legeslature, so presumably schools would leave themself open to suing if they breach the bill).

in line with the OP, im going to throw some stuff in -- seperated from my own views by being blue -- that represents the stereotypical oppinion of many people. in other words, blue stuff isn't my views and isn't aimed at jim; its just an example of foreighn oppinion of the us. I believe it's possible. there's certainly evidence to suggest that things are worse now than they were before sadam was removed. in line with the OP: what pisses some foreighners off is a percieved common oppinon amongst americans that no amount of badness inflicted on the iraqis could fail to be justified by the fact that they are now in possetion of the One True Form Of Govournance. US and UK. and again, possibly. which is better: to live and work in a relatively stable and moderately advaned (eg, has some modern infrastructure, like electricity, water, hospitals etc) country lead by a despot, or to live, unenployed, in a democratic country that is unstable, lacking in infrastructure and plagued by religiouse extremists and criminals that the govournment is too weak to supress. now... for many people, in many areas of iraq the above is the case. for many others, in many other parts of iraq, the above is not the case. for me, the question is the extent of the unenployment, the lack-of-hospitals etc caused by bombing etc, and how easy/difficult it would have been to avoid the situation by waging the war differently/handling the revovery differently. in addition, the UK (and i believe the US) sought permission from the UN to wage the war. permission was not granted, and the UK and US ignored this fact and attacked anyway. Now, that in itself is a bit shitty. if you agree to accept the desisions of the UN, and ask for its permission to wage war, to then turn around and ignore their ruling and invade anyway, that's unquestionably bad in one way or another. this probably accounts for the majority of the official disaproval from countries; the league of nations had problems with controling the larger countries military actions, which played a large part in the overall failure and breakdown of the organisation. i'd guess the UN doesnt particularly want to go the same way, BUT if it's larger voluntary members will not accept UN rulings, and the only ones that will are the smaller ones that can be forsed, then the UN will unavoidably become a tool for the larger countries to exert their will on the smaller ones. compared to the loss of lives -- and countered by the securing of the oil supply -- i think the capitol loss is irrelevent. as for loss of lives, approximately 40,000 non-military iraquis died in and following the war, whilst only 2,500 US/UK soldures died1. as far as loss of life, the iraqis suffered greatest. lots of americans think these 2,500 allied military deaths are more significant than the 40,000-odd police/civilian deaths; mouning your 'martyrs' for democracy, whilst overlooking the significant loss of civilian iraqi death caused by your 'democratic' war. as a little commentary on the persieved skill of your troups -- america had under twice as many troups in iraq as the UK2, but suffered about 25 times as many casualties1 which is seen as a result of the trigger-happy, gun-ho and poorly trained state of your troops. it is also suspected by many british that the majority of our military deaths are the result of american friendly fire, 'cos your soldures are crap. In truth, about a third/quater of british troups died in non-combat situations, and most of those were non-friendly-fire. friendly fire was a problem, but I couldnt find any info about US-inflicted v UK-inflicted friendly fire. I would like to point out that when two of our challanger tanks mistook each other for enemies, resulting in the only loss of a british tank in the war and the death of three tank-crew, this was seen in UK as a harsh yet probably unavoidable incident. When a british fighter was downed by a us missile, this was seen as poorly trained american soldures being crap again, despite the fact that our only military deaths before that point in the war had come from two recent crashes of british helecopters whilst trying to land, killing the people on board (just under half of which were american). So yeah, aren't stereotypes fun and completely grounded in logic and fact tbh, i kinda agree with you. afaik, there was a (justified) war, and we refrained from conquering iraq under the condition that they allow weapon inspectors in -- they broke this agreement, so we re-commenced with the invasion. the lack of WMD is irrelevent. the argument against WMD is somewhat more relevent agiainst the UK, because there are suggestions that Blair falsely over-represented the possibility of WMD in order to justify the war to the UK populance. possibly because two large countries invaded a smaller country to get what they wanted, resulting in the loss of several thousands of civilian lives, in an age where we can realistically expect to avoid war and on a continent that is volotile and has already been the theater of two world wars, neither of which we wish to see repeated. 'cos their arrogant bullies who like to throw their weight around

it doesnt illegalise the wrighting of books that paint gays etc in a bad light, just says that schools can't use that book. is this actually legislature then? or just a sylabus-type-thing?

