gcol

GCOL is just a contraction of my name. No avatar because: 1. As someone else said, an opinion or point of view should be taken at face value, not tempered with a preconceived prejudice. 2. If I could find a decent cartoon of Rip Van Winkle, might use that. Not sure if I have woken from a long sleep, or would like to fall into one and waken after a couple of hundred years to find out how much current nonsense has actually come to pass.

Ha, Ha, Ha: This whole thread is a joke, right? It is as meaningful as discussing religion. Weird opinions, subjective college blethering and not a shred of objectivity to back it up. Whichever joke PCS got, and I suspect it was ironic rather than humourous, there are plenty of others, largely unintentional.

If and when they do visit, care to bet, judged by our own standards, they won't zap us because we dont believe in their God? Or If they get to us first, which would indicate they are smarter than us, they may fall about laughing saying "You dont still believe in that old God mumbojumbo, do you?" Only time will tell.

The sub could generate power on the way down, but consume it in the mechanism that made it rise. Always a net consumption, always a loss in a closed system? Do not only hydroelectric systems produce power from a true kinetic source, the kinetic energy of the falling water?

Just a leg-pull, in the same vein as Severian's question.

Is he not voicing the opinions of the South Floridians, whoever and wherever they are? It is just their point of view.

Try this: http://www.abelard.org/technology/red_x.php

Not suitable for tanks. Been tried on politicians.Their skins are already made of it, but the shells and whizzbangs just bounce straight back at you. Completely impervious. Very dangerous.

Dont want to divert the thread, so ignore if necessary, but: When formulating recipes and cooking methods for fishing bait, I quickly became aware of the finicky way that the two types of starch in most foodstuffs can hold different amounts of water at different temperatures. This separation of solids and fluids, which may well precede microbial action, is an interesting subject for food chemists in its own right, and I believe that the many varieties of modified starch are produced just to minimise this effect as regards freezer and shelf-life.

Let me have a go, inexpertly, to see if I have learned anything from these forums: 1. no physical substance can be that rigid. 2. the action at one one end must be transmitted atom by atom through the medium. This transmission can not travel faster than light. How was that?

Jazz on a summers day. (lovely atmospheric jazz) Casablanca. (no excuses) All quiet on the western front. (War is stupid) Forbidden planet. (Archetypal modern genre sci-fi) The Mission. (made me angry and thoughtful)

It is a funny old world. The Greeks and Romans built Empires on slavery. Some modern countries did the same. (no names, no pack drill, all in the past)! No slaves now, mostly, but "low wage servants" fill the gap. Problem: At first they are welcomed in with open arms to do the menial tasks, but the door, once opened, refuses to close again, and you get too many. Then to rub it in, some insist on becoming educated and pinching jobs they were not intended to have. Moral: 1. Dont start something you cant finish. 2. The law of unintended consequences always applies. 3. History always repeats itself.

Must be true.... I mean, you cant get more personal than your own death:D

I wish I had been smart enough to said it in those terms. BTW, I might be getting Von Daniken and Velikovsky mixed up. Have not looked at their books in so many years. Covered in dust and cobwebs. About the sphinx...a couple of tongue in cheek possibilities for "blasphemies": 1. Must not upset the Egyptian tourist industry. 2. Lots of Archaeology profs who are as old and set in stone as the Sphinx.

Cheers, thanks, I'll drink to that.. P.S. Aj47 has a thread about homebrew, that info seems relevant to that, too..........

I have sympathy with your quest, my curiousity having been grabbed by Von Daniken when I was a lad. Much of his "evidence" has proven unreliable or fanciful, but he did unearth things from ancient mythologies which still make me wonder 'how on earth did they know those things all that time ago, before modern science?' Modern science is a hard and impersonal taskmaster. Its initial reaction is always to debunk, rubbish and ridicule. Perhaps that is its strength....... The ideas of out-of the box thinkers of whatever era are always worthy of a second look from time to time. They occasionally contain a grain of truth which was not recognised at the time. BTW, Is there not some new idea/controversy about the geological origins of oil? The new ideas remind me of something Von Daniken wrote. It was not fashionable at the time, but now? And is not Panspermia being considered seriously again? Real human origins from the stars.

Thanks, that's a start, gimme more! P.S. Aren't mols little blind furry things that ruin your lawn?

What volume of alcohol can ideally be obtained from 1kg. of sucrose? Specifically by fermentation. I specify sucrose, assuming that not all sugars have the same conversion rate, and not all sugars are fermentable. (e.g. lactose). This question arises from curiousity about 1. home brewing, and 2. producing alcohol as fuel. As a side issue, perhaps for another forum, I wondered 3, about the total energy input required to produce alcohol from, for example, Brazillian sugarcane. (of interest to seekers after alternative energy sources). Figures are obtainable for alcohol yield per hectare of brazilian sugar cane, but not more detailed information.

Agreed. If the correlation is capable of different interpretations, then it is merely an amusing observation. I suggested one possible way of interpretting it. How would you like to reinterpret the original correlation using you opposite example? Your example shows the original correlation has flaws and should not be relied on to support an argument.

Quote, Steph: There may well be a correlation. But it is the interpretation of it that is important. One interpretation is evolution saying "Because you can not control your loins, I have to apply the corrective mechanism to your offspring." The children pay the price of their parents selfishness.

Quote, Pink Trike: If that is true, it is the only logically defensible argument in favour of homosexuality that I am aware of, so well done to you. Natural population control by letting the current fashion for homosexuality burn itself out. I wonder how long we must wait for the Chinese to be predominantly homosexual?. I hope it is not too long, or they will be the dominant type.

It is surely a foregone conclusion that the U.S. will burn itself out and fall into decline. Not if, but when, and the question will be how it manages that decline and repositions itself when it is no longer king of the hill. If handled gracefuly and with long term preparation, the decline may not be socially catastrophic, but history is not favourable to that outcome.

Reverse had the right word, it is "abnormal". It is a genetic abnormality that, without positive discrimination should breed itself out. It is an evolutionary deadend because it is counter-reproductive. Those who contribute usefully to species propagation should be sympathetic to the afflicted. To those who feel very strongly it is an argument in favour of eugenics. Give me one strong argument as to why homosexuality serves any genetic purpose. Stop *****-footing around and being apologists for this aberation.

PEAK OIL MAN: What a vision, sort of Eco-Command Economy then? Like eco-communism. But with you as the World President, of course. Count me out, thanks and look for me among the revolutionaries. Are you doing your bit to reduce energy consumption by unplugging your computer?