a firewall is a must, and you didn't mention one. as for which protections can go: put it in limited user mode, keep the software firewall (unless you have a hardware firewall) and ditch the rest, and just try to avoid porn/crack sites and you should be ok. you can scan online every now and again in place of on-board anti-malware stuff (google for ewido, emsisoft and kaspersky and you should find some good online ones) as for linux/MS word: you can use the equally-annoyingly-flawed-in-places open office wrighter (which is free).

link I was tired; i misread the enboldened bit above as 'history books'. the study of different groups of people is what social studies is about, and the exclusion of gays from this is, of course, extremely hard to justify. also, i misinterpreted this as 'not requiring by law that history text-books include homosexuals' and transgenders' contributions to California history amounts to legally preventing their inclusion', which should explain my 'imbecil' comment. I also missed the fact that 'enforsed invisibility' was the only direct quote, and read 'CNS news' as 'CNN news', and so trusted the source to not be overy-biased. i was tired, ok that said, i'm going to retract/rebuke some of my own statements (some still stand). that would pretty much be the first option that i suggested: "'gay history' not being taught for homophobic reasons" I dont understand. but... SB 1473 (amended) it's history focusing on gay people, as opposed to 'gay history' or 'history with gay people left in', both of which would be different. I still maintain that this would be an unjustified hijacking if it was to be done in a history class, but it's not -- it's for social studies class. if so it was unintentionally. by 'specifically focus' I meant that homosexuals, both contemporary and historical, were being specifically targetted for inclusion in the sylabus; not that they were the main focus or anything. anyway, it was an argument against slanting the history sylabus to overly focus on gays, rather than against the inclusion of historical gay figures in the social science unit (which is what has actually been adopted) (and all the other arguments against focusing on gays within history class) I objected to the above scenario due to it's insiduouseness and it's hijacking of the academic process to promote the currently reccomended political ideology. BUT, the bill requires the inclusion of gays throughout time in social studies class, not history class. social studies is for studying variouse aspects of our society, and so the exclusion of gays (contemporary and historical) from this course would be (obviously) extremely hard to justify. no, people will be required to either learn it or fail the unit, as it is to be included in the social studies unit. there is no bias. einsteins sexual orientation is irrelevent to his theories, or to the understanding of his theories. one's sexual orientation is, as far as i am concerned, irrelevent in the majority of cases; in fact, arbritrarily attatching some kind of relevance to someones sexuality is, by definition, more indicitive of bias than to concider ones sexuality irrelevent. the fact that people aren't being required to teach about historical gay people outside of social studies makes this point irrelevent either way. yup (see above). I think i managed to also pull you into defending a set of circumstances that have not been adopted. soz about that. ========== i still think this bill is a tad heavy-handed, and the wrong way of addressing the issue, but tbh this may stem from my ignorance of american law/educational regulation rather than any genuinly valid point. so... can someone more familiar in this area tell me what the californian education code is? i.e. is it law, eduacational policy, or both? as i read it, the bit that was recently amended (the bit were talking about) was "REQUIRED COURSES OF STUDY (General Provisions)", which seems to be a curriculum outline, but also law?

yes, but why does the scenario actually exist? Is 'gay history' not being taught for homophobic reasons, or because it's genuinely not of enough academic interest to justify it's teaching in school? I'd guess it's the latter, hence my thinking she's wrong in her statement. it's history focusing on gay people. 'gay history'. there have been many midgets throught history, many of whom i'm sure have been valuable members of our society; but, do we specifically focus on midgets who have contributed to society just to prove that they do? no, and i really dont see why we should specifically point out someones sexuality in a history class unless it's relevent to understanding the history being discussed. (not meant as flippantly as it sounds, it's just the best way i can think to sum up my reasoning) having gone to school in the same country, i'm sure that you, like me, were taught of the fact that many women took to factory work during WWII to cover for the shortage of workers caused by the fact that many men had gone to war, and that women as a whole thusly contributed greatly to the war effort; and also the fact that, once the war was over and the men had returned, many women put up a bit of a fuss about being expected to get back in the kitchen. IMO, this is highly relevent from an historical pov (and thus is perfectly justified in being tought in school history classes) because it represented both a significant departure from the norm of the time (indicating the magnitude of the impact of the war on everyday life) and a majour turning point in womens rights. BUT, if someone were to suggest passing a law stating that women who had achieved stuff should be found and students tought about them just to show them that women are capable of being useful, i'd react in the same way as i am to this proposed bill: if a significant historical event specifically involved women/homosexuals, or if a person was relevent enough to discuss and knowledge of their sexuality was neccesary to understand what was being discussed, by all means mention homosexuals throughout history, but not just for the sake of mentioning it. I agree about the worrying trend, the fact that it's bad, and that it needs to be addressed, but not like this. Its too heavy handed. history is for learning about history, not the currently reccomended socio-political ideologies. Plus, i think it could actually be bad... there's alot of people in britain who resent black people for bringing in the 'positive discrimination' laws, (reguardless of the fact that both our civilians and our politicians are predominantly white), and i wouldn't be surprised if this was viewed as 'the gay folk pushing their veiws on us lets hate them for it' by many americans. Like i said, this is a tad heavy-handed and i think it should be dealt with a little more gently, even if only to avoid the above scenario. No, but i'd accuse you of adding in completely irrelevent facts for no reason whatsoever; if you want to do that, thats fine, but legally obliging people to do so kinda turns the mole-hill into a mountain IMO.

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/viewstory.asp?Page=%5CCulture%5Carchive%5C200605%5CCUL20060505b.html wtf? how does that work? not forsing people to learn something that has little academic value is the same as preventing them from teaching it? imbecil. Why bother learning gay history? I mean, if someone played an inportant part in history, why specifically point out his/her sexuality, unless it was specifically relevent? As an example: in school, when studying WWII, we were tought that the nazis persecuted people, mainly jews but also black people, gays, and, well, pretty-much everyone, but those were the main three. In that case, it's relevent 'cos the homosexuals were one of the groups being persecuted. But why focus on gays in other situations? I dont really see the problem. In fact, I was tought about gay sex in sex-ed at school (admittedly there were no pamphlets)

well, in each length you can make one-less diagonal than there are dots: horizontal, 4 dots, 3 diags: . . . . .\.\.\. . . . . . . . . vertical, same: . . . . .\. . . .\. . . .\. . . and, of course, there are two types of diagonal: \ and /... So I guess it's 2((w-1)(h-1)) {w = width in dots, h = height in dots}. diagonals spanning more than two dots should be dedusable in the same way.

Nope, i'm originally from england. Why'd you think I was french, out of curiosity? Now, there's no point trying to logically debate these views with me 'cos 1/ i dont really hold them, and 2/ they're not logical But anyway: the fat stereotype is merely a significantly overblown version of the truth. america has an obesity problem. america has large portions. ergo (so the stereotype goes), americans are fat. your attempts to portray yourselves as anorexically thin in your movies is merely an attempt to cover this up . and to add to what phil said: bush really hasn't done you any favours. from his 'athiests arent american', to his ban on stem-cell research 'cos he's a religiouse zelot, to his 'lets invade the world' attetude, to his inability to speak, to any number of other things, these perseptions lead many to believe that he's a bit of a pillock, and the fact that you voted him into office kinda paints you in a bad light in the eyes of many.

well, unfortunately I think britain is relatively given to low-grade racism, but, seeing america mainly as an outsider (i.e. largely through your own media), I'm not entirely surprised that these stereotypes exist. Next time you watch a film, try to pretend that you dont actually live in america, and so you can't easily seperate the bull from the bits that are grounded in reality. (not saying that hollywood-endoresement makes the stereotypes right, just that i can see where they come from) that we all have bad teeth would be analagouse to the 'fact' that all americans are fat. I can't actually think of another thats prevalent in america off the top of my head, although 'exesively rude/polite/aggressive' are general stereotypes about the british. we also share a few with you guys (arrogant, ignorant of foreighn countries, etc) , tho not, i believe, to the same extent. [edit]actually, if the OP doesnt mind, i'd be interested in hearing a few more steryotypes/foreighn oppinion of the brits[/edit]

Ooh you evil so-and-so you, I actually fell for that; for a minitue I was all like "aww nerts, i've managed to offend someone" (wont respond to your other comments as OP asked for no debating)

Not my personal oppinions, just reporting. dont shoot the messenger although, if you look at your own media -- which, remember, makes up the majority of your 'public face' to the world (foreighn media accounting for the majority of what's left) -- it's not too hard to deduce foreighn oppinion. Not many people think of americans in all of the following ways, or believe the following to the extent that I describe... but this is sort of an amalgamated steryotypical view of someone who believes in american steryotypes (if that makes sence?) Ok, so... arrogant and self-righteouse spring to mind. you know the guys from the films, who raise the american flag in front of their house every morning and almost cry whilst singing the national anthem? "aih love america, it's the best gawd damn country on gawds earth". etc etc. well, in britain, i'm pretty sure that alot of people think that americans are all, to a greter or lesser extent, derangedly zelotic patriots. the fact that you seem to have the need to over-right anything that could be concidered a foreighn achievement and make it an american achievement doesnt help: everything from changing french-fries to freedom fries, to re-filming british comody such as absolutely fabulouse and the office with american actors rather than just screening the british versions, or -- and excellent example -- the fact that a film was made about the cracking of the german code in WWII, and the british troops were replaced in the film by american troops. also fundamentally stupid. 'guns dont kill people, people kill people. the fact that most of these people-who-kill-people have guns is a sheer coincidence.' 'canada is an american state.' 'what other countries?' etc are all concidered by many to be representative of the average american intelect and education level. brain-washed. it's assumed by many that you all believe everything in hollywood movies, and that you all repeat, like a mantra, 'democracy is good. capitalism is good. comunism is bad and the opposite of democrasy.' etc. Your view of history (and also current affairs) is also seen as incorrect and re-ritten to paint america in a good light. exessively religiouse. i dont think i need to say more. hypocritical. You mourne the loss of innocent lives in september the 11th, and then retaliate in a manner that involves the bombing of several civillian targets, including hospitals, in a country that wasn't actually responsable for sep. 11. you invade other countries, shatter their cities, infrastructure and society and leave them without a functioning political system, all in the name of democracy, and then windge about 'having' to 'police' the world. you harp on about freedom of speach, and also try to silence the teaching of evolution or critisism of the american way, capitalism etc. your constitution, which you all seem to claim to follow like a bible, guarantees people equality, and yet america is percieved as immensly inherently racist, and as the ritch minority pissing on the majority. your army is seen as a bunch of trigger-happy retards who can't tell friend from foe oh, and every single one of you is fat. those are the main ones. I'd like to again point out that these aren't my views, and also that quite a few people don't view america badly atall. Also, as Apeofman said, people who express these views seem to express them towards america as a whole, rather than individual americans, who are generally tolerated unless they loudly 'do something american'. Unfortunately, there are a few (loud) americans who seem to live up to these sterotypes, with one of them being seen as many as managing to have gotten himself elected el presidento, and they, combined with hollywood, tend to enforce peoples beliefes about america. Next time i see something on the internet that demonstrates any of these steryotypes, i'll post it up for you if you want.

indeed, and to, say, de-prioritise VOIP software (what with lots of ISPs being telecom's companies. in fact, some ISPs have allready blocked traffic bound to the port that (I think it was) skype uses). As to what I meant... if it was done in with the genuine interests of the interweb in mind, prioritising could* be useful by, say, prioritising communications based on the distance they have to travel, deprioritising prefetch http requests, prioritising bittorrent communications on a newly starting torrent, deprioritising traffic to sites that are known to generate alot of automatic traffic by via malware, setting the priority of video's being watched-as-downloaded either up or down to what is needed to download at 1second of film/second, deprioritising emails etc. but... if networks prioritise, I can't see all of them putting aside their own interests and refraining from, say, deprioritising voip, or adopting pay-to-prioritise policies, which would suck all round. -------- *I'm by no means knowledgeable enough about the internet to know of how much benefit this would all be, but it sounds asif the whole system could be made more efficient by prioritising.

I think that, in and of itself, prioritising traffic could actually improve the internet. The only question is, could prioritisation be allowed whilst preventing the users essentially being shafted by corporatoins who wish to deprioritise competition, rather than prioritising intelligently.